The Tokyo Olympics have stressed gender equity, even if Japan lags most other developed nations in terms of women in the workplace. Perhaps in a nod to female empowerment, the all-women Takarazuka Revue musical theater troupe performed the Japanese national anthem.
Takarazuka was founded early last century by a Tokyo industrialist. Unlike Kabuki, the dramatic form in which men perform both male and female roles, Takarazuka doles out all roles to women. But critics say that the business aspects of the troupe are still controlled by men. Last year, the feeder school for Takarazuka stopped a system in which younger students had to pay obeisance to older ones by bowing at trains they had boarded or refrain from saying anything to them other than the briefest of responses.