OSAKA — Kiyoshi Kato, a 24-year-old worker in the music business, was one of four men wearing shorts and ballet shoes toe-dancing along with female participants in a lesson last month at a dance studio in the Akihabara district of Tokyo.
Their foreheads beaded with sweat and faces looking serious, the four were exercising on tiptoe at the Ballesonance Tokyo Ballet Studio to the voice of a female instructor ordering them to straighten their backs and legs.
Men rarely take private ballet lessons for amateurs. But like Kato, an increasing number are studying ballet and other disciplines typically geared toward women, apparently for self-realization and just to try something new.