“Such an Old-Fashioned Woman”
Asako Kageyama is the tragic heroine of Rokumeikan. Asako was a geisha when she met her former lover Einosuke Kiyohara and later was elevated to the aristocracy by her marriage to Count Kageyama. Such marriages were not uncommon in the Meiji era, as leading politicians looking to host social gatherings sought out geisha used to dealing with men in a social context, making them their mistresses or (as in the case of Prime Minister Hirobumi Itō) their wives.
If this was Count Kageyama’s intention in marrying Asako, it was thwarted. Asako proved to be a retiring sort, apparently never venturing outside the Kageyama estate, and certainly not to the Rokumeikan. As she says, “I’m such an old-fashioned woman, I can’t possibly go to such a fashionable place.”1
But she does go to the Rokumeikan to try to save the life of her son Hisao, previously bent on the assassination of Einosuke Kiyohara, his father and Asako’s former lover. Her action comes to naught: Hisao dies, shot by his father. It is strongly implied that Kiyohara dies as well, killed by Count Kageyama’s henchman Tobita. Asako herself is left to live out her life with Count Kageyama, in a marriage from which all illusions of love and tenderness have been stripped, with only raw power and resentment remaining.
Asako, more than Kiyohara, Hisao, or Akiko, is thus the great tragic figure of Rokumeikan. Akiko is young and still has the possibility of finding happiness. Hisao and Kiyohara are beyond all feelings. But Asako has only a life without hope stretching ahead of her.
Sweet Blue Flowers is not a tragedy, but if anyone in the manga can be said to be a tragic figure, it is Kyoko Ikumi. It’s therefore fitting that Shimura selected her to play Asako. She does not look the part—her short brown hair totally unlike Asako’s long black hair—but otherwise she fits the role to a T, with her reticence, old-fashioned air, unhappy past, troubled present, and uncertain future. As I wrote of Kyoko in a previous chapter, “If this were a traditional [Class S] story, the only suspense would be whether her remaining life would be short and unhappy or long and unhappy.”
In her dissertation on Rokumeikan, Mami Harano rhetorically asks why Japanese audiences would continue to flock to a play in which power wins and the heroine loses. Harano answers that audiences see in Asako someone who breaks the bonds of convention and dares to love: to engage in romantic love with her illicit lover Kiyohara, to show maternal love toward her illegitimate son Hisao, to choose affection (ninjō) over duty (giri).2
People often speak of “the power of love.” In Rokumeikan love has no power, at least in terms of the outworking of the plot. But it still has the power to move us. As Harano writes, “Observing all of the contradictions in her life and seeing all the unfairness and inequality in the world, audiences feel empathy with Asako ….”3 I think the same can be said of Kyoko in Sweet Blue Flowers. Her life is messed up, her mother ill and dependent, her hoped-for relationship with Yasuko thwarted, and her ongoing relationship with Ko in trouble, but she at least has her friendship with Akira and our sympathy as readers.
Sometimes a secondary character will break out from the pack and achieve a special place in the audience’s heart (for example, Nanami in Revolutionary Girl Utena). Kyoko is such a character for me. Though she is not the star of Sweet Blue Flowers as a whole, she is undoubtedly the star of this section of it.