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<Himeyuri no Tō>(1953) is a Takarazuka Revue written as a memorial for Himeyuri Gakutotai. Himeyuri Gakutotai were high school girls mobilized as auxiliary nurses and sacrificed during the Battle of Okinawa. The Himeyuri stories became astonishingly popular in postwar Japanese society, and were represented in various media, such as novels, plays, movies and dramas. Nevertheless, many of those works have been criticized, because of their perspectives on victimhood or sacrificial narratives combined with their use of the vulnerable girls’ images. The main purpose of this article is to analyze the aspects of the dual appropriation of the girls’ images, which maximized with the characteristic girlhood of Takarazuka in their representation of Himeyuri narrative. The secondary purpose is to reveal the fact that the Himeyuri narrative, represented by Takarazuka, ultimately turns out to be a symbol of militaristic girls' images through the reinforcement of the sacrificial narrative produced by the dual appropriation of girlhood. This article is therefore written to examine the vulnerability that is intrinsically embedded in those girls’ images, and to discuss the implications of postwar Japanese Himeyuri narratives from the viewpoint of contemporary memory politics.

Takarazuka Revue, Himeyuri no Tō, Militaristic Girl, Girlhood, the Vulnerability of Images