Japanese Studies

ISSN: 1037-1397 (Print) 1469-9338 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjst20

Boys at the Barre: Boys, Men and the Ballet in

Japan

Masafumi Monden

To cite this article: Masafumi Monden (2019): Boys at the Barre: Boys, Men and the Ballet in
Japan, Japanese Studies, DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2019.1611345

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Published online: 29 May 2019.

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JAPANESE STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2019.1611345

ARTICLE

Boys at the Barre: Boys, Men and the Ballet in Japan

Masafumi Monden
School of Design, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia

ABSTRACT
Since the introduction of ballet to Japan in the early 1900s, male
dancers have figured prominently, with a profile equal to that of
female dancers. Despite this, the association between ballet and girls’
cultures has been dominant in Japan, as in other cultures. As a
consequence, ballet is often considered to be a highly ‘feminine’
activity, with associations as a ‘queer’ activity for males in contem-
porary culture. What does the increase in visibility of ballet in
Japanese boys’ culture tell us? This paper examines Japanese popular
media that target boys and men as its core audience, especially the
magazine Dancin’, possibly the first ballet magazine in the world
exclusively for boys and young men. I examine how the magazine
operates in contrast to the female version to attempt to create a
virtual, imagined community that might offer a sense of belonging
and encouragement to otherwise isolated ballet boys.

Introduction

I am very happy to see the launch of Dancin’ as there hasn’t been any ballet magazine for
boys.

14-year-old male, Hyogo, 10 years of learning ballet

On 5 February 2017, headlines on Japanese news programmes reported that two

Japanese boys, 17-year-old Nakano Taisuke and 15-year-old Yamamoto Kōyō, had
achieved success at the famed international ballet competition Prix de Lausanne.1 For
some, the focus on the boys’ victory might be surprising because of ballet’s strong feminine
image in many cultures today. In Japan, too, ballet has been closely associated with girls’
culture. However, this assumption ignores ballet’s representation as a men’s activity in
Europe until the mid nineteenth century, and the fact that most classical ballet repertoires
cannot be performed without male dancers, including the essential male support in the pas
de deux.2 Male dancers’ solos or variations are a showcase of ballet performance, displaying
difficult jumping and turning sequences that call for athleticism, dynamism and control;
many ballet schools offer boys-only classes with distinct syllabuses, to train them to develop
specific techniques such as tours en l’air that are now performed almost exclusively by

CONTACT Masafumi Monden Masafumi.Monden@uts.edu.au

1
All Japanese names follow the convention of surname first: Nakano Taisuke, not Taisuke Nakano. All translations are
mine, unless otherwise indicated.
2
Pas de deux means dance for two.
© 2019 Japanese Studies Association of Australia
2 M. MONDEN

Figure 1. The cover of Dancin’, volume 3, 2014 (c) SHINSHOKAN Dancin’.

men.3 Despite this, the association in popular media between classical ballet and the
material culture of girls’ lives has been prominent not only in Euro-American ‘ballet
capitals’ but also in Japan. As a consequence, participation in classical ballet is often
considered to be a highly ‘feminine’ or ‘queer’ activity for males today. Still, the number
of boys who are learning ballet in the twenty-first century is increasing. The release of the
UK film Billy Elliot (2000) is said to have (re)kindled boys’ interest in ballet, and recently

3
Tours en l’air means turn in the air, a manoeuvre in which the dancer rises straight into the air from a demi-plié (a small
knee bend), makes a complete turn and lands in the fifth position with the feet reversed. Grant, Technical Dictionary,
121.
 JAPANESE STUDIES 3

Figure 2. The cover of Clara, volume 9, 2014 (c) SHINSHOKAN Clara.

Ballettguttene (Ballet Boys, 2014), a Norwegian documentary film about three boys study-
ing ballet in Norway, and Dancer (2016), a documentary film about Ukrainian male ballet
dancer Sergei Polunin, received acclaim and were released internationally. But it is in Japan
that the adoption of the art form in boys’/men’s culture has taken a unique approach: the
creation of boys’ ballet manga (comics) and a magazine.
What does the increase in the visibility of dancing in Japanese boys’ culture,
where the concept of chūsei (androgyny) has been part of aesthetic preferences,
tell us? This article examines the underlying importance of targeting boys and
men as a core audience for ballet in Japanese popular culture, using examples
4 M. MONDEN

Figure 3. A Dancin’ feature story on stage make-up, volume 8, 2015, 24 (c) SHINSHOKAN Dancin’.
 JAPANESE STUDIES 5

such as manga and in particular the ballet magazine Dancin’ – possibly the first of
its kind to be produced specifically for boys and young men.
I begin with a general overview of ballet culture in contemporary Japan. I then
examine common notions of ballet and masculinity, particularly in relation to the
practice notable in Anglophone culture of ‘masculinising’ ballet to attract boys to the
art, and I follow this with a brief history of male presence in ballet in Japan. The final
section seeks to establish how Dancin’ has been significant in creating an imagined
space where ballet boys can join a community of boys who share interests. In conclu-
sion, I also explore how Dancin’ and an emerging subgenre of ballet manga in boys’/
men’s culture effectively negotiate with the conception of ballet as ‘feminine’ art,
creating an affinity between the magazine and its male readers, the imagined commu-
nity of ballet boys.

Ballet in Contemporary Japan

As of September 2011, there were at least 4,630 institutions or organisations that offered
ballet classes across Japan, with levels ranging from hobby to professional.4 The most
prestigious of these institutions teach a considerable number of aspiring Japanese ballet
dancers who participate in international competitions every year. For instance, the Prix
de Lausanne is an international ballet competition held annually in Switzerland for
young dancers of all nationalities aged 15 to 18 who are not yet professionals. The
winners of the contest receive scholarships that allow them to complete a year of their
training in one of the partner schools or professional dance companies associated with
the Prix de Lausanne. Japan is one of the most active nations participating in this
competition; in 2017, 26 per cent (89) of all the candidates (338) were Japanese
nationals, the highest among the 36 nations that participated.5 The international
achievements of Japanese dancers have received significant media attention in Japan.
In February 2012, the news of 17-year-old female dancer Sugai Madoka placing first in
the competition swept across Japan.6 Her achievement was followed by Yamamoto
Masaya, who placed third in the same competition one year later.7 And in 2014 there
was more media attention when 17-year-old boy Niyama Haruo came first in the Prix
de Lausanne, with his compatriots, 16-year-old girl Maeda Sae and 18-year-old boy
Katō Mikio, coming second and sixth respectively. Niyama’s achievement became a
headline on NHK News 7, one of the most respected news programmes in Japan.8
A number of professional Japanese dancers who gained their start through competi-
tions have continued their careers in Europe and North America.9 The most famous
examples are ballerina Yoshida Miyako and male dancer Kumakawa Tetsuya, both of
whom were principal dancers with the UK’s Royal Ballet, and male dancers Horiuchi
Gen, former dancer at the New York City Ballet (and currently the artistic director of
the Saint Louis Ballet Company), and Iwata Morihiro, former first soloist with the

4
Umino et al., ‘Comparative Analysis’, 60.
5
Prix de Lausanne, ‘Candidates’.
6
Nihon Keizai Shinbun, ‘Rōzannu kokusai baree, kouni no sugaisan yuushou’.
7
Nomi City, Ishikawa Prefacture official website, ‘Yamamoto masaya’.
8
NHK News Seven.
9
For more information on Japanese ballet dancers’ careers abroad, see Sternsdorff-Cisterna, ‘Japanese Ballet Dancers’.
6 M. MONDEN

Bolshoi Ballet. Following on the paths of these icons are younger female dancers like
Kajiya Yuriko at the American Ballet Theatre, Kobayashi Hikaru and Takada Akane at
the Royal Ballet, Koike Mimoza at Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, Kida Mariko at the
Royal Swedish Ballet and Kono Mai at the Bavarian State Ballet, as well as male dancers
like Kura Kenta and Hirano Ryōichi at the Royal Ballet and Ebe Naoya of the National
Ballet of Canada. Kumakawa is a well-known celebrity, whose popularity soared with a
popular television commercial for Nestlé Gold Blend (1997), creating a link between
ballet and the media that I will explore later. This impressive list of Japanese ballet
dancers – and there are many more of them – indicates that at least as far as famous
dancers are concerned, men are as visible as women. The news of Niyama coming first
in the Prix de Lausanne was as big a news item in Japan as that of Sugai two years
previously, with equal media attention paid to the international success of a ‘ballet boy’
and a ‘ballet girl’.
In 2013, a Japanese publishing company, Shinshokan, which produces dance maga-
zines such as Clara (established 1998), a monthly ballet magazine for girls, launched
Dancin’, a quarterly magazine dubbed ‘Clara for boys’. A ballet magazine that targets
boys and men as its core readership is, inside or outside Japan, rare, if not unique.
Moreover, the introduction of Dancin’ was paralleled by other expressions of dance in
popular Japanese culture, notably boys’/men’s manga. This is particularly significant,
since classical ballet has, with the exception of a few male star dancers, been perceived
widely in the twentieth century as a feminine activity.10 This gender bias has been
documented in recent studies of ballet and gender, which have been developed pre-
dominantly within the canon of the Euro-American intellectual tradition, with the focus
on Anglophone case studies.11 Before moving on to discuss Japanese cases, it is worth
examining common notions of ballet and masculinity in this Anglophone context and
calibrating how they do or do not apply in the Japanese cultural context, where ideas of
gender, including masculinity, have been understood differently.

Ballet and Gender

‘Many little girls dream of becoming a ballerina’, writes Julianne Pepitone in her article
for Cosmopolitan magazine about the (actually not-so-glamorous) life of ballet dancers.12
This romantic association between classical ballet and material culture concerning girls
and women has been the norm, while ballet’s relationship with boys and men has been
somewhat problematic. We should first note that gender difference in classical ballet has
been regarded as an aesthetic virtue. The dichotomy of feminine and masculine aspects is
marked through ‘costuming, body image, movement vocabulary, training, technique,
narrative, and especially the pas de deux structure’.13 Ballet has not only been for
women; there has also been a place for men and male dancers. ‘The ballet aesthetic’,
writes Angela Pickard in her book on ballet, Pleasure and the Body (2015), ‘is expressed
by the male or female ballet dancer’, and thus the beauty of ballet is not limited to female
10
Klomsten et al., ‘Adolescents’ Perceptions’, 626.
11
See, for example, Burt, The Male Dancer; Fisher, ‘Make It Maverick’; Holdsworth, ‘Boys Don’t Do Dance, Do They?’;
Gard, ‘When a Boy’s Gotta Dance’.
12
Pepitone ‘What It’s Really Like to Be a Ballerina’.
13
Daly, ‘Classical Ballet’, 58.
 JAPANESE STUDIES 7

dancers.14 In our contemporary society, however, the equation of classical ballet with
femininity remains strong.15
Ballet and gender are indeed closely intertwined in modern times. Classical ballet
often demands clear definitions of gender on the dancer’s body, with set ideas for male
and female dancers.16 This is because ‘Developing the idealized, gendered ballet body
based on socially constructed aesthetic ideals of beauty and perfection is central in ballet
schooling or training’.17 Dance, and classical ballet in particular, is a space ‘where
gender-normative ideologies remain present’.18 Therefore, ‘dance (or at least particular
kinds of dance) has long been seen as something which boys and men, particularly in
Western countries, do reluctantly if at all’.19 Many authors point out that this is because
of the association people make between ballet and femininity, which within a hetero-
masculine context would evoke senses of unmanliness and homosexuality.20
Much modern scholarship on ballet and men points to the (assumed) association
between dance and homosexuality; yet while the conception of ballet as ‘feminine’
seems to have existed in the mid nineteenth century,21 ‘there was not a pronounced
association between ballet and homosexuality [in Europe] until the age of [Sergei]
Diaghilev’ in the early twentieth century.22 Male dancers dominated European ballet,
which had been systematically developed in the courts of Renaissance Italy and France,
until the beginning of the era of romantic ballet in the 1830s, when ballet skirts and
pointe shoes became prevalent.23 From the mid nineteenth century onwards, ballet
became embedded in girls’ material culture. Not only did it become one of the favourite
after-school activities for girls, ‘motifs of ballerinas in two and three dimensions are
constantly found on products intended for girls’ consumption’, dating back to the mid
1800s and continuing today, as Pepitone’s article indicates.24 Likewise, an association
between ballet and ‘unmanly’ stereotypes is present even now.25 The reason for this is
debatable, but some point to the body-revealing costumes of tights, which for some
connote ‘girlishness’;26 graceful dance movements, in opposition to rough and ‘sporty’
athleticism;27 or the male dancer’s position as an object of the gaze, to be offered as
(sexual) spectacle.28
Ballet is still tied to girls’ culture, and some perceive this association in a negative
light; for them, classical ballet, like gymnastics and figure skating, is often entangled
with the consumer-oriented ‘princess culture’. This entanglement affects and
diminishes ballet’s recognition ‘as an art form, rather than as a mode of dress, [and

14
Pickard, Ballet Body Narratives, 11.
15
Fisher, ‘Make It Maverick’, 45–66.
16
It needs to be noted that some contemporary ballet choreography sometimes tries to break away from these gender
distinctions. Examples include Shobana Jeyasingh’s Bayadère: The Ninth Life.
17
Pickard, Ballet Body Narratives, 6.
18
Holdsworth, ‘Boys Don’t Do Dance, Do They?’, 169.
19
Gard, ‘When a Boy’s Gotta Dance’, 184.
20
Holdsworth, ‘Boys Don’t Do Dance, Do They?’; Haltom and Worthen, ‘Male Ballet Dancers’, 757–78.
21
Daly, ‘Classical Ballet’, 59.
22
Fisher, ‘Make It Maverick,’, 59.
23
Zacharias, Ballet, 13.
24
Peers ‘Ballet and Girl Culture’, 73.
25
Risner, ‘Rehearsing Masculinity’, 139.
26
Fisher, ‘Make It Maverick’, 60.
27
Gard, ‘Dancing around the “Problem”’, 217.
28
Burt, The Male Dancer, 45.
8 M. MONDEN

this] informs girls’ culture’, and ballet is seen as superficial.29 Jennifer M. Miskec
similarly argues that ‘ballet is the perfect space for ideal femininity: thin bodies, frilly
skirts, speechlessness; graceful movements making it all look easy while hiding the pain,
physical anguish for beauty’.30 In this sense, the analogy between ballet and a feminine
image of the ballerina in a full, white, bell-shaped dress made of layers of tulle has been
embedded in contemporary culture.31 In order to counter this highly feminine image of
ballet and to bring it into boys’/men’s culture, the ‘masculinisation’ of ballet is becom-
ing a notable practice.

‘Masculinising’ Ballet
Commenting on the emphatic attention paid to the ‘athleticism’ of male dancers like
Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov in the mid to late twentieth century, Michael
Gard writes that ‘certain methods of moving embody widely recognized social mean-
ings about the sexual preferences of the mover’. Since they are primarily presented for
another’s gaze, a spectacle for their audiences rather than for themselves, ‘A dancing
body. . . refers not only to the physical body, but also to the social constructs regarding
gender, race and sexuality that are inherent in body and movement’.32 This idea
highlights the problem: ‘hostility to some forms of dance is based on profoundly sexist
and homophobic regimes of bodily practice which prescribe how and why male bodies
should move and be displayed’.33
In contemporary Anglophone cultures, the anxiety over male dancing is countered
by emphasising the association between ballet and ‘hegemonic’ norms of masculinity
through ‘Characterizing ballet as macho, in the sense of making it seem athletically
masculine and resolutely heterosexual’.34 For example, in order to attract boys to learn
ballet, ‘comparisons with sport are invoked in order to establish the “virility” of the
male dancer’, and in so doing, sports and athleticism are frequently juxtaposed.35 Or
masculine heterosexual virility and the sexual desirability of male dancers, as in the case
of Baryshnikov or, more recently, Sergei Polunin’s endorsement of Dior Homme in a
2012 advertisement campaign, are explicitly highlighted.36 This emphasis on ballet and
athletic activity seems to imply that ‘no “normal” boy would simply want to dance for
its own sake’.37 The suggestions of ballet as a practice to improve boys’ sport skills
‘[seem] to be an assumption that boys are a homogenous group and that the non-
athletic qualities of dancing are unlikely to be of any interest to them’.38 Even Matthew
Bourne’s celebrated production of Swan Lake (first performed in 1995), where all the
swans are danced by men, tends to emphasise dynamic, almost primitively aggressive
and ruggedly aesthetic male movements in stark contrast to the ethereal and lithe
qualities displayed by female swans. Since such stereotypical assumptions ‘reinforce
29
Turk, ‘Girlhood, Ballet, and the Cult of the Tutu’, 484.
30
Miskec, ‘Pedi-Files’, 240.
31
Potter, ‘Soft, Gauzy Ballet Dresses’, 8.
32
Pickard, Ballet Body Narratives, 11.
33
Gard, ‘Dancing around the “Problem”’, 220.
34
Fisher, ‘Make It Maverick’, 46.
35
Gard, ‘Dancing around the “Problem”’, 217.
36
Fisher, ‘Make It Maverick’, 50–51.
37
Gard, ‘Dancing around the ‘Problem’’, 218.
38
Ibid., 219.
 JAPANESE STUDIES 9

the understandings that graceful, supportive, delicate or even eroticized forms of bodily
movement and display are not consistent with male heterosexuality’,39 heterosexual
boys’ and men’s interests in ballet costumes, ballet music and graceful movements are
almost always disregarded.40 This poses a question: given young men’s high participa-
tion rate in international competitions, how is the relationship between men and ballet
understood in the Japanese context?

Ballet and Masculinity in Japan

As in Anglophone contexts, ballet has long been an essential part of Japanese girls’
culture, particularly in shōjo manga (girls’ comics) and fashion.41 Tachikawa Ruriko,
founder of Star Dancers Ballet Company, has voiced concern about the serious shortage
of male dancers with plans to pursue a career in Japan.42 According to Umino et al.’s
survey in 2011, there are approximately 400,000 individuals attending ballet classes in
Japan, about 0.3 per cent of the population. Only 2.2 per cent of these individuals are
men; women still dominate ballet student numbers in Japan.43 However, in the 2017
Prix de Lausanne, of 89 Japanese candidates, 24.7 per cent (n = 22) were men.44 Men’s
interest in ballet, however small, has been given a degree of prominence in Japanese
culture. Another survey indicates that about half of the ballet classes in Japan have some
male students.45
The history of ballet in Japan is not long, starting around 1911. Initially, ballet was
not regarded as an independent art form but more as part of opera or part of the
curriculum for training theatre actors.46 The first ballet teachers in Japan were
Australian and Italian, but it was the Russian presence that was most significant in
achieving recognition for ballet as an independent art form in Japan.47 Three Russians
who are said to have popularised ballet in pre-World War II Japan are, coincidently, all
named Pavlova: the legendary Anna Pavlova, who visited Japan and gave performances
in 1922; Eliana Pavlova, who opened Japan’s first ballet school in 1927; and Olga
Pavlova (Sapphire), who introduced the techniques of the Mariinsky tradition.48
Against this strong feminine presence, the career of Azuma Yūsaku (1910–71) marks
the importance of male presence in Japanese ballet culture. A pioneer figure in Japanese
ballet and choreography, who was inspired to become a ballet dancer by Anna Pavlova’s
performances, Azuma was a pupil of Eliana and a pas de deux partner of Olga before
starting his own ballet company in 1941.
39
Ibid., 223.
40
Ibid., 217. Here I do not have space to refer in detail to boy/male-oriented ballet productions such as Bourne’s Swan
Lake and films such as Stephen Daldry’s film Billy Elliot (2000). For more references to these texts, see, for example,
Michael Gard, Men Who Dance.
41
Kyoto International Manga Museum, Ballet Manga; Monden, ’Layers of the Ethereal’, 2014.
42
Tachikawa, quoted in Nihon baree-shi, 87.
43
Umino et al., ‘Comparative Analysis’, 61.
44
Prix de Lausanne, 2017.
45
Takahashi et al., ‘Nihon no baree ni okeru seito no hinzū’, 96.
46
Kawashima, Eliana Pavlova, 5.
47
The first Russian to perform ballet in Japan is believed to have been Yerina Alexandrovna Smirnowa (1888–1934), a
soloist at the Mariinsky ballet. With her pas de deux partner and husband, Boris, and three other people, she visited
Japan in June 1916 and performed for three days at the Imperial Theatre in Tokyo. See Usui, Baree senya ichiya, 49–
53.
48
Monden, ‘Layers of the Ethereal’, 258.
10 M. MONDEN

Under Olga’s direction, Nihon Gekijō (The Nihon Theatre, 1933–81) established the
first professional ballet-class ‘boys’ team’ in September 1936, with Yamanaka Hisashi
and Shibata Masao among others.49 Former ballet dancer and renowned ballet scholar
Usui Kenji, who first learnt ballet under Azuma, recalls that the first time he attended a
‘society for the study of ballet’ in Tokyo, where members could learn ballet in 1942,
most of the members were men older than Usui, who was still a high-school student.50
Matsuyama Ballet Company’s Shimizu Tetsutarō studied with Azuma and Shimizu’s
mother Tatsuko (a pupil of Olga). Shimizu was among the first Japanese male ballet
dancers to win a medal at a prestigious international ballet competition: a bronze at the
1974 Varna International Ballet Competition (his wife-to-be Morishita Yōko won a
medal too).51
In more recent times, Kumakawa Tetsuya has appeared in magazines and on
numerous television programmes, as well as in the famous 1997 Nestlé Gold Blend
television commercial, mentioned above, in part in the hope of giving ballet more
prominence. This inspired Miyao Shuntarō (among others) to become a ballet dancer.52
Now a rising star of Kumakawa’s K-Ballet Company, Miyao has appeared in television
dramas, a movie and commercials with such popular actresses as Yonekura Ryōko,
Fukada Kyōko, Kitagawa Keiko and Ōmasa Aya. A ballet icon, Kumakawa is passionate
about educating and nurturing future ballet talents; he established and manages K-
Ballet School and K-Ballet Youth, including boys-only classes, where young stars can
learn, train and perform. This raises a question: why is the popularity of boys’ ballet
increasing in Japan? One of the reasons seems to be a different and shifting conception
of the relationship between gender, body and the gaze in Japan.

Male Gender in Contemporary Japan

Gender roles and performance in Japanese performing arts and popular culture are
complex and somewhat differently understood than in Anglophone culture. The (all-
male) kabuki theatre and (all-female) Takarazuka Revue are obvious examples of art
forms where ‘neither femininity nor masculinity has been deemed the exclusive pro-
vince of either female or male bodies’.53 The concept of chūsei (roughly translated as
‘androgyny’ in English) in the performing arts, where hairstyle, fashion and make-up
‘confounds the conventional alignment of sex with gender and scrambles received
gender marks’, has been hailed as attractive in Japanese culture.54 In writer and
historian Ian Buruma’s words, the popularity of kabuki and the Takarazuka Revue
conforms to the Japanese ideal that ‘no real man can ever be as beautiful as a woman
playing a man, just as no woman is quite as stunning as a skilful female impersonator’.55
Therefore, the gender system in Japan functions differently in some aspects to that in
the West, especially in the entertainment and media spheres, where a specific male
attractiveness – not distinctly ‘masculine’ from a typical Western perspective – has been
49
Satō, Kitagunikara, 71.
50
Usui, in Azuma, Bokushin, 10.
51
Matsuyama Ballet official website, ‘Shimizu Tetsutaro’.
52
Kumakawa, Made in London, 21.
53
Robertson, ‘The Politics of Androgyny’, 422.
54
Ibid., 421.
55
Buruma, Japanese Mirror, 115.
 JAPANESE STUDIES 11

hosted. Indeed, male ballet dancers in Japan are frequently treated as ‘prince’ figures
whose elegant beauty is first and foremost accentuated.56 Like the otokoyaku (male-role)
stars of Takarazuka Revue and/or male aidoru (idol) performers, male dancers’ beauty
is marked as masculine (differentiated from ‘feminine’ beauty), yet their ‘sexual’ body
plays down their ‘manhood’, emphasising an idealised male beauty that is accepted
perhaps as unthreatening to female fans.57 In other words, what could be considered as
‘feminine’ or even ‘effeminate’ of men in Anglophone culture is not necessarily incom-
patible with male attractiveness in contemporary Japan.58 The visible preference for this
mode of male beauty in Japanese culture has fostered a space where men and boys can
develop their ballet practice without needing to redefine it as masculine. Most impor-
tantly, women have been recognised as holders of an objectifying gaze of male physical
beauty in such spheres.
And yet in modern Japan ballet has been considered largely as an activity for girls. Many
boys have encountered gender-based prejudice. One of the issues surrounding male ballet
practice and gender is the display of the (male) dancer’s body as a spectacle and, largely due to
body-revealing costumes, as an object to an eroticising gaze.59 The art’s nature as a perfor-
mance, a spectacle and an embodiment of ‘beauty’ largely based on costume and make-up, at
least on stage, is, moreover, seen as ‘feminising’ serious, masculine athleticism.60 However,
Japan seems to have developed a different idea of the relationship between gender and gaze.
As Laura Miller suggests in her study of body aesthetics in contemporary Japan, Japanese
women have traditionally occupied the position of the ‘viewer’. As far as Japanese visual
media is concerned, the female gaze as well as the male has traditionally been recognised and
incorporated.61 A contemporary example is found in Japanese men’s fashion magazines,
which, contrary to Anglophone men’s ‘style’ magazines, are often explicitly marketed as such,
and their discourse is often constructed around the imagined female gaze.62 As a result,
Japanese women’s capacity for and right to visual pleasure has been recognised, and women
(as well as men) explicitly appreciate beauty in (young) men as well as (young) women in
Japan.63 The ideal male beauty, as supported by a large group of (heterosexual) women in
contemporary Japan – slender, youthful and elf-like – has a strong relationship with fictional
texts such as the shōjo manga genre64 and, of course, ballet manga, further smoothing the
path for boys to do ballet in contemporary Japan.
The hegemonic mode of masculinity in Japan, especially since the end of World War
II, has been associated with the ‘salaryman’: middle-class, white-collar, work-oriented
and bread-winning, and often perceived as a mature masculinity with less emphasis on
fashionability and sophisticated mannerisms – almost the antithesis of ballet boys.65
Since around 2006, media have increasingly reported on the lack of assertiveness,
competitiveness and even ambition among young male workers.66 This change is in

56
Abe, ‘Barē “ōjisama kei” dantō’.
57
For a similar argument on Japan’s male idol performers, see Nagaike, ‘Johnny’s Idols as Icons’, 104–05.
58
Miller, Beauty Up, 151.
59
Burt, The Male Dancer, 54–55.
60
Adams, Artistic Impression, 201.
61
Miller, Beauty Up, 155; Screech, Sex and the Floating World, 93.
62
Miller, Beauty Up; Monden, Japanese Fashion Cultures.
63
Aoyama, ‘Transgendering Shojo Shosetsu’, 50.
64
McLelland, ‘No Climax, No Point, No Meaning?’; Miller, Beauty Up; Author removed 2015.
65
See, for example, Dasgupta, Re-Reading the Salaryman; Bardsley, ‘The Oyaji Gets a Makeover’.
66
Ushikubo, Sōshoku-kei danshi; Nihei, ‘Resistance and Negotiation’; Dasgupta, Re-Reading the Salaryman, 158.
12 M. MONDEN

part attributed to the bursting of the bubble economy in the early 1990s and subsequent
collapse of the myth of lifetime employment.67 Rather than sacrificing themselves for a
company that no longer assures stability, younger generations of men are believed to
have shifted their attention to life outside the work environment. This includes an
interest in conventionally ‘feminine’ concerns such as appearance, and it has affected
their choice of employment, too.68
This shift has coincided with the rising popularity of male figure skaters, ballet
dancers’ sporty cousins. Examples such as Vancouver Olympic bronze medallist
Takahashi Daisuke and, more recently, Uno Shōma, whose international achievements
and combination of athletic excellence and artistic impression, including beautiful
costumes and music, have helped mark aesthetic sports as favourably masculine in
Japan.69 Nonetheless, in Japan ballet and figure skating have been seen in much the
same way as elsewhere: many skaters learn ballet as part of their training, and com-
monalities (as well as differences) between the two activities have been discussed in
conversations between Kumakawa and Takahashi on numerous occasions.70 The popu-
larity of figures like Kumakawa and Takahashi, especially with female fans, is likely to
have produced positive images of boys and men engaging in these ‘aesthetic’ sports
among parents, especially mothers, who are often the primary decision makers of their
children’s after-school activities, including ballet. It could, however, be that ‘new’
portrayals of young Japanese men are, to a certain degree, a media creation.
Irrespective of the validity of this claim, the shift in gender norms, notable since the
2000s, has created a space where boys and young men who participate in such
conventionally feminine activities as figure skating and ballet are more accepted.
The portrayal of these notable male dancers in Japanese media and culture resulted
in the birth of a ballet magazine that targets boys/men as its core readership: Dancin’.
The launch of Dancin’ coincided with the increased adoption of dance themes in
Japanese boys’/men’s culture such as Takeuchi Tomo’s shōnen manga (boys’ comic)
Bōru rūmu e yōkoso (Sweep over the Dance Hall; 2011–present), in which a shy high-
school boy enters the world of competitive ballroom dancing: dancesport. The popu-
larity of Bōru rūmu e yōkoso perhaps influenced George Asakura’s first men’s manga,
Dance Dance Danseur (2015–present), in which a hyperactive teen boy ocilliates
between conventional masculinity and his love for ballet. I argue that a rich study of
the negotiation between negative stereotypes concerning boys’ learning of ballet and
appreciation of the art form, including male interest in costumes and beautiful appear-
ance, might be found in such texts.
Of course, media texts like magazines do not simply mirror the society in which they
were created and produced but are often distorted/shaped by ideology.71 Magazines, for
example, reflect the intention of their editors to attract and capture the attention of
their target readers,72 and this intention means magazines at least partly reflect real life

67
Taga, ‘Rethinking Male Socialisation’, 139; Dasgupta, Re-Reading the Salaryman, 39.
68
See, for example, Dasgupta, Re-Reading the Salaryman, 40.
69
The music associated with ballet and figure skating also plays an important part in the decisions that boys make, but
this is an aspect which would require further research, beyond the scope of this paper, to explore and develop it
properly.
70
For example, TV Tokyo, ‘Sochi e no chōsensha tachi’.
71
Pollock, Vision and Difference, 8.
72
See, for example, Monden, Japanese Fashion Cultures, 2015.
 JAPANESE STUDIES 13

in the society where they were created.73 Japanese media, moreover, tend to be
‘extremely sensitive to social change’ and hence are ‘obliged to ally the program with
matters of current popularity and even with population change’.74 In this respect, it is
also important to note that popular media can allow us to experience and prepare for
situations that are yet to be experienced.75 A ballet magazine targeting boys/men as its
core readership may have a certain transformative effect upon Japanese boys and men
while partly reflecting the society from which they originate. Considering these points,
it is worth examining the cultural representations of ballet in Japanese media texts that
target this audience.

Dancin’ as a Space for Ballet Boys

Dancin’ was first launched in August 2013 and was published quarterly for 10 volumes
by Shinshokan, a major publishing company that specialised in comics and performing
arts until it stopped operations temporarily at the end of 2015 in order to incorporate
digital content. In an interview I conducted with the editor, Abe Sayako, she revealed
that the idea of Dancin’ was formulated through her years of covering Japanese youth
and ballet learning as editor of both Clara and Croise (established 2000), a quarterly
magazine for adult ballet students.76 Her concern, which was shared by the Japanese
ballet world as a whole, was boy ballet students quitting early. Clara had started
featuring boys in the magazine, but it could only reach boys who had sisters reading
Clara. Clara did not reach other boys, and Abe was convinced that they needed to
publish a ballet magazine that specifically targeted boys.
In order to obtain a picture of the readers of Dancin’, I analysed the survey the
magazine conducted when the first volume was published in 2013.77 The sample is
small, and the aim here is not to analyse the survey results as an exhaustive demo-
graphic survey of ballet boys in Japan. Nevertheless, the results are from the demo-
graphic of Japanese boys and men who actually learn ballet or are interested in ballet
performance, so it is worthy of examination.
Of 48 responses, five (10 per cent) were female (one of them, a 17-year-old ballet
student, indicated that she bought the magazine for her younger brother) and 43 were
male. The ages of male readers ranged from 5 to 63. Of the total male respondents, 65
per cent were aged 8 to 14, with 8-year-olds the the highest percentage (16 per cent,
n = 7), followed by 11-year-olds (14 per cent, n = 6) and 13-year-olds (12 per cent,
n = 5). All of the male respondents indicated they attended ballet classes, the average
being 2.7 times a week, with once a week being the most common (23 per cent, n = 10),
followed by three times a week (21 per cent, n = 9) and twice a week (19 per cent,
n = 8). The average years of ballet training were 5.4 years. The survey results indicate
readers are pre/adolescent boys. Mature ballet learners (e.g. those 30 years and over)
were 12 per cent of the male survey respondents, which, Abe said, was a (nice) surprise.

73
Crane, The Production of Culture, 106.
74
Harvey, ‘Nonchan’s Dream’, 135–36.
75
Ang, Watching Dallas, 384; Mackie, ‘Science, Society and the Sea of Fertility’, 3.
76
The interview took place at the office of Abe’s new company, En Pointe, on 9 February 2017. It was a semi-open
interview and lasted 105 minutes.
77
The survey cards were analysed on 9 February 2017 at En Pointe.
14 M. MONDEN

In the interview, Abe told me that for boys learning ballet, the most important thing
is to have male ballet friends and companions. Abe realised this through her years of
experience covering younger ballet students, their teachers and professional dancers.
Many girls who read Clara are serious about their ballet training, she says, and are quite
articulate from an early age about their dream of being a professional dancer. Boys, on
the other hand, are less serious about ballet as their potential future career, until they
reach the level of participating in competitions, where they meet other male performers.
Boys seem to take rivalry with other boys as a source of inspiration and encouragement.
A space where ballet boys feel that they can connect with other boys is therefore
essential for the sustainability of male ballet in Japan. Enter Dancin’: a rare medium
for ballet boys to join a community of peers with common interests. So what is the
magazine like? To find out, I examined Dancin’ via an amalgam of visual and contextual
analyses.

Visual Analysis of Dancin’: Covers

A visual analysis of Dancin’ largely confirms the recent trend of ‘masculinising’ ballet
for boys, and a visual comparison of the covers of Dancin’ and its girls’ equivalent,
Clara, supports this. The magazine’s covers are its face: they are ‘advertisements that
increase the publisher’s sales, and perhaps more important, the sale of products and
service inside’.78 The covers are therefore essential in attracting the reader and in
introducing what the magazine conveys. Whereas the covers of Clara use pastel colours
and cursive script, the fonts used on the covers of Dancin’ are square and hard, with
strong colours such as deep purple, green, red, maroon and blue (see Figure 1 and 2).
The covers of Clara also feature only girl ballerinas from Euro-American institutions
like Vaganova Ballet Academy in St Petersburg – in other words, Caucasian girls. As
Abe says, the key word upon which Clara is crafted and directed is ‘dreams [of girls]’,
and for many Clara girls, the balletic dream is associated with European ballet girls.
Classical ballet connotes (imagined) Europe in Japan and has been synonymous with
the concept of romantic dreams and glamour in Japanese girls’ culture since the mid to
late 1950s.79 At the same time, the practice of regularly reading a magazine dedicated to
ballet points to the girls’ eagerness to obtain more specialised information about ballet
training. A cover image of girl dancers from prestigious ballet institutions such as
Vaganova creates both a sense of aspiration and of authenticity. Visually, the models are
frequently framed in a medium shot, with their gaze directed away from the reader. The
size of the frame indicates that the model is not too close/intimate but not too far away,
as if visualising the distance created between the reader and her friend while practising
in the studio. As Stephen Gundle explains in his book Glamour, ‘Glamour contained
the promise of a mobile and commercial society that anyone could be transformed into
a better, more attractive, and wealthier version of themselves’; thus the ballet girls on
the cover of Clara can symbolise for its readers the familiar yet perfect – their better,
ideal selves.80

78
Alexander, ‘Stylish Hard Bodies’, 541.
79
Monden, ‘Layers of the Ethereal’, 270.
80
Gundle, Glamour, 7.
 JAPANESE STUDIES 15

In contrast to Clara’s emphasis on Caucasian ballet girls, the covers of Dancin’ have
always featured action images of Japanese boys engaged in ballet, either in a rehearsal
studio or on the stage. For example, the cover of volume 7 (2015) features a boy from
Tani Momoko ballet company’s Open Boys Class, and 18-year-old Hayami Shōgo
graces the cover of volume 9 (2015). This emphasis on the ethnicity of the cover
models endorses the intention of the magazine, as outlined by Abe, to offer a sense
of belonging and mutual support for often isolated ballet boys in Japan. Abe told me
that whereas the key concept of Clara is girls’ dreams, that of Dancin’ is affinity
(shinkinkan). Benedict Anderson has famously argued that an ‘imagined community’
is where ‘the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-
members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of
their communion’.81 This imagined community has also been used by shōjo (girls’)
magazines since the early 1900s in Japan to create and sustain the collective identity of
girl readers as shōjo.82 Shōjo readers of these magazines use highly flowery and romantic
noms de plume (and, by implication, noms de plume distinctly different from their real
names) when writing to sections in which they could participate and communicate as
members of the shōjo community, separating their real lives from their imagined (and
collective) shōjo selves.83 On the contrary, the imagined community created by Dancin’,
with its more practical and perhaps realistic concerns regarding the improvement of
techniques and juggling of ballet and school life, draws on practicality and reality. We
will return to this point.
The covers of Dancin’ indicate the magazine’s intention to convey ballet as a cool yet
ordinary activity for boys, and that there are other boys in Japan who share the same
interest in, and even love for, the art of ballet. Except for volumes 1 and 7, the cover
models are always framed in a medium-long shot showing their full movements (often
they are demonstrating grand jeté or port de bras at the barre).84
These differences are reinforced by the use of technology. The Clara covers are taken
with wide to normal camera lenses, whereas the Dancin’ covers are often taken with a
telephoto lens. This creates a quite different relationship with space for the viewer. The
telephoto lens compresses space and is commonly used for action-sports photography,
whereas the wider-angle lens creates a more usual portrait perspective, even when the
subject is approximately the same size in the frame. The Dancin’ covers give the
dynamic look of a sports/performance photograph with a verité/reportage feel. The
covers of Clara, on the other hand, are reminiscent of a posed studio portrait. Indeed,
the girls on the cover of Clara are often pictured smiling and sometimes not practising.
The boys on the cover of Dancin’, in contrast, have a serious mien, signifying both their
concentration and that ballet is a serious, masculine activity.
It is evident that the content of Dancin’ attempts to distinguish the experience of
male ballet. A feature called ‘Boys File’, for example, reports on one chosen ballet boy
from Japan, giving his brief biographic information and current aspirations, together

81
Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6.
82
Honda, Jogakusei, 186–91.
83
Honda, Jogakusei, 186–91; Imada, “Shōjo” no shakaishi.
84
Grand jeté means a large jeté, or jump, where the dancer’s legs are thrown to 90 degrees with a corresponding high
jump. Port de bras at the barre often means a series of movements made by passing the arm or arms through various
positions.
16 M. MONDEN

with the comments of his ballet teacher and three to four pictures of the boy. It often
explains how the boy started ballet training. Features such as a round-table talk with six
boys who have participated in ballet competitions (ranging from ages 12 to 15)85 also
point to Dancin’’s intention to create a space with a sense of belonging for boy readers.
Indeed, in the latter feature, one of the boys emphasises the importance of making
friends at competitions, which both endorses this idea and Abe’s aforementioned
observation that boys in ballet require ‘ballet buddies’.

Ballet Boys and Their Concerns

Having a sense of belonging is considered to be important for ballet boys because they
tend to quit ballet after reaching adolescence, often as a result of experiencing awkward
feelings when practising with girls.86 The story of Kimoto Masayū, a first-soloist at the
Vienna State Ballet, confirms this. In his interview, Kimoto says that as a child he was
too shy to reveal his ballet knowledge, given the female dominance of the art. This
changed when he participated in a competition when he was in Year 6. At the
competition, Kimoto met other boys his age who were seriously engaging with ballet,
and this triggered in him a strong motivation to win.87 Also, the sense of belonging to a
collective is an attractive characteristic of male sports in Japan, further endorsing the
magazine’s belief that boys need peer structures to create senses of belonging and
affinity.88 Importantly, the concern about ‘being the only boy in class’ and ballet’s
assumed association with femininity is dealt with in Dancin’, modelling to readers a
broad range of possible responses. This is most obvious in interview sections, where
both amateur boys who attend ballet classes and male dancers are featured. Kumakawa,
for example, states that he was teased at school for learning ballet, but he never took the
teasing seriously. Instead, he was proud of doing what he liked.89
This issue is also addressed in the ‘Question and Answer’ page at the back of volume
1.90 A 12-year-old boy writes that he is too embarrassed to tell his friends that he learns
ballet. Atsuji Yasuo of Birmingham Royal Ballet answers by suggesting he invite them to
a performance where they might be enthralled by the beautiful costumes, lavish sets and
dynamic dancing. A ten-year-old boy seeks advice because he wants to learn ballet but
there are no boys in his local classes and he feels anxious. Atsuji reveals that he himself
felt lonely about being the only boy in class, while dancer Ōnuki Yūsuke says gender is
irrelevant when starting ballet class and he should not be concerned. Later issues of
Dancin’ feature technical questions (such as how to improve pirouettes, how to jump
higher), physical concerns (such as how to grow taller) and schooling (such as how to
study hard and practise ballet at the same time), reflecting the demographic of its
readers, the majority of whom are already attending ballet classes.
Dancin’ offers specifically masculinised ‘boys’ techniques’ of jumps and turns in its
‘how to improve your technique’ sections, which ‘sits comfortably with stereotypical

85
Dancin’, volume 6, 26–27.
86
Yasuda, ‘“Baree danshi” zōshoku chū’.
87
Kōbe shinbun next, ‘Whīn kokuritsu barē toppu Kimoto san’.
88
Kawazu, ‘Hitori bocchi de ragubī wo’, 119.
89
Dancin’, volume 1, 5.
90
Dancin’, volume 1, 89.
 JAPANESE STUDIES 17

constructions of young boys as boisterous, energetic and physically active’.91 What is

unique to this ideological construction is the magazine’s inclusion of garments as well
as aesthetic qualities of the art form. Contrary to our assumption that ballet boys are
predominantly interested in learning jumps and other ‘dynamic’ and sportive move-
ments, Dancin’ readers indicate that many boys have shown interest in more ‘aesthetic’
aspects of the art form as well. The magazine survey makes this point: Ishida Jun, a Year
4 boy in Tokyo, writes that his main concern is to obtain longer limbs and a slender
body; Tadokoro Keita, a 19-year-old university student in Tokyo, says he wants to
correct his bow legs; and 12-year-old Miyasaka Shō from Miyagi Prefecture asks, ‘I want
to strengthen the toe as my teacher often says it is still flexed when I thought it was
pointed ok. How can I extend my toe beautifully?’.92 These concerns inform the content
of later issues of Dancin’ (for example, in such articles as ‘How to Obtain Beautiful Male
Legs’, and ‘The Master Toe Pointer’).93

Ballet, Boys and Aesthetic Importance

Ballet boys’ concern for beauty is also communicated in the magazine via garments, make-
up and hairstyles. Eight-year-old Katase Takumi (Hyogo Prefecture) says in the survey: ‘I
was very excited to see many boys’ outfits, catalogues and ballet stories about male
characters’. Dancin’ has featured costumes, hair catalogues, make-up and skincare, all of
which have (unjustly) been perceived as ‘feminine’ concerns in our modern society (see
Figure 3). The second issue of the magazine ran a six-page spread of dance outfits for boys,
which Abe said had one of the most enthusiastic responses from its male readers, as ‘boy
readers generally responded very enthusiastically [to the features of outfits, skincare and
hair catalogues]’.94
Hairstyles are another big concern for ballet boys. As Abe revealed in the interview,

Boys who learn ballet are generally very appearance or beauty conscious, and the hairstyle
catalogue was also popular. Ballet restricts what hairstyles they can have in their lives
outside the ballet studio, so they liked a feature story that instructed them how to have
stylish hairstyles within their capabilities. 95

One of the appeals ballet holds is ascribed to the culturally contingent concept of beauty.
As Evan Alderson rightly says, ‘one of ballet’s charms is the overtness with which it
propagates socially charged imagery as a form of the beautiful’.96 While Alderson was
referring to feminine beauty in ballet, this notion can be extended to men and ballet.97
These conventionally ‘feminine’ interests tend to be ignored by the trend of ‘masculinis-
ing’ ballet, but in fact Dancin’ indicates that it can be important among the culture of
ballet boys. This corresponds with the aforementioned encouragement of men to display
greater fashion and appearance consciousness in contemporary Japan.98
91
Gard, ‘Dancing around the “Problem”’, 216.
92
All the names of the magazine readers have been altered in order to protect their privacy.
93
Dancin’, volumes 3 and 9 respectively.
94
Dancin’, volume 2, 16–21.
95
Dancin’, volume 7, 26–34.
96
Alderson, ‘Ballet as Ideology’, 291.
97
Pickard, Ballet Body Narratives, 11.
98
Miller, Beauty Up; Bardsley, ‘The Oyaji Gets a Makeover’, 114–35; Monden, Japanese Fashion Cultures.
18 M. MONDEN

What is unique about Dancin’ is its honesty in introducing a plurality of voices of actual
ballet boys on gendered issues. For example, one boy in ‘Boys Life’, 14-year-old Masuda
Jun, refuses anything pink or girly with which ballet is often associated, while 13-year-old
Igarashi Shū reveals that he started ballet because he was enthralled by the sparkling tutus
he saw at his older sister’s ballet performance when he was a three-year-old,99 mirroring
one common motivation for girls to start attending ballet classes.100 This plurality of voices
is effective in challenging the monolithic view of boys and ballet, and it posits that costumes
and the beauty of ballet can be an attractive factor for boys, too. As Abe summarised in my
interview, ‘Ballet is about seeking beauty really, and looking better makes a difference when
they practise in class – that is why outfits and other beauty-related features had strong
positive responses from boys and men’. This idea is supported by the fact that what we wear
affects how we feel and to some degree how we behave.101 Clothes and appearances strongly
affect and influence our physical and psychological senses, notably confidence and pleasure,
irrespective of gender and age.102 Simply ‘masculinising’ ballet to encourage boys’ ballet
participation might be missing this fundamental factor that applies across gender.

Attack of the Rat Monsters: Ballet and Boys’ Manga

The intention of Dancin’ to create a virtual space acceptable for ballet boys has led to a new
cultural subgenre: boys’ (shōnen) ballet manga. From the first issue, Dancin’ featured a
serialised manga story by Adachi Takafumi titled Ballet Hero Fantasy: Dan’s Adventures
(Dan no bouken), possibly the first boys’ ballet comic. The manga was a collaboration
between the Royal Ballet’s principal Steven McRae and Adachi, a ballet fan, who brought
the project to Abe and Shinshokan around the time they started working on the publication
of Dancin’. It tells the story of a ten-year-old ballet student, Dan, who is sent to a fantasy
world together with McRae. There they must fight a group of rat-like monsters, an obvious
reference to The Nutcracker. In the fighting scenes, they transform themselves à la Japanese
superheroes, but their fighting moves are a combination of ballet techniques – renversé,
arabesque and coupé jeté en tournant, for example – and they have to impress their enemies
with the beauty of these techniques in order to defeat them.103 With the emphasis on male
companionship, Dan and McRae travel around the world of famous ballet from The
Nutcracker to Swan Lake to La Bayadère in their fight to defeat ‘the Evil Eye’ and restore
order in the ballet world. Here the gracefulness of ballet is metaphorically transformed into
the boy’s cultural staple of a martial art.
Dan’s Adventures is targeted primarily at pre-teen and early-teenage boys, and
McRae says in an interview that, ‘This ballet and manga collaboration is aimed to
inspire’.104 Dan’s Adventures negotiates between the (assumed) necessity to ‘masculi-
nise’ ballet and the appreciation of a beautiful art form, by using the forms of the

99
Dancin’, volume 6, 33 and volume 7, 43 respectively.
100
Yoshida, Isshun no eien, 82–83; Asahi Weekly, ‘Rōzannu 2i maeda sae’.
101
Twigg, Fashion and Age, 22.
102
Steele, Fashion and Eroticism, 247.
103
Renversé is the bending of the body during a turn in which the normal balance is upset but not the equilibrium.
Arabesque is a position of the body supported on one leg, with the other leg extended behind and at a right angle to
it. Coupé jeté en tournant is a step made of a coupé dessous making a three-quarter turn and a jump on the foot
thrown forward at 90 degrees to complete the turn. See Grant, Technical Dictionary, 35.
104
Shipman, ‘Steven McRae Given Manga Makeover’.
 JAPANESE STUDIES 19

action-hero genre and the visual style of shōnen manga: cute, childlike characters of
short proportion with large eyes and spiky hair, drawn with thick, angular lines and the
frequent use of speed and focus lines to convey action and fast, dynamic movements.
Many of these conventions were made popular by monthly manga magazine CoroCoro
Comic (Shōgakukan, first launched in 1977), which targeted primary-school boys as its
core readership, the same target demographic as Dancin’.
While Dan’s Adventures was largely a fantasy manga, the concept of boys doing
ballet in a more realistic setting in contemporary Japan has since been realised in
George Asakura’s manga Dance Dance Danseur, for which Abe serves as ballet con-
sultant. Those familiar with the pages of Dancin’ would immediately spot the same
messages: Dance Dance Danseur focuses on an ordinary boy’s infatuation with ballet,
his struggle with the gendered stereotypes associated with the art and the development
of friendships with other ballet boys. Despite its relatively fictional, manga-esque traits
such as the protagonist Junpei’s exaggerated balletic talents and his rival Ruō’s dramatic
personal history, the manga’s serious depiction of the concerns that boys encounter in
ballet offers a more explicit promise of promoting ballet in boys’/men’s culture. From
Junpei’s uneasiness with wearing tights and dance belts to detailed depictions of male
companionship, training and fierce jealousies, and from the boys balancing high-school
life and ballet learning to their love of art and beauty of ballet – all of these aspects offer
support for still relatively isolated ballet boys/men reading the manga. Combined with
the fact that the manga is serialised in a men’s manga magazine, Dance Dance Danseur,
like Dancin’, demonstrates a potential for generating a positive effect on marginalised
groups of males engaged in activities with a significant gender-participation bias.
The anxiety surrounding boys doing ballet, and the sense of ‘isolation’ attached to it,
is frequently suggested through the real-life experiences of boys and male dancers, but
Dancin’’s approach to ‘masculinising’ ballet is less pronounced than in Anglophone
cultures. Instead, Dancin’ pays a considerable amount of attention to the aesthetic
qualities of ballet, such as costumes, body shapes and postures, practising outfits and
hairstyles. This corresponds with the Japanese media’s largely positive coverage of the
young men who gain admiration and fame internationally with ballet or its cousin,
figure skating. This could be due to the fact that gender is understood differently in
Japan, where ‘Historically, attention to male beauty [has] not [been] unusual’.105 And
therefore there may ‘be less stigma attached to men looking [and engaging in activities
that are often deemed] feminine in Japan’.106
As these features indicate, Dancin’ encourages boys who are interested in learning ballet
by sharing sentiments, experiences and information about male ballet dancing. Through
the utilisation of popular culture (such as boys’ manga), combined with the presence of the
voices of both authorities (stars) and ballet boys similar in age to the target reader, a social
affinity between the reader and the contents of Dancin’ is created, bridging the art-scape of
ballet and the real lives of its readers. While online and social media communities would
also be possible, I believe the traditional publishing format may offer a superior safe space
for several reasons. First, it is securely moderated; no ‘trolling’, however brief, is possible.
Second, the publication format has a perceived permanence and importance lacking in an

105
Miller, Beauty Up, 127.
106
Tanaka, ‘The Language of Japanese Men’s Magazines’, 228.
20 M. MONDEN

online presence. Last, computer and mobile-device usage is likely to be at least partly
restricted for the target audience of 8 to 14-year-olds.

Conclusion
At the end of our interview, I asked Abe whether or not the number of boys learning ballet
is increasing. She said it certainly is, and cited the presence of strong role models, as
exemplified by Kumakawa, as one of the most important factors. Through advertisements,
television programmes and movies, on top of his well-illustrated ballet career both
nationally and internationally, Kumakawa made a strong impression on many boys who
followed his path, wanting to be like him. Now those who grew up watching Kumakawa
are emerging stars in the Japanese ballet world, and it is their turn to exercise positive
influence and inspire boys who are learning ballet, like the target readers of Dancin’.
While the ‘masculinisation’ of ballet can be effective to a certain extent in encouraging
boys to learn ballet, what we have seen through the analysis of Dancin’ is that numerous
other factors – including ballet’s culturally contingent concept of beauty, iconic role
models and, most importantly, a space to share a sense of affinity with other boys – are
important for boys who are learning ballet. The increasing attention paid to male ballet
students in Japan, which coincided with the emergence of young ballet men who have
achieved international fame, has increased the visibility and influence of ballet within boys’
and men’s culture such as boys’ manga, albeit gradually. Media such as Dancin’ offer a
sense of belonging and mutual support for a still fragmented and isolated coterie of ballet
boys and men by creating a virtual, imagined community where they can safely connect
and identify with those who share their interests in, dreams of and love for dancing.

Acknowledgments
This article was made possible by the Japan Foundation’s Japanese Studies Fellowship 2016. Part
of this article was presented at Arts & Media Courses: Fan Cultures Symposium, 2017, held at
Ryukoku University, Kyoto. I thank Michael Furmanovsky and Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto for
giving me the opportunity to present there.
I greatly appreciate the useful feedback on early drafts of this essay that I received from Jan
Bardsley, Greg Ralph and anonymous reviewers. I am grateful to David Jellings for his careful
reading and editing of this article.

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