Playing with Pain: The Politics of Asobigokoro in Enzai Falsely Accused (original) (raw)
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Anime Pleasures as a Playground for Sexuality, Power, and Resistance
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This paper argues that the pleasure of viewing anime (Japanese animation) enables anime otaku's playful practices and engenders an imperceptible politics in viewers' own favor. First, by examining two anime works, Fooly Cooly (2003) and Revolutionary Girl Utena (1999)(2000)(2001), I argue that anime images embody the pleasure of evasion and the pleasure of transgression as a form of resistance to the regulatory power and the normative sexuality. Deliberately deploying (1) void signifiers, (2) bodily senses, (3) liminal conditions, and (4) taboos and prohibitive themes, both anime works provide a temporal revelation of social orders and body disciplines for viewers. Further, these evasive and transgressive pleasures empower anime otaku (commonly referring to obsessive fans among English speakers) to go beyond image consumption, actively and constantly changing, manipulating, and subverting anime images in their practices, such as creating amateur manga, peer-to-peer networks and websites, and anime cosplay (costume-roleplay). Anime otaku's pleasurable practices demonstrate de-assurance of their supposed identity and engender an imperceptible but playful politics that strays from social structures in which they reside.
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The Asian Yearbook of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. , 2019
Is it inherently wrong, or inescapably harmful, to make a game of rape? For the activists , politicians and pundits in ''the West'' who learned about the existence of the Japanese video game RapeLay, the answer would be a resounding and self-evident, 'yes!' The controversy the game sparked was relatively unexpected in its native Japan, where the game forms part of a broad erotic cartoon and game culture. Our analysis argues that the reaction in the West is an example of orientalism and yellow peril, wherein the Japanese 'Other' was targeted as immoral, dangerous and sexually deviant , spurring a call to discipline, educate and enlighten Japanese regulators and industry leaders about the perceived harms attached to sexually violent video games. In the second half of our article we problematize the discourse and reaction of the anti-Rape-Lay movement, and challenge the essentialist reading of the game as having a singular, stable and malevolent meaning. We discuss the possibilities of interpreting the video game through catharsis/sublimation theory, rape terror management, anime orientation , age play and a rape fantasy kinky framework.
Online Yaoi Fanfiction and Explorations of Female Desire through Sexually Exploited Male Bodies
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
This essay will try to trace the phenomena of rape, dub-con (dubious consent), and non-con (non consent) as literary expressions of sexual violence which find their graphic and image-laden expression in anglophoneyaoi (fiction centred upon male homoerotic relationship (s) in the Japanese anime/manga context) fanfictions (fiction written by fans based on an extant work). Through my work, I try to delve into the question of consent and the rationale of such literary acts through fan ethnography. Also there is the fiction-based otherization of the authorial self as fanfiction is written purely for the pleasure (often masturbatory) of the author and the intended and implied audience (the yaoifanbase) who, while harboring and finding pleasure in such fantasies, do not subscribe to such notions in real life nor would they enjoy to be in such situations. The essay also deals with the question of how gay men are represented in such texts and their discomfort in such representations, where t...
Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, 2020
During the twenty-first century, global developments with graphic texts have seen positive changes in the representation of characters and storylines representing female-led narratives and perspectives. Recent Japanese graphic texts offer an instructive window into concerns about feminist comics and graphic novels which not only represent a vital intervention in terms of contemporary Japanese feminist politics but also reinforce their relevance as feminist art activism within a global frame. Taking into account the popularity of manga worldwide this article argues that the growing range of Japanese texts with clear feminist messages marks an intervention on behalf of female creators in keeping with the theory and practice of contemporary feminist discourse. Additionally, this Japanese evolution illustrates the ways in which second wave feminism, particularly feminist art, has impacted women on a global scale. Consequently, the article explores the important role of intersectionality alongside themes relating to the body and sexuality, subversion of the monstrous feminine, feminist activism by considering the narrative of Rokudenashiko’s graphic memoir What is Obscenity?: The story of a good for nothing artist and her pussy (2016).
2015
Readers and scholars of monogatari-court tales written between the ninth and the early twelfth century (during the Heian and Kamakura periods)-have generally agreed that much of their focus is on amorous encounters. They have, however, rarely addressed the question of whether these encounters are mutually desirable or, on the contrary, uninvited and therefore aggressive. For fear of anachronism, the topic of sexual violence has not been commonly pursued in the analyses of monogatari. I argue that not only can the phenomenon of sexual violence be clearly defined in the context of the monogatari genre, by drawing on contemporary feminist theories and philosophical debates, but also that it is easily identifiable within the text of these tales, by virtue of the coherent and cohesive patterns used to represent it. In my analysis of seven monogatari-Taketori, Utsuho, Ochikubo, Genji, Yoru no Nezame, Torikaebaya and Ariake no wakare-I follow the development of the textual representations of sexual violence and analyze them in relation to the role of these tales in supporting or subverting existing gender hierarchies. Finally, I examine the connection between representations of sexual violence and the monogatari genre itself. By drawing on an extensive comparative approach that contrasts the Japanese monogatari with the Western genres of fairy tale, novel, romance and fan fiction, I argue that female readers and writers of monogatari could only address the topic of sexual violence within the confines of a genre avowedly fictitious, which, precisely because of its fictitiousness, provided a textual safe space. 1. Introduction: Rape across Time .