“Why does everyone have to put you in a box and nail the lid on it? I don’t know what I am—polymorphous and perverse… I’m me. That’s all I am and all I want to be. Do I have to be something?”
- Molly Bolt, Rubyfruit Jungle
This entry is dedicated to Enthousiaste and TheBigN. Thanks for showing interest.
The “other half” of Hourou Musuko is an interesting case. On the surface, Takatsuki seems like a mirror of Shuuichi– a girl who wants to be a boy. But the truth isn’t quite that simple: Whereas Shuu idolizes femininity and more or less ignores the world of boys, Takatsuki’s girlhood is unavoidable, and she hates it. Then again, all Shuu has to do is wear girls’ clothing; Takatsuki buys the plainest bras, but she can’t NOT buy them, nor can she help things like using pads. Masculinity, for her, seems like a way to escape the otherwise inevitable.
This is where I bring in the other side of Colette Chiland’s book. According to her, women who want to be men can scarcely even define what being a man means. They simply know that they hate being women, and that they want to feel personally empowered. Again, I completely disagree with Chiland’s implications, but the idea of inexpressible frustration is interesting.
Consider, for example, Takatsuki’s possible lesbianism. Among LGBT circles, there’s quite a bit of controversy over roleplaying among gay couples, i.e. the question of who is the “butch” and who the “femme.” When liking people of the same sex is already something that breaks the mold, some say, why this desire to continue a boy/girl dynamic? We’re supposed to have come a long way from the days when Oscar Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, wrote about “the love that dare not speak its name,” so isn’t this just buying into the same heterosexual system that condemns LGBT people as faggots and queers?
My personal answer to that is, how about we cut ourselves a little slack? It takes a long time to break centuries of gender programming. But I wonder if Takatsuki even knows that it’s possible to go outside the program. Does she understand that she can be a “boy” and remain a girl? If she wants to love women, does she understand that she can love women without being a man?
Who knows? It’s not even clear that Takatsuki is transgendered, or homosexual, or just a normal awkward adolescent. It’s not that her love dare not speak its name, so much as she doesn’t even KNOW what its name is. Perhaps this is strange of me to say for a fictional character, but I hope she finds it someday.
September 22, 2009 at 6:32 am
I’ve just read the first volume of Hourou Musuko and I can, suprisingly for some, relate to the story. What I can’t quite grasp yet is the behaviour of Chiba-san, so I’ll have to take my time to read the rest of the story. Quite rivuleting, I have to admit. And goes very well with the minimalistic design.
September 22, 2009 at 7:24 am
Chiba really IS an enigma. And yet, at the same time she seems the most typically adolescent of all of them: Trying out new religions, falling in love with the strange boy at school… The only oddity in that light is that she still has a wonderful relationship with her mother.
Thanks for reading. Alas, I can’t read Polish, but your blog also looks quite nice.
September 22, 2009 at 12:58 pm
I have 2nd volume schedule for the evening after preparing materials for my students
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As for the blog- thank you. You may occasionaly find entries in Japanese ( http://www.kantanda.pl/2009/01/11/pan-calineczek-issunboushi/ for example ) or in English ( e.g. http://www.kantanda.pl/2008/09/15/zza-krzaka-jak-oni-naprawde-zapamietuja-kanji-how-do-they-really-memorize-the-kanji/ ) – and you are always welcome for a button exchange or guest posts with your shrewd texts.
Keep it up!
September 22, 2009 at 7:06 am
You seem to assume that Takatsuki has shown sufficient signs of being into girls; I may have missed those, because I’m very much unsure about Takatsuki’s orientation, and never thought about it very much.
Also, the statements at the beginning of the article seem strange : Shuu is no less prisoner of his physical gender than Takatsuki, and the subject is treated as well (remember the nocturnal emission scene).
Otherwise, I agree on your thoughts and feelings on the unclarity of Takatsuki’s position. I’m also eager to read more.
On a side-note, thanks for the mention.
September 22, 2009 at 7:20 am
You’re right; I suppose the moments where she displayed lesbian tendencies have just stuck out in my memory. And good point re: Shuu’s wet dream. But I still wonder if perhaps Takatsuki’s problem is more that she has a myopic view of femininity, thanks to Japanese society.
September 22, 2009 at 8:05 am
Also, about Takatsuki’s orientation, there are other signs that may indicate a tendency to like boys. (I don’t want to use the term “heterosexuality”, because its meaning changes with the gender identity of the subject) For example, on v.4 p.130, Takatsuki remembers a dream she made the same morning, in which Nitori is depicted as a quite manly young man.
September 22, 2009 at 8:29 am
The subject is rather interesting, though I’m not sure how interested I am in the manga itself. Do we really need to be anything?
I don’t think so, but we definitely help ourselves when we assume categories, gender or otherwise. We become easier to sell to as a group. This may seem to be beneficial to the sellers… but think also that it’s a great way to get things relevant to our interests.
I just don’t want to naively dismiss categorization, roles and types as some kind of bogeyman of discrimination. It’s something we like to do. After all, individuals from each social group tend to divide the rest of humanity into haters and non-haters.
September 22, 2009 at 8:46 am
I think it’s more like we normally just can’t HELP being something, some category. It’s the way we understand the world. But when it’s something so deeply ingrained as boys versus girls, it’s tempting to think that this is the way it “naturally” is, or the only possibility out there. Which of course isn’t true. We’re pretty much constructed all the way down.
Also, thanks for reading in spite of not being interested in Hourou Musuko as such. I appreciate your input.
September 22, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Nice post, it has filled me with the desire to see a woman, preferably A Day Without Me, do this post, especially after her post on Revolutionary Girl Utena that I think is vital to this post of yours: http://gargarstegosaurus.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/diary-of-an-anime-lived-revolutionizing-a-world/
September 22, 2009 at 3:24 pm
I remember reading that. You’re right, it does put things in their proper context. Unfortunately I don’t think I’ve gotten A Day Without Me to acknowledge my existence as a blogger yet. One goal at a time…
September 25, 2009 at 2:59 am
Your critical analysis of Japanese visual culture through the lens of multiple disciplines, including postmodern aesthetic, gender identity, queer theory, iconography, historiography, cultural identity, and so on continues to astound me.
Most people have to use their familiarity with particular artistic media to understand the higher critical concepts.
I think you’re effectively doing the reverse for me, exploring these concepts in Japanese visual culture (and not solely in the context of anime and manga, either!) in a way that lets me understand them in an entirely new light.
Well done, sir. Keep it up.
September 25, 2009 at 11:25 am
I’m just happy I haven’t run out of steam. Glad you’re enjoying it.
September 25, 2009 at 4:07 am
I feel like I should leave a comment since I haven’t visited your blog in a while, but I have yet to read Hourou Musuko, so I’ll just steal a quote from “Kafka on the Shore.”
“According to Aristophanes in Plato’s The Banquet, in the ancient world of legend there were three types of people. In ancient times people weren’t simply male or female, but one of three types: male/male, male/female or female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangement and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut everyone in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing half. “
September 25, 2009 at 11:16 am
I have yet to read that one by Murakami, but I remember reading that section of the Symposium. Good stuff– with a grain of salt, of course, because the ancient Greeks had strange rules about screwing your social inferiors.
It’s perfectly fine if you don’t comment often. As long as you don’t disappear from the blogosphere entirely, know what I mean?
September 26, 2009 at 7:42 am
Of course I wouldn’t do that, darling.
September 25, 2009 at 6:36 am
Thanks for the awesome read. I’m still trying to collect all the volumes.
September 25, 2009 at 11:10 am
I do what I can for the Hourou Musuko love. Thanks for reading.
October 15, 2009 at 7:09 pm
[...] directly into their character designs, the sporty butch tachi and the frail, limp-wristed uke. 2DT defends this practice in real life as an inevitable consequence of centuries (likely millennia) of [...]
August 6, 2010 at 11:24 am
Yoshino is Transsexual. That’s one of the points of the manga.
August 9, 2010 at 7:38 pm
Actually one of the points of the manga is that she doesn’t precisely know about it. Well, there is no contradiction between her being a transsexual and her not being sure about it, but I wouldn’t make that strong statements.
December 5, 2010 at 7:14 am
In a new chapter it’s been confirmed he’s trans. Or maybe it’s just adding to the confusion.
Nitori is trans, that’s undeniable. But Takatsuki is ambiguous. She wishes to be a boy, which sounds trans, but she seems gender neutral. Maybe she’s another form of gender queer?
July 12, 2011 at 1:23 am
[...] Hourou Musuko and the Love That Dare Not Speak It’s Name [...]