Journey to the West

I’ve previously noted that the VIZ Media edition of Sweet Blue Flowers is relatively Westernized compared to many other translated manga, particularly in its complete omission of Japanese honorifics. As a result, some may accuse the VIZ editorial team of removing the Japanese aspects of the manga to appeal to Western audiences—analogous to past practices that turned Usagi Tsukino of Sailor Moon into “Serena” and her boyfriend Mamoru into “Darien Shields.”

But Sweet Blue Flowers was already relatively deficient in “Japaneseness” in its original form as Aoi hana, especially compared to other manga and anime set in Japanese high schools. For example, it lacks (or has in only minimal form) scenes set at cultural festivals, typically the sites of romantic encounters. Fujigaya Women’s Academy does have a cultural festival independent of the theater festival, but it is shown on only one page (SBF, 1:201). Matsuoka Girls’ High School has no cultural festival at all—a source of continual complaints by Yassan, Pon, and Mogi.

Sweet Blue Flowers also lacks any scenes set at fireworks shows, again a common manga and anime setting where couples can show affection and boys can compliment girls on how good they look wearing yukata.

Even more interesting, Sweet Blue Flowers has almost no scenes that depict or even hint at traditional Japanese religious practices associated with Buddhism or Shintō. The characters do not visit temples at the new year or for a festival—again, all staples of conventional high school manga and anime. Also, none of the scenes set in the characters’ houses depict the traditional alcoves containing pictures of the deceased (for example, Fumi’s dead grandmother) and associated offerings.¹ With one minor exception, the only religious symbols, buildings, or people depicted in Sweet Blue Flowers are those associated with Christianity, a Western import to Japan.²

Beyond religion, the characters of Sweet Blue Flowers are shown in several contexts as oriented toward the West and (by implication) rejecting at least certain aspects of Japanese culture. Most notably, both Yasuko and Kawasaki leave Japan to study abroad in England. While there, they live an idyllic existence in a cozy English house with a friendly English landlady, and Kawasaki even acquires an English boyfriend (SBF, 4:246, 4:338). They are followed in turn by Akira and her fellow Fujigaya students, who travel to England on their school trip, and later by Ueda, who also elects to study in England (4:239–43, 4:337–39).

Unlike the students at the exclusive and expensive Fujigaya Women’s Academy, the Matsuoka students can’t afford to go abroad for school trips. However, even though they stay close to home, they reject a stereotypical “Japanese” school trip. In particular, they do not even consider a trip to Kyoto, the traditional capital and symbolic heart of Japan that is the go-to destination for school trips in most manga and anime.

Instead, their main options appear to be a visit to the park-like island setting of Yakushima (off the southern tip of Kyushu) or the Huis Ten Bosch theme park near Nagasaki (SBF, 4:101). Huis Ten Bosch features a collection of imitation Dutch buildings commemorating the time when Nagasaki was a Dutch trading post where Western goods and (perhaps more important) Western ideas first entered Japan.

Ultimately the students choose Huis Ten Bosch and Nagasaki over Yakushima—not to mention Kyoto (SBF, 4:108). However, when the Matsuoka school trip is depicted in a later chapter of Sweet Blue Flowers, the focus is not on the imitation-Western setting of Huis Ten Bosch, but on the real-life Glover Garden in Nagasaki—home to a Scottish merchant who was a key figure in Japan’s early industrialization (4:118, 4:131–35). Even Glover Garden does not satisfy their appetite for things Western, though: Fumi and her friends still prefer the real West to the West-in-Japan, dreaming of trips to Europe and exclaiming, “I wanna go to London too!” (4:219–20, 4:244, 4:293–94).

What might this focus on the West and Western-influenced settings mean in the context of Sweet Blue Flower? Erica Friedman discusses a 1990s yuri trope, “Going to America:” “‘America’ was the place where lesbians fantasized they could go to be free. Many a classic Yuri manga would end with the two women ‘Going to America’ as a cipher for ‘and they lived happily ever after.’”³

England serves a similar function in Sweet Blue Flowers. It is where the characters can go (in body or in spirit) to do things they cannot do in Japan. Yasuko escapes the prison of her role as the “girl prince” and becomes a better and happier person (SBF, 4:22–23, 4:130–31, 4:242). Akira can confide in Yasuko and have a candid conversation about her relationship with Fumi (4:252–54, 4:266–67).⁴ And with the help of an intervention by Hinako, the editor-in-chief of the Fujigaya student newspaper overcomes her apparent anger at Hinako for rejecting her confession and repents of her earlier gossiping about Hinako’s sexual orientation (4:247–49, 4:310–12).

In the middle of the scenes of Glover Garden, Shimura inserts a panel showing a sign advertising a tea house named “Freedom,” the English edition’s translation of Jiyūtei (“freedom pavilion”) (SBF, 4:134). Under that name, the building housed one of the first Western-style restaurants in Japan, founded by a Japanese chef in the early Meiji era.⁵

A few years later, the word “jiyū” (“freedom”) was used first in the name of the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement and then in the name of the Jiyūtō (“Freedom Party” or “Liberal Party”). Both were founded by Taisuke Itagaki, the model for the character of Kiyohara in the play Rokumeikan (played by Ueda).

The focus on the West in Sweet Blue Flowers (and, by implication, on freedom as experienced in the West) harks back to the Meiji era when Japan attempted to use Western ideas and technology to make itself into a modern nation. At the same time, Western-style education for girls and Western ideals of individualism and pure romantic love gave rise to Class S culture and literature.

In its characters’ obsession with the West and Western things, Sweet Blue Flowers also looks forward: to a day when the hopes raised for the status of women in the Meiji era (that “new, wonderful age,” as one of the characters in Rokumeikan calls it⁶) will be fulfilled, and Akira, Fumi, and their friends will “experience a full life in the new era” (SBF, 3:92).