Anime Book Club – Mononoke Week 5: Nue (Japanese Chimera)

When I took on this particular Book Club project, I underestimated how difficult it would be. It’s not hard in that the show itself is somehow impenetrable – I definitely have thoughts on it and it’s not like I’ve been going in cold to this viewing. I’ve had literally years to think about and interpret these stories. It’s a series that hits on a lot of tough subjects, though. The older I get the more I assume that I have guts of steel and can withstand the act of being made to experience or be reminded of upsetting things. I think to some extent that’s true, but there are still times when I’m caught off-guard. For various reasons this past couple of weeks have been rough for me. I won’t elaborate on it too much, but if you’ve been keeping up on United States news you probably have some idea. I only have a certain amount of energy to deal with that kind of material, and when I’m at my emotional limit I’m not inclined to then go watch a very intense anime series in addition to that.

That said, there are also times where I find that my emotions are likely to spill over, and focusing them on anime analysis is just what I need to turn my anger into power. It can be difficult to know where that balance is and sometimes I make mistakes – overdoing it when I should be resting, staying in bed when I should be up and fighting. It’s hard to know just when to do what and how best to honor my boundaries when I’ve also volunteered myself to speak out about difficult topics. Perhaps I’m not as experienced as I like to think I am. Whatever the case may be, I suppose the best thing I can do is to keep trying and learning and improving.

Speaking of this story arc in particular, it’s the one that’s always left the least impression on me in the past, to the point that I can barely remember the major story beats. It’s strange, because even when I haven’t watched the show in a while, I can recall at least a few vivid images from each story arc. This one, with its purposefully muted color palette and very esoteric subject matter, is a little bit tougher. Perhaps a deeper look with strengthen my mental connections.

Remember to check out previous discussions if you’re interested in the series and would like to get caught up. The comments section is always open if you’d like to share your reactions! The episode headers for the summaries below the previous week discussions link to the streaming episodes on Crunchyroll.

Week 1 – Bakeneko

Week 2 – Zashikiwarashi

Week 3 – Umibouzu

Week 4 – Noppera-bou

 

Part 1

Four men are vying for the hand of Princess Ruri in marriage. Ruri is the last surviving heir to a famous incense school, and the man who marries her will be able to revive the school and inherit something called the Todaiji. Three people, a noble named Osawa, a merchant Nakarai, and a samurai named Muromachi, have arrived to make an attempt at winning Princess Ruri’s contest. They’re waiting on a fourth man but the only person waiting with them is the Medicine Seller, looking for mononoke as usual. Rather than wait around in the cold for their missing companion, they elect to enter the mansion and begin Ruri’s challenge. The task consists of playing an incense game called “Genjiko” – Ruri will prepare five incenses and the participants have to decide which of the five are the same or different to one-another. Each of the potential combinations corresponds to a chapter in “The Tale of Genji.” As each of the incenses is prepared, all the men have different reactions and begin to second-guess their own perception. When it is over they exit the room, ostensibly to use the restroom, but actually to search the grounds for this Todaiji that interests them.

The Medicine Seller releases his scales to search for mononoke; its presence is questionable and the scales have trouble indicating any direction with certainty. When the others return to the incense room the situation becomes more intense and the mononoke begins to move. They first discover the location of the missing nobleman, Mr. Jissonji – an adjacent blood-soaked room contains his mutilated body. Next, they open Ruri’s room and watch in horror as she’s stabbed in the neck by a mysterious unseen force. The group rushes into her room, and with little concern for her they begin to pull the room apart in search of the Todaiji. The Medicine Seller identifies this as a potential starting point for identifying the mononoke, and orders the men to tell him what the Todaiji is.

Part 2

The men explain that the Todaiji is another name for what’s called the Rannatai, a piece of wood said to be incredibly fragrant and which bears the marks of several famous Japanese rulers. The person who holds the Todaiji is said to be destined to lead. They hatch a plan to hold another contest so that a winner can be named and a marriage announced, before anyone finds out about Ruri’s death. The Medicine Seller offers to prepare the incense for a game based on the Princess Kaguya legend – an incense will be associated with Princess Kaguya and another with the Old Man; the players will have to say whether the five incenses following that are Kaguya, Old Man, or neither.

The first incense seems particularly striking to Muromachi. The Medicine Seller says it is made from a paper screen covered in blood. Muromachi hallucinates a memory in which he himself murdered Jissonji, the fourth player in the game. The second incense strikes Nakarai as being made from burnt hair, but whose? It’s then shown that he himself killed Ruri out of jealousy upon seeing her making love to someone else. The third incense is given to Osawa, the only player left. The Medicine Seller implies that it might possibly be made from the Oleander he “accidentally” mixed in with the other scents, but Osawa continues anyway. When he starts to feel ill, he races outside, tripping and breaking his own neck. The Medicine Seller is left alone with the mononoke, who turns out to be the Todaiji itself. For the Todaiji is nothing but a hunk of wood unless there are people around who believe it to be something more – they must perceive it as valuable in order for it to continue receiving attention. When the Medicine Seller defeats it, it becomes wood once again. When burned it releases a beautiful scent unlike anything else, but the graves of all the men who valued it above their own life come into view. The mansion is shown to be in shambles and the Medicine Seller leaves it to decay beneath the vivid cherry blossoms.

Thoughts and Reactions

I mentioned that this story arc has always been one of the less memorable ones for me, but now that I’ve watched it again I realize that I actually recalled quite a few of the details. I think the issue was more that I wasn’t able to connect the events in the story together in any meaningful way, which allowed me to push it aside in favor of the other story arcs that were clearer from the outset. With this viewing, I felt like I got a much stronger impression of what the story was really about, and provided me with enough meat to come up with an interpretation that I was more satisfied with.

The mononoke in this story, a Nue appears to the characters in various forms, and while those forms are sort of unclear until near the end of the final act, I feel like they have some significance. In addition to the frightening mask-like entity that the Medicine Seller eventually battles, the Nue appears to various characters as a young girl, and adult woman, and a blind old crone. While the Neo-Pagan in me has certain go-to interpretations of these three phases of women’s lives, I think it’s likelier that these forms represent the different ways in which the characters interact with others and also how they feel about themselves. Muromachi seems to have a bit of an inferiority complex – considering his overreaction towards Jissonji’s insults in his flashback, it makes sense that his character has some issues that compound the particular nature of those insults. When he encounters the Nue in the garden he sees it as a young girl who appears and disappears just out of his view. A trickster, toying with a man who already feels as though he’s being disrespected by others. Nakarai sees the Nue as a young woman in her sexual prime, because that’s how he sees Princess Ruri – a woman with whom he seeks to obtain both status and sexual satisfaction (in the guise of what he considers “love”). The old woman interacts with everyone, but she’s just there; the characters consider her nothing more than a nuisance or an unimportant background element, not a threat or legitimate obstacle.

Ultimately all of the male characters seem dismissive of the threat of a mononoke in general, and all of them prove themselves to be uninterested in marriage for the sake of the woman at the center of it all, so to consider the mononoke itself as central to this story seems less satisfying than it should. What I think is that the form of the mononoke as we see it is a bit of a misdirect and that the “monster with many forms” is actually more symbolic than it first appears.

Really I think this story arc is all about the ill-effects of toxic masculinity – the harmful ways in which men are expected to act and the roles in society that they’re expected to play, and how many of those roles are detrimental to the men and those around them. “Toxic” masculinity can be difficult to define, because in doing so it’s easy to give off the impression that a lot of the things we consider masculine actually aren’t that great – in short, they aren’t. It’s then easy for people to accuse the person speaking out about it of being a man-hater; I’m going on the record right now to insist that I’m not. But I do know very well how much society has glorified certain traits and declined to punish outwardly harmful ones, conflating masculinity with a very rigid set of standards that tends to do more harm than good to pretty much everyone.

Each of the men in the story represents some of these toxic ideals. Jissonji, who we only see in Muromachi’s vision/flashback, represents the obnoxious and harmful tendency of men in power to become gate-keepers of that power. Jissonji, a recognized incense expert, derides Muromachi for both his lack of learning, as well as his rank and class. Clearly a low-grade samurai, and a country bumpkin at that, would be foolish to aspire to something as high-class as the Todaiji. This attitude is an extension of the ambition for power and greatness that men are told they have to have, and that they feel they have to keep others from achieving. They are encouraged to value specialization and minutiae to the point that it distinguishes them from the people lacking in access and training. It’s the same story with social power and wealth, both things that are coveted by many but protected by very few.

Muromachi represents “problem-solving” through violence. Jissonji is an arrogant jerk, but the only way that Muromachi can identify to confront him about it is through unsheathing his sword and murdering him. It’s this attitude of “might makes right” that we see repeated in macro mode almost on a daily basis as world leaders use the threat of nuclear war to hold each-other to an ever-more-tense stalemate.

Nakarai is the “nice-guy” who claims to actually be in love with Princess Ruri, to the extent that he’s given up his own wealth and status in order to be with her. When he spies her in bed with someone else, his true nature reveals itself; his sense of ownership over her love leads him to kill her out of jealousy. Nakarai represents the truly wretched idea that, if a man does something for the sake of a woman, she then owes him something in return. Whether that something is a relationship, emotional labor, or sexual acts is usually up to the delusions of the man who believes he has something coming to him. Nakarai is all those guys who rant at length about being friend-zoned; men who are nice to women until their advances are declined and who suddenly proclaim all women to be “bitches.” The jilted boyfriends who call their exes “crazy” in order to absolve themselves of their portion of responsibility for the relationship’s problems. The boys who bring guns to school to get back at the girls who turned them down for the prom.

Osawa is a tougher nut to crack. He meets an end that seems much more trivial than the others’ more dramatic fates. What I see in his character, though, is a stubborn and single-minded focus on his craft that places very little value on anything else. Osawa continues playing the incense game despite knowing that one of the scents might be poisonous. Because the potential payoff so so highly-valued and considered a pinnacle of his chosen craft, all other matters become unimportant to him. While all the men in the story are horrifyingly unaffected when they discover that Ruri is dead, wasting little time worrying about her dead body and its implications before literally dismantling the shelves and drawers in her room in search of the Todaiji, Osawa seems to have the most tunnel vision. His worries always seem to be more focused on the men competing with him than the woman they’re ostensibly competing to marry.

It makes a lot of sense that the mononoke in this story is a Nue or Chimera – a being that appears to be various things to various people. I think all of us, both women and men, suffer various ill-effects of toxic masculinity based on what we’re exposed to and with whom we interact. For me, I think Jissonji, the arrogant gatekeeper rings most true. As a woman in a fandom that for such a long time seemed to be dominated by boys and men, my knowledge and expertise have been questioned time and time again as a sort of test of my right to be in fandom spaces. I recall many years ago when I wore a T-shirt bearing the name of a popular game franchise to a convention, and a young man cornered me and rudely asked me if I’d actually played that game. I didn’t recognize the situation for what it was back then, but I knew how insulted I felt having to defend myself and my hobbies to someone who didn’t even know me. I find it especially telling that this story is formed around an incredibly esoteric (some may say “geeky”) sort of hobby or activity – the type of thing that men are encouraged to codify, complicate, and turn into a competition. Much like with video games or sports, some men find it their duty to create barriers of entry which outsiders can never hope to penetrate.

I know many women who’ve seen the monstrous faces of the chimera’s various aspects, and though they may look and act differently, they’re all rooted in the same problem. What strikes me most about this story and what I think is one of the most important things to mention is the fact that, despite what they may say otherwise, all the men competing for Ruri’s hand see her as nothing more than an object to be won or owned or utilized. It’s quite upsetting to see how little the men are affected when they discover that Ruri has been killed. Almost without hesitation, they begin plotting how to pass off a false marriage so that at least one of them can still inherit the incense school and Todaiji. I think that itself is the core of all this – men who display toxic attitudes, whether they realize it or not, somehow always seem to believe in the inferiority of women (or anyone who is not a cisgender male). When leadership and respect are predicated on muted emotion, greater physical power, and the ability to memorize and regurgitate minutiae (things that are not limited to men but which women still seem to be discouraged from being, having, and doing), it stands to reason that some men would look at women as trivial creatures. Things to use rather than individuals to know and love as equal partners.

Because this series is, as I believe, comprised of stories that bring to light the injustices that women endure, I wanted to spend a bit of time on a line that the Medicine Seller speaks to the Nue prior to dispatching it. As he narrates the mononoke’s truth and reason, he states that, in order to remain relevant and powerful, the Nue, produced from the Todaiji itself, had to continue to be seen as something of value. The legend of the beautiful princess laying in wait for the right nobleman to arrive and prove his worth above all others became like a drug continuing to enthrall men and allowing the cycle to continue. The Todaiji became an object valued by powerful men, collected and hoarded behind closed doors. A hunk of wood that gained value just because men decided that they wanted it. As the Medicine Seller proves, though, wood is meant to be burned; when the Todaiji is allowed to serve the purpose for which is was made (or to be the person it always was, to continue the metaphor), the situation resolves itself. Though men may no longer come to the old mansion in droves, the land is now returned to its natural state. I think at the heart of this is the idea that some women put a lot of energy into appealing to men directly, whether that’s through looking or acting a certain way, or sacrificing their own interests in favor of something that might be seen as more in line with men’s expectations of them. Ultimately the only person they need to answer to is themselves; people, women included, are their best self when they don’t allow their likes, dislikes, or personality to become subordinate to someone else’s.

I’d like to leave off with a thought. I’ve spoken a lot about the toxic aspects of masculinity; the things about men that have harmed myself and others (including men themselves!). I think a lot about what non-toxic masculinity looks like and how men can choose to be the good people I know most of them are. To me, a good man is someone who isn’t afraid to show kindness. They don’t berate people for crying or showing emotion. They choose to defuse situations rather than physically fighting. They treat others respectfully and choose not to play “devil’s advocate” or explain things to people who already know what they’re talking about. They are caring lovers but also don’t assume that the universe owes them sex with a partner. They use their strength to help others rise up rather than to hold them down. There are terrible messages and bad cultural attitudes all over the place that beat the kindness and gentleness out of men; I think it takes hard work and self-awareness to minimize these influences and feel comfortable making different choices.

Next time (most likely next week, but it could be delayed depending on various factors), we return to Bakeneko in its second incarnation. There are some subtle connections between the two stories that I hope you’ll look for when you’re watching. I hope you enjoy it!