Ooku Episode 1 Notes

 Oh, woe is me. I planned to rewatch Ooku and see how well it all fit into my framework outlined in the previous post, but on rewatching episode 1 was hit with such density I decided to go through it more slowly, in a notes format. It definitely seems like Fumi Yoshinaga alternates between what I would consider serious structural worldbuilding, and kind of potboiler provocations, with some contradiction between the two. This makes sense, as this is a manga intended for entertainment and not a real scholarly treatise on how a country would actually biopolitically adapt to a situation where there was a 1:4 ratio between men and women. The tension therefore makes sense from a dramatic sensibility, even though it throws my theoretical edifice into chaos. No matter: Let's look through Episode 1 of Ooku from my structural framework and see what we can learn.

Episode One

We start with pure reproductive futurity and dramatic pathos, as a young farmer boy, presumed heir to the family line, is mauled by a bear and becomes the source of the red face pox. The future itself is thus biopolitically threatened. How can a feudal system survive if its property heirs are at risk?

The episode begins with a list of changes that occur: "Women become the labor force. Trades and occupations were passed down from mother to daughter. Marriage collapsed." Men are essentially prostituted out due to their economic scarcity. A real materialist read here, I feel like Engels would approve. But reproduction is still considered paramount here. For women to feel like they have a purpose, having children is considered crucial for self-fulfillment. For a woman, simply maintaining the property line is not enough. There's definitely carry over from the previously performed expectations of gender.

Marriage is basically defined as a luxury for upper classes. This basically fits with the historical record. Marriage as a property transaction still holds.

"Due to the bureaucratization of samurai society, inverting the roles of men and women was rather easy." Real admission of gender performativity here, but is this intended ironically? The rest of the show seems to be about how this gender swap actually isn't as easy as suggested. At the very least though, through bureaucratic rationalization and Confucian hierarchy, the roles are clear. There is no ambiguity about what roles MUST be performed by society.

We're introduced to our star crossed lovers, O-nobu, a merchant's daughter, and Yunoshin, a poor samurai. The Edo period tension of roles between the feudal hierarchy, where samurai are have the most prestige, and the growing power of the merchant class and its actual capital is set out here. The two would not be a good match because O-nobu is an up and coming bourgeoisie, and Yunoshin is a downwardly mobile warrior aristocrat.

Yunoshin's mother scolds him, "A man should marry into a respectable family and have a bunch of children." This feels like a provocation. We've already established that women still feel a cultural guilt for not having children, but this feels like Yoshinaga winking and nodding at her josei manga audience of women and saying, "Wouldn't it be funny if a man was told this?" And it is funny, but it definitely complicates the theoretical picture.

Yunoshin shows off his shaved head and asks, "Don't I look more manly now?" Previously we've established swordfighting as still a very male-coded hobby, while singing and dancing are still coded as more feminine. Patriarchy bends most where it is economically precarious. Women HAVE to take over as labor to keep the whole system from collapsing, but in terms of hobby and luxury, gender roles can hold in their previous forms.

The Ooku as we're introduced is a deeply hierarchical institution. A harem has rules and protocols. Those have held even as it has changed from women who are valued for their beauty, to men who are valued for their beauty.

A bit of gender play as the men of the Ooku are presented as catty gossips, laughing into their kimono sleeves like spoiled ojousamas. A queer coded man bullies Yunoshin about needing to shave his legs, showing a lot of play still in the newly constructed gender formulations. Making fun of rural hicks is still in fashion, however. The urban-rural divide persists.

Yunoshin fights back at this suggestion the gender rules are different now. Oh yeah? My haircut and kimono are actually more fashionable than yours! The rules may have changed, but the rules themselves still exist.

The men primarily occupy themselves with cooking and cleaning. This may be more polemical than realistic. We've already established that men tire more easily and are scarce resources. Would they really be doing this kind of manual labor when there are more women available? Or is this the institutional customs of the Ooku holding on in spite of change?

There is an attempted sexual assault of Yunoshin. Sexual violence here remains a gendered prerogative. "You will play the part of the woman." It seems sexual roles are still strictly proscribed.

Yunoshin thinks on the many poor women struggling to afford sperm. The luxury of the Ooku seems like a hideous waste if the men here are sexually frustrated. It's basically the hoarding of wealth by the shogunate to perform its prestige. The shogunate is powerful because it can afford to be economically profligate.

Yunoshin learn that looks and lineage are the most important hierarchies of the Ooku, when he bests the beautiful Kashiwagi at swordplay. Previously Kashiwagi excelled at the male-coded competition, but when he is bested, he's able to switch performance hierarchies. Well, you may have beaten me at swordsmanship, but actually being beautiful and well-spoken is actually more important here! Ego preservation is pretty flexible at choosing the justification system.

Yunoshin's roommate gives a tragic, very female-coded story of growing up being prostituted by his parents for money. Again, the rules of gender seem to be the most flexible when survival isn't actually at stake. Is gender itself a luxury belief?

We're now introduced to the eighth shogun, Yoshimune, a spirited and iconoclastic woman who doesn't care for a lot of the ritual of her new station. Even as she disrespects the Ooku, those invested in the structure of the system protest and request the shogun pay attention to its institutional prerogatives. Institutions are sticky even when situations and people change.

Yoshimune impresses the shogun with his own disregard for struct hierarchy. His disrespect of hierarchy ends up, ironically, getting him a promotion, but even so, he is happy to help the tailors using his common-sense know-how from hanging out with merchants. Our two main characters here really have a more modern sensibility that wouldn't have made sense at the time, but does make them much more compelling as fiction. They're so much more likable now that they have anachronistic values.

Yoshimune is named the "secret swain", the one who will take the shogun's virginity but be killed for the disgrace. So female virginity is still more prized than male virginity, despite the changing economic stakes being radically different. Is this inconsistent, or a holdover of values? This kind of thing holds only for the shogun. Poor women definitely don't seem to be as troubled by the idea of virginity. It's another luxury belief for the upper classes who can afford to do such things. Besides, being able to kill a man for besmirching your virtue is a real power play, and demonstrates the power of the shogun to be able to waste something valuable so frivolously.

At the coupling, Yoshimune reveals her "female name" as Nobu. Yoshimune requests to be able to call Yoshimine O-Nobu during their intercourse. This is interesting, we obviously see the resonance of calling her the name of his imagined lover, but he's also symbolically requesting for her to play the female sexual role. "Let me call you by your female name." Tragically, we do not see how the politics of the actual sex act go down. Who was on top? It's theoretically critical to know!

Yunoshin is not executed and is let go. He's given a new role as a commoner, allowing him to marry his true love without the class background interfering. This does read as a sop to modern audiences, he totally should have been killed. Or is this showing that Yoshimune is really and truly a dedicated reformer down to her bones? She's willing to discard any protocol if she doesn't like it.

Yoshimune is required to wear male clothing when speaking to Dutch traders. She also can't speak directly to them, but must speak through her male interpreters. This really leads a lot of credence to my male Gender Meiji Restoration read. As far as the outside world is concerned, Japan is a patriarchy, defended by robust men and not a suitable military target. Did the patriarchal world system require the holdover of so many institutional patriarchal forms? Or was this an overreaction?

Yoshimune dismisses the young and beautiful men from the Ooku, the ones most likely to be able to find marriages. But the men are crushed. They are caught up in the prestige and hierarchy of the Ooku despite their potential economic prosperity out on the literal dating market.

Yoshimune has questions about the system. Why does every head of the household have a male and female name? Is it true men used to be more plentiful? She meets with a Master Murase who has knowledge of the past. She'd like to reform such ridiculous traditions. "Unless there is a meaning behind the custom?" Murase asks, provocatively

Yoshimune is lead to the "Chronicle of the Dying Day" a record of the setup of the shogunate and Ooku system. It's author, Murase says, was a woman. A woman preserved these patriarchal forms. And the set up for the remaining episodes is basically to find out, why?

Conclusion

There's a lot of richness here, even in its inconsistency. Even this one episode has a lot to consider. But it seems the major question for the rest of the series is, why was it set up this way? Yoshimune is also a fascinating character. She's totally willing to discard a lot of feudal pretense in a way that is ahistorical, but even the mechanisms of the new, reconstituted patriarchal matriarchy are invisible to her. It doesn't quite make sense, but there's a logic to it. Even a heroic woman like her is a prisoner to hidden rules.

Now, the rest of the show is presumably about decoding the meaning of these rules. There's a lot of work to do.