The Takarazuka Revue is a Japanese all-female musical theatre troupe based in Takarazuka, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. Women play all roles in lavish, Broadway-style productions of Western-style musicals and stories adapted from films, novels, shōjo manga, and Japanese folktales. The Takarazuka Revue Company is a division of the Hankyu Railway company; all members of the troupe are employed by Hankyu.
Parisette, 1930
Takarazuka Grand Theater (Hyōgo Prefecture)
The first performance, Donburako, in 1914.
A historical photograph of a stage performance; all of the actors are women, some of whom are cross-dressing.
Shōjo manga is an editorial category of Japanese comics targeting an audience of adolescent females and young adult women. It is, along with shōnen manga, seinen manga, and josei manga, one of the primary editorial categories of manga. Shōjo manga is traditionally published in dedicated manga magazines, which often specialize in a particular readership age range or narrative genre.
Shelves of collected volumes of shōjo manga under the Margaret Comics imprint at a bookstore in Tokyo in 2004
Actress Hideko Takamine, portraying an archetypal shōjo wearing a sailor fuku in the 1939 film Hana Tsumi Nikki [ja]
Cover of the first issue of Shōjo-kai, 1902
A four-panel manga from the November 1910 issue of Shōjo (artist unknown). Note the henohenomoheji in the final panel.