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On a boiling hot day in August, outside a theatre in
the Ginza district of Tokyo, hundreds of women and girls are waiting to see their
hero. A short-haired woman, wearing sunglasses and
a baseball hat walks through the crowd. "Oh,
she's so handsome," says one elderly woman as Fubuki Takane, the newest Takarazuka
star, enters the theatre. Founded in 1914, the revue
is Japan's oldest and only surviving female musical-theatre group. The
handsome "otoko-yaku" or women playing men are a romantic female ideal
of the perfect male. Women start training when they
are between 16 and 20 and, after a girl is selected to be an "otoko-yaku",
her hair is cut short and she starts learning how to speak, walk and behave like
men. They often retire when they are in their early
thirties - if they get married before that, they have to leave the revue. Takarazuka
stars don't earn much but they can make big money from advertising and television
when they retire. Some people think that Takarazuka
is so popular because the women think that the otoko-yaku are better than real
men; more romantic and considerate to women. The average
Takarazuka fan club member spends about 250,000 yen a year on her hobby. | 
