UWC2101F: Writing & Critical Thinking: Aesthetic Transformation

Huang Kailin
USWP14, Paper 2
Dr. Gardner
02-10-01

Rurouni Kenshin, is a petite warrior with a battousai (thousand-man-slayer) past, upholder of justice in the Meiji Era which he has helped bring about through countless assassinations. His femininity - exemplified in his large liquid eyes and bundled red hair - also constitutes part of his cuteness. However, upon closer analysis, manga (Japanese comics) hero Kenshin is an embodiment of the new Japanese male ideal, along with immensely popular androgynous Japanese pop stars like Takuya Kimura. Particularly, Kenshin's cuteness challenges cultural critic Lori Merish's construct of cuteness in her article, "Cuteness and Commodity Aesthetics: Tom Thumb and Shirley Temple". According to Merish, cuteness 'demands a maternal response and interpellates viewers / consumers as "maternal"' (186). In other words, Merish establishes cuteness as a dominantly feminine phenomenon. What distinguishes Kenshin from Merish's model of feminised cuteness is that he is the juxtaposition of the male chauvinist and the feminised man, so-called 'sensitive new age guy' in modern terminology. The fundamental difference between the two constructions of cuteness leads to a necessary discussion of the applicability of Merish's idea of cuteness to Kenshin, and whether it is crucial to develop a new frame for interpreting cuteness.

Cuteness, as evident in Kenshin, is a form expressed through his adorable appearance, with his small frame, liquid eyes, endearing youthful smile and bundled red hair, creating an apparent vulnerability that undermines any hint of the malice he might have exhibited in his battousai past. He could have looked every bit a manga schoolgirl, save for his period costume and the physical signs of aggression he carries. The scarred cross on his face, as well as his reversed blade sword (a sword in which the position of the sharp edge is reversed, as compared to normal swords), bear testimony to the potential violence within the otherwise docile Kenshin and his history of assassination. Although Kenshin occasionally requires the assistance of bosom friend Kaoru - the main female character in the manga series, he frequently resolves his own or his acquaintances' problems through dramatic moments of transformation to his battousai glory, engaging in man-to-man fights reminiscent of those between superheroes and their alien foes.

Despite his shows of swordplay before enemies, Kenshin remains unusually subdued and domestic - like his cute appearance might suggest - off fighting grounds, resulting in a reversal of the gender dynamics between Kenshin and Kaoru. In one episode, the age-sensitive Kaoru raves freely at Kenshin because she does not believe that the youthful Kenshin - who is surprisingly tolerant of her ramblings - is already 28. In another episode, Kenshin and Kaoru share their feelings and agree that everyone has a past which they do not wish to bring up.

Compared to the males in the movies of Akira Kurosawa - director of critically acclaimed movies like "Ran" which are set against backgrounds of samurais and feudal lords - Kenshin arguably moves away from the patriarchal stereotype of Japanese chivalrous males. In a way, he demonstrates the dramatic changes in Japanese aesthetics after the nation's imperialistic conquests in World War II, due to an increase in what Merish terms 'cultural space for a feminine audience' - such as what she identified in Tom Thumb's wedding in 1863 (192-3). One distinct contrast, however, exists between the female market for Kenshin and that for Merish's examples of Tom Thumb and Shirley Temple: the latter were from a preceding time frame, the post-Industrial-Revolution, pre-World-War-II era (192, 196). Furthermore, Merish's examples of feminised cuteness signal a recognition of the 'hitherto dangerous male environments' through its attempts to abandon coarse, clownish performances tailored to male patrons, in order to attract female audiences (195). By comparison, both the female and the unconventional male motivated the creation of androgynous idols like Kenshin and other new Japanese male ideals. The Japanese example is an instance of compromise between the sexes while Merish's construct works through the exclusion of one sex to appeal to the other. The driving force behind idols like Kenshin could be attributed to the economic conditions in contemporary Japan. Following the burst of the bubble economy, men in the patriarchal Japanese society detect a possible outlet from their pressure-cooker lifestyles through chivalrous, free-willed and androgynous male models like Kenshin, who challenge the norm. Women, who were generally socially subordinate to men until the more recent rise of high profile female politicians like Tanaka, may find solace in the identification of an emotionally sensitive male like Kenshin who is tailored to female aesthetics, and whose chauvinism is kept within the confines of heroic resolution of conflicts.

If Merish's construction of feminised cuteness is to be assumed of feminised males like Kenshin, it would make sense to predict Rurouni Kenshin to be a toned-down act which is not 'vulgar', in accordance with the '"feminine" cultural style' of 'cute' (195). Interestingly, however, Merish's definition of 'vulgarity' can be seen as an expressive part of Rurouni Kenshin's cuteness without undermining it. Kenshin's closest friends represent people from different walks of life who were either social outcasts, law breakers or defiantly independent beings. Sanosuke was a fear-instilling gangster of tremendous strength, Yahiko was originally a pickpocket and Kenshin's love interest Kaoru is a sword-wielding, strong-willed family doujo (martial arts school) owner. Even though Kenshin or his friends may be represented in caricatured forms of cuteness - widened ovals for eyes, 'largeness of head in proportion' to his body and simplified fingerless limbs - appealing to what Merish terms 'the need for adult care' (187) - vulgarity still occurs in that very clown-like representation. The violence and bloodshed evident in every duel of Kenshin's - which ironically are in place for the sake of upholding his values of peace, justice and camaraderie - is yet another vulgarity. However, with due recognition for the social context of Rurouni Kenshin, these so-called vulgarities are probably not provoking to the manga's home audience. It must be emphasized again that Merish was working with early Western examples, while Rurouni Kenshin is a Japanese example that surfaced at the turn of the 21st century. Imperialism during the World War period, the Japanese ancestry of samurais, ninjas and feudal lords, as well as the spread of various forms of local entertainment have probably accustomed the Japanese audience to the form of character casting, violence and humour in Rurouni Kenshin. The tension between feminised cuteness and vulgarity is thus an existence dependent on the cultural influences affecting the audience.

With due regard for the cultural context, the dominant source of tension which plagues Kenshin, as well as other adorable Japanese feminine males, probably arises not from the conceptualization of the tension between gender stereotypes or between cuteness and vulgarity, but from his own psyche. Although Merish's forceful thesis claims that 'cuteness's preoccupation with Otherness is especially evident in the historical identification between the "cute" child and the "freak"' (188), Kenshin presents a departure from that construction. Otherness, defined within Merish's context, categorises people who depart from the mainstream of society, due to various reasons like ethnicity, unusual biological abnormalities or extraordinary talent (190-2). Freakishness, according to Merish, is synonymous with monstrosity and prodigy (192). However, Kenshin is not a child, and there is ambiguity as to whether he counts as a freak. Nonetheless, Kenshin's cuteness, to a large extent, is compounded by his Otherness, although his Otherness is not socially determined like in Merish's argument (188,197). Instead, his Otherness arises precisely because he chooses to be a lone wanderer, assuming an unknown existence, in the way he maintained a distance from mainstream society when he worked as a battousai.

In particular, his self-determined Otherness comes from the tension between his cuteness and his history of assassinations. As a frail-looking male with a submerged battousai psyche, he is, ironically, never at rest in the era he helped bring forth through bloodshed. On one hand, he neatly fits Merish's maternal model of cuteness, one that is 'generically associated with the child' (187). Yet, despite his adorable caricature during moments of comedy, a transformation to a sinister swordsman - acting in repentance for his past - always occurs at some point. Cuteness here is thus not a mere rationalization of Otherness, but also a mask for the undesirable and a metaphor for the ideal representation of the self, in this case, Kenshin as a peace-loving wanderer. Cuteness therefore serves as an expression of the disequilibrium of the feminised Japanese male. He cannot find equilibrium in society because of his heightened sensitivities and awareness that there is no pre-existing stereotype that fits him, unlike Merish's examples where cute is 'socialised' within 'familial structures': Tom Thumb resembled 'children imitating adults', while Shirley Temple is the classic child 'prodigy' who was succeeded by child stars like Jodie Foster, Helen Hunt and Drew Barrymore (194).

Kenshin's experience of Otherness, therefore, does not result from Merish's definition of freakishness, even though he is often placed in dramatic contexts of freakishness. Kenshin - though largely feminised - cannot be regarded as a freak, considering his normal looks and the fact that he acquired his swordsmanship through rigorous training, not prodigy. Rather, it is the cast of weird enemies Kenshin encounters that forms the context of freakishness. Hyottoko, literally translated as fire-man, is a fire blowing, monstrous looking man of sumo-wrestler build; Kamatari, christened 'girl-boy', is a gay character who dresses to resemble a charming, gentle young lady of the Meiji era, yet wields a lethal combination weapon comprised of a scythe and iron ball. The variety of freakish beings makes instant cosplay (literally costume-play, where fans dress up as a chosen manga or anime character) material. At the same time, they are reminiscent of the extravagantly dressed teenagers in Harajaku, Japan. Thus, in Rurouni Kenshin, Kenshin is the subject of his struggles to reconcile his past and present. It is the accompanying characters who are freaks 'culturally positioned' as 'object(s)' in the way Merish relates freakishness and cuteness (190). Merish's 'freakish' cultural objects of cuteness are objectified by their seemingly unconscious self mockery: Tom Thumb's Wedding is no serious event but an entertaining spectacle that has been parodied in children's books. Shirley Temple, child prodigy she may be, is a desexualised Lolita to her adult male benefactors in her movies and the cinema audience (191, 195). The crucial distinction is how Rurouni Kenshin uses a spectrum of 'freaks' - who are formidable yet absurd looking - to contrast and highlight Kenshin's cuteness, while consciously establishing Kenshin as a normal human being with an individual story. Thus, Rurouni Kenshin breaks away from Merish's designation of freakishness as a necessary and objectified marker of cuteness (189-190).

Clearly, the construction of cuteness is very much as Merish gathered from her reading of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, 'a culturally marked aesthetic' (185). One important finding in my analysis of Rurouni Kenshin is its adherence to this principle. However, Merish gives little regard to differences in culture between the East and the West, as well as cultural developments over time. Rurouni Kenshin's emergence as the newly feminised Japanese male ideal, one whose psychological struggles with identity are personal, human and not remotely conceptualized, is thus possible despite some degree of deviation from Merish's construction. This departure, particularly evident in the relegation of freakishness to the supporting role of contrasting cuteness, as well as in the ambiguity of vulgarity in Rurouni Kenshin, requires a new cultural framework - one that considers the applicability of a given model of cuteness over time and space - for analyzing cuteness.

Merish, Lori. "Cuteness and Commodity Aesthetics: Tom Thumb and Shirley Temple." Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, ed. Rosmarie Thomson. New York: New York University Press, 1996. 185-203.

Watsuki, Nobuhiro. Rurouni Kenshin. Vol 1-22. Tokyo: Shueisha Inc., 1994-2000. 28 vols.