S Is for Sugimoto

From Yasuko Sugimoto, I now turn to her family: her sisters Kuri, Kazusa, and Shinako, and her mother Chie (who is not named in volume 1). The Sugimoto family occupies a particular place in the story of Sweet Blue Flowers, related to the overall theme of the work as I see it.

First, as Fumi marvels when she first visits Yasuko’s home, “Her family’s rich!” (SBF, 1:303). To be clear, Fumi’s and Akira’s families are far from poor. They live in detached houses (instead of apartments), own cars, and can afford to send their daughters to exclusive (and presumably expensive) private schools. However, the Sugimotos are in another class entirely. It’s no accident that Takako Shimura modeled the Sugimoto family home on a guest house on the Tokyo estate of Marquis Toshinari Maeda, head of a leading samurai clan and (later) general in the Japanese army (1:378).

That wealth presumably comes from the position of Yasuko’s father. We’ve already encountered the fathers of both Fumi and Akira. But the Sugimoto family patriarch is unseen, unnamed, and unmentioned, at least in the story thus far. The only male presence in the Sugimoto household is Mr. Ogino, the family servant Fumi initially mistakes for Yasuko’s father (SBF, 1:299).

In the father’s absence, the Sugimoto women occupy their time with gossip and Mahjong. Except for Kazusa, an artist who formerly taught at Fujigaya for a brief time, they appear to have done little else since graduating from school. Of course, they all went to Fujigaya, and appear to have been part of that school’s Class S milieu. Shinako appears in the side story “Little Women” as the unrequited love interest of other girls (“everyone admires her,” Orie sighs) (SBF, 1:379), and (as Kuri remarks) “Mother wants to brag about how popular she was as a girl,” rather like a former high school sports star who continually retells stories of his exploits (1:305).

To my mind, the Sugimoto sisters and their mother represent another of Shimura’s critiques of Class S and yuri tropes. The Sugimoto women have achieved a sort of freedom from the patriarchal culture of Japan, to speak frankly about intimate relationships between women (much to Fumi’s embarrassment and consternation, after she’s outed by Yasuko), and to indulge in such relationships themselves.

However, it is a freedom that is open to only to a wealthy few (who do not have to worry about discrimination against LGBTQ people at work or elsewhere), is limited in time and place, and is ultimately at the sufferance of the men who wield financial and other control over these women’s lives. When those men return from their company headquarters, or golf courses, or mistresses, like Sir Thomas Bertram returning from Antigua in Mansfield Park,¹ they will reassert their authority and that of the male-dominated culture of Japan.

In other words, this is not the sort of freedom that Fumi needs or wants, even if she could achieve it in the first place. The Sugimoto women may be catalysts whose actions inadvertently help Fumi realize her identity and desires, but they can never be her models.