Ichizō Kobayashi
Kobayashi took inspiration from the youth ensemble that the Mitsukoshi Department Store had used to attract customers in Tokyo. This group of 20 to 30 fresh-faced teenage boy musicians, wearing Western-style clothes and feathered hats worn at an angle, were highly successful in publicizing the store. “For our Takarazuka New Spa,” Kobayashi later wrote in Takarazuka oitachi no ki (The History of Takarazuka), “we imitated this group, and with guidance from Mitsukoshi set up a girls’ musical theater group.”