What is a Revue? The revue style of musical theater has its origins in medieval France as a form of public entertainment at fairs and would eventually become the early “modern” revue popularized by the Cogniard Brothers at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin and shows, at the then new, Folies-Bergère in the early to…
BeruBara Tag Boom: Pre-War Girls Magazines and Post-War Shoujo Manga
[Passionate Friendship by Deborah Shamoon goes in-depth on the topic that I’m covering today. A small database of early Shoujo Gahou By the start of the Taisho era in 1912, Japan had made great strides in industrializing and becoming a modern country with a strong military force that had already taken control of Taiwan and…
BeruBara Tag Boom: S-Relationships
The Emergence of Girls’ Higher Education During eighteenth-century Japan one of the changes that worried the lords and members of high-level samurai was the shift from the traditional agrarian economy that Japan had known for centuries and had built its identity around was starting to see an intrusion from a new and burgeoning money economy…
BeruBara Tag Boom: Introduction
A series focused on how a musical based on a popular manga influenced Japanese women’s wrestling over the next decade. In February of 1976, a brand new tag team made their debut for All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling and on the same night won the WWWA tag titles from Mach Fumiake and Mariko Akagi. After that…
The BeruBara Tag Boom: Prologue
Hey y’all, as I’ve mentioned earlier this year on twitter, I have been doing research on a subject I feel is neglected in wrestling discussion and has been for decades, and that’s the popularity and importance of the Beauty Pair and the entire boom period AJW had in the late 70s. Discussion online about joshi…
Maki Ueda vs Jackie Sato: Beauty Pair at Budokan
February 29, 1979/Showa 54 Over the course of the corona virus pandemic I took a step back from watching pro wrestling, both old and new, as my go-to promotions weren’t holding my interest and following the tragic passing of Hana Kimura I had lost most of my passion for the sport and totally stopped watching….
Rest in peace Hana Kimura
This post deals with the subject of suicide, harassment, and abuse. If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts please try contacting a suicide crisis center in you country. Apologies if this post isn’t written very cohesively, this is the first time I’ve written a long-form obituary before and dealt with some self doubt on if…
Nobuhiko Takada vs Shinya Hashimoto: Now for something completely different
April 29, 1996/Heisei 8 During this time of at-home isolation and bountiful free time due to the hospitality & food service industry in my country exploding I actually have time to watch some wrestling in 2020, and for April 1st I decided to review one of my favorite men’s matches from a Japanese promotion. Around…
Jackie Sato vs Rimi Yokota: Beauty ends
February 25, 1981/Showa 56 At quick glance it’s easy to tell that this will be an important title match for the immediate future but this match is also a major changing of the guard for AJW from their first stars to the eventual rise of some of the biggest wrestlers of the new decade. I’ll…
My thoughts on Bushiroad buying Stardom
At the time this post goes up former Ice Ribbon member, Giulia, and Stardom are in an awkward position that pissed off some of their fellow wrestlers and promoters. With the Bushiroad acquisition bringing a new context to this situation it makes the whole thing stink more, someone probably tipped Giulia off that this purchase…
I say, you say, Heisei 