Abusive Relations Revisited

Content note: This chapter discusses child sexual abuse.

Now that the Fujigaya production of Rokumeikan has ended, the story of Sweet Blue Flowers moves on to other matters. After the congratulations to the actors and reviews of the performances, the chapter ends with Fumi Manjome being surprised by the news that her cousin Chizu has a new baby and is coming to visit (SBF, 3:112–13). The next chapter (“After the Banquet”) opens with an image of a young and vulnerable Fumi and is devoted to (re)telling the story of Fumi’s childhood relationship with Chizu.

I’ve already had my say about the abusive nature of this relationship. Does this chapter add anything to our understanding of Fumi and Chizu? Here are my thoughts on this question—which, like all my thoughts on Sweet Blue Flowers, are open to correction.

First, Chizu now has a family name, “Hanashiro,” as given in the character introductions for volume 3 (SBF, 3:5). In Japanese, the first part of her family name is the character for “flower,” the same character used in the Japanese title of the manga and the title of Nobuko Yoshiya’s Hana monogatari Class S series. The second part of the name is the character for “castle,” but it shares the same pronunciation as the character for the color “white.”

“White” in combination with “flower” evokes the white lily that symbolized passionate but pure romance in Class S culture. Its Japanese name subsequently became the name of the yuri genre. Considering Chizu’s history with Fumi, this seems a somewhat ironic pun on Shimura’s part.

Second, a brief comment about the title of the chapter. The translator’s notes for the VIZ Media edition are silent as to its origin and meaning, but other sources speculate that it references Yukio Mishima’s 1960 novel After the Banquet (Utage no ato). This is appropriate if true since the last few chapters focused on another Mishima work. The novel portrays an ill-fated marriage between an elderly politician and a middle-aged restaurant owner, who first meet at a banquet held at her restaurant. The New York Times review summarizes the novel’s conclusion as “Love is strong, but too weak to hold disparate natures together.”¹

The theme of “disparate natures” in an equally ill-fated relationship marked by an age gap is certainly apropos here. The purpose of the chapter seems to be to explore the nuances of Chizu’s and Fumi’s relationship. It also (perhaps deliberately?) contains clues to just how wide the gap in their ages was.

The story starts with Fumi beginning second grade, having moved away from Akira, whom she met in first grade. (See the chapter “Ten(?) years after” for more on the chronology.) Fumi would thus now be seven years old. We see Fumi’s introduction to her new class, her feelings of loneliness and thoughts of Akira, her unwillingness to go back to school after the first day, and (after her return) the beginning of what appears to be a budding friendship with two girls in her class (SBF, 3:116–23). And then Chizu comes to play.

At this point in the story, Chizu appears to be on the cusp of being a teenager (perhaps twelve or thirteen years old?), “very rebellious,” according to her mother, and not “obedient” like Fumi. Fumi clearly looks up to Chizu, looks forward to her visits, and is disappointed that she can’t sleep over (SBF, 3:124–26).

Then the story skips between pages to a time when Fumi is in fifth grade (SBF, 3:126–27), and is thus at least ten years old. Chizu’s age is not referenced, but if we take her uniform as that of a high schooler, she is now at least fifteen years old and perhaps as old as seventeen. However, her remark to Fumi that “You’re taller than me!” and her comment about “Girls these days!” seem to imply that Chizu herself sees the age gap between herself and Fumi as smaller than the five or more years it actually is (3:127–28).

Soon after, Chizu’s family moves closer to Fumi’s, implying that the two girls will see each other much more frequently (SBF, 3:128). We then time skip again between pages, with Chizu now headed off to university, and thus at least seventeen or eighteen years old, with Fumi therefore around twelve or thirteen years old, or perhaps slightly younger (3:128–29). The subsequent conversation over dinner and in bed highlights the pressure Chizu feels to marry and Fumi’s lack of interest in boys (3:130–32).

Though it’s not spelled out in so many words, I sense that the sexual activity between the two begins shortly after this. How frequent it was and long it continued are not clear. However, it ended before the time that Fumi’s family moved back to Kamakura, Fumi began attending Matsuoka (at the age of fifteen), had her reunion with Akira, and was then surprised and shocked by Chizu’s marriage (SBF, 1:20–25, 1:33-40). If we assume that the age gap between Fumi and Chizu is five years, then at the time of her marriage Chizu would have been twenty years old, now officially an adult, and would have completed at least two years of university.

The chapter features one last time skip, as we come back to the present day with an image of Chizu lost in rueful thought (SBF, 3:132–33). She’s interrupted by Fumi bringing two cups of tea and a piece of cake—a hark back to earlier meetings between the two (3:124, 3:130). Chizu enthuses about the possibility of moving to Kamakura near Fumi, stops and thinks better of it, and then apologizes to Fumi: “Just kidding.” Fumi stares at her, drawn in a full-body profile view that echoes but reverses the image of a young and vulnerable Fumi with which the chapter begins (3:133–34, 3:115).

The parallels to earlier scenes continue as Chizu again asks Fumi if she likes anyone. This time Fumi answers, “Yes.” When Chizu questions her further regarding the object of her affections, Fumi replies, “A girl.” Chizu apologizes again (“I’m the one who made you that way.”), but Fumi resists this interpretation (“Don’t say it like that.”) (SBF, 3:134–35).

As the conversation continues, Chizu is overcome with regret and more than a hint of jealousy (“Do you like her more than me?”). She muses on her daughter’s resemblance to Fumi and finally breaks down in tears in contemplation of the path her own life has taken compared to Fumi’s (“I can’t be that kind of girl.”) (SBF, 3:136–37).

The last (unspoken) words are Fumi’s. She thinks to herself, “My love for Chizu was real,” before drawing a line under the whole affair: “And that’s the truth” (SBF, 3:138).

But we as readers can’t help wondering, what really is the truth here? Clearly, Chizu thinks of herself, and by implication exonerates herself, as a victim of circumstances beyond her control: that she was pressured into marrying, and that social prejudices and ties of blood (“We’re girls … and cousins.”) kept her from having the relationship she wanted to have with Fumi (SBF, 3:137).

What is less clear to me is whether Takako Shimura wants us to think of Chizu as a victim. Chizu was certainly hemmed in by the expectations of her family and society, expectations that limited whom she could love and have as a life partner. On the other hand, Fumi was just past childhood, and Chizu was nearly an adult. If Chizu was drawn to women, she could have—and should have—sought out someone closer to her own age, whether at high school or university. Instead, in Fumi she found and exploited a young girl for her own purposes, a girl who was predisposed to look up to her and follow her lead.

As for Fumi, objectively speaking, she was a victim of abuse, but I don’t think she regards herself as such. I do not believe this is because she was manipulated into this view, but rather because this is consistent with her overall personality as portrayed in the manga.

To paraphrase what I previously wrote, Fumi is a person with a “steel core,” a deeply emotional person who ultimately does not let her emotions distract her from who she is and what she wants. Whether Chizu “made [her] that way” is irrelevant to Fumi. As she tells her friends later in volume 3, she is “that type of girl,” and that’s all there is to it.

The final image of the chapter again echoes and reverses the chapter’s initial image of a young and vulnerable Fumi: eyes no longer cast down, she looks straight ahead, her glasses and her ponytail (a change from her typical more childish pigtails) marking the maturity that she is well on the way to achieving (SBF, 3:138).

In the end, I’ll repeat what I previously wrote about Chizu: “Sweet Blue Flowers seems to valorize relationships between equals and implicitly criticize unequal relationships based on age or other hierarchies. … From this point of view, Chizu’s relationship with Fumi offers the reader another example of the potential harms inherent in and inseparable from some classic yuri tropes.”

Although Chizu is featured in character introductions later in volume 3 and in volume 4, this is the last time she plays a part in the events of the manga. What happened between Fumi and Chizu is now in the past. What will happen between Fumi and Akira is now the most important question.