Ugly Ducklings:
The Construction and Deconstruction of Gender in Shôjo Manga
A Thesis Presented
by
Jennifçr Ricard
T 0 McGill University
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of Master of Arts
in
East Asian Studies
McGill University, Montreal
October 2005
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Abstract
This thesis examines shôjo manga (Japanese comics for girls) as a site of the subversion of gender. The focus will be on stories about cross-dressing, as the cross dressed heroine poses from the outset questions about the nature of girls within shôjo manga and the girls who are supposedly reading the texts. The analysis takes place at two leve1s: visual language and narrative. Over the course of five chapters, focusing on a couple of series in each, this thesis will show the various ways categories of gender and sex are undermined in five different subgenres. Yet gender norms are recuperated in the end. The manga always return to the figure of the shôjo, the ambiguously gendered "not quite-female" female that must expire at adulthood and the regulatory function heterosexuality plays in this inevitable demise. Nevertheless shôjo manga readers need not necessarily share this end. The various ways that the reader is positioned both visually and narratively suggests that her gender and sexuality remains ambiguous and indefinable.
Cette thèse examine les shôjo manga (bandes dessinées japonaises pour filles) comme emplacement de la subversion du genre. Le foyer sera sur les histoires portant sur le travestisme comme la héroïne travestie pose dès le début des questions au sujet de la nature des filles de shôjo manga et les filles qui lisent censément ces textes. L'analyse a lieu à deux niveaux : récit et langage visuel. Au cours de cinq chapitres, se concentrant sur un couple de séries chacun, cette thèse montrera les diverses façons dont les catégories du genre et du sexe sont transgressées dans cinq sous-genre différents.
Pourtant les normes de genre sont récupérées à la fin. Les manga retournent toujours à la II figure du shôjo, la femelle "presque-femelle" qui doit disparaître à l'âge adulte, et le role que joue l'hétérosexualité dans cette cession inévitable. Néanmoins les lectrices de shôjo manga ne partagent pas nécessairement cette fin. Les diverses manières que la lectrice est placée visuellement et narrativement suggèrent que son genre et sexualité restent ambiguës et indéfinissables. III
A Ilote on names
Japanese names have been written in the Japanese manner; that is family name followed by given name. The only exception is when the author is writing in English.
A note on translations
As much as possible, 1 have tried to use primary materials in their original language. But occasionally, for reasons of availability, 1 had to rely on either North
American or French releases of certain manga series. This is noted in the bibliographical references. AIl translations from French and Japanese are my own except when otherwise indicated.
Japanese words are romanized using the Hepburn system and kanji is given the first time these words appear. When a manga title is given only in English, this is how it appears on the original text. IV
Table of Contents
Abstract ...... 1
Notes ...... III
Table ofContents ...... IV
Acknowledgements ...... VI
Introduction ...... 1 o A briefhistory ...... 2 o Androgyny ...... 5 oThe shôjo ...... 6 o Cross-dressing ...... 8
Chapter 1 - Drawing Gender: Visual Presentations ofGender in Shôjo Manga ...... 11 o Gendered conventions ...... 13 o Backgrounds andframes ...... , ...... , .. " ...... " .. , ...... 17 o Perspectives on gender ...... 22 o The position ofthe reader in the play ofgazes ...... 27 o The indefinable reader ...... 31
Chapter 2 - The Girl Who Would Be Prince: Blending Genders and Creating an Ideal Masculinity ...... 38 o Female men ...... 40 o Combining masculinity andjèmininity ...... 43 o Revolutionary otokoyaku ...... 47 o Female love ...... 52 o The end ofthe legends ...... 58
Chapter 3 - Female Male Idols: Conventions ofBeauty and Gender Relations ...... " ...... 60 o Female bishônen ...... 61 o The body beneath ...... 64 o Love andfemininity ...... 67 o Relational genders ...... 71
Chapter 4 - l Want to Be Your Little Boy: The Social Construction ofSex and Gender ...... 74 o The social construction ofgender ...... 76 o The construction ofsex ...... 81 o Destiny ...... 83 v
o Discomfort ...... 84
Chapter 5 - Troubled Romance: Stereotyped Gender and Compulsive Heterosexuality ...... 86 o The fool ...... 87 o Stereotypes ...... 91 o Compulsory heterosexuality ...... 96 o Queer heterosexuality ...... 98
Conclusion ...... 105
Bibliography ...... 109 VI
Acknowledgements
l wish to express my gratitude, first and foremost, to my supervisor, Anne
McKnight. She read and reviewed my admittedly rough work and helped me pro duce the fini shed product you hold today in spite of distance and time constraints.
Thanks also to Thomas Lamarre who suggested reading material and engaged me in discussion about visual regimes and how these might function in manga and who critiqued my first chapter in its early stages.
Thank you to Heather Lee Mills, who was perhaps not directly involved in the production of this thesis, but who studied alongside me and offered support as we both faced this difficult stage of our Master studies.
Finally to James for his merciless proof-reading and unending encouragement and to my family and friends who put up with me on the good days and the bad. Ricard 1
"Ail girls are ugly ducklings. Eventually a day will come when we can turn into beautiful swans '" One day you will faU in love too and become more like a woman because ofit. " 1
Introduction
Shôjo manga (Y-:9:"rliOO) - Japanese comics aimed at, created by and primarily read by women - are, by deftnition, gendered texts. Manga are categorized and marketed on the basis of distinct gender categories: shôjo for girls and shônen (Y~) for boys. It could he argued that this division recreates and supports narrow deftnitions of gender.
After aH, the presumption that certain types of stories, themes, characters and art styles appeal more to girls than to boys suggests that there is a certain way boys and girls, naturally or by social conditioning, should he.
In this spirit, Fusami Ogi argues that manga have "imposed existing gender roles upon readers, categorizing both readers and writers according to the sex to which they were born,,2. However, these gendered categories are not necessarily as "naturally and widely accepted" as she claims. Though they are perhaps not in the majority, there are women who read shônen manga and boys who read shôjo manga. If nothing else, the handful of interviews performed by Alwyn Spies in the course of her doctoral thesis show the existence of such variations. The one high school boy she interviewed, Shoji, was a fan of shôjo manga, and the high school girl called Rie "said she read men's manga and boys' manga more often [than shôjo]" 3. While Spies' interviewing process was far from exhaustive, it does give a glimpse into actual reading patterns. And these patterns need not necessarily conform to preset norms. If categorization by gender is truly an attempt to reify
1 Washio Mie, "Great Waiters?" Bitter. (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 2003) 245. 2 Fusami Ogi, Reading. Writing. and Female Subjectivity: Gender in Japanese Comics (Manga) for Girls (Shôjo) 9. Ricard 2 gender norms, to ensure that female bodies act in feminine ways as Ogisuggests, these anomalies put into question its ability to succeed. Rather, the fact that target audience and actual readership need not match shows that actual gender divisions (of the readers at least) are not as simple as the categorization of manga makes them seem.
With this in mind, 1 shall address the ways in which gender is constructed in shôjo manga. Such analysis is important because, as Maïa Tsurumi claims in her article on gender norms in Yu/can Kurabu, "comics are reflective of culture'.4. She argues that while manga are fantasies, they do tell us something about Japanese society. In other words, while it is clear that these texts are fantasies and not self-help manuals, they offer a window both on the dreams of the readers (and writers) and the socially acceptable limits ofthose dreams. 1 am not implying that manga regulate gender norms but rather that they can help us see what is being regulated and by what means. And that precisely is the project ofthis essay. 1 will argue that gender in shôjo manga is by definition ambiguous and that institutionalized heterosexuality works to normalize and hide this ambiguity.
A brief history
The history reveals the gender ambiguity that is characteristic of shôjo manga. The genre began in the 1950s, but its current form is very different from these origins. Shôjo manga in the 50s were produced and published almost exclusively by men for an audience of prepubescent girls. Osamu Tezuka is often lauded as the founder of shôjo manga; he created the first "story comic" aimed at girls ''that emphasized narrative structure and
3 Alwyn Spies, Studying Shôjo Manga: Global Education, Narratives of Self and the Pathologization of the Feminine. (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2003) 222. 4 Maia Tsurumi, "Gender and Girls' Comics in Japan," Bulletin ofConcemed Asian Scholars 29, 1996.55. Ricard 3 cinematic techniques"S (as opposed to gag strips and illustrated novels). This original story,
The Knight ofthe Ribbon published between 1953 and 1956, concerns a lady knight with both a male and a female heart. For this reason she must constantly altemate between being a prince and a princess. It is significant that one of the earliest Tezuka's work was still a rarity in the early days of the genre; most stories concemed child heroines in family settings.
The seventies saw a revolution in these manga. The change is in large part due to the introduction of female artists into the genre; shôjo manga became characterized by female authorship as much as by a presumed female audience. The stories also began to change, focusing on slightly older girls. In this period, Nishitani Yoshiko ftrst introduced high school romance as a theme - one that has become central in modem shôjo manga. The most famous ofthis flfst wave ofwomen artists have become canonical. They are known as the Nijûyonen Gumi in reference to the twenty-forth year of Showa (1949) most ofthem were bom in or around. Despite the importance of this group, its exact membership is a question of debate; it includes among others Hagio Moto, Takemiya Keiko, Oshima
Yumiko and Ikeda Riyoko. What ail these women have in common, aside from their year ofbirth, is a similar focus on gender ambiguity. Their manga deal with, among other things, cross-dressing (Berusaiyu no Bara, 1972-74 and Orpheus no Mado, 1975-81), male homosexuality (Touma no Shinzou, 1974 and Kaze to Ki no Uta, 1976-84) and sex change
(Joka e, 1973). The Nijûyonen Gumi are also the origin of narratives for girls dealing with male homosexuality, later known as yaoi. In the words of Matt Thom - an English language scholar of the genre focusing on yaoi - "it was the Nijûyonen Gumi that
5 Frederick Schodt, Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga. (Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 1996) 253. Ricard 4 developed sexual ambiguity as one of the primary concerns of shôjo manga." 6 The influence of their transgressive art and narrative styles on shôjo manga ean still be seen today.
Over the next twenty years, shôjo manga market expanded exponentia1ly.
Especially after 1991, with the economic recession, the number of different titles and subgenres increased in order to reach more specific markets. Shôjo manga branched into different niches including yaoi, yur/ and josel or ladies comics as well as fantasy, science fiction, mystery and a multitude of other subgenres. The manga industry became one where "anything that has followers (consumers) goes,,,9 one that caters to subcultures rather than simply the category of "girl" as a mass culture. As a result the eategory of shôjo manga is now too large and varied a field for any kind of unified definition. No specifie art style, type of narrative or theme can describe the genre as a who le. One might argue that while shôjo manga still form a gendered category in opposition to shônen manga, this diversity might put into question narrow and unified definitions of gender as well as the genre.
As this essay also references English and French adaptations of shôjo manga, they deserve a brief comment. French countries, which a1ready had a large and varied comic industry, took to manga earlier and with more enthusiasm than most Western eountries. In contrast, manga have been translated with limited success in North America since the eighties. The industry only rea11y took off in the mid nineties. Manga now consistently
6 Matt Thom. "Unlikely Explorers: Alternative Narratives of Love, Sex, Gender, and Friendship in Japanese 'Girls' Comics", matt-thorn. corn. 6 Dec. 2004
Androgyny
Gender ambiguity is also present in the art, more specifically in the androgynous characters that populate the worlds of shôjo manga. Male characters often have feminine
appearances and many of the girls appear quite boyish. When
reading American comics, superhero comics in particular,
questions about a character's sex would rarely if ever occur.
Men are of the superman type: square-chinned, steely-eyed
and broad as a house (and aIl of this muscle) (Figure 1).
Conversely one might find the lanky teenager who will one
day become said superman. Women in these comics are no
less strong; often they are heroes in their own right or great
adversaries. But they are voluptuous and big-breasted (and Figure 1 Colossus, Jean Grey and Beast of often scantily clad), leaving no doubt as to their sex. This does Ultimate X-Men not necessarily mean that gender stereotypes are rigidly enforced when it comes to personality or action. Perhaps they are but that is a topic for a different paper. Yet it remains that the physical appearance of mainstream American comic heroes rarely deviates from what one might calI the sexed attributes of the body. Indeed, one might even consider them archetypes in the way they enhance and exaggerate said attributes to an
Fictions," The U.S.-Japan Women's Journal 25, 2003. 50. Ricard 6 almost absurd extent. One would rarely confuse the sexes in this comic form.
Japanese comics deviate greatly from tbis trend. This does not mean that such exaggeratedly male or female characters do not exist. Shônen manga, especially from before the 1990s, portray many such figures. One need only look at classic series like City
Hunter or Fist ofthe North Star to find evidence of this. Such exaggerated figures, made outright disgusting in their excess, are also common villains and comedie characters. But in shôjo manga, and increasingly in shônen manga as weIl, one witnesses a very different dynamic. The differences between the sexes are far less pronounced. Most characters are Figure 2 VOki, Tôru & Kyo of Fruits BlISket similar in build: slender with long limbs, large eyes and delicate facial features.
Furthermore, the sexed differences of the body, breasts for example, are not generally pronounced. The difference between male and female bodies in shôjo manga is quite as we can see in the above picture oftwo boys and a girl from Fruits Basket (Figure 2). Indeed, in stark contrast to the gender archetypes of American superhero comics, one might speak here of androgyny where differences in sex are as superficial as clothing or a matter of agreement.
Theshôjo
But aside from considerations of art and bistory, shôjo itself is a very pregnant term and time. Generally the term refers to a young girl between puberty and social adulthood.
But it has far more significance than an age bracket. As Jennifer Robertson - who analyzes sexual politics and gender construction in Japan's all woman theatre, Takarazuka - points Ricard 7 out, "the key indicator for female social adulthood are marri age and motherhood. Shôjo is the term coined in the Meiji period for unmarried girls and women and means, literally, a
'not-quite-female' female"lO. Naturally, the shôjo has evolved since the beginning of the twentieth century along with the roles of women within the family and society. But
Robertson's definition reveals the shôjo's revolutionary potential. ''Not-quite-female'' suggests a certain fluidity, an as yet undecided-ness of gender that allows for some space to play.
Sharon Kinsella perfectly captures this shôjo rebellion as play (asobi lliV) in her article "Cuties in Japan". She describes how young women participating in the infantile cute (kawaii PJ~v \) culture (which is concemed with everything from behaviour, speech, dress and, above all, consumerism) are trying to extend the shôjo period. This is because
"whilst a woman was still a shôjo outside the labour market, outside of the family she could enjoy a vacuous freedom of an outsider in society with no distinct obligations or role to play"ll. More than simply trying to enjoy a bit more freedom, remaining a shôjo marks a
"stubboro refusal to stop playing, go home and accept less from life,,12. In other words, it is a denial of the feminine roles of marriage and motherhood that Robertson describes as well as other similar socially imposed roles. Shôjo manga, like the cute culture often associated with them, embody this play. Indeed, although they are similar in art, there is statistically less gender play (cross-dressing, tomboys, gender confusion and homosexuality) once you
"graduate" to josei manga (~~ 11 ïOO) Shôjo, as a liminal period, seems ideal for exploring issues tbat test the boundaries of gender divisions.
10 Jennifer Robertson, Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modem Japan. (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1998) 65. Ricard 8
However, one key factor in the shôjo's potential is what Robertson calls
"heterosexual inexperience" 13. Remaining heterosexually inexperienced seems vital to maintaining the ambiguity and play of the shôjo figure. Heterosexuality leads to just that which ends the idyllic shôjo period, marriage and motherhood. Many shôjo manga (to say all would inevitably lead to a string of exceptions) are concemed with heterosexual romance, often first loves. It thus will become important, as 1 explore how gender is portrayed within the manga 1 have chosen, how this entry into heterosexual life affects gendering. Does it put an end to the freedom of the shôjo? Perhaps this why series often end with the successful creation of a stable couple; the shôjo has in that very moment ceased to exist.
Cross-dressÎng
1 have chosen to focus my analysis on the subgenre of cross-dressing stories within shôjo manga. As we have seen in my briefhistory, narratives about cross-dressing played an important part in the formation of the genre. It is not a distinct subgenre in the same sense as yaoi; there are no manga magazines dedicated to cross-dressing. This subgenre is found interspersed within other magazines and is thus hybridized with many other subgenres (fantasy, sci-fi, high school romance, etc.). 1 chose this subgenre because of the ability of the cross-dresser to reveal the construction of gender through her performance. In the words of Judith Butler "in imitating gender, drag reveals the imitative structure of gender itself.,,14 Drag both creates a unified picture of femininity or masculinity and undermines the fictive naturalness of these categories (created through heterosexual
11 Sharon Kinsella, "Cuties in Japan," Women, Media and Consumption in Japan, ed. Lise Skov and Brian Moeran (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995) 244. 12 Kinsella, "Cuties in Japan" 250. 13 Robertson 65. Ricard 9 discourse) by applying them to the opposite sex. Naturally drag is just one form of cross-dressing. However, 1 would argue that all forms of cross-dressing question the
"natural association of sex and gender to sorne extent. As such the cross-dresser in shôjo manga might he the site of crisis that makes the functioning of gender, sex and sexuality visible and accessible to analysis.
1 One must rememher, however, that "parody by itself is not subversive" 5. The cross-dresser shows the constructedness of gender roles but is not inherently subversive to these roles. The narratives of the manga in this essay are constructed in such a way as to recuperate "normal" relations between the sexes by the end, be it through marriage or simply the division of spheres of influence. Our cross-dressed heroines might find a whole new world of possibilities open to them, a place outside of the narrow duality of gender as it is typically envisioned. Yet they are always recuperated within the system by the end.
Indeed it is remarkable how many of these heroines in drag retire their swords, grow out their hair and marry a good man, or in more tragic tales, are killed off in order to restore the status quo. There are two strands working through these manga: one that normalizes and restricts gender divisions and another questions them. The problem we must address is whether or not this questioning undermines gender norms within the characters or readers.
My analysis shaH proceed at two levels - visuallanguage and narrative - as both are necessary to construct meaning in manga. However, 1 do not wish to restrict shôjo manga to a unified and definable body of texts any more than 1 wish to restrict femininity by such a definition; 1 would argue that both the gender and the genre are ambiguous.
Therefore, 1 have divided my essay into five chapters, each addressing a different subgenre
14 Butler 137. 15 Butler 139. Ricard 10 within cross-dressing narratives and the different questions of gender, sex and sexuality that they pose. Bach chapter shall also address several series in order to avoid the creation of model for the subgenre or the genre as a whole. This essay is not an attempt to define shôjo manga but to.explore the functioning of gender within it.
The first chapter dea1s with the visual structure and conventions of shôjo manga as they function in cross-dressing series. 1 will look at how gender is structured visually and how it is undermined. 1 will also address the position of the reader in order to argue that the cross-dresser is an attempt to represent the reader' s indefmable position within the text and gender.
Chapter two shall focus on manga about women as aristocratie swordsmen. These series suggest that gender is not dual and oppositional; that it is possible to he both a man and a woman. They also address the romantic ideals of female audiences and how this relates to the love between women that frequently appears in shôjo manga.
Chapter three concems cross-dressers in the entertainment industry. The main issue here is gendered beauty. These series show the ways in which gender affects how we read the body. They reveal the vital role that the figure of the bishônen plays in allowing the reader to recognize the heroines' flashed bodies as male. They also propose a relational model of gender in which masculinity and femininity are not coherent outside of heterosexuality .
Chapter four addresses the social construction of sex and gender more directly as it concerns stories in which heroines are re-gendered by parents and community. These series show how this construction takes place. They also pose the question of why, if there is Ricard 11 nothing natural about gender and sex, do the narratives always return to the notion of destiny.
The final chapter addresses the most widespread of the cross~dressing subgenres, one that has elements in most other series - high school romances. 1 have purposefully placed this subgenre last so as to avoid overarching definitions of shôjo manga and instead highlight the variations and disruptions in the genre, as in the gender they portray. Chapter five is about compulsive and normalizing heterosexuality and the ways in which this heterosexuality can be undermined. It also addresses the comedic structure of these manga and its affect on reading position.
AlI chapters explore the functioning of gender, sex and sexuality within their respective subgenre. The conclusions reached are not identical as the series are also different. Nevertheless we shaH see that each chapter reveals a form of gender ambiguity and the limits thereof. It shaH become increasingly clear, as the essay progresses, that this limit is heterosexuality.
1 ~ Drawing Gender: The Visual Presentations of Gender in Shôjo Manga
ln this initial chapter, 1 offer a method for reading the images in manga and look at the various ways this reading is affected by gender. 1 will also show how cross~dressing is one attempt to explain the indefmable position of the reader. Manga are not novels; they are not just words and narratives, nor are they illustrated narratives. They are hybrids, combining words and images in a complementary rather than descriptive way. To ignore either aspect of manga is thus to ignore much of their content. Indeed, Spies' research seems to show that readers place precedence on the images: "1 found consistently that ail Ricard 12 interviewees chose their manga according to the drawing more often than according to the story" 16. In the following chapters we shall see ambiguities of gender and sexuality constantly undercut by heterosexuality within manga narratives. But as 1 have said, manga are not only narrative; a true subversion of gender may still be possible within the visual regime.
With this goal in mind, 1 shall look closely at a couple of series in order to show how cross-dressed characters are gendered visually. 1 will focus mainlY on The Rose of
Versailles (Berusaiyu no Bara A./v"fT --f .:::t. fi) IfG) and Orpheus' Window (Orufeus no
Mado;f"/v 7:x. !7 ;:{ (/J,tg) by Ikeda Riyoko, as they are sorne of the earliest of these cross-dressing stories (published in 1972-1974 and 1976-1981 respectively) and had a great influence on those that follow. 1 will, however, reference other series when it becomes necessary.
1 will start my analysis at the level of the icon, of the visual conventions of shôjo manga. 1 will look at how the manga in question use icons and visual cues to indicate gender, and how cross-dressing characters are gendered or re-gendered according to these conventions. Secondly 1 will look at perspective, namely the different forms of perspective at work simultaneously within manga and how these structure the visuallanguage. Next 1 will examine viewing positions or points of view; 1 will look at how they construct subjectivity and gender in both characters and readers. Another element that cannot be ignored, especially in view offeminist analysis of film, is the gaze. Does the gaze structure the visual field and is this structure gendered as Mulvey suggests? Finally, 1 will look at the issue of anamorphism and suture in relation to Lacan's ideas about "structuring absences".
16 Spies 182. Ricard 13
What is missing or impossible within manga art and how does that absence structure what we see? 1 suggest that the cross-dressed characters are an anamorphic site in this visual regime and that the structuring absence is the reader herself.
Gendered Conventions
Spies describes one way in which the gendered expectations of shôjo manga could he undermined visually, one which concems conventions of gendered genres (shônen and shôjo manga specifically). She looks at Banana Fish by Y oshida Akimi, a gritty tale about
New York street gangs in the 80s, drugs and the deep friendship/love that develops between two boys from very different worlds. Spies describes it as "a shôjo manga story
7 within a shônen manga frame". • It is true that Banana Fish is a story about men, with very few women making even a brief appearance. It also contains more violence and harsh reality (rape, child prostitution, murder, drugs, etc.) than generally expected in a series for girls. Nevertheless the narrative is constructed in a manner reminiscent of shôjo manga.
The focus of the story is on relationships (most notably the romance between lead characters Ash and Eiji) and the interior world of thought and feeling. Spi es c1aims that
"the key to the 'shônen frame' lies in the visual representation. Y oshida' s drawing style - the lines, backgrounds, and frame breakdowns - is very masculine,,18. Thus in her mind what makes the series masculine are things like the thick Hnes and the even, rectangular and inviolate space of the frames. An aesthetic that is contrasted with the delicate lines, haphazard framing, flowery style and effete pretty boys common in the Nijûyonen Gumi manga focusing only on boys.
The difference between the two styles is c1ear in figures 3 and 4 below. The
17 Spies 29. 18 Spies 30. Ricard 14 situation on both pages is the same, a stolen kiss, but they are constructed very differently visually. The regular, rectangular framing in Banana Fish is opposed to irregularly shaped
frames that overlap each other and
run off the page. Banana Fish also
forgoes the bloom of flowers that is
characteristic of romantic moments
in shôjo manga and which can be
seen in the background of figure 4
(for the record, the characters are in a dorm room, not a garden). Thus, through the combination of Figure 4 A kiss in HanaKimi Figure 3 A kiss in Banana contrasting narrative and art styles, Y oshida' s series creates an Fish ambiguity that we will encounter again in the following chapter- a dual gender.
The question is whether or not cross-dressing manga do something similar. None of the manga we are examining use a "shônen frame". They all display the art style Spies suggests is more common in shôjo manga. None significantly transgresses the conventions of shôjo manga in the way that Banana Fish does. Does this me~ these cross-dressing manga do not create gender difference visua1ly, either in their characters or the shôjo genre? 1 suggest that this difference remains. Rather than diverging from the art conventions of the genre, the manga play with the notion of gender while remaining within the genre. It is a repetition with difference. Ikeda' s manga use the flowery aesthetic of shôjo manga but play with how it is deployed and how it is read. Finding just how this is accomplished and how it affects the readings of the texts will be the goal of the rest of this chapter. Ricard 15
As was argued in the introduction, art and character designs in much of the corpus of shôjo manga are always already playing with dominant ideas about gender (whether the readers share these ideas is not clear). They undermine stereotyped conceptions of the gendered body for one. Shôjo manga's manliest of men often look quite effeminate to those unfamiliar with the genre. Heroines are far from busty and curvaceous. This androgyny may exp Iain the ease of creating believable cross-dressing stories as it is aIready a kind of gender bending. Androgyny is not absent from the manga in question here either, but androgynous appearances do not automatically imply a destabilization of gender roles.
After all, Shôjo manga form a genre. As with any genre the spectator or reader is expected to have knowledge of the body of works that composes it in order to grasp meaning. A reader who knows the conventions of this genre is in a position to make sense of it. Thus habituai readers can usually tell which character is male and which is female, unless they are purposefully being misled. This begs the question of whether the readers of cross-dressing manga are being misled. Is the character's gender always clear to the reader if not to the other characters? Or do these characters have a different relation to gender visually? The answer lies in how gender is revealed. There must be sorne convention of representation, a language of icons that makes gender clear to the reader if only at an unconscious level.
Gender difference is hard to pinpoint in specific physical traits as the characters are quite androgynous. Hair length, figure and clothing are of little help. In The Rose of
Versailles, most everyone has long haïr, for example. While this is extreme, even for shôjo manga, there are always enough short-haired girls and long haired boys to confuse the issue. Julius of Orpheus' Window cuts her haïr when her classmates treat her like a girl. Ricard 16
Similarly, Ito and Makoto of Double Juliet respectively grow out and cut their hair before their wedding. These cosmetic changes show that sorne associations between gender and physical traits still exist. But these associations are not fixed; they are usually only emphasized for cross-dressing characters as if to clear up sorne confusion.
Nor is body shape any indication of gender or sex. AlI characters are equally slim and long legged. None ofthese series have any voluptuous women or muscular men. There is no feature, physical or cosmetic, that is unique to either gender. Even busts are not large enough, nor shoulders broad enough to create a significant difference. Indeed one of the only women in Ikeda's two manga with a pronounced bust is Madame du Barry (the king's mistress) because the power ofher sexuality is vital to the story. The division of gender is clearer in adults than in teenagers. A grown man is less feminine than an adolescent one; at times he might even have a beard or broad shoulders which the youths rarely if ever have.
Even in such cases the difference is slight. This might point once more to the fact that the period right before adulthood, the shôjo period, is key to gender ambivalence. But while this age based difference is interesting, it does not he1p to clari:fy how the shôjo characters are gendered.
Many writers suggest that female characters have larger, rounder eyes in manga and that this may be a way of distinguishing between the sexes. But looking at the two manga, Orpheus' Window in particular, we find that this is quite misleading. While the rule does work on occasion, like other physical indications it fails too often to be trustworthy.
Isaac, the male lead of Orpheus' Window, has possibly the largest eyes of the cast. Large eyes have more to do with a kind of wide eyed innocence and openness of emotion that is more typically feminine but not exclusively so. Thus Julius' relative1y small eyes may have Ricard 17 more to do with her air of mystery than with the fact that she is cross-dressed. Character designs are thus not revealing. It would perhaps be more productive to examine instead how characters relate to their worlds.
Backgrounds and Frames
When we speak of the characters' worlds in terms ofvisual space, we are probably referring to the backgrounds on which they are placed and the frames in which they dwell. ln this section, 1 will argue that the way that characters relate to frame and background genders them, and accordingly the cross-dressers relate to these elements differently than other characters. In order to better understand these relations, 1 shall look flfst at the introduction of the cross-dressers in Ikeda's manga. Julius is the main character in
Orpheus' Window and physically female. She is also the bastard daughter of a rich lord with two elder, legitimate half-sisters. She and her mother pretend that she is a son so that she might inherit. When Julius is introduced, the reader is not told that she is a woman.
Indeed, Isaac expresses relief that she is a man: "oh ... it's a man, thank goodness!,,19
Everything from her uniform and her way of talking to her sleek, curveless body and her brash attitude suggest a man. And yet despite this, despite the fact that her physical sex is not revealed until page 105 - though there are occasional jokes about her pretty face and soprano voice earlier - we suspect that she is a woman. Why? How is her portrayal different from that of the men?
Julius' introduction is very different from Isaac's. Isaac's relation to background is the tirst of these differences. He is integrated into the world (the principals office in this case), indeed subjugated to it. He is so far in the background in his first appearance that he might indeed be background, an inconsequential character rather than the principle one that Ricard 18 he is. The focus is on his actions within the world and interactions with it (see Figure 5).
The same seems true of Julius at first; the first two panels portraying her place
her simply within the scenery Isaac sees from the window. But as soon as she
turns her face to him and to the reader, her relation to the world changes
completely. The background falls away and Julius, more specifically her face,
is foregrounded. The next page shows an even more extreme example of this;
Figure 5 Isaac her face and flowing hair take up half the page (Figure 6). Backgrounds writes in the background are replaced by leaves, bubbles and stars. While not particularly large, her eyes draw aH the focus in the image. They are drawn with more detail and emphasis than any other element. If eyes are truly windows to the soul, the reader is drawn through them into Julius' inner world. Indeed this interiority literally explodes onto the page in the form of leaves and Figure 6 Julius' introduction sparkles. The physical world outside is replaced by the inner world of the heart. Men can exist in this mode but such occurrences are an exception rather than a rule. Klaus and Isaac, the two main love interests (who both see Julius through the mythic Orpheus' Windo~o), have approximately ten such moments each in the first two volumes, a negligible number compared to Julius or the other female characters.
Relation to the frame can also indicate gender. Just as Julius makes an emotive break with the background, so too with the frame. Frames throughout the series are irregular. They are rarely simply rectangular; they overlap and flow off the page. This is often characterized as a feminine style. Spies contrasts this style with the clearly delineated
19 Ikeda Riyoko, Orufeus no Mado Vol. 1. (Tokyo: Shueisha, 1976) 17. Ricard 19 frames of Banana Fish which she tenns masculine, a loan from shônen manga. But more important than the style of framing, which is common throughout, are the instances when the characters break out of the frame altogether. Both men and women break the frame but there is a gendered difference. In most cases, women's faces or at most their bust break out as in Figure 6: not enough to show action, merely expressions. This break with the frame is often combined with the relation to the background discussed in the previous section. Men usually break out with their whole bodies as Isaac does while looking upon Orpheus'
Window for the first time. This break is akin to the American shot in cinema, a heroic mode that emphasizes movement and action. The difference between the twp kinds of break with the frame is the difference between an affect-image and an action-image. Just like the relation to background in the previous paragraph, this kind of difference makes blatant assumptions about men and women and how they relate to the world. One of these assumptions is that women are more emotional and passive than men. Above all, it constructs a division between two genders.
Is Julius then unproblematically female? Far from it, while it is true that she is introduced in a way that is emotional and parallels other female characters, she is not always portrayed in this way. Her portrayal depends on the situation and on the characters that surround her. When she is alone or when she is with certain men (Isaac and Klaus, as weil as Siegfried who is attracted to her male persona), she is portrayed in this feminine style. But her visual presentation changes when she is in the presence of other women, other students and her family. This becomes immediately c1ear in the scene following her introduction when she arrives home. The sudden increase in movement is the first
20 Legend bas it that if a man looks through the windowand sees a woman, he is destined to love her and for it to end tragically. Both Klaus and Isaac see Julius, though neither knows she is a woman. Ricard 20 indication of a change. Whereas her movements were merely subtle displacements previously, suddenly she shakes, runs, jumps and fights. More importantly she abandons
the break: with the frame and background that formerly defined her.
She breaks out of the frame twice in this family scene. Once it is
holding and protecting her mother. The second instance, seen in
Figure 7, shows her full bodied with arms in motion (as indicated by
their position and the movement Hnes behind her). Her break: with Figure 7 Julius makes an active break with the frame emphasizes her action, not her emotion. The women, the frame however, continue to be portrayed as she had been previously: foregrounding the face and portraying their emotions in lieu of backgrounds. If Julius' half-sisters' emotions and attitudes are portrayed as dark smoke rather than flowers or stars that does not make it any less an exterior expression of an interior world. It indicates a difference in personality, not gender.
Only in situations concerning love is Julius truly a woman like others. She falls does in love with Isaac or Klaus as soon as she meets them. Nevertheless the potential for romance (created by the window) places her in a heterosexual couple and clearly affects her presentation. It might be argued that the feminine persona is her true one because it is the one she shows when she is alone. Regardless, it is still too soon for such conclusions.
We need to analyze these gendered portrayals and their relation to her body more closely.
What is clear is that Julius has an ability to be either male or female visually that has nothing to do with clothing or physical features.
The Rose of Versailles shows a similar pattern. However, unlike Julius, Oscar's initial presentation is masculine. She is a girl who has been raised as a boy in order to Ricard 21 become a commander in the French army like her father. Considering that in both stories cross-dressing is practiced for the purpose of inheritance, this difference is interesting. We meet both Oscar and the queen, Marie-Antoinette, on pages 10 and 11, and they are strongly contrasted. Marie-Antoinette is immobile, eyes shinning and surrounded by roses.
The emphasis is on her face whereas Oscar strikes a battle pose. The following pages, describing their respective childhoods, show Marie-Antoinette frequently breaking through the frames; only once is she drawn upon a background that is not roses or stars. Her emotion is overemphasized. Though her entire body is often portrayed, when she breaks the frame, the emphasis remains on emotions, on excesses of laughter and tears.
Marie-Antoinette is not the only woman portrayed in a feminine manner, but she is almost an excess of this mode. Oscar tends to stay within the frame by contrast and only leaves it to express movement. Indeed most ofher childhood history concerns fencing. The meeting ofthese two characters emphasizes their difference. Marie-Antoinette's face, surrounded by flowers, is directly opposed to Oscar on horseback. Oscar most closely resembles the
Dauphin on the next page. Not only is this portrayal gendered but at times it seems that
Oscar and the queen play off each other visually in a way typically reserved for heterosexual couples.
Like Julius, Oscar has some movement between the two gendered modes. The first time we see Oscar in a way parallel to
Marie-Antoinette is with the arrivaI of Fersen. Again feminine portrayal is tied to love. Figure 8 foreshadows the deep feelings both women will have for Fersen. The portrayal ofboth women focuses on the face with flowers and shining eyes. It is a stark contrast to Fersen standing between Figure 8 Oscar and the queen meet Fersen Ricard 22 them. More often than not Oscar is presented as a romantic fantasy for young women,
Marie-Antoinette among them. She is usually presented, in essence, as Fersen is in Figure 8.
The difference is striking in the one scene where Oscar dresses as a woman to meet with
Fersen. The dress is not the most drastic change. Her entire presentation changes; she is suddenly everything that Marie-Antoinette had heen. Love it seems makes even the most masculine of women feminine. Men also know love, André - Oscar' s servant, friend and lover - and Fersen in point of fact. But their love is shown primarily in their actions, as when André grabs Oscar and kisses her, whereas women's love is externalized emotions made visible. That Oscar and Julius are presented in both male and female ways is a testament to their gender ambiguity.
Perspectives on gender
Reading the images in terms of perspective might grant further insight into methods of gendering. After all, when we speak of conventions and icons in manga as we have heen, we are reminded that the visual has much in common with a language. Like language it has a structure, something akin to grammar, which allows one to extract meaning from it.
Many have suggested perspective as a way of getting at visual structure and of defining the subject of the visual field. It is a claim often made of Western painting. It may he of use to us here but we must remember that manga are not paintings. The closest analogy might be a sequence of paintings, though even this does not quite capture the difference. For this reason among others, the relations between manga and perspective are not simple ones.
There is rarely a single type of perspective functioning throughout an entire volume. Many different types coexist within a page, even within a panel.
When we speak of perspective, especially in Western painting, it is usually in terms Ricard 23 of linear perspective: a fonn of perspective organized around a vanishing point where the subject is presumed to be at a single point outside of the image. Martin Jay - who in his article "Scopic Regimes ofModernity" describes three fonns of perspective (Linear, Dutch and Baroque) and links each to different world views - describes linear perspective so:
"The basic device was the idea of symmetrical visual pyramids or cones with one of their apexes the receding vanishing or centric point in the painting, the other the eye of the painter or the beholder,,21. We do frequently see this fonn of perspective in manga as well, especially where scenery and background is concemed. Orpheus' Window opens with just such a landscape - the city seen as iffrom a narrow window. There is a singular viewing position and the whole image converges to a single point. There are a couple of similar scenes in the volume, fewer in The Rose of Versailles and next to none in more modem series like Double Julie!. Such perspective seems descriptive, locating the action objectively; it is the "allegedly objective optical order,,22. Perhaps this is why this type of scene is relatively rare as we have seen shôjo manga are primarily about emotion. Shôjo manga remain emotional despite the ambiguous gendering in cross-dressing manga.
Yet linear perspective is far from the only kind of perspective present in manga, pr elsewhere, as Jay's article suggests. The simple linear perspective that opens Orpheus'
Window is troubled by the following frame. This image too seems to be linear but while everything converges to a single point, this point is somewhere outside of the frame. This adds a sense of indetenninacy to the image; it makes us aware that we are not seeing everything. The viewing position becomes harder to detennine: we no longer know who is looking or if the reader shares this position. This fonn of perspective is by far the most
21 Martin Jay, "Scopie Regimes ofModemity," Visions and Visuality, ed. Hal Foster. (Seattle: Bay Press, 1988) 6. Ricard 24 common way of portraying scenes without any humans in both Ikeda manga. Such nearly perspectivaI images undermine the sense of an objective viewer much as the cross-dresser undermines the idea of gender as a pure category.
The whole issue of perspective is complicated by the introduction of characters and text into the image. Such images compose the majority of the frames; few manga spend much time dwelling on the scenery. OécasionaIly the introduction of characters brings on a
complete break with linear perspective giving
something more flat. The breaks with the frame and
background that we examined earlier are a perfect
illustration ofthis. Julius's introductory picture (Figure
6) has no vanishing point, no fixed viewing position,
indeed no relation to the world at aIl. There is still a
sense of depth but it is the result of layering rather than
any technique of linear perspective. They are flat
characters on blank backgrounds. Other instances take
this sense yet further, for example the Orpheus myth that Figure 9 The Orpheus myth as emaki opens the manga series that bears his name (Figure 9) as weIl as the introduction of Oscar and Marie Antoinette. Both scenes are akin to the orthogonal perspective found in emald (~~), Japanese picture scrolls from the Heian period (794-1192) that combine tales (Genji Monogatari I{~~~ or The Tale ofGenji being the most famous) with images.
Orthogonal perspective is based on diagonals; there is no sense of a panel as a
22 Jay 6. Ricard 25 single point in time and space. Both these images portray numerous scenes and people from vastly different times and places without any sort of division. Figure 9 shows Orpheus chasing Eurydice, Eurydice dead and Orpheus mourning. They do not posit a single viewing position, indeed such a position May be impossible, but rather invite the eye to move across the image. What unifies these disparate moments if not viewing position?
Narrative can unify the image as il1 the Orpheus myth. But there need not necessarily be a story behind the compositionjust as there is none in the Oscar and Marie-Antoinette image.
In this case orthogonal perspective seems to indicate the characters' shared destiny rather than a story. We are no longer dealing with an objective description but images organized by one or more feelings. Both this orthogonal perspective and the break: with linear perspective seem like the break: of the frame to be affective, emotions so strong that they undermine perspective and often the frame itself.
Not only do these different forms of perspective coexist within a single volume but also within the space of the page and the frame. The effect is that the eye is kept moving over the surface of the page by the shifts in viewing position, forced to follow the flow of the narrative. This effect is again similar to orthogonal perspective. If read in terms of pages instead of panels, manga as a whole have much in common with the ema/d-like scenes just described. The relation of the panels to each other is similar, for one, though the distances between the scenes in time and in space tend to be much less pronounced in most manga pages. There are relations between these disparate images but perspective alone does not give us an adequate way to deal with these relations.
More productive may be the way different types of perspective can interact within the frame. Flat characters can be placed on top of perspectival backgrounds creating a clear Ricard 26 distinction between the characteI's and their worlds. Characters never truly follow the rules of perspective. Scott McCloud, a cartoonist who in Understanding
Comics, sets out to describe the iconic and narrative conventions of
(mainly American) comics, would say that the characters are iconic rather than realistic. He would argue that characters are purposefully less realistic than, for example, a portrait to facilitate identification.
Thus the characters are relatively two-dimensional and have only as Figure 10 Julius is many details (especially in the face) as is necessary for the story in superimposed on a I)aekground question. Putting aside issues of realism for a moment, there is clearly a distinction between the characters and the perspectival backgrounds on which they are drawn.
Examples are too numerous to name. One could look for example at the image of Julius walking away from the window after her conversation with Isaac (Figure 10). The trees and fence converge toward a point though we cannot see it; they give the illusion of three-dimensionality. Julius, however, is drawn on a single plane and looks simply superimposed upon the image.
The contrasting use of perspective for characters and backgrounds begs several questions: how these characters fit into their worlds? How they relate to other characters?
And are these relations are different for gender bending characters? One might argue that through perspective characters are made separate from their worlds. They are made to exist in a different dimension, literally, thus suggesting that they have no place in a realistic world. By this logic, the world might be realistic and the characters are not in McCloud words; action might be realistic where emotion is not (although in shônen manga it is often action that makes the breaks that we have been discussing). Nevertheless, it is important to Ricard 27 remember that verisimilitude is not concemed with what is real so much as what appears
23 real. In terms of genre it is about what is probable and appropriate within the given genre .
It is possible that the non-perspectival characters are more realistic. Whichever the case, there is nonetheless a c1ear distinction created between the world and the characters. Is this relation any different for the cross-dressed characters? Given the analysis so far, the first impulse would be to answer yeso However on close examination, cross-dressed characters exist in the same odd relation with their three-dimensional environment. This is as true for
Julius as for Isaac or the "evil half sisters". If the characters in manga are in a world that is different from the one we inhabit, these cross-dressers too are a part of that world. If different forms of perspective (this latest one inc1uded) gender anything, it is manga and not the characters. We would need to seek sorne kind of difference in the relation of these figures to the other characters and to the reader.
The position of the reader in the play of gazes
We have already seen how perspective is not adequate for explaining the relationship between characters and between panels, perhaps because it is a system best discussed within a single image. Viewing positions may be a better way of approaching these issues as they always imply the relation between two things. Usually one would discuss viewing positions in terms of perspective as weIl. This is how Jay discusses the issue nor is he alone in doing so. However, the constant shifts in perspective that we saw in the previous section make it impossible to have the singular viewing position that is usually discussed within such a system. The viewing position in manga is far more indeterminate than in a perspectival system. The missing vanishing point in certain images is but one
23 Steve Neale, "Questions of Genre," Film Genre Reader II, ed. Barry Keith Grant. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995) 160. Ricard 28 example of tbis indeterminacy. Thus while we might still speak of viewing positions in terms of perspective, within manga it might he more productive to speak of a play of gazes.
Play of gazes can mean many things. On a basic level it refers to the gases of the characters within the visual space. Eye-line matches and shot-reverse-shot are classic examples of such gazes. These are not consistently used in manga. At times eye-lines match up and others they do not. There is similarly a constant breaking of the 180-degree rule. Shot-reverse-shot as it is used in manga also often breaks cinematic rules. We are often given shots of Julius staring at something without ever being shown what she is looking at; the same is true of Oscar. But these breaks with the system tell us as much about the characters and their relations to each other as consistent use of eye-line matches and shot-reverse-shot. The gaze can also be about the reader's viewing position. Eye-line matches and shot-reverse-shot are an attempt to make the reader' s position correspond to that of one of the characters. However, this is just an illusion, which is all the more clear because of the frequent failure of these devices. The reader' s point of view does not simply correspond to that of the characters. Neither is the reader distant, overlooking the text objectively. The position of the reader is perhaps best viewed as an exchange of gazes; such a structure better shows the reader as interacting with the text rather than standing apart from it.
Let us begin with eye-lines, for the way these do or do not match tells us something about how the characters relate to each other. Occasionally we see eye-lines match up as the rules of cinema tell us they should. This occurs for most of the conversation between
Isaac and Julius in the familiar introduction scene. For the most part Isaac and Julius seem to be looking at each other. Isaac looks down diagonally with Julius looking up in such a Ricard 29 way to meet bis gaze. But on page 19, this falls apart (Figure Il). While their positions have not changed and they should still be looking at each other, their eye lines now cross each other almost perpendicularly. The match gives the impression of a kind of meeting of minds or hearts, two people on the same wavelength. We can tell that they get along by the way their Figure Il Isaac and Julius' gazes cross gazes meet; they seem close together despite their physical distance (Julius on the ground and Isaac in the tower). Thus it is a good device for friends and loyers. It can be employed even when the two characters are not in the same space. thus creating a sense of closeness in spite of distance. However, there are also instances, as in the end of this scene, where there is no match: in moments of bigh emotion, banter, misunderstanding, and argument.
At times these mismatched gazes spin around at a dizzying rate so the reader too gets caught up in the emotion and confusion (especially if she is actually trying to keep track of the gazes). The frequent fight scenes (physical or verbal) Julius engages in are a good example of this kind of violent mismatch.
The way the cross-dressers relate to the other characters in this system of looks is different from the way other characters do. Given that 1 can explain eye-line matches on the basis of Julius' interactions, it is clear that she is involved in tbis economy of gazes. The question becomes: how is Julius' use of eye-line matches different from the other characters; when does she break with the system? Julius rare1y has consistent eye-line matches. Usua1ly they match for at most a single and brief gaze wbich more closely resembles a defiant glare than a meeting of hearts. One might claim that she is somewhat distanced from the other characters. Even when she follows the mIes, as with her meeting Ricard 30 with Isaac, there is often a break in the system of gazes (Figure Il). It is interesting that in this case the break comes precisely as she is introducing herself. Perhaps there is something false in this introduction, something that interferes with the budding romance, namely her masculinity. Is it possible that the way she is gendered sets her apart? This might explain why love requires a return to a feminine aesthetic as we saw earlier in this analysis.
Another application of gazes, shot-reverse-shot, is more concemed with who is
100king than how gazes meet. The standard functioning of this method is to show a scene and then to pull back and show someone observing the scene thus turning the objective shot into a subjective shot. This happens in the early pages of Orpheus' Window where we pull back and find that a teacher has been watching the conversation between Isaac and the principal. It is a fairly common technique, and manga do use it, though not always in the Figure 12 The failure of shot standard manner. Occasionally the observer comes fust, as reverse shot. in Figure 12 where we see Isaac looking out the window and then see Julius through his eyes (we see this sequence twice in succession on this page alone).
At other times we are shown the person observing without ever being shown what they see. At the bottom left ofthis same page, the subject of Julius' gaze is uncertain. She may be looking back at Isaac, but their gazes do not match. Rather it seems she sees something the readers, and Isaac, do not. These objectless gazes are very frequent, especially for Oscar and Julius. Disorientation and a disconnection from the characters can be created through this break in the system. The reader does not understand what the Ricard 31 characters are seeing or thinking. We are not allowed into their minds. Generally shot-reverse-shot is associated with issues of identification and viewing position. In cinema studies the viewing position is often associated with the holder of the subjective shot; the reader is supposed to identify with this position. If we are to accept this kind of analysis, it could be argued that the reader is never meant to identify with Julius. After aIl, she is usually looked at. When she looks we often do not share what she sees through the subjective shot. In this sense gender confusion is allowed within the narrative but not as a model for the readers, not as a position to identify with but as an Other.
The indefinable reader
There is a problem with this kind of analysis, however - the viewing position is not that of one of the characters. A two point system like shot-reverse-shot suggests is a little too simple and does not adequately explain the system of gazes. From what position are we seeing the holder of this subjective gaze? A better way of approaching this, which could also explain the orientation ofthe reader, could be found in suture. The viewing position is not one of the characters, nor is it an objective single point outside of the image as suggested by linear perspective; rather it is a third point, the Other or Absent One. Slavoj
Zizek discusses suture and its function in cinema in "Back to the Suture", the second chapter of his book, The Fright of Real Tears. He looks at "shifts from standard suture" such as we have seen in the previous paragraphs and uses Lacanian theory to relate these shifts to subjectivity, signification and the gaze. Zizek describes the standard form of suture by which shot-reverse-shot offers "a complementary shot which renders the place from which the Absent One is looking, allocating this place to its fictional owner, one of Ricard 32 the protagonists"24. In essence, these cinematographic techniques are always an attempt to disguise the fact that it is the Other that looks and that manipulates the images. The terms used to describe this absence are a bit misleading; the Absent One is not a single person or a person at all, it is an impossible subjectivity. There is, in Zizek's words, a sense ofthreat from a point-of-view shot that is not associated with a protagonist within the narrative.
After all, this gaze without a subject, with an impossible subject, acknowledges the absence which cannot be signified but which is necessary to signification.
The Absent One may be the most appropriate description of the viewing position in manga. Point ofview in manga often changes in such a way that it would be impossible for
a single person to hold aIl viewing positions, sometimes even two
sequential ones. The images are often sutured in such a way so the
Absent One seems to become the character having a subjective shot. But
images do not always suture so nicely. Zizek shows how suture can fail
Figure 13 Julius in Hitchcock films and how this creates a sense of the uncanny. The gazes breaks with suture in manga are slightly different from the ones that Zizek describes but the effect is the same. An example ofthis can be the failure of shot reverse shot, the way characters look at something without the reader ever seeing the subjective shot. For example, Figure 13 shows Julius looking intently at something, but Figure 14, which immediately follows it, does Figure 14 There is no not show what she has seen or even someone else looking at subjective shot her; we only see her surprise at being interrupted. We never do find out what had fascinated
24 Slavoj Zizek, The Fright of Real Tears: KrzystofKieslowski between Them)' and Post-theory. Ricard 33 her so, and this distances us somewhat from her thoughts. Conversely, at times we are not shown what sees as with the scenery that opens the first chapter (the village and the school building). Isaac and the principal are inside, so who is seeing the building from the outside?
Is the house seeing them or is there sorne outside force like the malignant birds from the film of the same name? AU these breaks undermine the system that works to hide the
Absent One and constructs "a space of impossible subjectivity,,25.
How does this system apply to cross-dressers? One could argue that they become a site of indetennination rather than merely characters we do not identify with. They are, after all, the most frequent site ofthis break with suture. Such an indeterminate space might allow them to remain without a fixed gender; astate not generally possible in a world where people are assigned a gender at birth and treated accordingly for the rest of their lives. The ambiguously gendered character could be an impossible subjectivity, so to speak.
This is somewhat problematic. No matter how ambiguous they may be, the cross-dressed characters remain within the diegetic space and thus cannot be the Absent One.
Yet the problem ofthe cross-dresser in relation to this absence poses the question of whether the subject-Iess gaze can be gendered. Laura Mulvey would argue that it can be gendered, in cinema at least, and that this gender is male. In her famous article, "Visual
Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", she argues that the visual field is structured by the male gaze in cinema. She suggests that when women appear on the screen, the men in the audience are forced to identify with them and this creates discomfort in the form of the castration complex. In order to overcome this discomfort, the camera pulls back to show a man watching the woman. The image of the woman becomes a subjective shot belonging
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001) 32. Ricard 34 to the man. Therefore, woman always becomes the object of the male gaze aI1d female viewers themselves become implicated in this objectification.
There are several problems with this kind of analysis, however. At the most superficiallevel while Mulvey' s claims are easy to make for certain types of film, film noir especially, it is hard to sustain more generally. Another problem is the way she deals with
Lacan and the formation of self. Lacan is a psychoanalyst heavily influenced by Freud and
Saussure who deals famously with the development of subjectivity in his description of the
"mirror phase". However, he also deals with language and systems of signification as weil as the gazes and perspectives that interest us and how these systems create subjects. It is his theory on the formation of subjectivity that is misrepresented here: the film screen is not a mirror and the subject does not simply form itself based on what it sees. The truth is quite the opposite as Copjec describes Lacan's mirror phase: ''the mirror is conceived as a screen,,26. Mulvey' s analysis presumes that a man is looking at a woman on the screen and that he is forced to identify with this woman as if the screen were a mirror reflecting his self.
As this is emasculating, the image becomes a subjective shot held by a male character with whom the man can identify comfortably. The film is structured specifically with a male gaze in mind; it ignores the discomfort a female spectator might feel at being forced to objectify a woman from a male perspective. But the argument becomes far less solid in light ofCopjec's insights on Lacan because it depends on the notion of the screen as mirror.
Finally, as we have seen, Mulvey's system of gazes is too simplistic; there is always a third position and there is no reason this position needs to be male in manga, even if the holder of the subjective shot is.
2S Zizek 36. 26 Joan Copjec, Read my Desire: Lacan Against the Historcists. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994) 16. Ricard 3S
AIso, tied to Mulvey's notion of a male gaze is objectification of the female fonn.
She argues that woman is fetishized or punished within film (the femme fatale is a perfect example ofthis). Such objectification does not occur systematically in shôjo manga as she suggests it does in cinema. One of the first scenes in Double Juliet, for example, is one of the heroine, Ito, in her undergannents; Hanazakari no Kimitachi he starts with an almost identical scene. Such revelatory scenes are rather common even in this medium meant for girls and one might claim that this is an objectification for the male gaze. Ifwe look at the scene in Double Juliet more closely this argument might at frrst seem to be correct. After all, Ito is disrobing for a male gaze (though the reader does not know that Makoto, who is watching her, is a man at this point in the narrative). Is the viewer truly made to objectify and take pleasure in the sight of this half-clothed woman with the male character as her proxy? Rather the focus seems to be on the man, who becomes a figure of fun in his discomfort. The scene thus serves the dual purpose of establishing Ito's physical sex and watching the man watch. There is no identification with the male gaze, in this case at least.
There is not always a male mediating these scenes to mock. Still, it is not clear that looking at a woman necessarily objectifies her. Indeed these scenes always seem to be ones that create subjectivity for the woman: Ito describes herself to Makoto; Mizuki thinks about her feelings and plans for the future; Kiri looks at herself naked in the mirror and wonders who she is. Besides, ifwe are to cali this objectification by the male gaze, what are we to make of similar displays of the male body? Ito discovers that Makoto is a man in a scene parallel to the revelation ofher own sex. Similarly, Tôya rlses out ofbed in front of
Kiri wearing only boxers early in Never Give Up. Ifwe must speak of objectification, it is not merely of the female fonn but ofbeauty in general. We are not dealing, like Mulvey, Ricard 36 with a male-dominated industry. The gaze, in manga at least, is never unitary or unified in the way that Mulvey's male gaze is. Thus it is hard to claim that any one group is eonsistently objectified in the way she suggests or that this objectification genders the gaze.
Even if it were possible to gender the gaze, why must it necessarily be gendered male?
After aIl, if we are to talk of it in these terms, the manga 1 discuss are written by women, for women, in contrast to Mulvey's male dominated film industry.
1 doubt it is possible to gender the position of the Absent One at all sinee, as stated, it need not be a person. This position is closest to what is called the implied author in literature. Amanda Mayer Stinchecum is a classical scholar who, in her article "Who Tells the Tale?", analyzes narrative voiee in Heian literature (monogatari specifically) in order to reach a better understanding of how these tales are told and what organizes them. She calls this implied author, which is neither the author nor a character within the tale, the
"speaker of the text". For Stineheeum, the speaker is more of a unifying prineiple than a person. Though its point of view occasionally "coincides with that of certain eharacters in certain passages" it "does not have a personified voice like that of the narrator or eharacters,,27. It is impossible to gender such a subject. Perhaps this impossibility is important in and of itself. Perhaps in these cross-dressing tales, or even in shôjo manga more generally, we could talk of a gaze whose gender is indeterminate or impossible to determine in much the same way as the Absent One in suture is an impossible subject.
Perhaps that is the importance of cross-dressers within the narratives; they are an attempt to represent this unrepresentable gender.
Finally, 1 wish to turn once more to absence, to the things that are impossible within
27 Amanda Mayer Stinchecum, "Who Tells the Tale? 'Ukifune': A Study in Narrative Voice," Monumenta Nipponic!l, 1980 ed. 384. Ricard 37 manga. According to Lacan's theories, it is these spaces outside of the image that construct meaning within it. The viewing position that we posited, the third position or Absent One, is such an absence but it is not the only one. On one level, motion and time are only ever possible in manga because of the empty spaces between panels; they are the intervals that allow the necessary but unseen movements from one panel to the next to occur. But while these spaces are in a sense a structuring absence, the blank page is still a part of the image; like the cross-dresser they remain within diegetic space. What then is impossible within the manga image? Within the genre of shôjo manga, cross-dressing in narratives is in a sense this impossible moment; it is the transgression of gender within a gendered genre. But even if cross-dressing is a narrative anamorphism, it is one that is ultimately tamed and made to serve the genre. Is the cross-dresser also an impossible site for the image and what might this mean? It is an intriguing question but ultimately these cross-dressers seem difficult to portray using the conventions at hand, contradictory at times but not impossible.
Rather, the impossible may be the reader herself. The reader, though often a woman, cannot be expressed in a single way. There is no singular definition of woman, no defining characteristic possessed by a11 women, things which a gender based category like shôjo manga seems to imply. The cross-dressing would then be an attempt to express this impossible reader and her impossible gender, to determine the indeterminable.
Cross-dressers are a hybrid, bringing in elements not characteristic of shôjo while conforming to shôjo conventions; they are an anamorphism, showing that gender is not a pure category. Yet this attempt to derme the reader must aIways faIl short because without this absent space, we can no longer construct meaning.
In terms of art style and conventions, the figure of the cross-dresser remains quite Ricard 38 ambiguous. She can move back and forth between masculine and feminine modes quite freely. While the categories of gender do not seem to change (love and emotion remain feminine and action masculine), she can move between them despite her biology. She remains somewhat distant from the reader, often impeding a sense of identification. This gender bending is not meant as a model to emulate. Rather, it seems to signify incoherence in the gender system. Masculinity and femininity in the "real world" are not c1ear cut, easily defmable categories. The cross-dresser does not destroy these categories but is an attempt to express the indefinable gender of the reader.
2 - The Girl Who Would Be Prince: Blending Genders and Creating an Ideal Masculinity
In this chapter, 1 will show how female characters are id.olized for their ability to simultaneously portray masculinity and femininity in the works of Osamu Tezuka, Ikeda
Riyoko and Saito Chiho. The titles in question are Osamu's The Knight of the Ribbon
(Ribon no Kishi !J ;j{~0M:i:), The Rose of Versailles by Ikeda and Revolutionary Girl
Utena (Shôjo Kakumei Utena ;y'K1fIitf/J7rt-) by Saito and Be-Papas. These titles are, as we have seen, foundational to shôjo manga. After all, they are some of the oldest and most popular manga concerning cross-dressing. The Knight of the Ribbon is often called the founder of the shôjo genre. In the words ofFrederik Schodt - who examines the history of manga in Dreamland Japan - "Princess Knighjl8 is widely regarded as the progenitor of the modem girls' manga format,,29. This manga format refers to certain characteristics of the art ("bug eyes" for example) as weIl as a "story comic" style of narrative (as opposed to
28 The Princess Knight is another translation of the title often used in North American references to the text which, white less accurate, also captures sorne of the gender ambiguity present in the story. 29 Schodt 253. Ricard 39 gag strips) that most readers now take for granted. Utena' s popularity inspired a lengthy anime (Japanese animation) series and movie as weIl as an alternate telling of the manga series (The Adolescence of Utena or Adoresensu Mokujiroku 7 F v--e ~ A~JF.).
Finally, The Rose ofVersailles surpasses both by inspiring numerous editions of its manga, a television series watched in countries throughout the world and an adaptation onto the
Takarazuka stage. Also its effect on future shôjo manga is far from negligible. The influence of The Rose of Versailles on Utena, for example, is unmistakable both in narrative and aesthetics. The rose, which is an icon for both series, perfectly expresses this influence. AlI three series are known and loved by many and shaped shôjo manga as we know it today. Thus it is significant that all focus on the problem of gender and seem to actively work to destabilize gender norms.
30 Though the manga artists and times of publication are very different , all three manga have similar themes and stories. They all concem female aristocratie swordfighters in a male world; women who fight and live on equal standing with men while maintaining female identities. How they get into these unusual situations varies. Sapphire, the knight of the ribbon, is a woman possessed of both male and female hearts. Like Julius, she must pretend to be male in order to inherit her father's throne. Oscar, the youngest daughter in a family without sons, is raised as a boy in order to continue her family's patrilinear line of generals. Finally, Vtena is saved from death by a young man and seeks to become a prince in his image. In spite of these slight differences, the heroines' ambiguous gendering and their roles in society raise many of the same questions.
The first of these questions concems the way the characters are able to meld
30 The Knight ofthe Ribbon began publication in 1953, The Rose of Versailles in 1972 and Utena in 1996 Ricard 40 masculine and feminine chara,cteristics; how they live as men while remaining women and what this might mean for categories of gender. Secondly, 1 show that Sapphire, Oscar and
Utena portray male ideals in a manner similar to the players ofmale roles (otokoyaku !JJfJl:) of the Takarazuka review. Again relating to this famous all female theatre, these series raise questions about love between women and about women's fantasies. Finally, 1 will examine the endings of these tales and how they invite readers to relate to the cross-dressed heroines.
My analysis will rely heavily on Jennifer Robertson's theory relating to the history of and gender formations in the Takarazuka Revue. These manga and the theatre are closely tied to each other in history and content. Takarazuka inspired Osamu to create The
Knight ofthe Ribbon. As he stated himself in an afterword to the manga: ''the works 1 have created for girls, especially, often reflect a deep nostalgia for Takarazuka,,31. The theatre's
Moon troupe also performed Oscar's story on two separate occasions (in 1974-76 and again in 1989-91). More importantly, Oscar, Sapphire and Utena are in a way otokoyaku who never leave the stage.
Femalemen
First, in spite of their sex, these three women portray masculinity. Ali three heroines enact masculine roles in their daily lives. Swordsmanship is the most obvious expression of this masculinity. This activity defines them and their roles within their societies. Almost immediately after entering Ôtori high school, Utena is inducted into a secret society. The members ofthis Rose Society fight duels to win possession of the Rose
Bride, Anthy, and through her the power to revolutionize the world. Over the course offive
31 Schodt 256. Ricard 41 volumes, Vtena fights and defeats every other member of the society. Vltimately it is her fencing victories that allow her to attain her goal - to become a prince like the one who saved her life. Similarly,
Oscar is captain of the Royal Guard at Versailles and later commander ofthe French Guard. She became the son ofher family in order to continue this military tradition. She relates to the entire world as a soldier, is rarely seen out of Fi2Ure 15 Oscar's portrait uniform and even more rarely without a sword. Over the course of 1600 pages she appears unarmed less than two dozen times and never for more than a few panels. Thus it is appropriate that when asked to paint her portrait, the artist portrays her as a triumphant warrior on horseback (Figure 15). She wears armour and wields a sword. And more importantly she is portrayed using the male conventions that were described in the previous chapter - she is full-bodied and active. This portrait is the image that de fines her best. As the artist puts it: "1 wanted so much to paint this handsome young man and it was you without a doubt. .. ,,32. Sapphire literally begins her sword training as a baby. She is thus quite skilled; she is able to defeat all opponents, including her love interest, Prince
Charming. Attacks on her masculinity are all answered with a duel. She threatens even the angel, Tink, with her sword when he insists on calling her princess. When her sex is discovered at her coronation and she is stripped ofher rank, she becomes a masked knight.
Sword fighting is a role performed almost exclusively by men in their worlds; one that entails goals intended for men such as inheritance and brides. Thus it is important that such a masculine role holds a central position in all their lives and identities.
After all, the three heroines are not simply women who can perform male roles. Ricard 42
Though they might rightly be called swordswomen in respect to their sex, they are not treated as women. They are considered men on the battlefield and often off it as weIl. Oscar is one of the highest ranking military officers that we encounter in her tale. Nor is it a token position; she is good at her job. Her skill is clear from the way that the French Guard reacts to her commando They refuse to fight under her at first on the pretext that she is a woman:
''we don't want to receive orders from a woman!,,33 They even to threaten rape in order to show her that she is a woman. She is shocked by their attitude because "in all my life, only in the French Guard have 1 ever been considered a woman,,34. Yet even these staunchest of opponents come to love her. The soldiers refuse, by the end, to serve under anyone else.
Sapphire also has all the privileges and responsibilities of a man in her position: she must fight, lead troops and rule as if she had been bom a prince in truth.
Nor does anyone take it easy on them because they are female. The heroines fight physically male opponents on equal terms and win. Utena defeats all corners. Indeed, her first match is won with only a broken wooden sword, against a man desperate to win. Even in Adolescence where Utena and Tôga are loyers, he faces her ''with all he's got,,3S though he is clearly stronger that she is, and she wins. Often the male characters do not even have the luxury of going easy on these women; they can only struggle to keep up. When André is made Oscar' s sparring partner as a child, he fears for his life. He complaihs to his grandmother that his new companion was supposed to be a girl. Even as a grown man, he cannot best her in battle, nor can anyone else without resorting to underhanded means. And like Oscar and Utena, Sapphire defeats the duke's man, who would prove her a woman in
32 Ikeda Riyoko, La Rose de Versailles Tome 2. trans. (Bruxelles: Darguad Benelux, 2002) 451. 33 Ikeda La Rose de Versailles Tome 1 898. 34 Ikeda La Rose de Versailles Tome 1 917. 35 Saito Chiho & Be-Papas, The Adolescence ofUtena. Trans. (San Francisco: Viz, LCC, 2004) 87. Ricard 43 battle. They are not merely women perfotming male roles. When it cornes to fighting at least, they are masculine.
Sapphire's strength fades when the angel, Tink, begins a spell to remove her male heart. Her temporary weakness implies that her strength and skill arise from her masculinity. The same might be said of Vtena and Oscar as weIl, though no angel tries to remove their male attributes. They possess female bodies, but thls does not imply a feminine gender. This denaturalization of gender resembles much of Judith Butler's theory.
When Butler poses the question of gender she acknowledges that the concept arose to counter the notion ofbiology-as-destiny. It is posited as a social construction in opposition to natural sex (she later questions the naturalness of sex as weIl but that will he addressed in another chapter). But, she argues, if gender is indeed a construction, it does not need to be connected to physical sex: "man and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one,,36. The heroines' ability to consciously perform masculinity shows that it is indeed a construction. By virtue of this construction, there is no reason why their female bodies could not be masculine. Oscar, Vtena and Sapphire seek to become exceptional on male terms rather than exceptional women in a male world; to become princes, not self-sufficient princesses. They might be considered men with female bodies.
Combining masculinity and femininity
However, it is their combination ofmasculinity and femininity that is revolutionary.
A female man merely acknowledges the construction of gender and disassociates it from physical sex. She does not undermine gender roles or spheres of activity (such as the public vs. the private ). Gender remains divided into a strict duality with associated societal expectations. The heroines of the se manga are not transgressive figures because they are Ricard 44 men, but because they are women as weIl. The controversy of Sapphire's birth is not that she has a male heart, but that she possesses one in addition to the female heart she was originally meant to have. ''Now how will we know," God complains, ''whether this child will be a boy or a girl?,,37 It is the blurring of gender boundaries that is problematic, not the masculinity within a female.
Utena, Oscar and Sapphire are characterized by gender ambiguity. They maintain their femininity while pursuing traditionally masculine lives. For one, all three are
exceptionally beautiful with slitn figures and bright eyes; Oscar
and Utena have long, flowing haïr. Of course, their heauty does
not necessarily distinguish them from the men in their tales. Many
of the male characters, love interests such as Tôga and André in
particular, can be considered beautiful by similar standards. Shôjo
manga are after all famous for their bishônen (~y~) -literally
Figure 16 André and beautiful boys - characterized by their androgynous heauty. As Oscar seen in Figure 16, André (left) has features similar to Oscar (right). They are drawn with thin lines. The shape of and emphasis on their eyes is nearly identical (though André's eyelashes are not as detailed as Oscar's). Both have beautiful curly hair. Though their body shapes are not visible in this image, these too are similar. While Oscar, Sapphire and Utena display what one might cali feminine beauty, this beauty does not necessarily distinguish them from male characters. But it does not follow that they are not feminine. We have already seen that masculinity can exist in a female body. Gender does not lie in the physical body. Thus seeking femininity through physical beauty might he a bit misguided.
36 Butler 6. 37 Osamu Tezuka, Princess Saphir V QI. 1, trans. (Paris: Hachette, 2005) Il. Ricard 45
One example of this gender duality can he found in language. This does not come through in translation (except, to sorne t(xtent, in French due to the feminine accord).
Gendered language differences are a particularity of Japanese that do not appear in English.
Selfreferential pronouns are gendered for example. Ore (1ft) or boku (m) are used mainly by men (the latter usually, though not always, by young boys), watashi (fA) is close to neutral while atashi (lb t~ L) is specifically female. Tomboyish characters are sometimes known to refer to themselves as boku though rarely as ore. Characters in other cross-dressing tales tend to adjust their manner of speaking to a more masculine one in order to maintain their disguise. Almost all switch to using ore, or at least boku, with but sorne slips. Julius, for example, refers to herself as boku even in her own mind. Yet neither
Vtena nor Oscar switch even to boku. Indeed, Vtena continues to cali herself atashi and talk in a feminine manner despite the masculine attire and attitude she has adopted.
Oscar usually uses watashi or the more formaI version of it, watakushi. Her sentence endings are also neutral for the most part. Her speech patterns are a far cry from the markedly feminine ones employed by the Queen and Rosalie which are softened by endings in wa (v) or no «1). Nevertheless Oscar lapses into masculine speech (ending sentences in zo (.:f) for example) very occasionally. Though the difference is not as marked as with Vtena, it is still striking that the son of the family does not speak as a man, even in situations where those around her do. Her manner of speaking marks her neither as male nor female, thus it is not a surprise that Fersen could be ignorant of her sex for so long.
The most important sign that they are feminine seems to be that other's consider them so. When one of Oscar' s soldiers suggests that she should undergo a physical to make Ricard 46 sure she is a woman, André hits him. André tells him he just does not understand her femininity. Certainly there are instances where their friends and family treat them as women, as André does in the above example. On the battle field there is no question about their masculinity, but off it the problem becomes a bit more complex. André and his grandmother attempt to protect Oscar's honour and chastity as if she were a woman. When
Fersen, believing Oscar to be a man, says that there is no reason for him to leave the room while Oscar is changing, her nanny rages. She kicks Fersen out, screaming "how dare you speak that way about my mistress?!,,38 Sapphire's nanny tries to allow her as much femininity as possible under the circumstances, coddling her and bringing her doUs for example. Both nannies are thrilled at the rare opportunity to dress their mistresses as women for a ball. Furthermore how they are viewed by these people affects the way they portray themselves which is as much feminine as it is masculine.
Indeed they portray themselves in ways that meld the masculine and the feminine.
Love is one of the ways in which they express their femininity. We showed in chapter one that Oscar is portrayed in a masculine way in contrast to Marie-Antoinette. Nevertheless she parallels the Queen in her passionate loves. AlI three heroines are allowed to be dreamy, emotional and weak-kneed like any other woman in their stories when it comes to love though they are rarely so in any other situation. However Sapphire and Utena's femininity is less subtle than Oscar' s and more closely intertwined with their masculinity. AlI their masculine features are somehow "tainted" by their femininity. For example, Utena distinguishes herself by wearing the male uniform to school. She is scolded precisely for this: "Parading around in boys' attire! 1 don't know what to do with yoU!,,39 But it, like her
38 Ikeda La Rose de Versailles Tome 1 224. 39 Saito ChÎho & Be-Papas, Revolutionruy Girl Utena Vol. 1, trans. (San Francisco: Viz, LCC, 2003) 8. Ricard 47 hair, is pink - a color associated with femininity more than any other. Sapphire too, when she is a prince, dresses as a boy except for the high heeled shoes that everyone remarks on
(Figure 17). More importantly, she sees no contradiction in being a princess one instant and
a prince the next. In the second chapter she
appears in a dress, singing and plaiting flowers.
As soon as the clock strikes nine she dons male
clothing and goes off to inspect the troops,
trampling her flower wreath. Similarly, she will
dance with Charming in one encounter and duel
with him at the next. Rer life is evenly divided
between being a man and a woman and Figure 17 Prince Sappbire in bigb beals tramples ber flower wreatb continues to be so even after the whole kingdom discovers that she is female. As the series progresses, these two roles begin to meld into each other. She wears heels while in uniform, and fights in a drèss until her masculinity and femininity are no longer the multiple personalities they appear to be in the second chapter.
Revolutionary otokoyaku
This femininity within masculinity is reminiscent of the otokoyaku. According to
Robertson, otokoyaku were encouraged to perform their male roles while maintaining their femininity. She claims that the directors of Takarazuka did not want the players of male roles to be too successful in their appropriation and performance ofmasculinity. Thus they insisted on a certain amount of femininity to permeate the male created on stage. In order to reinforce this sense that the actors remained women ''the director also staged shows where Ricard 48 the otokoyaku were to appear as women" 40. This role reversaI was not appreciated by the otokoyaku. They resented the change in role (and preswnably the lower status that came with being a woman even with Takarazuka). Sorne threatened to resign if forced to play women. This reaction is not surprising if Robertson is correct in asswning that these and other policies were attempts to limit the transgressive power of the otokoyaku.
Again like the otokoyaku, both Oscar and Utena have a single scene where they appear as women. Oscar who wants her beloved Fersen to see her as a woman, not a male friend, wears a dress and attends a hall. She is beautiful and Fersen notices her as she had hoped. It is curious, however, that it is this that is treated as a disguise. She tries her best to hide her identity; she claims to be a foreign noblewoman and escapes when Fersen begins to recognize her. When surprised from behind by a bandit, she immediately reverts to her military training. The assailant is Ieft to wonder just what Figure 18 Oscar as awoman kind of woman he has come across. Sapphire attends her own ball incognito as a woman so that she may wear dresses, be beautiful and dance with Charming.
Utena too attends a party in a dress given to her by Tôga. And, she too is drawn into battle before the evening is done.
Sorne might argue that these ballroom scenes are attempts to limit the ability of the heroines to undercut fixed gender roles, similar to the efforts of Takarazuka directors. This femininity persists, they would claim, in order to remind the readers that they are just women after all. 1 would argue the opposite; the heroines are more transgressive because of their dual gender as the audiences of Takarazuka have long since realized. "The player of men's roIes, in short, is appreciated as an exemplary female who can negotiate successfully
40 Robertson 78. Ricard 49 both genders and their attendant roles, without being constrained by either,,41. It is precisely because they are not completely men that they are figures of wonder. A woman who gains status and a certain freedom by becoming a man and fulfilling a man' s role does not ultimately alter the status quo. To simply become a man reinforces the gender ideology and division. There are still things that only men or women can do. Robertson is quite correct in pointing out that it is the otokoyaku's ability to meld both genders, to make a new gender or new gender possibilities, that is revolutionary. "The key to liberation, as it were, involves not a change of sex but a new gender identity and by extension a transformation in gender ideology'.42. Thus in denying the divisions of gender, Oscar, Sapphire and Utena undermine gender norms in the manner of the otokoyaku.
Yet there is still a large difference between the femininity portrayed by Oscar and
Utena and that the otokoyaku are expected to show, especially off stage. Takarazuka's motto is "Modesty, Faimess and Grace,.43. These are feminine virtues very similar to the ones put forward as the norm in The Knight ofthe Ribbon: ~'Those who receive blue hearts shaH become strong and brave boys; the red ones shan make you beautiful and gentle girls,,44. Takarazuka's motto arises from the "Good Wife, Wise Mother" ideology of the
Meiji period. Even the founder of the theatre, "Kobayashi's choice of nomenclature was informed by the Good Wife, Wise Mother (Ryosai Kenbo) model of female ideology and femininity codified in the Meiji civil code, as weH as the primacy of the patriarchal, conjugal household,,45. It was an ideology that limited the woman' s sphere to the home; her duty was to support her husband and raise and educate future citizens of Japan. Sharon
41 Robert~on 82. 42 Robertson 87. 43 Schodt 255. 440samu 9. Ricard 50
Sievers - who tracks the construction of the notion of woman and the development of feminist consciousness during the modernization of Japan - succinctly describes the Meiji woman's roIes: ''women shouid provide the religious and moral foundation of the home, educating their chiidren and acting as the 'better half' to their husbands,,46.
Of course, the concept of the Ryosai Kenbo (.Et ~ tf-œ:) is an anachronistic way of describing femininity in shôjo manga. It was an ideal encouraged by the directors of
Takarazuka. However, even in the Meiji period Ryosai Kenbo was not widely practiced or accepted: "even in this period, Japanese women did not totally acquiesce to the narrow status allowed to them or to the ideology of the 'good wife, wise mother' which was promoted through the state controlled education system,,47. Even ifthey did agree with the ideology, most women did not have the luxury of staying home. Not working was a privilege of the samurai class before the Meiji period, and the middle class after it. Besides unlike Takarazuka, which was founded in the twenties, immediately following the Meiji period, manga emerged in the postwar period. Conceptions offemininity and a woman's place in society changed a great deal in the intervening years. These changes can account for much of the difference between Oscar and Utena's femininity and that of the otokoyaku.
Ochiai Emiko, a sociologist interested in the changes of the family and the effect of these changes on women in Japan, documents the different conceptions of femininity in the twentieth century. Women are marrying later, are more educated and pursuing careers
(made easier by policies such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Law) in contrast to
4S Robertson 14. 46 Sharon Sievers, Flowers in Salt: The Beginnings of Feminist Consciousness in Modem Japan. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983) 22. Ricard 51 the Meiji woman. There are nevertheless still notions of the division of labour. The domestic space is often asswned to be one for women. Even following the feminist revolution of the seventies, women would often quit their jobs in order to raise children.
According to Ochiai, :Uris practice and the concept of the housewife arose in the postwar and are specific to this period. Though women will often return to the workforce once their children are grown, their long absence reduces them to part-time labour. They are no longer career women but housewives with part-time jobs. Certainly the specifie roles of women within the home have changed with the transitions in the family system - from the ie to the "individual as unit" through various incarnations of the nuclear family - and there are far more opportunities for different lifestyles. However the idea that for a woman being a mother and a wife takes precedence over other considerations occurs in various forms in the twentieth century. There is a sense of the inevitability ofthis entry into domesticity; a sense that "a woman was supposed to marry and, once married, have children, and this meant staying at home full time,,48 that affects how women think about their life choices.
While modem femininity is very different from the ryosai kenbo ideal, their remains a link between femininity and domesticity (i.e. marriage and motherhood).
In contrast, Oscar and Vtena do not even consider marriage and motherhood as a part of their lives. Both Oscar and the Vtena ofAdolescence have sex with men they could never marry (André because he is common, Tôga because he is already dead and only allowed to exist as a figment ofUtena's memory). Furthermore, Oscar fIouts the institution of marriage altogether. When her father organizes a ball to find her a husband, she attends
47 Kimiko Fujimura-Fanselow and Atsuk:o Kameda ed. Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on the Past. Present and Future. (New York: The Feminist Press, 1995) xxxi. 48 Ochiai Emiko, The Japanese Family System in Transition: A Socialogical Analysis ofFamily Change in Postwar Japan. Trans. (Tokyo: LTCB International Library Foundation, 1997) 9. Ricard 52 in dress uniform and flirts shamelessly with all the women. She ignores the men who have come to court her. Nor does either woman engage in typically feminine endeavours while not working. Both Utena and Oscar have women to take care of all household chores. Not once do we see them cleaning or cooking or even managing these duties. Oscar' s idea of fun is fencing, drinking and horseback riding. She clearly disassociates herself from her sisters and their domestic lives: "If... if 1 had been raised as an ordinary female, would 1 have been forced to marry at the age of fifteen like my sisters? 1 could be playing the clavichord, singing arias, dressing up every night in fme clothes and laughing away the time in high society [ ... ] 1 could be wearing velvet beauty marks and rose perfume; 1 would fill my arabesque compact with cosmetics; 1 could bear children - and raise them,,49 and she thanks her father for allowing her this different life. These domestic feminine pursuits are not a part of their lives. As such they are different from otokoyaku who must learn flower arranging and tea ceremony, who must "return to their primary feminine selves"so
(marriage or at least acting traditional women's parts in cinema). Oscar and Utena are feminine but at the same time they are not traditionally so.
Female Love
1 would argue that the heroines' distance from domestic femininity is in part due to their ambiguous relationship with heterosexuality. For one, Utena and Oscar evoke a great deal of love and admiration from women. Though such interest exists in the spectators of
Takarazuka, it is always heterosexuality that is performed on stage. "The Revue continues to uphold the dominant ideal ofheterosexuality and to inform a lesbian subcultural style"Sl.
What is subtext in the Revue becomes text in the manga. The coyer of the second tome of
49 Robertson 75. 50 Robertson 85. Ricard 53
The Rose of Versailles is of Oscar embracing the queen; they look like nothing so much as lovers. The covers of both The Adolescence of Utena (Figure 19) and volume 3 of Utena show Vtena and Anthy in sunHar embraces. They are interlaced and Anthy gazes up at
Vtena lovingly.
This female love is not merely visual; it is present within the narratives as weil.
Whenever Oscar arrives at a court function, balls in particular, all the ladies flock around her and vie for her attention. In one chapter, Oscar accompanies her ward
(Rosalie) to a ball and dances with her. The other women are furious in their jealousy and harass Rosalie. These are often married women or young women who will one day get married and they are weIl aware that Oscar is a woman.
Vtena is similarly admired by her female classmates. In the Figure 19 Anthy & Utena on the coyer of Adolescence first chapter she plays basketball against the boys. The girls cheer her on while sighing and wishing she were a boy. Her best friend Wakaba is constantly embracing and admiring her. One could calI this behaviour lesbianism but 1 believe something else is at work in most cases. As 1 have said, these women do marry and not always out of obligation; they love men too, though perhaps in a different way. Even as
Wakaba expresses her affection for Vtena, she sends a love letter to Saionji. Rosalie, who has been completely enamoured with Oscar since their flfst meeting, falls in love and leaves with Bernard.
The love and admiration that Oscar inspires is perhaps akin to what the audiences of Takarazuka feel for the otokoyaku. They do not love these women as men. It is not a
SI Robertson 73. Ricard 54 heterosexual relationship employing two female bodies, a hetero-gendered relationship (a claim that is often made in reverse about yaoi manga, which 1 find equa11y unconvincing).
Nor is it a preference for women. Rather, as in Takarazuka ''the players of men's roles, in short, are appreciated as an exemplary female that negotiates successfully both genders and their attendant roles,without being constrained by either"S2. They are revered not as men, or even as women for that matter. It is their ability to transgress these gender boundaries that is admired.
They are loved as an unattainable self, a dream of what might be. T'hat is why
Oscar's admirers protest when she acts the gallant to a single woman (making her closer to a courting man) and even more so when a marriage is suggested for her (making her an ordinary woman). It is the same frustration felt by Takarazuka fans protesting otokoyaku becoming "ordinary women" by retiring. When popular otokoyaku Daichi Mao retired to pursue a career as an actress, she was sent a letter from a disappointed fan. "You, " the fan writes, "Takarazuka's new flower, females' freedom andjoy, our fm de siecle dream. Why did you become a woman? Just an ordinary woman?!"S3 Otokoyaku and our cross-dressed heroines are a dream. As such they might be considered a third, different gender altogether
- idea1s of masculinity as can only be performed by women.
Thus the heroines of these manga are not simply men or women but, like the otokoyaku, women performing an idealized masculinity: "more suave, more affectionate, more courageous, more handsome, and more fascinating than actual males,,54. They are
''the representation and enactment of the ideal man" 55 ; they are neither men in the
S2 Robertson 82. S3 Robertson 81. 54 Robertson 17. '5 Robertson 59 Ricard 55 traditional sense (any more than they are traditional women) nor a model for men. Yet what makes them ideals? Part of it seems to be appearance. Oscar is the essence, perhaps the foundation, of the bishônen or beautiful boy that is so popular in shôjo manga. She, like
Utena, is slim, athletic and elegant with long haïr and shining eyes.
They are also gallants in true romantic tradition. They are charming and polite.
They often swoop in to protect women from threats to their bodies and to their honour.
Utena epitomizes this in her protection of Anthy. She fights duels so Anthy need not become the slave of the other duellers, particularly Saionji who loves her possessively and beats her. Nor does Utena expect or want anything in return. Anthy even offers her body, as she has apparently done for all victors, but Utena refuses. She wants to he a friend, not a master. Oscar is similar in her protection of Marie-Antoinette and of Rosalie. Indeed she is selfless in her love for the Queen and protects her interests regardless of the circumstances.
It is above all such protection that defmes a prince. Utena puts it best: "1 want to be a prince, not a princess. 1 don't need to be protected! When l'm a prince, 1'11 do the protecting!"S6
However, our heroines are not the only ones in their respective tales with such ideal masculine attributes. Indeed, men share these and other qualities. Tôga, the school president, is charming and attractive in ways similar to Utena. He too is slender and long haired. He too protects Anthy when Saionji tries to hit her. He also steps in front ofUtena to take a blade intended for her. For these reasons Utena suspects for a time that he is the prince she has been looking for. Akio sweeps even Utena offher feet. Their counterparts in
The Rose o/Versailles are André and Fersen. André wins Oscar's love and her body in the end through his tireless dedication and passionate love. Ali are great men (larger than life one might say) with great success with women, even with the heroines. But they are not Ricard 56 ideals in the same way as Utena and Oscar with the same sort of fanatical followings. What then is the difference between them, what is the special attraction of these beautiful, gallant women? The answer might bring us again to their ambiguous relationship with heterosexuality .
1 would argue that it is precisely the female bodies beneath their masculinity that make Utena and Oscar more appealing than male characters. Love and admiration for other women is a wide spread phenomenon in early shôjo manga, not limited to cross-dressers.
Rei and Kaoru of another of Ikeda Riyoko's series Brother, Dear Brother (Onisama he :J:3
)L~.r-....) are similarly revered; so too Rei in The Glass Mask
(Garasu no Kamen ;If:;; A (/)ffiiiJ) by Miuchi Suzue. Aside from wearing pants, however, they do not truly cross-dress. They never pretend to be men. In the case of Brother, Dear Brother, one might claim that the setting of a girls' school explains an attraction to the most masculine among girls; the myth that single.. sex institutions breed homosexuality (whether this is true or not is immaterial as they remain fictional stories). As we can see in Figure 10 Kaoru & Rei
Figure 20, Kaoru and Rei are masculine in appearance, at least by the standards of shôjo manga. Kaoru bears a striking resemblance to André and both appear completely flat chested. However, this explanation is only truly convincing in the absence of other examples. Rei in Glass Mask is not the "only alternative" in the absence of men, nor are most other examples of idolized women in shôjo manga.
The issue lies rather with the threat inherent in masculinity. This is not to say that
S6 Saito Chiho Revolutionarv Girl Utena Vol. 1 90. Ricard 57 our cross-dressed heroines are harmless. Oscar, Utena and Sapphire are great warriors, greater than most of the men. The threat is sexual. The aforementioned Aldo, Saionji and
Tôga are sexual predators. Aldo seduces Utena and sleeps even with his own sister, Anthy.
Saionji is obsessed with Anthy and his attempts to force this love on her are outright frightening. Tôga thinks of little but sex. He is introduced in Adolescence naked, in bed, post coitus. Utena is not only a counterpoint to this sexuality but also a staunch protector against it. She protects Anthy from Saionji and the rules of the Rose Society that make her an object for the duellers to possess. In The Rose o/Versailles, even André, in many ways the perfect friend and servant, can be frightening. Once, driven crazy with jealousy and desire, he pins Oscar down and nearly rapes her. Then, when he thinks he williose her to another man in marriage, he attempts to poison her. That each time he stops before committing an unforgivable act is irrelevant - this potential, even in the best of men, is frightening.
The difference between the male and female gallants is less pronounced in The
Rose 0/ Versailles than in Utena. Nevertheless it is clear that here too Oscar is the ideal alternative to the unattractive fate of women, namely marriage without love. The episode regarding Charlotte illustrates this best. Eleven-year-old Charlotte is deeply in love with
Oscar and declares it openly. These feelings intensify just as she is forced to marry a frightening man several times her own age. Her inability to escape or get close to Oscar leads to her suicide. She would rather die than marry. Thus it is not the portrayal of idealized masculine qualities alone that grants the heroines their popularity. Nor are they without fault, though they may appear so to their admirers. Utena is not the most intelligent of girls (she gets 38 on her math quiz for one). Oscar has a violent temper and an alcohol Ricard S8 problem. Instead they are ideals for offering an image of masculinity without the threat.
They are the dream of young unmarried women; they are an innocent love without sexuality or marriage. A love that, like the shôjo period itself, the characters must outgrow.
Charlotte kills herself to avoid this growth. Rosalie and Wakaba fmd the love of a man.
Oscar and Utena are thus ideals rather than just men because they allow an escape, however brief, from compulsive heterosexuality; the kind of heterosexuality that forever ends the gender play of the shôjo.
The end of the legends
The heroines themselves need not outgrow their gender ambiguity, however. Often m shôjo manga, wild girls with adventurous loves return to stable heterosexual relationships and marriage regardless of the complexity of their love triangles. They abandon their play and become women in an oppositional, heterosexual understanding of the term. The otokoyaku retire and marry or become "ordinary women". Not so for Oscar and Utena. They do know romance with men. Utena has long been infatuated with Dios, the prince whom she seeks to emulate. She also has relationships with Tôga and Akio.
Oscar for her part pines for the queen's lover Fersen. She rides offweeping at the news of his marriage, a reaction that parallels Marie-Antoinette's own. It is ultimately her childhood friend and servant, André, who wins her love; she spends her last night in his arms. But uttlike most shôjo manga heroines they do not let these loves detine them and they never conform to social norms of femininity because of them.
Yet, theirs are tragic endings. Utena dies in the reversed castle above the high school, allowing her friends to escape. And Oscar, already dying of tuberculosis, falls during the siege of the Bastille failing to defend the doomed monarchy. Both think last of Ricard 59
their great loves. Oscar caUs out André' s name as she dies. Utena embraces Akio knowing
that it will unite the two halves ofDios and destroy both her and the man she loves. Love is
as important to them as to any shôjo manga heroine but it does not make them conform.
Their love drives them to excel in their chosen masculine professions and to become tragic
heroes. When André dies, Oscar does not collapse into tears and join him (like the typical
Juliet). She picks up her arms and fights in earnest until she is ultimately shot in the heart.
When Utena finally finds her prince, Dios, after nearly being defeated by Aldo, she hegins
her final battle in earnest. He makes her realize that "it' s not enough just to yearn for my
prince. 1 must he the prince myself,57.
It is this difference that makes their deaths necessary. Oscar and Utena refuse to
follow the norms of society and thus cannot continue to live in it. This becomes more
evident when one considers the ending of The Knight ofthe Ribbon. She alone of the three
survives her tale. However, she does so by abandoning her male soul and marrying the
prince. Nevertheless, while sorne would condemn The Knight ofthe Ribbon and calI such
as The Rose of Versailles liberating on the basis of their endings (as Ogi does in her
comparison of the two series), one must not be ovedy hasty. It is true that heroines such as
Utena and Oscar offer positive models outside of those standard ones of femininity offered to women. They are admired precisely for this ability, and unlike Sapphire they are never required to retire their ambiguity. However, they are not models meant for the general public any more than the otokoyaku are meant as models for men. They are mythic, exceptional and unique. We are to admire them and like their admirers in the tales or like the audiences of Takarazuka, growand marry and live "normal" lives. We are told that the lives of such strong and passionate women are something short and tragic; something to
57 Saito Chiho, Revolutionary Girl Utena Vol. 5 39. Ricard 60 read about, not to live. Vtena alone offers sorne hope. At the end, with Vtena dead and forgotten by all but two characters, Anthy takes Vtena's uniform and rose seaI ring (and presumably her fate) as she too seeks to revolutionize the world.
The women in these tales suggest a remarkable fluidity of gender. They do not simply tell us that sex and gendered traits need not correspond, but also that it is possible to adopt masculine traits while maintaining a feminine identity. They suggest that masculinity and femininity are not mutually exclusive and by doing so create new gender possibilities. They are male ideals akin to the otokoyaku of the Takarazu/ca stage. They create a type of heterosexuality free of the threat of male sexuality. As such they themselves need not submit to the structures of heterosexuaIity. They too love men, physically even, but they need not marry or abandon their masculine lives. And yet while they are allowed this freedom, it requires quite a sacrifice. They live short, heroic lives and die tragic deaths. Through these endings they are distanced from the readers. They become romantic fantasies, not models of gendering in everyday life.
3 - Female Male Idols: Conventions of Beauty and Gender Relations
In this chapter 1 will show how notions of beauty and gender become relational in cross-dressing manga taking place in the entertainment industry. In Never Give Up (Neba
Giba -*/{~/'\'!) by Mutô Hiromu, Duran High School Host Club (Ouran Koukou
Hosuto Kurabu ~JfitWi~* À J-. $) by Hatori Bisuko and Double Juliet (W Jurietto W
:/.::z. !/ .:r.:Y f) by Emura, beauty and gender are not related to the body, but rather to a character's position in heterosexual love. Consequently, outside of hetero-normativity, beauty and gender become difficult to defme. Although the heroines of aU three manga are considered unattractive women, they enter the entertainment world as men and become Ricard 61 immensely popular stars.
Kiri of Never Give Up is a large and boyish girl who is in love with her childhood friend, Tôya. She becomes a male model when Tôya does in order to proteet him and stay by his side. Double Juliet stars Ito, a tomboy and male lead ofher drama club. She falls in love with the new transfer student, Makoto. Makoto is attending school as a girl in order to prove to his father that he can be an actor. Both of these manga are concemed mainly with heterosexual love between couples who do not fit gender norms. Finally, Haruhi of Host
Club is a poor scholarship student in a prestigious private school. She is forced to work for the host club to pay off a debt; a club where the most beautiful and eharming boys in school are paid to entertain the girls.
1 will look, first of aU, at how the beauty of each of these characters is construeted and gendered. 1 will then show how this gendered beauty is (or rather is not) related to the body, how it imposes readings on the body. The figure of the bishônen becomes vital in the process that allows readers of shôjo manga to read bodies clearly sexed female as those of men. Finally, 1 wiU show how heterosexuality plays a part in normalizing the relation of gender and sex onCe more and how defining gender roles on the basis of such romance creates relational categories.
Female bishônen
Given that these are all manga that take place in the entertainment industry, physical beauty is a central issue. Yet all three cross-dressers are initially considered unattractive and unworldly women. They do not eonform to ideals of female beauty put forth by the mass media; the super model ideals that confronts us in advertising, music and cinema. Indeed, they all express dissatisfaction with their physieal appearance. "Will the Ricard 62 day come when even 1 might look like a woman" 58, Kiri wonders as she looks at her nude form in a mirror. The reader can sympathize with her plight; looking at
Figure 21 it becomes clear that she is very masculine by shôjo manga standards. She towers over her female classmate. Her shoulders are broad, her bust completely flat and her haïr style unisex at best. More importantly, the way she is portrayed here - in action with little facial detail or expression - is characteristically male. Even the way she catches her classmate is best described as gallant; the fact that the girl has fallen in Figure 21 Kiri catches a love with Kiri by the following panel supports this claim. elassmate
Ito similarly bemoans the fact that she is tall, flat and less feminine than her boyfriend. Both Kiri and Ito are often unfavourably compared and compare themselves to other more fashionable and attractive women. Whether these women are models, their boyfriend's fiancé or just the pretty girl in class, the heroines often feel that they have lost in advance. As Kiri thinks when a group of girls monopolize Tôya: "They're all pretty and look so grown-up [ ... ] it's frustrating but 1 can't compete yet ... ,,59 This sentiment is not unusual in shôjo manga. Shôjo heroines are not typically great beauties. Rather they tend to be portrayed as ordinary girls: "heroines are usually not beautiful, their grades in school are poor, and they repeat the same mistakes again and again. They are absolutely ordinary,,60.
Indeed, they are often short, chubby, clumsy and naïve; Miaka of Fushigi Yûgi is the perfect example ofthis trend.
The unattractiveness of these particular heroines is associated with boyishness. A common complaint is that their boyfriends are prettier than they are. Indeed, all three are
58 Mutô Hiromu, Neba Giba Vol. 1. (Tokyo: Hakusensha, 1999) 25. 59 Mutô Hiromu Neba Giba Vol. 127. Ricard 63 mistaken for boys before they begin to consciously perform masculinity. Host Club plays on this motif of gender confusion; even the reader is led to believe that Haruhi is a boy for the tirst chapter. The other club members also assume that she is male. It is the first thing they say (with some disappointment) upon seeing her: "Oh, it's a man,,61. That they have her work off her debt as a host is further indication of their mistake. When the club president, Tamaki, fmds her student ID, clearly marked female, he is shocked to silence.
He can only point comically. Makoto also mistakes
Ito for a man, as is clear from his shock at seeing her disrobe in front of him; he gets his revenge by submitting her to the same shock, in reverse, a few pages later. Kiri is mistaken for a man on several occasions. Our first encounter with her is in a four panel gag strip preceding the first volume which Figure 22 Kiri makes a better prince than princess plays on this misconception (Figure 22). "Long ago, in a country far away there was a princess as lovely as a flower,,62. Unfortunately, the joke goes, Kiri is much better suited to the role of the "gallant prince from the neighbouring country" and Tôya is cast as the princess instead.
Kiri is the most masculine of the three heroines. She is taIl and broad of shoulder; her hair is short and her eyes are narrow in the convention of men in shôjo manga. As is often the case, she is matched with a love interest that is as effeminate as she is masculine.
Tôya is as petite and delicate as she is large and strong. The contrast is clear in figure 22 and it highlights her masculinity. Indeed, even the backgrounds suggest that Kiri is less
60 Nishiyama 396. 61 Hatori Bisuko, Ouran Koukou Hosuto Kurabu vol. 1. (Tokyo: Hakusensha, 2003) 7. Ricard 64 feminine than Tôya. In the frrst chapter 1 mentioned that flowery backgrounds were often associated with femininity. When compared to the roses behind Tôya, the simplistic line of tiny flowers in Kiri's panel makes her femininity seem somewhat clumsy and half-hearted.
The same is true oflto who stands a head above her classmates. She too is strong, a master ofmartial arts with short hair and flat chest. Whereas she is constantly cast as a boy in plays, her boyfrlend Makoto can pass himself off as the most beautiful girl in school. Thus the heroines' unattractiveness is not simply the inability to match up to some unattainable standard ofbeauty. It is not that they are ugly but that they are masculine.
Perhaps this is why, despite the emphasis on their unappealing physiques, they can become gorgeous and desirable men. Kiri is a very successful mode!. It was not uncommon for girls in school to faU in love with her (she had received her first love confession by page
22). Nevertheless she is shocked by the popularity of her alter ego, Tatsuki. After one of her first jobs, her pictures can he found in magazines, on posters and on billboards. Her face is suddenly all over town and girls everywhere are talking about her. Similarly, Ito is the male star of her theatre club. She is forced to play ail the male leads despite the presence of men in the club. Haruhi also excel due to her masculine charms. After being cleaned up a little, she becomes the high point of the host club. She charms all the girls without even trying. Tamaki calls her a prodigy. But the simple fact that they are successful in an industry where appearance is so important is a testament to their male beauty. So perhaps, like the ugly duckling mentioned in "Great Waiters?", they a1ways were beautiful, merely being judged by the wrong standard. Perhaps they were simply meant to be bishônen.
The body beneath
62 Mutô Neba Giba Vol. 1 6. Ricard 65
We are never allowed to forget about the female bodies beneath this male beauty.
Displays ofthe body are frequent. Ito disrobes a seant five pages into her series (Figure 23).
Kiri is shown naked early in the tirst volume and frequently thereafter. Indeed, nearly
every time Kiri goes to work we see her binding her chest in
preparation for the photo shoot. Thus her female body is associated
to her performance of masculinity. Displaying the body in such a
way is not simply an effort to titillate the reader. The predominantly
female readership is not being forced to adopt a male gaze and
objectify the heroines as Mulvey might argue. For one, Tôya and Figure 23 Ito changing Makoto's bodies are also constantly bared. More importantly, these instances are usually self-reflective. This is quite literaI in Kiri's case; she is almost always looking at her nude body in a mirror. But mirror or no, they are never just undressed. They need always remark on their bodies, more precisely its sex. Usually the comment is like the following: "Despite appearances, l'm a real, authentic woman,,63 or "Even so, Pm a proper woman,,64. It is an acknowledgement of their masculine traits but a reassertion of their femininity, or at least their female sex. This is the purpose of the apparent voyeurism. We are never supposed to simply accept that they are men.
This voyeurism is not a reassertion of the primacy of sex; we are not being told that their female bodies prec1ude "real" masculinity. If anything, we are being shown that sex is not obvious, nor is it a simple duality. The characters' bodies do not conform to standard notions of female sex. The dialogue makes this c1ear enough; they would not need to reassert their sex if it were obvious. They have breasts, such as they are, and female
63 Emura, W Juliet Vol. 1. (Tokyo: Hakusensha, 1999) 9. 64 Mutô Neba Giba Vol. 4. (Tokyo: Hakusensha, 1999) 110. Ricard 66 genitals, we assume. Nonetheless· it is not obvious they are female. What rnakes them female to the readers and to themselves, even with their full body in view, is their very assertion of womanhood. In the words of Judith Butler, "language itself produce[s] the fictive construction of'sex,,,.65 Throughout Gender Trouble, she treats sex not as a natural category but as a construct. Physical attributes that are generally considered signs of sex
(breasts, genitals, etc.) are in fact only random features given an "artificial unity,,66 through language. Thus the relation of sex and gender is not that of nature vs. culture. Rather
67 gender produces sex and establishes it as prediscursive • The offshoot ofher argument is that the way in which a person is gendered affects how we read the sex oftheir body. This is why the constant revelation ofKiri and Ito's bodies does not diminish their masculinity.
By the sarne token, their bodies are female in these voyeuristic moments, not because we see signs offemale sex, but hecause of the effects of language.
The figure of the bishônen in shôjo manga is part of the reason why Kiri and Ito's beauty is intelligible as male within these texts. We already know that characters in shôjo manga are androgynous. The most attractive men are often confused for women. One need only think ofHotohori in Fushigi Yûgi who brags that he is more beautiful than the women in bis harem. In a way, these heroines rnight he a joke on bishônen; the admission that their beauty is so feminized that being a woman could only augment it. But bishônen are not women; they are not beautiful because they are feminine. If anything, their beauty arises from their arnbiguous gendering. We have already seen how shôjo manga idolize arnbiguity. Characters that blur the boundaries of masculinity and femininity in the manner of bishônen and gallant women like Oscar are adored. Nevertheless bishônen are always
65 Butler ÎX. 66 Butler 114. Ricard 67 male. And it is the icons and signs (in essence the visuallanguage) that allows the reader to understand their androgynous bodies as male that qualify Kiri, Ito and Haruhi' s beauty as male as weIl. But the cross-dressers of this chapter are even more transgressive. Not only do they acknowledge that sex is a reading but their sex is fluid. While bishônen, no matter how ambiguous, are always male, Kiri and company are not.
Love and femininity
Although Kiri and Ito make attractive men, paradoxically their beauty becomes increasingly feminine over the course of their narratives. Vnlike Oscar,
Vtena and Sapphire who wish to be princes in spite of their sex; Kiri and Ito are transformed into princesses while performing masculinity.
Whereas they were previously confused for men, they are suddenly considered beautiful women with numerous men flocking around them
(and these men always "know" them to he women, disguise or no). The first time Kiri is told that she looks like a woman or that she is cute is when she is pretending to be a man. Indeed, the longer she is Tatsuki, the more suitors vie for her band. In the fifth volume she is even asked Figure 24 Kiri as a remale model to model as a woman rather than as a man (Figure 24). The same is true of Ito. When the story starts she can not be distinguished from a boy and her admirers are all other women. Yet before the fust volume ends, boys are fighting over her. Soon she too gets to be Juliet in school plays. This seems almost a reversai of the discussion in the previous section: whereas sex had been a reading of the body produced by gender, suddenly it seems that the heroine's sex is an essence that shines through the "pretense" of masculinity .
67 Butler 7. Ricard 68
However, sex cannot be an essence; it is still produced by the visuallanguage of manga as when they were considered male. The heroines' physical appearance changes very little over the course of the series. As can be seen in Figure 24, Kiri has not suddenly become voluptuous; her hair is still short. Though she wears a dress, this is not the first time she does so. Ifher feminine beauty were merely a function ofher wardrobe, why did her feminine clothing earlier in the series make her look like a man in a dress (as it does in
Figure 22)? There is no doubt that she is a beautiful woman in Figure 24 but we recognize this female beauty by the same iconic language as we had previously recognized her male beauty. In this case, she is drawn with more delicate lines and lighter shading; her eyes are larger and round. In other images we can see how she begins to have the same relation to frame and background as is typical of women. Thus sex is still created by language, though the language is visual and not verballike Butler's mode!. Neither sex is more natural or true for the heroines. Rather their portrayal has changed because they are now gendered differently, which begs the question ofwhy their gender has suddenly changed.
Simply, the difference between the unattractive boyish girls they were and the elegant beauties they become is love. The short story "Great Waiters?" concerns a masculine girl much like Ito and Kiri who falls in love with a waiter. She pretends to he a man in order to get a job at the same café as him. When she despairs at being mistaken for a boy all the time, her friend tells her: "AlI girls are ugly ducklings. Eventually a day will come when we can turn into beautiful swans ... One day you will fall in love too and become more like a woman because of it... " 68 This quote is interesting because it acknowledges that girls (shôjo) are not women, but always in the process of becoming women and that beauty is a function ofthis femininity. But more importantly, it points to Ricard 69 the role of love in this transformation. And this love, it is implied, is aIways heterosexual.
Just a bit further this friend specifies that ''when you're aIways watching someone of the opposite sex, you'lI know that you're in love. And because of that a girl will turn into a swan,,69.
On the one hand this quote refers to the cliché that there is nothing as beautiful as a woman in love. Even so their feelings of love do not simply give them some kind of glow;
it literally makes them feminine. They are not truly women until they
love and are loved in return. At the risk of being repetitive,
heterosexuallove is what ends their period of ambiguous gendering.
This is clear from the fact that the measure of their beauty is
attractiveness to the opposite sex. Within the narrative their male
beauty is measured by their success in the entertainment industry and
their groupie-like femaIe admirers. Similarly we know that they are
Figure 25 Kiri & feminine and beautiful when men love and pursue them. We know that T&va's weddinl! something about Kiri has changed when Akira faIIs for her. Whereas being a princess was once her vain dream, suddenly severaI men ''want to become prlncess Kiri' s prince" 70. This is the result ofher budding romance with Tôya. The closer they get, the more feminine Kiri becomes. Changes in Ito are aIso the result ofher love for Makoto and are marked by male interest. It is only after she starts dating him that other men, such as Toki, start to take interest in her. Social adulthood, signified by marriage and motherhood, is the antithesis of the shôjo, the "not-quite-femaIe femaIe". Marriage is what results of both Ito and Kiri's loves. It is unsurprisingly on their wedding day that they look the most feminine. Their haïr
68 Washio Mie, "Great Waiters?" Bitter. (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 2003) 245. 69 Washio 271. Ricard 70 is long, their bust and eyes larger. Tôya is even finally taller and less delicate than Kiri
(Figure 25). Love allows them to find their feminine beauty but it also puts an end to their ambiguity and their fabulous careers.
Host Club shows just how the absence of heterosexual relationsbips can affect the development of femininity. This series forgoes the standard entry into the heterosexual society. Haruhi does not seek the love of a man and this affects her. She becomes a man by simple misunderstanding. Nor is she just any man; she becomes a favoured member of the school's host club. Of the three cross·dressers, she is the only one who is comfortable with her masculinity. Her appearance, however it may be gendered, does not make her insecure.
She is not concemed about her appearance at all: she cuts off her hair because of a bit of gum and wears her grandmother's glasses. The other club members must force her to clean up her image against her protests. Nor does she try to reassert her sex through displays of the body. The only time we see "her" nude body is in a doctored photo made to give her a male physique. As her father is a transvestite, gender is very arbitrary in her mind. Thus she does not consider being mistaken for a man a personal slight as Kiri often does. One gender is as good as another in her mind. This is why when her sex is discovered she tells the other club members that she does not care whether they treat her as a girl or a boy.
Her attitude towards gender is closely tied to her disinterest in romance. Indeed, she does not even realize that men are interested in her. In one instance she tells Tamaki that he had been cool in bis protection of her. He blushes and in the manner of shôjo manga romances wonders "Îs tbis the beginning of our tirst 10ve?,,71 She, however, bas not noticed the moment and is already debating the benefits of continuing to live as a man to bis great
70 Mutô Neba Giba Vol, 1 165. 71 Hatori Host Club Vol. 1 52. Ricard 71 dismay. Tamaki is quite disturbed to discover her physical sex and even more disturbed by her attitude towards gender and romance because he has fallen in love with her. He tries to make her a "proper woman" on several occasions; he constantly harasses her to dress and act more like a woman. In essence Tamaki wants to bring out Haruhi's femininity through their romance. To his chagrin she has no interest in him or anyone else and so she remains in a kind of limbo between the genders. Heterosexuallove is clearly vital in the formation of femininity for its absence allows the continuation of ambiguous gendering.
Relational genders
Men also love and are not feminized by the sentiment. If anything the opposite occurs. Just as Ito and Kiri are their most feminine when they are to be married, Makoto and Tôya have also changed by this final chapter. They are taller, their hair is short, they wear suits (which
Tôya is told early on do not look good on him) all ofwhich can be seen in Figure 26. In the end these things are arbitrary, Tôya and
Makoto are still bishônen; the aesthetics of shôjo manga have not Figure 26 Ito & Makoto in volume 14 changed. Perhaps they look more masculine by comparison with their earlier selves but they have not become big, muscled brutes any more then Ito and Kiri are suddenly voluptuous. They retain their svelte figures and delicate features. Their increased masculinity is not ultimately a function of physical or cosmetic transformations but of their position in a love relationship.
If gender is fornied by heterosexuality, as the ugly duckling narrative suggests, it becomes a relation between two things. There is no fixed definition of masculinity or femininity because "gender does not denote a substantive being, but a relative point of Ricard 72 convergence among culturally and historically specific sets of relations"n. As Butler argues, men and women are not definable alone but only in opposition to an Other: "one is one's gender to the extent that one is not the other gender, a formulation that presupposes and enforces the restriction of gender within a binary pair,,73. She suggests that gender is only coherent within the context of heterosexuality because this system creates gender as an oppositional binary in the first place. Heterosexuality both requires this binary in order to hecome compulsory and naturalized and regulates it in order to remain so. The male leads need not abandon all their feminine features in order to conform to a unitary conception of masculinity since such a thing does not exist. Tôya and Makoto merely need to be differentiated from women, which is "accompli shed through the practices of heterosexual desire,,74. They must be masculine compared to the women they love and in the context of the worlds in which they live. After all, heterosexuality is a relation between men and women. That sounds obvious but what 1 mean (and what Butler suggests) is that it creates roles and positions for the two members in the relationship which is the source of conceptions of masculinity and femininity as we know them. Heterosexuality is probably the source of the notion that these two genders are the only possibilities available. While heterosexuality purports to he a relationship hetween a man and a woman, it is what creates these men and women in the first place. It creates dualities that the respective partners must fulfilL Makoto and Tôya are masculine because that is their role in the relationship.
An example of the oppositional roles that are created is the active/passive paradigm.
Love just happens to most shôjo manga heroines. They fall in love, they might even confess their loves, but they do not pursue their loves; it is the boys who fight over them.
72 Butler 10. 73 Butler 22. Ricard 73
Women watch and worry when there are rivals but they do not interfere. For example, Ito is very jealous of Makoto's fiancé and suspects that she cannot win against her. When she catches them together all she can do is run away. Kiri is the same. The men openly fight with each other and claim what is theirs while the women stand back and watch. This is why Makoto cannot chase away the other men who are interested in Ito and maintain his female disguise. When Toki is first introduced, the female Makoto can only watch as he hugs and flirts with Ito. He must dress as a man and risk discovery before he can tell Toki
"she's my girlfriend so don't touch her,,75. Similarly, in order for Kiri to pursue Tôya into the modeling business, she must frrst be a man. It is when the men pursue her that she is judged feminine. Thus heterosexuality brings out masculinity and femininity not because of the sentiment but because of the contrasting relations it sets up for the partners.
The implication of genders being relational is that a man is what a woman is not and vice versa. This could mean many things. Sorne feminists, such as de Beauvoir, speak of this relation in terms of man being a subject and woman, the Other. A similar theory argues that man is the general of humanity and woman alone carries the mark of gender. In opposition, theorists like Irigaray argue that both the position of the subject and Other are male and that woman is unspeakable, unthinkable; she is an absence. Whatever the nature of this duality, man has no meaning in the absence of woman. This precisely causes a problem for our leading men. The shôjo that concems all these manga is not yet a woman.
But it is not clear that shônen is a fluid gender category like shôjo (though perhaps it can be). Ifit is not fluid, what does it mean to be a man in this genre without any women (yet)?
This question creates a crisis of identity in both Makoto and Tôya. They struggie to find
74 Butler 23. 75 Emura W Juliet Vol. 1 172. Ricard 74 what it meatts to he a good man, one that is worthy of the women Kiri and Ito will become, and constantly falI short. For Ito's father, the mark of a good man is eyes with "a strong gaze that reflect bis will,,76. It is a vague description that causes Makoto to scrutinize bis eyes in a compact mirror with no clearer idea ofhow he should be. Tôya similarly puzzles over the problem of how he might become a prince and ideal man. His answer to the problem of masculinity is a comical insistence on ingesting absurd amounts of milk in hopes of growing taller than Kiri. This confusion points to the fact that the shônen may not be as fluid a gender category as the shôjo and this causes difficulty for the boys trying to relate to the girls they love.
This section concerned beauty and thus the body. It showed us that not only can masculinity (or male beauty) accrue to a female body but that physical sex is not a natural feature of the body. Instead sex is a reading imposed upon it by gender through language.
This reading and the gendering attached to it is a function of entering heterosexual society.
Those, like Haruhi, who do not have heterosexual relationsbips have a very different relation to their bodies and to gender. These series also elucidates sorne of the difficulties in defining masculinity and femininity. Gender as constructed through heterosexual relationsbips is a relation rather than a set of characteristics. This begs the question ofwhat a man is in relation to the ambiguously gendered shôjo and whether men and women can exist in the absence ofheterosexuality.
4 - 1 Want to Be Your Little Boy: The Social Construction of Sex and Gender
The manga of this chapter present sex and gender as social constructs. They show
76 Emura W Juliet Vol. 4 143. Ricard 75 the power and agency at work in this construction and how it is disguised as destiny.
Global Garden by Hiwatari Saki and Basara by Tamura Yumi, unlike the other series 1 analyze in this essay, present the tragic aspects of cross-dressing and gender. Both series offer a model for the social construction of gender by re-gendering their heroines. This is tragic because it shows the heroines powerlessness in the face of social pressures. They must continue the performance of masculinity in opposition to their own hopes and happiness; they continue for the benefit of those around them. These social pressures come from parents and community; gender and sex are constructed through language and expectation. This does not negate the characters' agency but their agency (which in Global
Garden takes the form of a near magical force ofwill) is subjugated to external factors. The heroines cannot take themselves out of society and its influence. Nevertheless social construction is dependent on making categories of sex and gender appear natural and prediscursive. While Ruika and Sarasa conform to this system by adopting a new gender, they undermine this same system by proving that gender can be changed. This causes a deep sense of discomfort. Destiny is employed in both tales in an attempt to stabilize gender and sex once more.
Before we begin, a brief plot description of the manga in question will aid in better understanding the analysis that will follow. Global Garden tells the story of Ruika, a girl whose father and younger brother died in quick succession. Because of the trauma, Ruika's mother cornes to believe that her daughter is in fact her son, Makoto. In order to protect her mother and her feelings, Ruika indulges the fantasy that Makoto survived instead of Ruika.
Taking on her brother's life makes her progressively less feminine and physically female.
Global Garden is more than a family drama, it is also a science fiction tale; a tale about Ricard 76
Albert Einstein helping two prescient boys (Hikaru and Haruhi) live young long beyond their years so they might meet Ruika. She is destined to help them save the dying world.
She shaH undo the damage caused by the atom bombs through her uncanny power to make wishes come true.
Basara is a post-apocalyptic fantasy and yet at a basic level, the narrative is very similar to Hiwatari's. Sarasa's twin brother, Tatara is destined from birth to rise up against the kings who are oppressing the people of Japan. However, he is killed in an attack by the
Red King before he could accomplish this destiny. In order to save the world and prevent her people from falling into despair, Sarasa cuts offher hair and pretends to be her brother.
She begins a rebellion in Tatara's name that will sweep the entire archipelago. She fights for revenge and freedom as her brother, fulfilling her promise to "protect [their] parents and the villagers when [he's] not here,,77. Her efforts shall unite the scattered people of
Japan and unbalance the dictatorial monarchy. In doing so she proves that she was the child of destiny all along.
The social construction of gender
Through their narratives Basara and Global Garden show a model of the social construction of gender. The fact that the sex of the characters thus molded does not match the gender that is created makes this construction more obvious. As 1 argued in chapter three, if gender arose from sex traits, a female body would result in a feminine persona which is not the case in these manga. As gender is a construction "it does not follow that the construction of 'men' will accrue exclusively to the bodies of males or that 'women'
77 Tamura Yumi, Basara Vol. 1, trans. (San Francisco: Viz, LLC, 2003) 42. Ricard 77 will interpret only female bodies,,7S. Though it seems obvious at this point that gender is a construction, how it is constructed is not. Therefore 1 will explore the role society plays in the construction and performance of gender.
Sarasa and Ruika do not create the behavioural patterns that they act out. The gendered behaviour is conditioned on the basis of their interactions with their parents and with society at large. 1 use the word "conditioned" quite deliberately. They are not asked or even told to he men. Nor do they choose their new gender any more than they chose femininity when they were born. Butler tackles this problem - which appears to be social determinism - in regards to Simone de Beauvoir. She daims that the statement "one is not born a woman, but, rather, becomes one,,79 seems to foreground the agent's power in the creation of gender. However, becoming is not as variable and volitional as it might sound at first; one hecomes a certain gender "but always under a cultural compulsion to become one"So. This compulsion does not come from sex in Butlees account or in these manga;
"there is nothing in [de Beauvoir's] account that the 'one' who becomes a woman is necessarily female"Sl. Rather compulsion is found in language and in expectations - in the limits of what is intelligible.
Consequently the heroines are gendered in response to the way they are named and treated. Ruika's mother, seeing her daughter for the first time after the accident, cries out
"Masato". In doing so she identifies her as completely as when a doctor says "it's a boy" after a delivery. This relates, as in chapter three, to the role language plays in the formation of gender. She will not hear that Masato is dead and continues to treat Ruika as her son; her
78 Butler 6. 79 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. E.M. Parshley. (New York: Vintage, 1973).301. 80 Butler 8. 81 Butler 8. Ricard 78 daughter responds accordingly. Ruika insists on dressing and speaking as a man as weIl as being called Masato. She reacts to pressure to be more feminine as if it were inappropriate.
"1 can't wear it!,,82 she insists when Robin brings her a dress. In her distress, she goes so far as to throw the dress out the window. This reaction results from her mother' s attitude.
When she tells a friend to calI her Masato, she adds: "Especially in this hospital since my mother's here too,,83. However it is not simply a pretence to please her mother. As the incident with Robin reveals, this discomfort with femininity has become ingrained. She does not believe it is right to act like a girl, whether her mother is present or not; she cannot even think of herself as a girl.
The same is true of Sarasa. She cuts off her haïr and wears her brother' s c10thes in order to fulfill her promise to him. It is the memory ofhis words that push her into action.
She is able to truly become him because her people name her "Lord Tatara". They "know" that Sarasa cannot be the saviour, that a girl cannot save them. Thus she must be Tatara. It is the confidence which the villagers place in Tatara, their certainty that "he" will save them, that forces Sarasa to c1utch onto her brother' s horse and charge the enemy though she is crying with grief and terror. In essence Ruika and Sarasa become what their parents and societies expect: what they want to see and "know" to be logically true. It is no different from dressing a baby girl in pink and buying her doUs because her genitals are arranged in a certain way. Is it a surprise that she will act in the way she was raised or expected to behave? Yet the feminine behaviour that results is believed to be natural. Similarly, the masculine behaviour the heroines must perform is taken for granted by the characters who do not know that they were girls first. Ruika sums up the situation of both heroes
82 Hiwatari Saki, Global Garden Vol. 1, trans. (paris: Delcourt, 2004) 50. 83 Hiwatari Global Garden Vol. 1 40 Ricard 79 succinctly: "[my mother] doesn't accept to see Ruika, and 1. .. 1 love her so much ... that 1 decided to become Masato!,,84 It is an identity formed by and for the expectations of others.
Yet it is not sufficient to say that their gender is formed by social expectations.
What does it mean for gender to be constructed, what relation does it have to a person's identity? One reading of Ruika' s statement is that her gender is different from a true or original gender identity. She will "become" it, implying that she was something el se before.
Of course she had initially been raised as a girl but that does not make this earlier state any truer. As de Beauvoir was quoted saying and as the ugly ducklings of the previous chapter suggest, one always becomes a gender; it is not inbom. One cannot he a gender.
Moreover there are two different problems of identity at issue here. The first is the gender identity we are discussing; the second is a personal identity bom of experience. The latter is not separate from gender identity; a person without a gender is culturally unintelligible. Butler argues that identity itself "is assured through the stabilizing concepts of sex, gender, and sexuality,,85 and is not coherent unless one adheres to the norms instituted and maintained by society. The difference between the two identities is that the later is unique to each person, resulting from life experiences and the convergence of different identities (race, religion, etc.). Being forced to change this personal identity is what causes Sarasa and Ruika misery. The problem is not that they must become boys but that they must become their brothers. This is what hurts Ruika the most, especially as a child. When her mother refuses to accept who she is, she wonders: "Mommy .... Do you only love Masato? But why ... don't you need me?,,86 It is a pain that remains on her mind years later, in the present of the narrative. Sarasa feels a very similar rejection in that the
84 Hiwatari Global Garden Vol. 148 85 Butler 17. Ricard 80 villagers adore her brother as a saviour and ignore her: "People only care about my brother.
Nobody cares about me,,87. Yet as her brother she must wield the sword that she was once beaten for trying to touch. There is a sense that being forced to abandon their selves and become another person as they are is wrong and painful.
The masculine gender they adopt is another matter entirely. When Ruika decides to admit to her mother that she is not Masato (at the urging of Hikaru whom she has come to
love), she has a dream. She dreams that she meets her brother' s spirit. He
has been with her all these years. Now, he acknowledges, it is time for
Ruika to be herself again and for him to pass on. This does not create a
sudden change in her towards the feminine. She accepts more readily that
people use her real name. However, her change in gender had caused a
Figure 27 Ruika physical change in her body; abandoning her brother' s identity does not as a boy aIter her hermaphrodism or her behaviour (for example her refusai to wear dresses and her masculine way of talking). It is not until her mother accepts that
Ruika is still aIive and changes her attitude and expectations towards her that we see a marked change in Ruika. Indeed after her mother has been cured of her delusions, she tells Ruika that she would like her to go out with boys and make up for lost time. Figure 28 Ruika as a As a result Ruika transforms over night. The Ruika of Figure 27 girl with her short hair, dull eyes and flat chest is transformed into the Ruika of Figure 28. Not only is her hair longer, her eyes and her eyelashes more defined and detailed but the background is flowery in what, we saw in chapter one, is a very feminine style. Despite this
86 Hiwatari Global Garden Vol. 1 39 87 Tamura Basara Vol. 1 13 Ricard 81 sudden and drastic change, her mother "accepted it naturally"ss. It seems as if continuing to act as a boy now that she has been dec1ared a girl once more would have been the more shocking development.
Nor does Sarasa admitting to her crew in volume ten that she is not her brother cause any change in their attitudes towards her or in her roles. She still leads them and despite Nagi's concems, they do not spoil her. Being Sarasa apparently does not imply becoming feminine or even female. Their brothers' identity allows Ruika and Sarasa to take on male personas but their masculinity is not contingent on these assumed identities.
Gender is not an expression of their selves. It is not an identity except perhaps in Butler' s sense of the word: "normative ideals rather than a descriptive feature of experience"S9. To be a person in this sense means to conform to the "gendered norms of cultural intelligibility,,90; to act as society demands of a person of their gender. Thus they conform even when forced to change their gender. It does not truly matter what gender they are as long as they conform to the requirements of that gender.
The construction of sex
Unlike Sarasa, Ruika puts into question the naturalness of sex as well. She changes not only her appearance and behaviour but also her body. She could properly be termed a transsexual though she has undergone no surgery. She has so integrated herself into her masculine role that even she does not menstruate and her breasts have not grown. She is left with a somewhat hermaphroditic Figure 29 Ruika's bermapbrodism appearance (Figure 29). Her doctor also hints that she is beginning to show signs of male
88 Hiwatari Global Garden Vol. 4 44 89 Butler 16. Ricard 82 genitalia. She is a testament to the saying "mind over matter". She becomes very difficult to categorize under any theory of physical sex. After aH, these theories would often claim that the category of women consists of a group that shares certain physical traits as weIl as the experience of menstruation and childbirth. Such theories are oft disputed for they leave out a large part of the population, infertile and post-menopausal women for example. They certainly leave out Ruika who se near-magical will overrides the stability of the body ..
Her transformation, or lack thereof, speaks for the precedence of gender over sex.
As Butler argues, "if the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construction called 'sex' is as culturally constructed as gender,,91. In other words, questioning the stability and duality of sex categories as Ruika does shows that it is not natural. Butler takes the argument further. Gender is not the cultural inscription of meaning on a pregiven sex. Ifboth are constructs, it seems rather that gender is the means by which sex is made to seem prediscursive - to precede, create and thus legitimize gender. Ruika illustrates what
Butler has long argued: the naturalness of sex is a myth created by gender and consequently institutionalized heterosexuality.
This destabilization of the body may sound like something out of fantasy or science fiction. While Global Garden may indeed be described as science fiction, Ruika's transformation cannot be; it is about hormones. She has unusual control over these hormones due to her power to fulfil wishes. Nevertheless, if one were to base a notion of physical sex on hormones rather than on random anatomical difference~ that do not characterize all ofhumanity (hermaphrodites are surprisingly frequent, a fact concealed by post birth surgery), the picture would be far different. A hormonal system is not a binary.
90 Butler 17. 91 Butler 7. Ricard 83
Hormones offer an array of possibilities rather than the standard two sexes acknowledged by most cultures; a standard deriving from heterosexuality and its oppositional genders rather than from nature. This is what Ruika seems to point towards as she is neither a man nor a woman by traditional considerations. She has, as 1 have said, physical characteristics of both sexes. Her body shows that sex is not naturally a duality. The very concept of a duality derives not from nature but from gender.
Destiny
Despite the evidence of social construction, both tales return to the notion of destiny. The narratives center on the prophesized futures the heroines are meant to attain: on the one hand a Japan free of the despotic monarchy and on the other the utopic global garden which will heal the wounds humanity has inflicted on the earth. Though Sarasa's twin is originally lauded as the prophesized saviour, it becomes increasingly clear that this has always been her destiny. Similarly we know that Ruika, regardless ofher masculinity, will become the beautiful and feminine saviour of humanity, Skuld (as they calI Ruika's future self) because Hikaru and Haruhi have already seen il happen. Thus as the story progresses, Sarasa begins to take on many of the qualities that she pretended to have early on: prowess at fighting for example. She becomes a great swordswoman, besting the pirate queen in a deadly blindfolded sword fight among many others. The prophet Nagi realizes his mistake at the end of the first chapter: "Tatara was the sacrifice. Sarasa you are the one.
The child of destiny,,92. Indeed her greatest and most decisive victories are fought as Sarasa, not Tatara. Her first step in overthrowing the monarchy, killing the Blue King, is not accomplished in drag. She seems merely a girl about to be sacrificed. Yet even drugged and injured she reveals the king' s farce of godhood and kills him with his own sword. Her male Ricard 84 guise allows her more mobility and the ability to be a saviour to her people. As a man, she can fight and bear arms as a woman May not. Taking her brother' s place allows her to grow into her true role, not to become a man.
For this reason it seems that Basara returns to the sex-as-destiny formulation.
Sarasa continues to think of herself as a woman. Although the villagers have fooled themselves into believing this shorter person with her higher voice is indeed Tatara, although she knows she must be Tatara in order to attain her goals, she does not want to be a man forever. Her goals are quite simply to "save Yunoka and the others [ ... ] to take revenge on the Red King and tell everyone l'm Sarasa,,93. Perhaps, much like Oscar and
Utena, her male persona allows her to approximate an ideal of strength, courage and cunning that her people expect of a saviour. But she does not consider herself a man. Thus whenever the opportunity arises, she retreats to a hot spring and engages in the Most feminine of pursuits in this genre: love. She does not remain unchanged by her second life: like the women in the previous chapter she can go from being an ignored tomboy to a beautiful woman loved by powerful men. Through her Many trials she becomes not only a saviour but also the "woman worth dying for" that Ageha was prophesized to meet. Thus we are made to wonder if their gender ever changes more than superficially. They do not become their brothers or men but are in the process ofbecoming the women that they were always meant to he.
Discomfort
The reinsertion of the notion of destiny is a measure of the discomfort felt at Sarasa and Ruika's unfettered gendering. While the narratives show that gender and sex are
92 Tamura Basara vol. 1 56 93 Tamura Basara Vol. 1 158. Ricard 85 constructed by having the heroines change their genders, this very construction depends on ignorance of its existence. The obvious change from one gender to another, even if it is an enforced change, makes those that are aware of it very uncomfortable. Those who know that "Masato" is actually Ruika are determined to have her be feminine as ifthis too were part of her identity. "It' s impossible for her to hecome a boy!! ,,94 they claim, in spite of evidence to the contrary. Thus they are shocked at her physical changes. She is treated as a scientific oddity, as if she were ill. In spite of her good health she must undergo regular medical examinations. Her doctor checks on her growth and asks ifher menstrual cycle has begun. The failure ofher female body to act as a female body "should" is a source of deep concem. These characters also have trouble remembering to cali her Masato. Some, like
Kôdai and Hikaru, refuse to use her brother's name. Kôdai takes his refusal even further by asking that Ruika live with his family. The contact with his mother and sister would, according to him, make her more feminine. Of course, his desire that Ruika he influenced by his relatives supports the idea of gender construction. At the same time he insists that being feminine would be more natural for Ruika than being masculine: it ''would come naturally and you would feel good,,95.
Ruika's dresses are the ultimate sign oftheir discomfort and their efforts to "fix" her. Ali her friends try to convince her to wear a dress. These dresses, which her mother buys in memory ofRuika, are a symbol ofher femininity. Ruika refuses to wear them with the same insistence as the men around her foist them on her. The incident where she throws
Robin's proffered dress out the window is an extreme example ofher refusaI. Incidentally, the frrst time she accepts to wear a dress over a temporarily female body it is one chosen for
94 Hiwatari Global Garden Vol. 128. 95 Hiwatari Global Garden Vol. 142. Ricard 86 her by Hikaru, the man she loves. This once again points to the power ofheterosexuality in gendering. Even though these manga show the fluidity and construction of gender and sex, there is a constant attempt to make them natural categories again or at least to make them appear so through love and destiny.
The manga of this chapter show how societal influences can shape gender. More importantly, Global Garden in particular begins to destabilize sex based categories. There remains a sense of destiny, of character determined at birth (or before it). On the one hand, masquerading as their brothers seems just a thin veil to hide the fact that they are not traditionally feminine women and that they were never meant to be. Sarasa and Ruika's disguises give them the opportunity to develop their potentials as girls are not generally permitted (think only of how Sarasa, the true destined saviour, was not even allowed to touch a sword as a girl). On the other hand destiny is also a measure of the discomfort created by revealing the construction of gender openly. Destiny might be one more way to say that their changes in gender were never more than superficial; they were bom to be girls and that is what they have always been.
5 - Troubled Romance: Stereotyped Gender and Compulsory Heterosexuality
Throughout this essay heterosexuality has been posited as the source of normalized femininity. In this chapter, 1 will show how the entry into heterosexual romance is a compulsion which brings the shôjo period to an end. For You in Full Blossom (Hanazakari no Kimitachi he 1E~'»~ tJ (/)1!7t t;~, often shortened to Bana Kimi) by Nakajo Hisaya and Power!! (released as Girl Got Game in North America) by Seino Shizuru are romantic comedies in a high school setting. They concem young girls who, for love or ambition, Ricard 87 enter an all boys' school or boys' dorm in male guise. The ironic structure of comedy, centered on the figure of the wise fool, reveals the heroines' misunderstanding of the genders they perform. These manga also show the ways in which the heroines are forced to conform to the heterosexual matrix. 1 will argue, however, that minor characters can continue to trimsgress this matrix through homosexuality and alternative forms of heterosexuality .
Hana Kimi is the story of Mizuki, a Japanese girl raised in the V.S. She returns to
Tokyo on her own after falling in love with Izumi, a Japanese highjumper she once sawon television. She transfers to his high school which, unbeknownst to her family, is an all boys' schooL Power is very similar in plot and tone. In this case Kyo's father enrols her in high school as a boy. He wants her to join their prestigious basketball team and fulfill his
NBA dreams. She too is forced to maintain this disguise; a task made difficult when she falls in love with her roommate, Chiharu. The plots of both series revolve around humorous misunderstandings and near discoveries caused by the heroines' cross-dressing.
The Fooi
First 1 would like to take a moment to dwell on the comedie structure of these manga - the peculiar relation between reader and text created by the fool character - and what it might Mean for gender and systems ofheterosexuality. The wise fool is a common literary device. He is an apparent simpleton or Mad man who in his play reveals insights into a situation that no other character can see. Further more, his status as a fool gives him the licence to speak these insights. The problem is that no one understands him but other
Mad men and the audience. Thus in King Lear, when Lear's fool warns him that his daughters are playing him false, the king threatens to beat him. Lear only understands the Ricard 88 truth of the fool's words when he is at wit's end, destitute and yelling into the storm.
Similarly Kyo and Chiharu can only confess their love for each other when under the influence of magic mushrooms although their friend, Yura, has been hinting at their feelings all along. A privileged relationship is thus created between the fool and the audience. Both are granted the same insights and information. Readers see the text through the eyes of the fool which affects how they understand the characters and their actions.
Umeda Hokuto, the school doctor in Hana Kimi, is such a fool. This does not mean that Umeda is crazy, though he does present a kind of c10wnish excess. His gaudy dress is one example of this excess. On a fieldtrip, the students comment on the inappropriateness of his floor-Iength, bright red jacket. In another scene he dresses as a (female) dancer in a bikini with feathers, flowers and maracas (Figure 30).
Mizuki is literally petrified by the sight. His sexuality is another form of excess. He is constantly getting caught in compromising positions with students and lovers. The same field trip finds him (the chaperone) half-dressed and kissing a man in the baths. Often, when Mizuki bursts into his office, she finds him entangled with one man or another. Figure 30 Umeda's excess These incidents often turn out to be misunderstandings: massages and medical treatments.
But that such misunderstandings occur at all is due to his excessive sensuality. He himself understands his excess to be a joke. Thus he can tear open his shirt and offer to comfort
Mizuki with his body, knowing full weIl the response he will receive.
Like any good fool, Umeda has a cruel sense of humour that hits at the heart of every problem. He is the first who realizes that Nakatsu is in love with Mizuki, before the Ricard 89 boy himself. As is his style, he sneaks up behind Nakatsu and whispers in his ear: "You're in love with him aren't yoU?,,96. His statement provokes shock and vehement denial. It is also completely true. He is the dispenser of advice, the one person who sees and understands all that occurs. Of course, in the tradition of fools, most do not grasp the truths
he offers. He knows that Mizuki is a girl and that Izumi has
uncovered her secret. He knows that Izumi and Nakatsu are in
love with her. FinaUy, he is the only character allowed to speak
directly to the readers. In a single panel gag at the end of the
second volume he comments that ''this book is like a gay manga" Figure 31 This book is Iike a gaymanga (Figure 31). The other characters can only protest ineffectively in the background. This strengthens the relationship between Umeda and the readers while foregrounding his viewpoint before that the main characters.
In addition, Umeda' s insight is tied to his sexual difference. He does not require revelations of the physical body to recognize Mizuki's masquerade. Izumi fmds out that she is a girl because he feels her breast while carrying her. He later sees her in the shower to further reinforce his knowledge ofher sex. Umeda's knowledge is not located in Mizuki's body. When asked how he knew that she is a girl, he answers that it is because he is gay.
Just as Shakespeare's fool is outside the standard systems ofpropriety and rationality, and thus can see the logical failures in society, Umeda can see the breaks in the gender system because he is outside of the system ofhetero-normativity.
Figures like him appear frequently in cross-dressing tales. Robin, the mute boy who houses Einstein's spirit in Global Garden, is remarkably intuitive; he knows Ruika for who she is immediately. He is not only asexual, being a child, but also a clone conceived
96 Nakajo Hisaya, Hanazakari no Kimitachi he Vol. 1. (Tokyo: Halrusensha, 1997) 86. Ricard 90 without sexual union of the ceUs of two men (Einstein and Hikaru). Basara's Ageha is another such fool. He is the first to understand that Sarasa is a girl and the child of destiny.
Like Umeda, his knowledge is tied to sexual ambiguity. He is straight but will prostitute himselfto men ifthe need arises. He is also renowned as the drag queen, Kicho. Ageha is a post-apocalyptic M Butterfly ifthere ever was one. His excess also links him to Umeda.
His drag show is but one example of this excess. When required to change into prison garb, for example, he turns it into a strip show. In a sense the excess of these fools parodies gender within these texts just as drag does. Above all, their position allows them to comment on the systems of gender from the outside or, given the doubtful existence of an outside of discourse, at least from a critical distance.
Whether a character embodies the fool or not, this is the position the reader of these manga are asked to take. Power!! and Hana Kimi are not mystery tales. The pleasure does not come from figuring out secrets; these are revealed at the start. For example, we know that the boys are really girls. Hana Kimi opens with a scene of Mizuki in her undergarments; her cross-dressing and the reasons for it have been explained by the third page. We know which boys love them, though the boys themselves may not, and who the heroine will end up with. We knowall and like Umeda and Ageha, we watch it unfold and laugh. Yet what does it mean to associate the reader with such characters? Identification is usually assum~d to be with the main character of the same gender, Mizuki or Kyo, but that does not appear to be the case here. There is perhaps some emotional connection with the heroine but the viewing position, at least in these romantic comedies, is closer to that of the fool.
One could argue that taking a viewing position separate from the heroines stabilizes Ricard 91 the gender categories. The characters can masquerade as one gender or the other as they please but we see the truth that underlies this play. Even Nakatsu's apparent homosexuality might he undercut by the reader' s near omniscient knowledge. But is the sex of the body really the truth in question? As 1 have said, Umeda's knowledge is not dependent upon the body. He never sees or touches Mizuki' s body; he does not need to. Gender and sex do not arise from the body as 1 have argued in previous chapters. That Chiharu can touch Kyo's breast or Nakatsu Mizuki's and not link it to a female body is but one hint ofhow gender informs our interpretation of bodies. The truths understood by fools and readers are not physical sex and the gendered behaviours that people attach to sex. Umeda and Ageha's very existence undermines presumptions about gender and sex. They ridicule, through their persons and their behaviour, the assumptions people make about femininity, masculinity and sexuality. The truth they see and play with is the performance, which no one else recognizes.
Stereotypes
Irony is thus the source of humour in these romantic comedies. When we understand irony as "a form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that hearing shaH not understand and another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware, both ofthat 'more' and of the outsider's incomprehension,,,97 the fools, and by extension the readers, hecome thls second party. The comedy relies on the incomprehension of the heroines and the other characters. The incomprehension we are invited to mock is not simply the characters' failure to recognize Mizuki and Kyo as girls.
What is misunderstood, appropriately in manga about cross-dressing, is the very nature of sex, gender and sexuality. Physical sex is not the unheard truth. Mizuki and Kyo - who one Ricard 92 would assume to have the most intimate knowledge of the sex of their own bodies - are as confused~ if not more, than any other character. These cross-dressed heroines get into strange and funny situations as Oscar and others do not because they confuse gender with the stereotype of gender.
Because of the dorm environment and the importance of secrecy in Hana Kimi and
Power!!, Mizuki and Kyo are faced with the necessity of convincing those around them that they are men. The problem is that they have no idea of what it means to be a man. To be fair, the men in chapter three struggle with the issue of masculinity as weIl, though they were raised to the role. The heroines of these series err in assuming that masculinity and femininity can be defined on the basis of characteristic traits. Narrowing gender down to characteristics possessed by all who calI themselves men or women might be an impossible task. It is the same problem Butler encounters when she tries to fmd a basis for feminist politics. Representational politics, by which feminists would be united by a common participation in the category of 'woman' , is unsatisfying because it runs the risk of creating the very subject (woman) that one was trying to represent. In essence, in the attempt to defend women, feminism might further limit them by defming the category of woman. It is not a question of finding a better defmition. No defmition ofwoman can include all women because one's gender is not separable from all our other identities. We are not simply men or women. Our identities are also constituted by race, religion, nationality and many other things. There is no way to separate one of these identities from the rest. Thus any unitary definition of woman must necessarily be a stereotype.
Kyo and Mizuki are not trying to find the subject offeminism but the problem is the same. They are trying to represent man (in the sense of artistic representation rather than
97 H.W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modem English Usage. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968) Ricard 93 political representation). Unlike Butler, they assume that an essential man exists and that by extension a definition of man is possible. Instead of becoming men they create a category of man and assume that this category precedes them. It is not surprising that, just as women of colour protested the feminism of middle-class white women that had formed due to a definition of feminine essence, the male characters are puzzled by Kyo and
Mizuki's enactment of male stereotypes.
Mizuki and Kyo run into trouble because they are trying to capture some essential masculinity which does not exist. In addition Mizuki and Kyo seem to believe that there is something essentially feminine about themselves that they must hide. They try to hide their femininity by engaging in what they consider masculine behaviour. However, as we have just seen, there is no set of qualities or behaviours that make one a man or a woman. In an effort to distance themselves from femininity these girls try to live a stereotype of masculinity, which is all a definition ofman can ultimately amount to.
Whenever Kyo believes her disguise is in danger of failing, as when Chiharu touches her breast, her solution is to molest the female students (Figure 32). The idea behind her lecherous behaviour is that men are sexual predators who think only of sex; the
more she acts in this way, the manlier she will be.
Naturally, far from being impressed by her masculinity,
everyone thinks she has been driven insane by lust. Her
Figure 32 Kyo, sex-maniac friends' reaction does not Mean that the stereotype is completely without basis. A stereotype is after all a trait possessed by a portion of a group used to describe the whole. Men are not completely without sexual desire (although this desire May as easily be conditioned as ingrained and need not appear only of men). Ricard 94
Accordingly her friends' solution to her insanity is to show her pomography. Yet the existence of sexual desire does not make it characteristic of masculinity. Chiharu has no interest in watching the pomography, nor does he conform to the image of the lusty male.
His attraction to Kyo is purely emotional; the concept of physicality frightens him a great deal. He has nightmares about her coming on to him, divides their room with tape and panics at the slightest touch. This does not, however, make him effiminate; no more than
Kyo's behaviour makes her more like a man.
In similar situations Mizuki tries to act tough. In Figure 33, she punches a fellow student who had been selling pictures ofher as one of the beauties of the academy. She is so angry that her eyes change shape and turn white, dehumanizing her. Her violence is so excessive that the frame cannot contain it; the sound effect of her punch, bald, is abnormally large and seems superimposed on the page.
Her behaviour is best described as overcompensation. As in this example, she reacts to threats to her masculinity with Figure 33 Mizuki is too aggressive anger and violence. She often displays anger too great for the situation and her small frame
- such as provoking fights with men who tower over her - making it as excessive and comedic as Kyo's lust. In essence Kyo and Mizuki are taking stereotypes, exaggerating them and performing them in the manner of a drag show. In these moments they are not doser to being men. They are drag kings.
These so called male attributes are completely divorced from their personalities; as a result, they seem false. Mizuki is overly affectionate and a bit of a cry-baby. Her first words to Izumi (to his shock and dismay) are that she likes him and wants to be his friend. Ricard 95
She constantly hangs offhim: hugging him, walking arm in arm. Her behaviour, however, is not deemed unmanly, merely American eccentricity. The point is that these masculine stereotypes do not suit them; they hurt their disguises more than they help them. In fact, they are at their most masculine when they are merely themselves. No one suspects them when they are not trying to be manly. Even when in a dress - as Mizuki and the other
"girlish" boys are at the ball- she remains a boy in their eyes. They might tell her that she looks like a girl when all made up for the occasion, and many do, but underlying these statements is the firm beHef that she is not a girl.
Indeed, against all expectations these short, delicate boys are quite good at sports and popular with girls. On Valentines Day98, both are mobbed. Kyo shows offher locker full of chocolates (depressed that, as a girl, she has received so many); she receives more than even the most popular of her team-mates. The irony is that she is not adored for what she. believes to he masculine qualities but for what she has accomplished on her own merits: basketball. Despite her height, she is a great basketball player with speed and agility and several show-stopping numbers (notably using other players' faces as a spring board for dunking). For this she is considered cool and adored by all the girls. The interesting thing is she used to play as a girl and equally weIl. The greatest part of her masculine appeal does not prevent her from being feminine.
Kyo's conscious attempts to be feminine go equally awry. For example, she cooks for Chiharu in hopes that he will see her as a woman and potential girlfriend. He describes her cooking as "a bold dish, neither fancy nor pretentious: 'manly cooking,,,99. This is probably because she goes about portraying her femininity in the same way as her
98 On Valentine's Day in Japan it is traditional for girls to give chocolates to the boys they like, contrary to the practice in North America. Ricard 96 masculinity. Everyone believes her to be a boy but she struggles vainly to get Chiharu to see her as a woman. This indicates that gender in these manga is above all a matter of agreement. The idea of gender as agreement could be related to Diana Fuss' solution to the problem of representational politics. She argues for a coalition politics where woman as the subject offeminism is defined by her participation in the group. Woman no longer needs to be a univers al and stable subject preceding feminist discourse; rather a woman is a woman because she daims participation in that group. By similar logic, no one seriously doubts that Mizuki and Kyo are boys. After all, they daim to be boys and live in the boys' dorm.
The other characters expect a boy and thus that is what they see. Short, pretty boys perhaps but few are those that think they are anything else. It seems that a boy' s uniform and the occasional statement of their male gender is enough to make them masculine. Their conscious attempts to be male or female are doomed to fail because they are excessive and unnecessary .
Compulsory Heterosexuality
While these manga acknowledge that gender is not an essence, the problem of the characters ''true'' gender remains a central concem. After all, both Hana Kimi and Power!! are primarily about heterosexual romance. Such romance is ironically the goal or the result of the cross-dressing in most cases. Mizuki disguises herself in order to meet Izumi, with whom she has fallen in love, as his school is inaccessible to girls. However the romance she came to Tokyo seeking is impossible to her as a boy.1zumi cannot return her feelings until he disco vers her secret early in the first volume. He does not even want to be friends with her before he knows that she is a girl. This rejection is dosely tied to heterosexuality. When
Mizuki tells Izumi that she likes him and wants to be friends, he balks. She is described as
99 Seino Shizuru, Girl Got Game Vol. 7, trans. (Los Angeles: Tokyopop, 2000) 14. Ricard 97
"a woman mistaken for a gay man"lOO. Even though they grow doser and their love for each other increases after his discovery of her sex, neither can act on their feelings. Until
Mizuki's femininity is known to.all, touch can only he for comfort or by accident, kisses only a drunken mistake. Whereas sorne ambiguity is conceded in terms of the portrayal of gender, the narrative forbids the principal characters any relationship that is not clearly heterosexual. The same is true in Power!! While Kyo's reasons for entering the men's dorm involve basketball rather than love, these are her father's reasons. Her ultimate reason for wanting to stay is that she has fallen in love with her roommate, Chiharu; she does not want to part with him. She too struggles with the problem ofhow to express her love and how to have her feelings returned while she is a boy. Love is central to these stories and yet these are set up, despite the gender mix-up, as heterosexual relationships. It cannot proceed without the division of gender dear between both members and society.
Thus when sexuality is in question, it is suddenly important that the characters' gender be aligned to physical sex. Displays of the body, for both members of the relationship, are rampant. The flfst volumes ofboth Bana Kimi and
Power contain bath scenes where the nude female body is exposed to the view oftheir love interests. Both Chiharu and Izumi fondle the heroines' breasts by accident at least once. Revelations of sex both complicate the disguise and make romance possible. But it is not enough. Though there is a great focus on sex in this context as if it were primary and overriding, it Figure 34 Izumi sees Mizuki in the becomes c1ear that gender is still equally, ifnot more important. shower
While the girls' gender is male, they cannot be in a heterosexual couple. Kyo says it
100 Nakajo HanaKimi Vol. 1 12 Ricard 98 best: "am 1 still a girl? ... or half of a gay couple?"lOl Her donn mates seem to agree with the sentiment. They give her or Chiharu magazines about gay relationships on more than one occasion. More importantly, both Chiharu and Izumi refuse to start a relationship, not for lack of love but because of the complications of the situation. Although they know that the person they love is a girl, they cannot openly love them until that is clear to everyone.
Dates are only possible when Mizuki or Kyo are girls as when lzumi dances with Mizuki at the bail (for which she has been "dressed up" as a girl). They are fully immersed in Butler' s heterosexual matrix, "a model of gender intelligibility that assumes that for bodies to cohere and make sense there must be a stable sex expressed through a stable gender
(masculine expresses male, feminine expresses female) that is oppositionally and hierarchically detined through the practice of heterosexuality" 102. They cannot even conceive of a way to be together if they are not clearly boys and girls. ThUS, as with the shôjo period, ambiguity is permissible up to a point. However, love (and the marriage that it implies) ends this gender play by creating finn divisions and forcing the heroines to become women. Love that does not do this is not permitted, indeed is inconceivable.
Queer heterosexuality
Even relationships that are purportedly homosexual seem to he affected by this heterosexual matrix. Boys often faH in love with Kyo and Mizuki without knowing that they are girls. Their attraction results from a phenomenon that 1 caU "Nakatsu Vision". The heroines will merely smile or talk in the presence of a particular friend (the unfortunate
Nakatsu, for example) and suddenly we are given an ultra shôjo vision of her from this friend's point of view (in Hana Kimi clearly labelled as "Nakatsu Vision" as in Figure 35).
101 Seino Girl Got Game Vol. 740. 102 Butler 151. Ricard 99
The lines of the drawing become more delicate, thinner and flowers surround the face
(usually this is a close up on the face). The lips are also more defined and glossy, lashes longer and more delicate. The eyes take over the whole image; they are large, detailed and the focus of the frame. The contrast between this vision and the heroines' actual appearance (Figure 36) is striking. Despite heing portrayed as boys, these heroines seem to give off a feminine aura that affects how they are viewed by certain characters.
At these moments, the friend, he it Nakatsu or Chiharu or any of Julius' friends, is
enraptured. N akatsu is constantly struggling to resist the urge to kiss this
vision that only he can see. At first glance it seems almost as if the friend is
being drawn into the heterosexual matrix unawares; that their loves are also
understood in the oppositional terms that create the traditional genders.
Figure 35 Apparently even what appear to be homosexual relationships Nakatsu Vision are forced into a heterosexual mold. Nishiyama Chieko argues just this of yaoi manga when she discusses sexuality in shôjo manga. She claims that "feminized male characters frequently appear in girls' comic books that depict male homosexual love. The male Figure 36 The homosexual characters are included in order to represent women's realMizuki
1 roles" 03 • By her argument, Kyo and Mizuki might also be playing a feminine role in spite of themselves and their disguise.
1 would argue, to the contrary, that these characters subvert heterosexuality while remaining within the system. For one Nishiyama supports her claim with the fact that
"these comics interconnect the value of beauty with these feminized male homosexual Ricard 100 characters"I04. It is true that beauty is at issue both here and in her analysis. These ''Nakatsu visions" are all about attraction, both romantic and physical. But there is nothing inherently feminine about beauty. Indeed, the beauty of men - embodied in the figure of the bishounen - is a cornerstone of shôjo manga. One might argue that our cross-dressed heroines and Nishiyama's male homosexual characters are beautiful to an unusual extent for men but it is still just beauty. If being beautiful in ways typically associated with women (slender figures, delicate features, silky haïr, etc.) automatically made a character a representation ofwomanhood, there would be few men left in shôjo manga. Are we then to argue that all shôjo manga, includingyaoi, are actually thinly veiled lesbian romances? No, it is rather doubtful that Mizuki and company are somehow emitting some female essence, which 1 have already shown does not exist.
These visions do not correspond to their true selves even when they do not play at being boys. At best it is a gross exaggeration. Indeed, they never appear as Nakatsu and company see them except in these purely subjective shots. The difference between Figures
35 and 36 makes this clear. It seems rather that Nakatsu and his ilk are the source ofthis phenomenon. After all, if the ''Nakatsu Vision" signified some kind of overflowing femininity, others would surely see it as weIl - especially characters such as Izumi who love them. However the opposite is true. Chiharu stops seeing these visions once he knows
Kyo to be a woman; Izumi rarely sees them at all. Thus while one might claim, if one held the view that physical sex is primary, that N akatsu saw Mizuki' s feminine essence and thus was never gay, it is a weak argument. It depends on the doubtful existence of said inherent femininity. He does not conform unknowingly to the heterosexual norm but defies it.
103 Nishiyama 406. 104 Nishiyama 401. Ricard 101
In fact, the odd configuration of these homosexual relationships, inc1uding male and female bodies, is what assures the subversion. Some might assume that these relationships are, in Butler's words, homosexual "copies and replicas" 105 of heterosexuality as the relationship between butch and femme lesbians is often coded.
Butler argues the opposite is true describing it as a parody that destabilizes the terms of heterosexual discourse while "appropriating and redeploying the categories of sex"I06.
Thus the attraction for a butch woman, understood as liking "her boys to be girls,,,I07 is a desire for the transgression and destabilization of male gender and female sex that the butch represents. Nakatsu's desire is the same; he loves his boys to be girls (i.e. female).
And in the same way he parodies and troubles heterosexual romance. His love is ironically funny, like Mizuki's portrayal of masculinity, because he transgresses heterosexuality without realizing it. This displaced heterosexuality as parody explains why relationships between Kyo and Chiharu, Mizuki and Izumi are so problematic. We know they are boys and girls so the fuss seems silly. Nevertheless, ifthey date while ambiguously gendered, they will undermine the heterosexual matrix as Nakatsu does instead ofreinforcing it as it seems they must.
Despite the dogmatic insistence on heterosexuality for the heroines, this attraction seems to engender something ak:in to homosexuality. While one might argue that the romances that ensue are of a physical male and female and thus heterosexual, Nakatsu and
Chiharu (among others) do not know this. Indeed they do not even interpret these bodies in such a way. Even when they touch Mizuki or Kyo's breast, one of the primary elements of what people consider a female body, they do not recognize it as such. This is not simply a
105 Butler 123. 106 Butler 122. Ricard 102 measure of their ignorance. Rather their assumption of a masculine gender affects how they interpret the sex of the body. What is most important is the apparent gender and that is male. For all intents and purposes they have fallen in love with men with the social stigma attached to such a love relationship. Their struggles with their growing homosexuality cause them great anguish, to the amusement of the readers and fools who know that the objects of their affection consider themselves women. Nakatsu is constantly struggling against temptation and running away in tears when he fails. Chiharu is so confused by his emotions that he tries to see if other men can evoke them. touching them as he had touched
Kyo. In Chiharu's case, his problems are resolved when he finds out that Kyo is female.
However, Nakatsu does not unveil Mizuki's secret until halfway through the final volume
(volume 23).
Quite to the contrary, Nakatsu embraces his homosexuality. He turns down a pretty girl who loves him; he realizes that he will never love anyone other than Mizuki. He goes even further to declare in front of everyone his love for this boy. Ali are shocked by his admission but from that point onward he pursues his friend's love openly (though without success). He is never "rehabilitated" into heterosexuality either, as heroes such as Chiharu must be. He is never allowed any romantic relationship with the female Mizuki. Ironically, it is when he knows her to be a girl that he stops being uncontrollably attracted to her. The last time he sees anything resembling his "Nakatsu vision" is right before he fmds out the truth. Nor does he end up with a different girl, having understood the error ofhis ways. He realizes that the fact that she is a girl does not make him straight. He is happy for half a panel that her femininity might nullify ms homosexuality but denies this fleeting tht)\.tght just as quickly. In ail ways he is portrayed as a homosexual; though perhaps one that has
107 Butler 123. Ricard 103 misunderstood something essential and has little chance to win his love.
Why, if the heroes must always return to heterosexuality, do such tales of transgressive sexuality coexist within the narratives? Certainly Hana Kimi is from the start a more open forum for homosexuality, perhaps because the manga artist is also the creator of yaoi doujinshil08 under another pen name. Nakao is in love with the dorm president
Minami, one among several romances between boys in this all boys' school. Homophobes are also thoroughly mocked. When Mizuki's brother arrives in the second volume, it is made clear that homosexuals are ''the type of person he hates most"I09. Umeda quickly realizes this and plays off his fears. Shizuki jumps and trembles whenever Umeda is near and he in turn teases him with constant Httle touches. When they part, Umeda kisses him.
Nevertheless it is made clear through Umeda's expressions and comments to the readers that he has no more interest in the brother than the sister. He does not even close his eyes for the kiss which conventions of shôjo manga require). It is pure harassment, as the kiss is labelled, ajoke on Shizuki's homophobic fears.
Since it is clear that the texts, even Hana Kimi, require the heroines to be unambiguously heterosexual, acceptance of (male) homosexuality is obviously not enough.
Homosexuality is relegated to side characters even in this atmosphere of tolerance. The main characters are distanced from any "taint" ofhomosexuality. Izumi loves Mizuki and knows that she is a girl, but cannot pursue her because she does not know that he knows; she might think he is gay and give up. For the same convoluted reasons, Mizuki cannot confess because his acceptance would Mean that she could never have him without
108 Doujinshi are fan comics, sometimes original stories but often portraying copyrighted characters (Nakajo's doujinshi being of the later sort, spoofmg Inuyasha by best selling Takahasi Rumiko among others). These often have much in common with slash fiction. 109 Nakajo Rana Kimi Vol. 2 156. Ricard 104 maintaining her disguise forever. Thus, while they become closer and their love grows, they cannot admit their feelings until the secret is revealed to all. Similarly Mizuki can never respond to Nakatsu feelings for he does not love her as a girl. She is also uncomfortable with Nakao's conflation of their situations; she sees her love for Izumi as something miles away from his love ofMinami. Heterosexuality is made the norm that the heroines must conform to and homosexuality, while certainly not denied, is relegated to the sidelines.
Even so these minor characters are a small ray ofhope. They are one way to escape from conformity of gender and sexuality. It is in the nature of shôjo manga to allow its heroes youthful adventures and experimentation only to bring them back into the fold by the end. The shôjo is an ambiguously gendered figure who must, through heterosexuality, become a woman in a clearly defined sense of the word. The ugly duckling must become a swan. Accordingly shôjo romances tend to end in monogamous heterosexual relationships, often marriage. This is certainly true of most of the series examined thus far. Mizuki must adopt a more feminine style (including dresses, long haïr and visible bust) before she is reunited with Izumi after a year. Only then can they begin a "proper" heterosexual relationship in which he takes the initiative. As he tells her: ''this time l've come to meet you" 11 0. Even Umeda's sarcastic voice is silenced. After her femininity is revealed to all and she is sent home, he vanishes from her life. He no longer has advice or comments; he does not even say farewell. The endings for the other series we have looked at are not identical but all are along this vein. No matter how strong, independent or tomboyish, they are "rehabilitated" and returned to their place in gender dualities.
Not so for Nakatsu, his love transgresses sex, gender and heterosexuality and is not Ricard 105 forced to conform to the norms in the end. His is not necessarily the happiest of endings; he does not win his love. Still, he is allowed to maintain his ambiguous sexuality which cannot he defined through easy dualities. One might attribute this to Nakajo and her background but she is not the only one who allows such a small glimmer of hope. For example, the ending ofYazawa Ai's Paradise Kiss sees the heroine married to a doctor.
She must abandon her unorthodox relationship with her boyfriend George to whom she was simply the "second wife". It is Isabella, the boy who could only come into his own in a dress, who is allowed to sail off with his beloved George; he can remain a transvestite and have the ending the heroine is not allowed. That these minor characters are allowed to exist is a resistance however small to the social norm. It gives hope that perhaps one day heroines will be allowed a happy ending of a different sort, one that lleed not re-establish the heterosexual norm.
This chapter has shown how the reader is distanced from the characters' sometimes conservative conceptions of gender and sex through the comedie deviee of the fool. This viewing position and the heroines' misunderstandings allow us to see how arbitrary gender can be, how diffieult to define. And yet heterosexuality normalizes the relation to sex and gender. Minor eharaeters are allowed to transgress the heterosexual matrix but the heroines are forces to conform. They are given no option but to conform.
Conclusion
1 began my analysis with the problem of gender in shôjo manga. The seemingly straightforward question of whether these texts reinforce gender norms or whether they undermine them turned out to be quite eomplex. In the end, they do both. The manga we have studied show that girls can he anything, inc1uding boys. Yet ultimately they require
110 Nakajo HanaKimi Vol. 23 182. Ricard 106 that these same girls return to stable, dual and oppositional notions of gender for narrative closure and peace ofmind (whose exactly 1 could not say for sure).
My focus on cross-dressing stories was not incidental. The cross-dresser proves, through her performance of gender, that the gen!fered roles, behaviours and appearances that most people take for granted are constructs. She shows us that gender is always performance, one that need not have a relation to the body. This is also what our heroines do, each in het own way. Oscar, Vtena and Sapphire deny the oppositional nature of gender by being both men and women. Kiri and lto show us that sex is merely a reading of gender imposed upon the body. Sarasa and Ruika reveal the social construction of gender and sex; they show that these constructs have little to do with nature and everything to do with social expectations. Finally, Mizuki and Kyo show that femininity and masculinity can never truly he defined; there is no "form" of the woman to use Socrates' terminology. A closed definition can only amount to a stereotype and performance of that stereotype, drag.
In spite of these radical portrayals of gender, there remains a compulsion to return to a fixed conception of femininity. What becomes obvious, however, is the role that heterosexuality plays in creating these gender roles. In essence, the concept of man and woman as distinct, oppositional and natural categories with specific roles and spheres is bom ofheterosexuality. Thus love can make even the most mannish of girls, like Ito and
Kiri, traditionally feminine. Whereas those who refuse such love, as Haruhi does, remain in a kind of limbo: not asexual but nevertheless ambiguous. Yet heterosexuality is not a choice; it is a compulsion. Compulsion does not equal natural urge, as one might assume at first. Rather heterosexuality makes itself necessary for the creation of subjectivity. It is necessary, in Butler's words, in order to make the person intelligible. We saw, in Hana Ricard 107
Kimi and Power!!, howany relationship that is not c1early heterosexual, that does not lead to the fonnation of man and woman, is not conceivable. Even Haruhi will presumably abandon her innocent ignorance of romantic love and "setde down" before her series conc1udes. This does not mean that homosexuality and cross-dressing do not continue to exist; we have seen numerous examples to the contrary. Vmeda, Nakatsu and Ageha live on. They also preserve their ambiguity but this is accomplished at the cost of a place in society; Butler would argue at the price of personhood. They are minor characters, on the fringe of society or completely outside of it like Ageha, the former slave. Or like Vtena and
Oscar, they are doomed to short tragic lives. Perhaps it is a price worth paying.
What remains is the place of the reader in relation to all this. Ogi's analysis suggests that manga, through their gendered genres, categorize and attempt to define the readers. Having reached this point, 1 do not think that this is the case. Certainly it was argued in the second chapter that the tragic deaths of the heroines was a reminder of the inevitable end of the shôjo period; it tells the readers of shôjo manga that, like the audiences of Takarazuka and the women who love Oscar, they must grow up, get married and start families. 1 do not doubt that it is telling us this. What 1 doubt is that it tells us that the readers necessarily behave in such a way. Such an argument would suggest that the readers iqentify with these characters, that they take their position. We have shown the position of the reader to be something else entirely. The comedie structure of the high school romances suggested the readers read the text from the position of an outsider such as Vmeda. Furthermore, our first chapter showed us that the reader's position was not that of any character at all. The reader is in the Absent One, something that cannot be expressed.
The implication of this reading position is what the cross-dressers have been telling us Ricard 108 throughout this essay: femininity is not a unitary, definable entity. Even if shôjo manga truly form a gendered category, they do not succeed in fixing the identities oftheir readers. Ricard 109
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