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[title]It is almost 10pm when we emerge from the Shinbashi Enbujo Theatre in Tokyo. Despite it being an unusually cold evening for that time of year, a huge crowd of female fans gathers outside the back door. Their cause? To catch a glimpse of their idol, the actor-singer Hideaki Takizawa.
You wouldn’t be able to tell from his boyish good looks, but Takizawa – affectionately known as Tackey – is 33 years old. Taken in by Johnny & Associates, Japan’s largest male talent agency, when he was just 16, Takizawa struck gold as one-half of the J-Pop duo Tackey & Tsubasa before rising up the ranks and gaining the trust of Johnny Kitagawa, the agency’s founder. ‘Johnny decided that I should get into acting,’ he tells us. ‘So I did.’
TV dramas, commercials and theatre followed, and now he’s the star of Takizawa Kabuki, a modern and colourful take on the four-centuries-old art form that’s making its international debut on our shores this month.