Compared with Tamasaburo Bando,
Dustin Hoffman was a raw ingenue in Tootsie. Though only 33, Bando is already a master onnagata, a man who plays female roles in the centuries-old art of Kabuki. So apposite are his opposite-sex portrayals that he is the object of study by aspiring actresses and real-life geishas seeking to refine their feminine ways. "To act as an onnagata, "he says, "is to try to create an ideal; what I as a man would consider to be the ideal woman." Bando has also done non-Kabuki work, including heralded performances as...
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