Sayonara by James A. Michener Read Free Book Online Page A

“I used to be a flier. Now I work here.”
    “What is this place?” I asked in a low whisper.
    “You don’t know?”
    “Never heard of it.”
    Mrs. Webster saw us talking and cried, “Oh, Lloyd! Don’t spoil the fun!”
    “I hate mysteries,” I said.
    “All right, well go.”
    She and the thin young man took us out of the zoo and up to an enormous building which looked like an armory in Kansas City. It was a theater. We went to our special seats in the very first row and there we faced one of the largest stages in the world on which was enacted the most amazing performance I had ever seen.
    I can’t say I understood the play. It was called, the young man said,
Sarutobi Sasuke,
meaning
Little Monkey Sasuke,
and Sasuke isa boy’s name. It dealt with some children who accidentally conjure up a wizard who helps them save a castle from the enemy. Who the enemy was or what the castle I never understood because at Takarazuka it wasn’t the story that counted. It was the overwhelming effect of size.
    The play started at one and ran till six. It had thirty-four different scenes, each the biggest and most lavish you could imagine. I never saw a Ziegfeld show, but Mrs. Webster said that any Takarazuka scene outdid the best Ziegfeld ever put on. There was music, there was dancing, there were songs. In fact, there was everything. In this one show there were two gorillas, a jeep, two live pigs, a wizard, three different trios singing three different kinds of songs, a ballet, a football game, a live goat, a motion-picture sequence showing the wizard at work, a passage from an opera and a cave whose trees moved about. But most of all there were girls.
    There were more than a hundred girls on stage, and they were all real dazzlers. I thought to myself, “And you were the guy who said he’d never seen a good-looking Japanese girl! Wow!” But at the same time there was something ridiculous about this excess of beauty, for there were no men actors. The most striking girls played men’s roles, and I whispered to Eileen, “This show could use a few Clark Gables.”
    Mrs. Webster heard me and laughed. “In Tokyo there’s another theater which has no women. There men play all the parts.”
    “Doesn’t sound sensible,” I said.
    “It’s Japanese,” she explained.
    I soon tired of the show—one enormous set after another and beautiful girls making believe they were men. I said I was willing to leave whenever the others had had enough. Eileen said, “I’m ready,” and as we walked up the darkened aisle I began to appreciate the enormous size of this theater. It must have seated more than 3,000 people. I asked our guide, “Is it always filled this way?” for there wasn’t a vacant seat. He sucked his breath in proudly and said, “Every day in the year. Twice on Saturday and Sunday.” I didn’t tell him so, but I figured there must be something in a Takarazuka show no American could understand because I was bored by this one and so were Eileen and her mother. But the Japanese loved it. They sat on the edges of their seats, their round faces transfixed with intense pleasure.
    We started to return to our car but the guide stopped us and said, “The Supervisor has invited you to attend a special rehearsal of our next month’s show.”
    “Have you two companies?” Eileen asked, a bit bedazzled by the 115 girls she had just seen.
    “We have four,” the guide said proudly. “One plays here, one in Tokyo, one tours, and one is in rehearsal.”
    He led us to a huge empty stage where some young girls in green skirts were walking through an intricate dance, while a man at the piano hammered out a tune that sounded like Schubert. In another empty room another man played a song that sounded like Gershwin for a trio of young girls, also in green skirts. “They wear the Takarazuka costume,” the guide explained.
    Then suddenly he came to attention and the girls at the piano stopped singing. Everyone looked at the door