Emotional Incontinence

In my first reading of Sweet Blue Flowers, I couldn’t make sense of Fumi’s strange dream in chapter 50, in which young Akira urinates down her legs and young Fumi laps it up (SBF, 4:289–92).

But then I thought, what is incontinence? It’s an involuntary release of bodily fluids due to a lack of control over one’s own body. In a social context, this lack of control translates into public shame and embarrassment—embarrassment because one has broken social norms about proper social behavior (i.e., confining urination to appropriate spaces and times), and shame because others judge one for that transgression.

Tears are another example of an involuntary release of bodily fluids, in this case, due to a lack of control over one’s own emotions. Crying is a much milder social transgression than public incontinence. However, in a society focused on social harmony and maintaining a public “face” that is different and more restrained than one’s private “face,” openly crying in public could presumably be considered a transgression as well. If so, it too could occasion shame and embarrassment.

This brings us to Fumi and Akira. After Akira meets her childhood friend Fumi on the train without knowing who she is, and their two mothers arrange a reunion, Akira’s mother asks her, “Do you remember Fumi?” (SBF, 1:28). In the subsequent flashback, young Fumi can’t make it to the bathroom in time, and her classmates call Akira in from another elementary school class to help out (1:29–30). (Note the implication that this is not the first time that Fumi has done this.) Akira takes control of the situation and gets Fumi to the school nurse to get cleaned up and changed (1:31).

In a nutshell, young Fumi is a person who cannot control herself and, in particular, cannot control her own body. Since elementary school, Fumi has presumably overcome her childhood incontinence. Still, her continued and frequent crying is another indicator of her lack of self-control, this time of her emotions.

Akira, secure in her control of her own body and emotions, can then step in and help Fumi regain both her physical and emotional equilibrium. Just as she takes control when young Fumi urinates on herself, she urges young Fumi to stop crying (SBF, 3:318). As a teenager, she continues to be the level-headed person in their relationship, drying Fumi’s tears just as she once helped her dry her underpants.

But Akira’s self-control is accompanied by her seeming inability to feel certain emotions herself. In particular, she does not (cannot?) feel a strong romantic or sexual attraction towards anyone, including Fumi. She also does not (cannot?) cry openly. It’s not that Akira is unemotional in general: throughout the manga, we see her be alternately happy, angry, embarrassed, nervous, puzzled, and distraught. But through most of the manga, we never see her cry in the presence of someone else.¹

Being in love and crying are connected in Akira’s mind. Thinking to herself, she wonders, “Will I ever like someone … and end up in tears like Fumi? … Fumi is always crying …” (SBF, 2:66). Given her frequent admonitions to Fumi to not be a “crybaby,” it’s no surprise that Akira might have at least an unconscious bias against romance as well.

This is, of course, very frustrating to Fumi. She has a powerful romantic and sexual attraction to Akira, an attraction Akira does not (and cannot?) feel toward her. From this perspective, I see Fumi’s dream of Akira’s incontinence as a manifestation of her desire that Akira not let self-control hold her back from a relationship. Fumi unconsciously wants Akira to lose control of herself in love, just as Fumi succumbs to her own emotions (SBF, 4:290).

Unlike young Akira, the dreaming Fumi does not see Akira’s incontinence as an opportunity for her to step in and restore Akira’s self-control and emotional equilibrium, as Akira had once done for her. Instead, she responds to Akira’s loss of control in a manner that seems to welcome it and reads as intensely sexual (SBF, 4:291). No wonder Fumi dreams of Akira shouting “Stop that, Fumi!” and then covers her face in embarrassment upon waking (4:292).

Beyond Fumi’s dream, the manga has an ongoing theme of Akira and urination, depicting Akira needing to rush to the bathroom (SBF, 1:265, 1:281, 1:374, 2:35, 2:139–40). This occurs so often that it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Shimura consciously intended these scenes to be read metaphorically, perhaps as representing the pressure of emotions within Akira that she has resisted letting herself express.

This is capped off by a dream in which Akira imagines herself visiting Yasuko and Kawasaki in England and urgently needing to use their bathroom (SBF, 4:224–25). This (almost) loss of bladder control has a parallel loss of emotional control on Akira’s actual trip to England, as we see Akira’s eyes fill with tears as she talks to Yasuko about Fumi and their relationship (4:254).²

The final scene of Sweet Blue Flowers touches on the topic of tears once more. As Fumi and Akira lie in Fumi’s bedroom sometime after Akira’s confession, one of them muses to herself about wanting to stay awake and talk all night and concludes, “And I felt like crying” (SBF, 4:365). Shimura does not make explicit whose thoughts these are, an ambiguity that may be deliberate: as the story ends, perhaps Akira, as well as Fumi, is willing and able to lose herself in tears, finally giving in to her overflowing emotions.