Masuda Yasumare (1908 - ?) ill-fated lover

Saijo Eriko, then 23, was a leading musumeyaku, a player of female roles in the all-female revue Shôchiku Shōjo Kageki, who had been in the 1933 short film Wakasa to netsu no shûdan geijutsu: Shôchiku shôjo kageki no ichinichi. In spring 1934 she was emerging from bathing backstage when she met with one of her fans, the upper class Masuda Yasumare. 

Masuda, raised female as Masuda Fumiko, had taken the male name Yasumare and dressed accordingly. Saijo later stressed Yasumare’s physical beauty, his straight white teeth, his Harold Lloyd spectacles and his ‘Eton crop’ hairstyle. Masuda followed her to venues in eastern and western Japan where she was performing, and visited her almost daily. In addition he wrote her frequent passionate letters. She walked out with him, even hand-in-hand. 

Masuda had taken family money and stock certificates to finance his travels. On New Year’s Day Yasumare and Eriko shared a hotel room and bed in Kyoto. She was supposed to return to Tokyo for a photo-shoot, but he used emotional blackmail to stop her going. They took the slow ferry to Beppu on the island of Kyushu which is famed for its hot springs. They had been entertaining romantic ideas about a joint suicide, but on arrival Eriko’s chronic appendicitis flared up and she was three days in hospital. On doctors’ advice they took the train back to Kyoto which is much faster than the ferryboat. 

In Kyoto Masuda threatened suicide if Eriko returned to her work. By this time a private investigator hired by Masuda’s mother (the father had left home to live with his mistress some years before) had found them and alerted the press which ran daily stories on the couple. On 23 January, after an attempted flight by train and car, they were apprehended. Masuda was sent to his mother’s home in Osaka, and Erika returned to her parents in Tokyo. 

Late at night on 27 January, Masuada, who had escaped from home again and taken a hotel room in Tokyo, phoned her. She immediately went to him, her father with her. With her father’s blessing, she stayed with Masuda, supposedly until someone from his family came. However they both took tranquilisers and sleeping pills. A journalist who insisted on interviewing Saijo realised the situation and called for medical help. They did not die.

There had been several ‘lesbian suicides’ in early 1930s Japan. This case generated particular interest given Masuda’s class status and Saijo’s celebrity as a musumeyaku. In 1932 the novelist Muramatsu Shōfu had coined the term “dansō na reijin”(female beauty in men’s clothes) and used it in a short story inspired by Kawashima Yoshiko whose transvesting in military uniform with the Imperial forces in Manchuria was well-known. The term was now applied to Masuda.

Saijo Eriko

Saijo Eriko, who had her acting and modelling career, took some initiatives. She dealt with the Masuda family through their lawyer and persuaded them that Yasumare be allowed to live independently (in Japan at that time only sons were allowed to do so). When Masuda’s estranged father came to visit Yasumare in hospital, she criticised him as an absent father. Eriko wrote an account for a women’s magazine, Fujin Kōron, shortly afterwards, presenting herself as perhaps foolish, but not as someone who considered suicide. She left the Shôchiku Shōjo Kageki, and had a couple of small parts in films in 1935 and 1936.

In 1937 Eriko married a cis man.

• Nakano Eitarō. “Dansō no reijin to Saijō Eriko: dōseiaishi misui no ikisatsu (The cross-dressed beauty and Saijō Eriko: the circumstances of their double suicide attempt)”. Fujin Kōron, 1935, 3: 1617.
• Saijō Eriko. “Dansō no reijin Masuda Fumiko no shi o erabu made (Up until Masuda Fumiko, the cross-dressed beauty, chose death)”. Fujin Kōron, 1935, 3: 168-78.
• Ksbayashi lchisd. "Danso no reijin"to toa? Kageki 169, 1935:10-12.
• Jennifer Robinson. Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan. University of California Oress, 1998: 193-6.
• Jennifer Robinson. “Dying to Tell: Sexuality and Suicide om Imperial Japan” in Cindy Patton & Benigo Sanchez-Eppler (eds) Queer Diasporas. Duke University Press, 2000: 38-70.
• Leila J Rupp. Sapphistries: A Global History of Love between Woman. New York University Press, 2009: 167.
• Jennifer Robertson. “The Politics of Androgyny in Japan: Sexuality and Subversion in the Theater and Beyond” in Anne C Herrmann & Abigail J Stewart (eds). Theorizing Feminism: Parallel Trends In The Humanities And Social Sciences. Second Edition. Taylor & Francis, 2018: 174.

IMDB(Saijo Eriko)