Mukokuseki and Concepts of Race and Beauty

Eleven years ago, I wrote about mukokuseki, the Japanese term for the “race-neutral” big-eyed look favored in anime and manga. As a relatively new anime fan, I was struck by how western-appearing the characters looked... or so I saw it then.

At that time, I read the TV Tropes essay on mukokuseki, which has since been updated and is even more interesting to read now than it was then. The most commonly accepted explanation for why manga and anime characters typically have big round eyes is attributed to Osamu Tezuka being influenced by Disney characters, and his great success more or less cementing a certain look for manga and anime characters ever after that.

Recently I thought about the issue again in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement and civil rights protests in the U.S. I support Black Lives Matter and all civil protestors, because attitudes toward race and ethnicity have not only affected me personally and professionally as an American of Japanese ancestry, but have profoundly affected the lives of millions of Americans, including white Americans. It’s impossible to divorce oneself from these issues if you are an American, no matter what your color.

To me, the obvious, logical, and gracious solution is to acknowledge that we truly are all equal in this country and our culture; that injustices happened and mistakes were made in the past; and that moving forward into the future that the entertainment media that reflects our society has to do a much better job of representing everyone who lives here.

Anime and manga – especially anime and manga translated into English – is of course a niche medium, enjoyed here in the U.S. by people who appreciate Japanese pop culture, or who at the very least are not averse to Japanese culture and Japanese people. I recall recognizing, early on, the feeling of being comfortable when attending anime conventions. I knew I was somewhere where my Japanese face was always going to be welcome and not looked at askance.

I’ve been thinking about mukokuseki in the context of representation, because it occurred to me that manga and anime could have gone another way.

Take, for example, the real-life historical figure of Toshizo Hijikata. Hijikata was the vice-captain of the Shinsengumi, the legendary samurai force tasked with guarding the last shogun in 19th-century Japan. If you’re an anime fan, you already know that there are a lot of depictions of the Shinsengumi in anime and manga, from Kaze Hikaru to Peacemaker Kurogame to Gintama, and many other story universes.

The Shinsengumi – let’s leave aside for a moment the fact that they were an uber-reactionary law enforcement division of a rigidly hierarchical government system – are usually presented in a romanticized fashion as the last samurai of a dying era.

Hijikata in particular is a heavily romanticized figure. He was a handsome man (see his Wikipedia page for proof), and was idolized during his lifetime by many.

Here’s Hijikata as depicted in the Hakuouki anime series:

And here he is in the Gintama universe:

Notice anything? They look pretty Japanese, don’t they?

Representation has value not only for the obvious reasons of inclusivity and fairness, but for other reasons too. You can argue that the idea of what makes someone beautiful or attractive is of lesser importance, but I would say it’s part of the same thing. Do you see a certain segment of society or overlook them? And – the most difficult question of all – does that segment of society itself see and accept themselves as valued, attractive, important? Because seeing people who look like you being represented in your culture is part of it, and has more of a significant impact than you might think, especially if you are younger.

I wonder what would have been the outcome if Osamu Tezuka, instead of going with the Disney-inspired round-eyed look, had decided to create character designs that more authentically represented the way most Japanese people look.

One choice made over 70 years ago influenced the self-concept of generations that came after it. It’s something to think about.

The Romance of the Shinsengumi

I am currently finishing the writing of a novel called Kaminishi. It's a time-travel yaoi romance about a samurai warlord and a modern-day American graduate student. It's mostly set in Japan in 1851.

Now, 1851 is a tricky year to try to recreate. That was two years before Commodore Perry arrived with his black ships - so the Japanese characters, particularly the samurai, need to be described as looking authentically late-Edo period in their clothing. While doing research for this novel, however, I discovered that there are a lot of movies that are set either in the very late-Edo period - the Shinsengumi period, when the shogunate was about to lose power and bite the dust as an institution - or in the Warring States period, around 1600, with Kenshin Uesugi, Nobunaga Oda and all those guys. But there aren't a lot of movies set in-between those two times, or more specifically, in the period just before Perry landed; in other words, the period I need to recreate visually for the reader in terms of what people wore, what the cities of Kyoto and Edo (Tokyo) looked like then, what foods they ate, etc.

The Shinsengumi period (1860s) still had samurai, and it is late-Edo - the end of the Edo period, in fact - so it's been tempting for me to try to use movies and anime set in that time period for research. The problem is: not only Western ideas, but Western fashions had already begun to infiltrate Japanese society, even the samurai, by then.

Some samurai began wearing Western-style soldier dress. But thankfully - not the Shinsengumi. ;)

The Shinsengumi fascinate me and it's easy to romanticize them, as it is to romanticize the last of any breed, culture or group. They were the samurai holdouts, the representatives of a dying era and cult of ideals.

As part of my research, I recently watched Peace Maker Kurogane, a rather uneven anime series about the Shinsengumi. The protagonist is an annoying brat named Tetsunosuke Ichimura:




Tetsu joins the Shinsengumi, for whom his older brother Tatsunosuke already works as a bookkeeper:




Both Tetsu and his brother Tatsu actually existed and are documented Shinsengumi members. I kind of doubt the real-life Tetsu looked like that, however. ;)

Peace Maker Kurogane begins as a rather comical and lighthearted series, but in the last four or five episodes it turns gut-wrenchingly, hideously violent. It's as if a 24-episode TV series started off as Pokemon and then turned into Silence of the Lambs around episode 19 or 20 or so. (One could write a post just on bizarre tone shifts in anime. And Peace Maker Kurogane should top the list.)

If you watch any movies or anime about the Shinsengumi, the major players become familiar quite quickly. For us fangirls, Soji Okita is a favorite.




Historically, Soji Okita was supposed to be tall and dark. He was an excellent swordsman, and he died of tuberculosis. If you're watching a Shinsengumi story and a samurai suddenly starts coughing up blood, that's Soji.

In Peace Maker Kurogane, Soji is so beautiful that he looks female. Soji Okita, for some reason, has been personified as a bishonen in Shinsengumi recreations, including the movie Gohatto where he's played by Shinji Takeda; and the TV series Shinsengumi! where he's played by Tatsuya Fujiwara (Light Yagami in the Death Note movies).

The two leaders of the Shinsengumi were Isami Kondo and Toshizo Hijikata. Here's Kondo in Peace Maker Kurogane:



... and Hijikata:




What I'm about to show you next may shock you a little.

This is Isami Kondo.



And this is Toshizo Hijikata.




One thing about the Shinsengumi that differentiates them from other samurai is: we have photographs of some of them.

Most historical figures are a little misty around the edges. We read about their childhoods and adult lives, their exploits, triumphs, failures... and they seem more like characters in a book than people who actually lived.

But starting in the mid-19th century, even in isolated Japan, some of those figures were forever immortalized by the new technology: photography.

When I look at the photos of Kondo and Hijikata, it jolts me. Suddenly all the romantic imagery of the end of the samurai and Japan's pre-industrial era come smack up against hard reality. The Shinsengumi were samurai in an era when the samurai actually had to fight again. After hundreds of years of an indolent peace in which they largely engaged in cultural pursuits, the Shinsengumi were the last samurai to take up arms; and they went out in a fierce, bloody blaze of glory. Kondo was captured and beheaded in 1868 at the age of 33. Hijikata was killed a year later on the battlefield at Hakodate. He was 34 years old.

A new Shinsengumi anime series, Hakuouki, just started this spring. The legend of the Shinsengumi continues to evoke the dream-like beauty of that historical era in Japan and the long twilight - and violent end - of the samurai culture in our imaginations. The drawing to a close of that era is a theme in Kaminishi. When the novel comes out, in the tradition of kigo, or change-of-seasons imagery, look for a lot of falling autumn leaves. ;)