(ENG) Rikami Miura's Millennial Connection with Takarazuka

I want you to picture a moment in time.

It's 2026.

Right.

And the world is watching the Malang Cortino Winter Olympics.

The tension in the arena is, it's absolutely electric.

Oh, I can imagine.

You can hear that sharp cutting sound of blades on the ice,

the collective held breath of the crowd,

and then just this massive eruption of cheers.

Because Japanese figure skater, Rikumiura,

just captured pier skating gold.

Exactly. She's gliding across the rank with this,

this really extraordinary, almost unbelievable mix of raw,

athletic power, classical elegance, and deep, unshakable resilience.

Yeah.

But to truly understand how she forged that winning combination,

we actually have to leave the ice rink entirely.

We do.

We have to travel back over 1,000 years to her hometown.

A city built on top of ancient tombs, spectacularly failed swimming pools,

and an incredibly unique, layered history.

It is quite the journey, because you know,

when most people hear the name of her hometown, Takarazuka City,

their minds immediately jump to one very specific,

very glamorous image.

The theater, right.

Exactly.

The world famous, all female, Takarazuka review.

But looking at the academic report we are diving into today.

Which is titled, Takarazuka Historical Research

and Local Spirit, by the way.

Yes.

Looking at that, we quickly realize that the theater

is really just the tip of the iceberg.

The history beneath it is what truly shapes the people

who come from there.

Completely agree.

And that is our mission for today's deep dive.

We are going to unpack the incredible,

almost cinematic historical stories

about Takarazuka City hidden in this research.

You can be fun.

We'll point out some amazing hidden tourist gems

connected to these tales.

Perfect for your next trip, if you're listening.

And we're going to reflect on this fascinating concept

called Genius Lochi.

Which basically means the spirit of place.

Right.

We want to see how a city's literal and metaphorical bedrock

actually shapes the exceptional people

who grow up walking its streets.

Okay, let's unpack this.

I was looking at the origin of the city's name

and it literally translates to treasure mound.

Yes, it does.

But looking at the geography mentioned in the report,

these mounds were actually ancient tombs.

How does a landscape of death become associated with treasure?

That is exactly where this concept of layered history begins.

If we connect this to the bigger picture,

Takarazuka is a profoundly rare example

of a place that doesn't just pave over its past

to build the future.

It absorbs it.

Exactly.

It continually absorbs and transforms it.

To answer your question about the name,

we actually have to go back to the Kofu and Period.

So that's roughly the third to seventh centuries?

Right.

Because of its location where the Muko River flood plains

meet the hills,

Takarazuka was considered prime real estate.

For burial grounds?

Yes.

For the burial grounds of ancient rulers,

we're talking massive,

imposing earth and mounds built to project immense power.

And tombs are inherently terrifying, right?

For especially ancient ones.

I mean, they're literal monuments

to dead rulers who had absolute unquestioned power

over the populist.

Precisely.

Take the Nakiyama Shon Kofun, for example.

Oh, yeah.

The report highlighted that one.

Right.

It's a tomb from the mid-seventh century

and it's incredibly rare because it's octagonal.

Eight-sided.

Yeah.

In ancient Japan,

an eight-sided structure was an architectural privilege,

reserved almost exclusively for the absolute highest

tier of royalty.

Like emperors.

Exactly.

So initially,

these were highly intimidating symbols.

But here is where

that what researchers call the meaning flip happens.

The meaning flip?

Yeah.

Fast forward to the year 1701.

The Tokogawa Shogunate is in power.

And a geographer named Kishio Kata

compiles a text called the Setsuyu Gundam.

Okay.

He records a local myth

that shows how the everyday people

had fundamentally changed the narrative

of their own landscape.

Over generations,

locals began to believe that if you picked up items

near these ancient burial mounds,

it would actually bring you happiness and good luck.

That's wild.

So they completely stripped away the fear.

They took monuments meant to intimidate them

and turned them into sites of profound luck.

Exactly.

And from a psychological standpoint,

this creates a deep-seated resilience

within the culture of the city.

It establishes this subconscious environment

where the past, no matter how intimidating,

is safely contained and transformed

into something positive.

So when Rikamura talks in interviews

about the piece of mine,

her hometown gives her...

She is drawing on a thousand-year-old tradition,

a tradition of finding safety and treasure

in what used to be a landscape of fear.

What blows my mind is that you can actually go there today

and see this layering for yourself.

Like if you're visiting,

you don't have to go to some remote

roped-off museum field.

Not at all.

You can walk right into a modern,

residential neighborhood

and suddenly boom,

you're standing at the ruins of the seventh century,

octagonal Nakayama Shouman tomb.

Right between people's houses.

Yes.

And furthermore,

the report notes that most tourists

walking toward the famous Takazuka Grand Theatre

have absolutely no idea what's under their feet.

They are quite literally stepping over more

than 200 buried ancient tombs

beneath the city streets.

It's the ultimate paradox.

Building a modern city globally famous

for dreams and happiness

directly atop ancient burial grounds.

It really is.

But that idea of transforming something

intimidating or even a massive failure

into something wonderful

feels like a recurring pattern in the city's DNA.

It does.

Because reading about the industrialist

Ikizo Kobayashi in 1910,

the guy essentially builds a train line

to nowhere, right?

He did.

Kobayashi started a suburban railway line

but he had a major problem.

No passengers.

The destination was completely desolate.

It was just a boring riverbed.

He desperately needed a reason

for people from the bustling city of Osaka

to buy train tickets

and ride all the way out to Takazuka.

So what does he do?

In 1912,

he decides to go spectacularly big.

He builds paradise.

Paradise.

Yeah, that was the name.

It was a massive, gorgeous,

renaissance-style red brick building

designed to house Japan's

very first indoor heated pool.

And the report says it was a 100-sudo pool.

Just to clarify for anyone trying to picture this,

that's about 3,500 square feet.

Right.

That is a massive aquatic center for 1912.

Incredibly ambitious.

He was trying to completely redefine

leisure culture in Japan.

He wanted to move people away

from traditional public bathhouses

and introduce them to a glamorous

western-style aquatic spectacle.

Here's where it gets really interesting.

The reality was a colossal,

unmitigated disaster.

Yeah, total disaster.

The technology just wasn't there yet

to support his vision.

Since they had no dehumidifiers,

all that warm moisture

from the heated pool rose up,

condensed on the cold ceiling,

and constantly drip freezing water

back down onto the guests.

Not exactly relaxing.

Right, and during the harsh winters,

nobody wanted anything to do with it.

In his 1920 diary,

Kobayashi literally refers to the whole venture

as a great failure.

He did, he was very blunt about it.

Wait, I have to jump in here

because his solution is wild to me.

He has a freezing,

dripping disaster of a building,

and his big fix is to just drain the water

and throw some wooden floorboards

over the empty basin.

Yeah, that was the plan.

How was that considered a stroke of genius,

and not just a desperate,

last-ditch pivot to avoid bankruptcy?

Oh, it was absolutely a desperate pivot,

but that is exactly what makes it

a textbook example of what the report

calls catalytic failure.

Catalytic failure.

Yes, any ordinary businessman

would have demolished the building,

cut his losses and sold the scrap.

Kobayashi didn't.

He repurposed it.

He looked at that miserable,

dripping pool,

and completely re-imagined the space.

Once he laid those solid floorboards

right over the empty basin in 1914,

he formed a troop of 16 young girls

to perform a theatrical version

of the Peach Boy legend.

Called Dumbaraco, right?

Exactly, on that makeshift stage.

Out of a spectacularly failed swimming pool,

the legendary Takarizuka review was born.

It's just incredible.

He took an empty basin of failure

and filled it with theater.

What's fascinating here is the profound metaphor.

Converting liquid water into a solid stage.

And think about the psychological blueprint

that leaves on a city.

Ah, so.

Kobayashi took an environment that was physically hostile

and converted it into a stage for high art.

When we look at an Olympic skater like Rikamura,

the connection isn't just that she skates on ice

while they had a pool.

The real connection is the psychology of the pivot.

Mura operates in a freezing,

unforgiving environment,

where a single mistake or injury

can be a spectacular failure.

But she adapts.

Exactly.

Just like Kobayashi,

she takes that unforgiving environment

relies on the city's blueprint of resilience

and executes a highly choreographed,

emotionally resonant art form.

It's the exact same creative alchemy.

If you're walking into the Takarizuka Grand Theater

or the Takarizuka Hotel today,

you really feel that alchemy.

You do.

And here is a hidden gem

that will completely change how you experience those buildings.

When you're stepping on those plush,

impeccably vacuumed, elegant carpets,

take a moment to look down.

Because you're standing on history.

Literally.

You're standing over the footprint

of that disastrously cold,

rippy swimming pool.

You are walking on a monument to brilliant failure.

It proves that the physical space remembers.

The architecture changes,

but the genius Lossi remains.

It really does.

In speaking of how these unique environments

shape creative minds,

that same theater went on to heavily influence

one of Japan's most legendary artists.

Oh, yes.

It's fascinating how that theater

became the heartbeat of the city.

And it didn't just impact athletes.

It literally shaped the godfather

of modern Japanese pop culture.

It's quite the story.

Story number three brings us to 1933.

A five-year-old boy moves

to the Gotanyama area of Takarizuka.

He spends his youth running

through the rich pristine forest there

obsessively collecting insects.

He even creates his own

incredibly detailed hand-drawn bug encyclopedia.

Yeah.

That little boy was Osamu Tazuka

who would grow up to become

the undisputed god of manga.

What the research points out

about Tazuka's upbringing in Takarizuka

is the intense duality he was exposed to.

It acted as a massive creative incubator.

Right, because on one hand,

up in the Gotanyama woods,

he was immersed in raw, unfiltered biology.

The brutal and beautiful cycle of life,

death, and nature.

This environment directly inspired

the profound ecological themes

in his famous work,

Kimba the White Lion.

Right, but then right down the hill,

he is absorbing the exact opposite.

Pure artificiality.

Yes.

He was heavily exposed

to the highly artificial,

glittering, glamorous performances

of the Takarizuka review,

specifically the Otoko Yaku.

The female actresses

who specialize in playing male roles.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It was this stylized, gender-bending

theatricality that inspired the

gender-ambiguous protagonist

of his groundbreaking manga, Princess Knight.

For a young creative mind,

learning to hold those two contrasting truth

at the same time is incredibly powerful.

The juxtaposition of raw,

untamed nature with extreme,

deliberate artificiality

is what gives Takarizuka

its unique aesthetic signature.

It's quite a mix.

It is.

And for Tizuka,

this duality instilled a deep respect

for what the research is called

The Weight of Life.

It provided a philosophical foundation

for the entire postwar manga industry.

He learned that art could be both

an exploration of profound biological truths

and the glittering artificial spectacle

all at once.

If you want to tap into that specific

creative energy on your next visit,

you have to go hunting for the ruins

of the Neko Jinta

or the Cat Shrine in the Gutanyama area.

Which actually features in Tizuka's works.

It does.

And then, head straight to the Tizuka Osamu Memorial Hall.

Don't just browse the comics,

make sure to find the intricate diorama

of the 1940s Takarizuka Skyline.

That diorama is fantastic.

It lets you see the exact geographical duality

Tizuka experienced as a kid,

if visually perfectly captures

how the wild forest bleed

right into the theatrical city center.

It's a perfect visual representation

of the city's layered history.

But as the report notes,

it isn't just art and nature

that overlap in Takarizuka.

It is also the sacred and the secular.

Speaking of holding two contrasting ideas

at the same time,

let's talk about the Northern Hills.

Yes, the temple.

Up there sits the Kiyoshikou Jun

Suchouji temple.

This place is old,

founded in 896 AD by Emperor Uda.

It is dedicated to Kojin,

who is the god of fire and the hearth.

For centuries,

people have gone there to pray

for very worldly things.

Money, good business,

warding off bad luck,

superworldly everyday stuff.

But then the 37th head priest,

Koki Sakamoto,

does something completely out of left field

to mix this everyday faith with high art.

He does.

In the mid-20th century,

pre-Sakamoto makes a fascinating decision.

He begins aggressively

collecting the works of Tomeoka Tessai.

Okay, for those who might not be familiar,

who was Tessai?

Tessai is widely considered Japan's last great

literati painter.

Literati painters were essentially scholars

who created highly expressive

philosophical brush paintings.

Right.

They cared more about capturing the spirit

of a subject than perfect technical realism.

The temple eventually amassed

over 2,000 of Tessai's works,

building an entire museum for them

right there on the temple grounds.

This raises an important question.

How do those two worlds coexist?

You have crowds of people

praying for promotion at work

right next to these incredibly

esoteric, transcendent brush paintings

that are striving for a completely

different spiritual plan.

The research explains that this temple

perfectly captures the balance

of the sacred and the secular in the city.

You have the rough, intense

curification of the fire god

combined with this eccentric pursuit

of high art.

It's a striking contrast.

Together,

they represent a collective,

civic consciousness.

The idea that you can only achieve

perfection through intense hardship

and purification.

Ah, I see where this is going.

Right.

When an athlete like Mira is putting

herself through grueling repetitive

training sessions,

falling on the ice and getting back up,

she is tapping into that exact same

local ritual of purification

through fire and striving.

And to really feel that ritual yourself,

you have to walk the dragon's road.

It's a 1.2 kilometer approach

up to the temple.

And it is lined with shops

dripping with that nostalgic

mid 20th century

Shoah era charm.

It's a beautiful walk.

But the absolute must-do

when you get to the temple is

observing a custom called

Yaku Yuki Hibashi.

You bring large metal

fire tongs to the temple

and you offer them up to

symbolically pinch away

your bad luck in your worldly troubles.

That's amazing.

It's such a tactile,

physical way to interact with faith.

It is a very deliberate

physical action to create

psychological clarity.

And that pursuit of clarity

along with an overarching

elegance really

defines our final

historical layer.

Which is the era of

Hanshin-Kan modernism.

It's exactly.

Let's set the scene

for the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Osaka was rapidly

industrializing,

becoming choked with pollution

and earning the nickname

the Smoke City.

So people wanted out.

Exactly.

Wealthy locals started fleeing

the smog to find fresh air

and they looked west

toward the beautiful

Muko River in Takarazuka.

In 1926, an architect named

Masaharu Kazuka

built the Takarazuka hotel

right on the riverbank.

Picture Red Ruse,

gorgeous arched windows,

grand classical sweeping

staircases.

It was the absolute peak

of modern,

elegant, sophisticated living.

What we are analyzing here

is the production of space.

The architects and residents

were deliberately

grafting western ideals of leisure

and classical beauty

onto pristine Japanese nature.

Blending the two again.

Right.

It created a highly

structured refined atmosphere.

And when we look at Rikumir

on the ice today,

we see the direct result

of that environment.

The elegance.

The strict classical

almost hotel-like elegance

combined with rigorous

punishing physical training.

Is it direct inheritance

from this 1920s modernist movement?

It established a distinct

graceful character

that people even started

calling Takarazuka-esque.

If you want to experience

that 1926 glamour today,

you're in luck.

The hotel is actually relocated

and rebuilt in 2020

right next to the grand theater.

They perfectly replicated

those original arched windows

and grand chandeliers.

But the real hidden gem

isn't the building itself.

It's the ground outside.

Take a walk along the Muko river

and look at the sand.

Yes, the white granite.

It is lined with this beautiful white

granite sand.

That bright, crisp white stone

is literally what forms

the refreshing,

clean color palette

for the entire city's aesthetic.

It is the geological bedrock

literally dictating the color

of the culture above it.

Okay, so we've covered ancient tombs

turning into treasure,

a freezing pool

transforming into a legendary theater,

the godfather of manga,

catching bugs,

fire tongs, pinching away bad luck,

and the crisp white sand

of a modernist hotel.

Quite the lit.

So what does this all mean?

How do we take all these

fascinating disparate threads

and actually weave them

into a single 2026 Olympic gold medal?

The report synthesizes this brilliantly

by outlining five historical moves

of the city's genius loci,

its spirit of place

that have directly shaped

an athlete like Mura.

Let's walk through how they overlap.

First, there is frontier transformation

and resilience.

Just as the city historically turned

terrifying ancient tombs

into hills of treasure,

and just as it painstakingly rebuilt

after the devastating 1995

ancient earthquake.

Mura has absorbed a culture

that teaches her to turn

severe sports injuries

and setbacks

into a resilient,

unshakeable piece of mind.

Right.

And that leads directly

into the second mode,

which is catalytic failure.

Taking that miserable,

freezing indoor pool,

draining it,

and using the empty basin

to build a theatrical empire.

So it's almost like the muscle

memory of the city

is to turn a mistake

into a masterpiece.

Exactly.

Mura takes that exact same concept,

pivoting gracefully

from a literal or metaphorical

slip on the ice

and channels it into executing

higher.

Mace total sense.

The third mode is

gender tension and strength.

The Tucker-Azoca review is famous

for its male role aesthetic,

where women portray

powerful,

stylized masculinity.

Growing up in a culture

that explicitly celebrates

female athletic strength

and theatrical power

gave Mura the toughness

to completely defy

the traditional

fragile female stereotypes

that are often associated

with pair skating.

Spawn,

the fourth mode is

religious layering and ritual.

The intense precision,

focus, and dedication required

to win Olympic gold

doesn't just come from a coach.

It mirrors the exact

physical rituals of the city.

Yes.

It's the same focused

intention as bringing

those metal fire tongs

to the temple

to meticulously tinge away

bad luck.

And finally,

the fifth mode ties it all

together.

Modernist elegance.

The classical grace

and perfectly postured

aesthetic that Mura displays

on the ice isn't just

choreography she learned last

year.

No,

it is the inherited

cultural DNA

of the 1926

Tucker-Azoca hotel era.

It is a full century

of Tucker-Azoca-esque

elegance

channeled into a single

flawless athletic routine.

It is just mind blowing.

It really reminds us

that a gold metal

isn't just one by

muscles, good coaching,

and early morning practice.

Not at all.

Sometimes a champion is

slowly forged by the water,

the forests, the fire,

and the very stones

of a hometown

over the course of a thousand years.

Rikumira wasn't just skating

for her city.

She was skating

with the weight and the power

of its entire history

beneath her blades.

Beautifully put,

we've seen how the invisible

layered history of a city

its ancient tombs,

drained pools,

and white granite

can silently dictate the

trajectory of a modern

athlete's life.

Yeah.

It makes you wonder,

what forgotten failures,

hidden monuments,

or ancient rituals

are buried beneath the

concrete of your hometown.

And how are those

invisible layers

secretly scripting the story

of your life right now

without you even realizing it?

That is such a fantastic

provocative thought to leave on.

Thank you so much

for joining us on this deep dive

into Tucker-Azoca's

layered history.

Keep looking closely at your

surroundings.

Keep uncovering the hidden

gems around you.

And most importantly,

keep questioning the ground

beneath your feet.

Keep questioning the ground

beneath your feet.

Keep questioning the ground

beneath your feet.