TSUGUMI AND THE UGLY FEMALE

Tsugumi, in Tsugumi (1989), is a quintessential shojo manga character in that she reflects the ‘petty individualism’ that Kinsella (2000) argues critics have associated with the shojo manga genre. Tsugumi is characterised as being obnoxious to all of the people around her. These include her sister, Yoko, her cousin, Maria, and her mother and father. Maria, the narrator, writes that:

“If I had to make a list of the Top Three Victims of Tsugumi’s Outrageously Nasty Disposition, the order would undoubtedly be: Aunt Masako, then Yoko, then me. Uncle Tadashi kept his distance” (Goodbye Tsugumi, 1989a, English translation 2002, 4).

In her selfishness Tsugumi recalls the Yukino character in Yoshimoto’s earlier novel Kanashii Yokan (A Sad Premonition) (1988d).  This type of character is not entirely new in Japanese writing, however. In the 1939 short story ‘The Schoolgirl’ (In Run Melos and Other Stories) by Dazai Osamu, the narrator wakes up and says ‘I’m at my ugliest in the morning’ (44). She speculates later about a female Christ and thinks, ‘How repulsive’ (51). Later, after being ‘nauseated’ by a pregnant woman wearing makeup on the train she says:

“Women are so disgusting. Being one myself, I know all too well what filthy things women are, and I hate it so much it makes me grind my teeth. The unbearable smell you get from handling goldfish – it’s as if that smell covers your entire body, and no matter how much you wash and scrub, it won’t come off. And when I think that I’ve got to go through every day of my life emitting that smell, that female smell, there’s something else that pops into my mind and makes me think I’d just rather die now, as I am, still a young girl” (Run Melos and other Stories, 1988, 70).

This misogynistic depiction of women brings to mind the Meiji period writer Kunikida Doppo who suggested that women were “monkeys mimicking humanity.” Tsugumi is obnoxious but Yoshimoto is careful to place this in context. She is associated with the fantasy women characters in Yoshimoto’s writing like Urara in Moonlight Shadow (1988a). Tsugumi is described as being an ‘unpleasant woman’ (1) and ‘like the devil’ (3). Her room is described as being like a scene from The Exorcist (5). As a result of illness, she has been treated kindly since birth and people are afraid for her health. Tsugumi is described as ‘growing into her badness’ in this environment (4). In terms of the novel’s construction, Tsugumi’s character represents rebellion as opposed to her cousin Maria who represents conformity.

Furuhashi Nobuyoshi argues that this split between narrator and main character is necessary because Tsugumi is such a ‘selfish’ character (1990, 103). Furuhashi argues that by having Maria narrate Tsugumi’s story, Yoshimoto demonstrates that even a ‘selfish’ character such as Tsugumi may be understood (106). And this is a very different emphasis from that of Doppo or Dazai. However, Tsugumi is not just ‘understood’ by Maria, she also inspires Maria, who comes to see the suffering that Tsugumi masks through anti-social behaviour. They enjoy a symbiotic relationship in which each needs the other. Tsugumi needs someone to tell her story and Maria learns to be strong from Tsugumi. This is the enclosed world of the shojo. It is a world of intense feeling in which Maria says of the days spent on the island with Tsugumi ‘… those days were blessed’ (161). The enclosed shojo world cannot last forever, however.

Earlier in Tsugumi (1989) when the girls’ favourite series came to an end on TV, Maria says:

“That night, having wriggled down into my futon all alone, I found myself in the grips of a wrenching sadness. I was only a child, but I knew the feeling that came when you parted with something, and I felt that pain” (Goodbye Tsugumi, 1989a, English translation 2002, 67).

Tsugumi describes a group of ‘four women enjoying each other’s company’ (27). As such, it is also a forerunner to the ‘women’s paradise’ in Amrita (1994). But Yoshimoto does not just describe the vulnerability of this world and suggests that there is more to the world of the shojo, as Aoyama (2004) argues, than passivity and frivolity. Rather than witnessing the decline of Tsugumi’s health, the reader is shown Tsugumi learning to take responsibility for others. Thus, when the dog, Gongoro, is kidnapped, Maria says, ‘It was the first time in her life Tsugumi had gotten angry on someone’s behalf. Something about her seemed sacred to me then’ (Tsugumi, 1989, English translation 2002, 137). When Gongoro disappears again, Tsugumi digs a deep hole at the back of a neighbouring house. Yoko, Tsugumi’s sister, discovers the hole and rescues one of Gongoro’s youthful kidnappers trapped inside. When she tells Maria this story, Yoko describes it as a ‘genuine adventure’ (151). Maria reminisces and says, ‘She hadn’t changed a bit since she was a girl. All along she had been living in a universe of thought that was all her own, shared with no one else’ (156). There is a sense of purity about Tsugumi’s single-mindedness. This event becomes part of their shojo folklore, all the more precious because of Tsugumi’s illness.

Treat describes Tsugumi as the ‘perfect shojo who will never grow up’ (1996, 295). For Tsugumi, there is ‘never anything but “today”’ (295). He argues that in Tsugumi, ‘Yoshimoto Banana generates a youth (seishun) that could be anywhere, at any time, as an act of homage to a present that does not necessarily have to be “now” or “here” (296). He is critical of Yoshimoto on the basis that her ‘contemporary nostalgia lacks any determined past to validate it’ (296) and points to how Yoshimoto portrays herself as the perfect shojo in the postscript identifying herself with Tsugumi rather than the successful author she has become as an adult (297). Treat asks ‘why childhood and adolescence should be so idealised as a lost object at the expense of a future adulthood?’ (1996, 297) and suggests that characters like Maria are narcissistic and reluctant to let go of their adolescent selves. This could be true, but Maria is also vulnerable because of her parent’s relationship. Even though Maria is hurt by Tsugumi’s anti-social behaviour, she can see through it and forms a strong friendship with Tsugumi. Tsugumi is to be admired, not pitied. Tsugumi might be an 'ugly female' character but she is no longer to be judged by the standards of the past.