so, yeah, that research paper
Jun. 11th, 2006 12:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meretriculaI just remembered I promised to post this after it was graded. Oh, and since you probably don't care, I got an A+, much like the rest of my class.
CLAMP is a circle of four Japanese graphic novelists, or mangaka, generally acknowledged to be some of the most successful and prolific women in their field. Their particular area of expertise is shoujo, or girls’ manga. In this genre, big-eyed heroines and handsome heroes abound, but in CLAMP’s manga, the dividing line between the two roles is often somewhat blurred. Female characters, rather than swooning in order to be more effectively rescued by their menfolk, take charge and save the day; male characters are as likely to sew, cook, clean and mother as not. Sexuality also frequently plays a part in the reversal of gender roles; the “man” and “woman” in a relationship are usually clearly defined, regardless of their actual genders. Duality of persona is a common device in the androgynization of CLAMP’s characters, who often display tendencies towards one gender while playing one role and towards the other when performing a different function. The most extreme example, of course, is the case of split personality, where one person within the same body will evince very feminine characteristics and the other will seem more masculine, although physical gender does not change.
Cardcaptor Sakura (CCS) is one of CLAMP’s most definitively shoujo works. Timothy Lehmann describes it as their “entry into the magical girl genre,” being more light-hearted and cute-and-fluffy than their prior, more serious works (Lehmann 39). In it, a young school-girl named Sakura discovers that she has been gifted with supernatural powers and uses them first to reclaim the escaped “Clow Cards” that are wreaking havoc in her community, then to gain full mastery over the cards. The bizarre nature of her quest necessitates a double life for Sakura: as the dutiful daughter and school-girl, and as the powerful (if sometimes clumsy) card-captor. In the former role, she is stereotypically shoujo, blushing and stuttering madly over a boy named Yukito, with cutely childish outfits and absolutely enormous eyes. In the latter, although the size of her eyes remains the same, she is able to set aside her crush-induced idiocy and employ a combination of will and cleverness to capture the cards. Her outfits for card-capturing range from the silly to the sexy, perhaps representing her greater freedom when uncircumscribed by the societal role of the school-girl. In the omake, or afterword, of Miyuki-chan in Wonderland, another of CLAMP’s works, one of the four CLAMP mangaka remarks that “the constant battle against the schoolgirl uniform in Miyuki-chan is symbolic of women’s struggle against sexual oppression,” although, to be fair, the other three promptly and humorously point out that they just enjoy drawing the skirts (CLAMP, Miyuki-chan in Wonderland 95). Sakura’s rapid-fire switches between the swooning shoujo and the super-hero girl are a running joke in CCS, such as when she sighs to her familiar, a talking stuffed animal that she has given the diminutive nick-name of Kero-chan, “I’ll take Yukito-san over some silly ol’ cards any day,” and then immediately jumps up, on fire to complete her quest, when reminded of the lives that may be at stake should she fail (CLAMP, CCS Volume 1 108). As Sakura matures, she becomes more effective in her role as heroine, with the addition of more “heroic” helpers (a tiger instead of a stuffed toy and the winged judge Yue in the place of the girlish Yukito, respectively) and ever-growing self-confidence, eventually finding the strength within herself to defeat her predecessor, Clow Reed, and generally save the day.
Sakura herself is not necessarily the best example of the double-gendered character; most of her maculine characteristics stem from her psychic powers, which Susan Napier argues “can be read as both wish-fulfilling fantasies of empowerment, at the same time as they can also be seen as intimately related with a young girl’s normal femininity,” not masculinity (Napier 93). However, the minor characters in CCS are a much more interesting study. The role of the family, as in Japanese society in general, is central to CCS, so it is fascinating to observe that in the single-parent household CLAMP has chosen to present an ideal family that circumvents the “breakdown of modern family, which was built upon the maternal myth” in Japan, as more and more women seek to define themselves not as mothers but as individuals (Suzuki 258). By eliminating the natural comparison between the mother and father and combining the two roles into one person, CLAMP has established the perfect “super-parent,” displaying the best characteristics of both male and female. Sakura’s father, Fujitaka, is a prime example of this; when Sakura introduces him, she says, “He’s an archaeology professor at the local university. He’s very nice, not to mention a whiz at cooking and sewing. I love him.” (CLAMP, CCS Vol. 1 23). Of course, Sakura’s family situation is idealistic, not realistic; there is no mention of tension stemming from the combined responsibilities of full-time work and providing the sole care for two children. Both Sakura and her older brother, Toya, adore their father and do their best to help him around the house. Sakura’s mother, Nadeshiko, is perhaps an ominous commentary on the “perfect” woman: she is beautiful, forever young, idolized by husband and children, and long dead. She appears occasionally as a ghost or in photographs, but her presence or absence affects Sakura very little. When her brother worries that she is lonely without their mother, Yukito disagrees with him, saying that it isn’t so much that Sakura misses Nadeshiko as that “if she thinks she might be able to meet her mother, she can’t help wanting to,” since she died when Sakura was too young to remember her (CLAMP, CCS Vol. 1 170). It is Fujitaka, not Nadeshiko, who performs the necessary maternal functions for Sakura, from making her lunch to helping her sew a yukata (light-weight traditional Japanese robe) for her friend and later love-interest, Syaoran Li. The home life of Sakura’s best friend, Tomoyo, is slightly more accurate to reality; Sakura explains, “Tomoyo-chan’s mom is the CEO of a large toy company. She’s very busy. Some days Tomoyo-chan doesn’t even see her… Come to think of it, Tomoyo-chan never mentions her dad. I don’t think he’s passed away… I guess it’s just… complicated” (CLAMP, CCS Vol. 2 16-17). Still, Tomoyo seems happy and well-adjusted, and certainly shows no resentment towards her mother for being absent so often. When the two are together, they enjoy an affectionate relationship. The lack of a father in Tomoyo’s case or a mother in Sakura’s causes no harm to the family dynamic; on the contrary, it creates a closer bond between child and the parent, who assumes both the traditional male role of wage-earner and the female one of home-maker.
One of the greatest sources of gender confusion in CCS is the vast and varied tangle of relationships that hold the many characters together. Sakura herself worships Yukito with all the intensity of emotion that a first crush demands; however, her male classmate Syaoran takes one look at Yukito and falls just as hard. Since CCS takes place in an ideal world, there is no mention at all of homophobia, and Syaoran’s feelings for Yukito are considered as valid as Sakura’s. Indeed, a great deal of humor is derived from their rivalry in the pursuit of the affections of the oblivious Yukito, while themselves oblivious to the fact that Yukito’s relationship with Toya is well on its way to going far beyond mere friendship. Sakura and Syaoran both express their feelings for Yukito in a typically feminine manner – they blush, Sakura swoons, Syaoran flees in mortification, and they both present Yukito with gifts for Valentine’s Day (note that in Japan, girls give presents, usually chocolate, to boys on Valentine’s Day; on White Day, March 14th, boys are supposed to return the favor). However, about halfway through the series, Syaoran develops a crush on Sakura, and his actions towards her then become parallel to hers towards Yukito. Sakura decides to make a teddy bear for the object of her affections, along with her female friends, and Syaoran secretly does the same, although he is too embarrassed to explain the meaning of the gift when he presents it to Sakura. Nor is this the first time that Sakura finds herself playing the unconscious “male” role in a relationship: her best friend, Tomoyo, privately admits several times to an unrequited love for Sakura, although the brave heroine, not the most sensitive in these situations, remains unaware that Tomoyo feels anything but platonic affection for her. In a strange and slightly incestuous twist, it is revealed that Tomoyo’s mother, Sonomi, had a similar relationship to Sakura’s mother during their childhood (Sonomi and Nadeshiko were cousins), and whenever she comes into contact with Fujitaka, she insists on competing with him for the right to Nadeshiko’s posthumous affections. Finally, although Yukito plays a masculine role relative to Sakura and Syaoran, his relationship with Toya places him in a distinctly feminine position. Toya protects his friend throughout the course of the series, often from his own clumsiness and ignorance of his magical nature, carries him off like a swooning princess numerous times after Yukito experiences fainting spells, and eventually sacrifices his “sixth sense” to save Yukito’s life.
One particular example of gender-exchange in CCS that is worthy of closer examination is the school play in volume five. The play is Sleeping Beauty; through some mishap of gender-blind casting, Syaoran plays the princess, and Sakura the prince. While merely comic to the Western reader, this switch of roles is actually an echo to two traditions in Japanese theater: the Kabuki onnagata and the Takarazuka otokoyaku. In Kabuki, only male actors may perform, hence the creation of the onnagata to play female parts; the Takarazuka Revue is an all-female theater school, and the women specially trained to play men are referred to as otokoyaku. The onnagata and otokoyaku are not, however, perceived as equivalent, as even their names make clear: “whereas the kata in onnagata means ‘model’ or ‘archetype,’ the yaku in otokoyaku connotes the serviceability and dutifulness of a role player” (Robertson 59). The onnagata is supposed to be completely transformed into a woman, and even serve as a role model for real women, while the otokoyaku merely portrays masculinity onstage, and yet, Syaoran is a laughably unconvincing princess, while Sakura carries off her part as the prince admirably. CLAMP manages to switch around the gender patterns even in transvestitism. Another curious (and perhaps coincidental) note: the cards that Sakura captures during the play are the Light and the Dark, polar opposites and sometimes considered representative of two other “polar opposites”: men and women. Sakura is unable to capture the Dark and, by doing so, make it a part of herself, until she acknowledges the Light within herself. It is an interesting hypothesis to consider Sakura’s acquisition of the Light and the Dark as a symbol of gender – she cannot absorb either masculinity or femininity (i.e. mature into a sexual being rather than a sexless child) without also receiving the other.
Many characters in CCS play different roles – both Sakura and Syaoran, for instance, must alternate between their commonplace lives as schoolchildren and their ventures into the realm of the supernatural in search of the Clow Cards – but the most extreme example is Yue/Yukito, a sole entity with two separate consciousnesses, one magical and the other not. Yukito is clumsy and clueless as they come, and almost as shoujo as Sakura-the-schoolgirl. He also has wide, round eyes that rival the size of any girl’s in the manga. Yue, on the other hand, is an extremely powerful magical being. He first appears as Sakura’s enemy, the final test she must pass before becoming a true “master of the Clow.” Although Yue’s symbol is the moon, usually representative of femininity, while Cerberus’s (or Kero-chan as Sakura calls him) is the sun, Yue is aggressive and unsympathetic to Sakura. When Cerberus attempts to help Sakura in her test, Yue taunts him, “Soft-hearted as always,” to which Cerberus replies, “And you’re as cynical as always” (CLAMP, CCS Vol. 6 112). In attitude, at least, Yue is quite masculine. One aspect of his appearance also stresses the shift in his gender patterns from Yukito to Yue: his eyes flatten out to about half their height, much more closely resembling the eyes of Toya (one of the few definitively masculine characters in CCS) than Sakura’s.
A few other characters have split personalities, but their genders are more ambiguous. Ruby Moon, created to be the equivalent of Yue, and her alter-ego Nakuru both affect hyper-feminine clothing and behavioral patterns, but are actually sexless, as Nakuru herself admits and her flat chest represents. Clow Reed, the magician who created the Clow Cards, was split into two people: Sakura’s father, Fujitaka, who has already been discussed, and Eriol Hiiragazawa. Eriol defies analysis; like Sakura, he plays two roles, that of the schoolchild and that of the magic-user, and displays different personality traits depending on the role he is playing. As Sakura’s classmate he is kind, helpful, and very reminiscent of Fujitaka; Sakura remarks numerous times on the similarity between the two. As a magician Eriol is secretive and often almost villainous-seeming. However, in either role he seems more sexless than masculine or feminine. His interest in Sakura is completely non-sexual, and his abrupt declaration of love at the end of the series for Kaho Mizuki, Sakura’s former substitute teacher, comes as an unforeshadowed surprise.
Shoujo manga is a highly idealized genre in and of itself. When compared with shonen (boys’) manga, shoujo manga “stress a more passive, inner world of dreams and endless musings about human relationships,” rendering them an appropriate forum for speculations about the nature of a perfect relationship (Schodt 88). Shouji Masako, a shoujo mangaka, observes that “in shoujo manga you can pursue dreams and readers would not recognize them as lies” (Shouji, cited in Ogi, Female Subjectivity and Shoujo Manga 786-7). While Shouji clearly views this as a flaw in shoujo’s audience, it is also an asset in its medium: shoujo is capable of presenting an “ideal world” or “ideal relationship” to its readers without being forced to conform to a standard of reality. The idea of a fourth-grade girl with magical powers is already outside the norm, and so the reader of CCS is not jarred by other differences between Sakura’s world and his or her own, while the surface similarities between the two invite a comparison. Specifically, CLAMP is able to offer a proposal for a suspension of fixed gender roles, while their audience, having already set aside reality to accept that Sakura can fly, is willing to to consider that she and her companions may step outside the stereotypes that their genders have determined for them.
It is not so much the idea that a female may act as a male (or vice versa) that is strange and wondrous, as the fluidity of the change back and forth. Even in presentations in other manga of situations where gender does not determine one’s career or role in a relationship, as Sean Ledden and Fred Fejes note based on a sample study of thirty different manga, “it merely allows women to exchange feminine roles for masculine ones. They are not allowed to combine elements from both” (Ledden and Fejes 172). Gender-ambiguous characters in CCS have not switched permanently from one sex to the other: they waver between them, or, as in the completely idealized case of Sakura’s father, consistently display aspects of both. It is also important to note that CLAMP idealizes gender-duality, not gender-neutrality. Persons without characteristics of either gender, specifically Nakuru/Ruby Moon and Eriol, seem calculating and inhuman, especially when compared with the warmly sympathetic portrayal of Fujitaka.
Similar to this use of an unreal universe as a backdrop to consider the ideal of gender is the appropriation, both in yaoi manga (a genre that depicts love between men, although usually authored by women) and CCS, of a foreign testing ground for female romantic ideals, i.e. a male homosexual couple. Kazuko Suzuki explains, “portraying homosexual relationships allows [the mangaka] to break free, rhetorically, from heterosexual norms and, by implication, the unequal relationships in which those norms are embedded” (Suzuki 248). Fusami Ogi concurs, noting that while Hagio Moto, the specific mangaka both critics are discussing, presents a world without female protagonists, her readers still see the relationship issues of shoujo, albeit expressed on the relatively blank slate of a couple undivided by their gender (Ogi, Gender Insubordination in Japanese Comics for Girls 181). Toya and Yukito can be considered such a pair. Toya is the more masculine of the two, and initially the more powerful; his greater physical strength and psychic abilities enable him to protect Yukito, as well as Sakura. However, Toya gives up his magic, and with it a great deal of his strength, to save Yukito’s life. This would seem to suggest that the romantic fantasy of the female mangaka in a relationship is that the stronger partner (following strict gender stereotypes, the male) should voluntarily surrender his power to the other. This, theoretically, places the two on an equal level in the relationship. Thus, through Toya and Yukito CLAMP also expresses the ideal of the elimination, not necessarily of gender, but of the barriers gender places between partners in a relationship.
This tactic of placing a commonplace dilemma into an alien environment to highlight it in contrast is not limited to gender or relationships, either. In an interview with Kat Avila, Carol Fox, an editor for the company that publishes the English translation of CCS, comments, “CLAMP seems very fascinated with morality — their characters are constantly wrestling with themselves over the right thing to do, something to which pretty much all of us can relate. And the fact that so many of their stories deal with magical or fantastic elements adds a whole other element to that” (Avila). The change in the surroundings has not altered the existing debate, but it makes the topic more accessible to readers, who absorb serious lessons along with the fantastical situations that contain them.
In Cardcaptor Sakura, CLAMP created a wide variety of characters, many with some form of dual gender. However, one must bear in mind that even in CCS, the ideal double-gendered characters are outnumbered by the normal inhabitants of the ordinary reality that exists side-by-side with the world of magic and Clow Cards. While CLAMP employs the manipulation of gender stereotypes to present an ideal where gender no longer dictates a person’s role in society or a relationship, it is still an ideal far from the reality in the world today, and especially in Japan – a reality that is reflected in CLAMP’s writing alongside their idealism. This paper has focused on CLAMP’s attempts to free their characters from the constraints their genders have placed upon them, but those constraints do still exist, and still exert restrictions on characters in contrast to the relatively liberated ones mentioned here. CLAMP’s double-gendered ideal invites the reader to compare the fantasy world in the manga with the reality both in the manga and her (or his) own life. Unless both similarities and differences between the real and ideal can be identified, idealism serves no purpose.
Works Cited
Avila, Kat. “15 Years of the All-Woman Manga Studio CLAMP: Interview with Carol Fox.” Sequential Tart. November 2004. Sequential Tart. 13 December 2005 http://www.sequentialtart.com/archive/nov04/art_1104_4.shtml
CLAMP. Cardcaptor Sakura Volume 1. Los Angeles: TOKYOPOP. 1996.
--- Cardcaptor Sakura Volume 2. Los Angeles: TOKYOPOP. 1997.
--- Cardcaptor Sakura Volume 6. Los Angeles: TOKYOPOP. 1998.
--- Miyuki-chan in Wonderland. Los Angeles: TOKYOPOP. 2001.
Ledden, Sean and Fejes, Fred. "Female Gender Role Patterns in Japanese Comic Magazines." Journal of Popular Culture 21 (1) (1987) : 155-176.
Lehmann, Timothy R. Manga: Masters of the Art. New York: Collins Design, 2005.
Napier, Susan J. "Vampires, Psychic Girls, Flying Women and Sailor Scouts: Four Faces of the Young Female in Japanese Popular Culture." In Martinez, D.P. (ed.), The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries and Global Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 91-109.
Ogi, Fusami. "Gender Insubordination in Japanese Comics (Manga) for Girls." In Lent, John A. (ed.), Illustrating Asia: Comics, Humor Magazines, and Picture Books. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001. 171-86.
--- "Female Subjectivity and Shoujo (Girls) Manga (Japanese Comics): Shoujo in Ladies' Comics and Young Ladies' Comics." Journal of Popular Culture 36 (4) (2003): 780-803.
Robertson, Jennifer Ellen. Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Schodt, Frederik L. Manga! Manga!: The World of Japanese Comics. Tokyo: New York: Kodansha International, 1983.
Suzuki, Kazuko. "Pornography or Therapy? Japanese Girls Creating the Yaoi Phenomenon." In Inness, Sherrie A., (ed.), Millennium Girls: Today's Girls Around the World. London: Roman & Littlefield, 1999. 243-68.
CLAMP is a circle of four Japanese graphic novelists, or mangaka, generally acknowledged to be some of the most successful and prolific women in their field. Their particular area of expertise is shoujo, or girls’ manga. In this genre, big-eyed heroines and handsome heroes abound, but in CLAMP’s manga, the dividing line between the two roles is often somewhat blurred. Female characters, rather than swooning in order to be more effectively rescued by their menfolk, take charge and save the day; male characters are as likely to sew, cook, clean and mother as not. Sexuality also frequently plays a part in the reversal of gender roles; the “man” and “woman” in a relationship are usually clearly defined, regardless of their actual genders. Duality of persona is a common device in the androgynization of CLAMP’s characters, who often display tendencies towards one gender while playing one role and towards the other when performing a different function. The most extreme example, of course, is the case of split personality, where one person within the same body will evince very feminine characteristics and the other will seem more masculine, although physical gender does not change.
Cardcaptor Sakura (CCS) is one of CLAMP’s most definitively shoujo works. Timothy Lehmann describes it as their “entry into the magical girl genre,” being more light-hearted and cute-and-fluffy than their prior, more serious works (Lehmann 39). In it, a young school-girl named Sakura discovers that she has been gifted with supernatural powers and uses them first to reclaim the escaped “Clow Cards” that are wreaking havoc in her community, then to gain full mastery over the cards. The bizarre nature of her quest necessitates a double life for Sakura: as the dutiful daughter and school-girl, and as the powerful (if sometimes clumsy) card-captor. In the former role, she is stereotypically shoujo, blushing and stuttering madly over a boy named Yukito, with cutely childish outfits and absolutely enormous eyes. In the latter, although the size of her eyes remains the same, she is able to set aside her crush-induced idiocy and employ a combination of will and cleverness to capture the cards. Her outfits for card-capturing range from the silly to the sexy, perhaps representing her greater freedom when uncircumscribed by the societal role of the school-girl. In the omake, or afterword, of Miyuki-chan in Wonderland, another of CLAMP’s works, one of the four CLAMP mangaka remarks that “the constant battle against the schoolgirl uniform in Miyuki-chan is symbolic of women’s struggle against sexual oppression,” although, to be fair, the other three promptly and humorously point out that they just enjoy drawing the skirts (CLAMP, Miyuki-chan in Wonderland 95). Sakura’s rapid-fire switches between the swooning shoujo and the super-hero girl are a running joke in CCS, such as when she sighs to her familiar, a talking stuffed animal that she has given the diminutive nick-name of Kero-chan, “I’ll take Yukito-san over some silly ol’ cards any day,” and then immediately jumps up, on fire to complete her quest, when reminded of the lives that may be at stake should she fail (CLAMP, CCS Volume 1 108). As Sakura matures, she becomes more effective in her role as heroine, with the addition of more “heroic” helpers (a tiger instead of a stuffed toy and the winged judge Yue in the place of the girlish Yukito, respectively) and ever-growing self-confidence, eventually finding the strength within herself to defeat her predecessor, Clow Reed, and generally save the day.
Sakura herself is not necessarily the best example of the double-gendered character; most of her maculine characteristics stem from her psychic powers, which Susan Napier argues “can be read as both wish-fulfilling fantasies of empowerment, at the same time as they can also be seen as intimately related with a young girl’s normal femininity,” not masculinity (Napier 93). However, the minor characters in CCS are a much more interesting study. The role of the family, as in Japanese society in general, is central to CCS, so it is fascinating to observe that in the single-parent household CLAMP has chosen to present an ideal family that circumvents the “breakdown of modern family, which was built upon the maternal myth” in Japan, as more and more women seek to define themselves not as mothers but as individuals (Suzuki 258). By eliminating the natural comparison between the mother and father and combining the two roles into one person, CLAMP has established the perfect “super-parent,” displaying the best characteristics of both male and female. Sakura’s father, Fujitaka, is a prime example of this; when Sakura introduces him, she says, “He’s an archaeology professor at the local university. He’s very nice, not to mention a whiz at cooking and sewing. I love him.
One of the greatest sources of gender confusion in CCS is the vast and varied tangle of relationships that hold the many characters together. Sakura herself worships Yukito with all the intensity of emotion that a first crush demands; however, her male classmate Syaoran takes one look at Yukito and falls just as hard. Since CCS takes place in an ideal world, there is no mention at all of homophobia, and Syaoran’s feelings for Yukito are considered as valid as Sakura’s. Indeed, a great deal of humor is derived from their rivalry in the pursuit of the affections of the oblivious Yukito, while themselves oblivious to the fact that Yukito’s relationship with Toya is well on its way to going far beyond mere friendship. Sakura and Syaoran both express their feelings for Yukito in a typically feminine manner – they blush, Sakura swoons, Syaoran flees in mortification, and they both present Yukito with gifts for Valentine’s Day (note that in Japan, girls give presents, usually chocolate, to boys on Valentine’s Day; on White Day, March 14th, boys are supposed to return the favor). However, about halfway through the series, Syaoran develops a crush on Sakura, and his actions towards her then become parallel to hers towards Yukito. Sakura decides to make a teddy bear for the object of her affections, along with her female friends, and Syaoran secretly does the same, although he is too embarrassed to explain the meaning of the gift when he presents it to Sakura. Nor is this the first time that Sakura finds herself playing the unconscious “male” role in a relationship: her best friend, Tomoyo, privately admits several times to an unrequited love for Sakura, although the brave heroine, not the most sensitive in these situations, remains unaware that Tomoyo feels anything but platonic affection for her. In a strange and slightly incestuous twist, it is revealed that Tomoyo’s mother, Sonomi, had a similar relationship to Sakura’s mother during their childhood (Sonomi and Nadeshiko were cousins), and whenever she comes into contact with Fujitaka, she insists on competing with him for the right to Nadeshiko’s posthumous affections. Finally, although Yukito plays a masculine role relative to Sakura and Syaoran, his relationship with Toya places him in a distinctly feminine position. Toya protects his friend throughout the course of the series, often from his own clumsiness and ignorance of his magical nature, carries him off like a swooning princess numerous times after Yukito experiences fainting spells, and eventually sacrifices his “sixth sense” to save Yukito’s life.
One particular example of gender-exchange in CCS that is worthy of closer examination is the school play in volume five. The play is Sleeping Beauty; through some mishap of gender-blind casting, Syaoran plays the princess, and Sakura the prince. While merely comic to the Western reader, this switch of roles is actually an echo to two traditions in Japanese theater: the Kabuki onnagata and the Takarazuka otokoyaku. In Kabuki, only male actors may perform, hence the creation of the onnagata to play female parts; the Takarazuka Revue is an all-female theater school, and the women specially trained to play men are referred to as otokoyaku. The onnagata and otokoyaku are not, however, perceived as equivalent, as even their names make clear: “whereas the kata in onnagata means ‘model’ or ‘archetype,’ the yaku in otokoyaku connotes the serviceability and dutifulness of a role player” (Robertson 59). The onnagata is supposed to be completely transformed into a woman, and even serve as a role model for real women, while the otokoyaku merely portrays masculinity onstage, and yet, Syaoran is a laughably unconvincing princess, while Sakura carries off her part as the prince admirably. CLAMP manages to switch around the gender patterns even in transvestitism. Another curious (and perhaps coincidental) note: the cards that Sakura captures during the play are the Light and the Dark, polar opposites and sometimes considered representative of two other “polar opposites”: men and women. Sakura is unable to capture the Dark and, by doing so, make it a part of herself, until she acknowledges the Light within herself. It is an interesting hypothesis to consider Sakura’s acquisition of the Light and the Dark as a symbol of gender – she cannot absorb either masculinity or femininity (i.e. mature into a sexual being rather than a sexless child) without also receiving the other.
Many characters in CCS play different roles – both Sakura and Syaoran, for instance, must alternate between their commonplace lives as schoolchildren and their ventures into the realm of the supernatural in search of the Clow Cards – but the most extreme example is Yue/Yukito, a sole entity with two separate consciousnesses, one magical and the other not. Yukito is clumsy and clueless as they come, and almost as shoujo as Sakura-the-schoolgirl. He also has wide, round eyes that rival the size of any girl’s in the manga. Yue, on the other hand, is an extremely powerful magical being. He first appears as Sakura’s enemy, the final test she must pass before becoming a true “master of the Clow.” Although Yue’s symbol is the moon, usually representative of femininity, while Cerberus’s (or Kero-chan as Sakura calls him) is the sun, Yue is aggressive and unsympathetic to Sakura. When Cerberus attempts to help Sakura in her test, Yue taunts him, “Soft-hearted as always,” to which Cerberus replies, “And you’re as cynical as always” (CLAMP, CCS Vol. 6 112). In attitude, at least, Yue is quite masculine. One aspect of his appearance also stresses the shift in his gender patterns from Yukito to Yue: his eyes flatten out to about half their height, much more closely resembling the eyes of Toya (one of the few definitively masculine characters in CCS) than Sakura’s.
A few other characters have split personalities, but their genders are more ambiguous. Ruby Moon, created to be the equivalent of Yue, and her alter-ego Nakuru both affect hyper-feminine clothing and behavioral patterns, but are actually sexless, as Nakuru herself admits and her flat chest represents. Clow Reed, the magician who created the Clow Cards, was split into two people: Sakura’s father, Fujitaka, who has already been discussed, and Eriol Hiiragazawa. Eriol defies analysis; like Sakura, he plays two roles, that of the schoolchild and that of the magic-user, and displays different personality traits depending on the role he is playing. As Sakura’s classmate he is kind, helpful, and very reminiscent of Fujitaka; Sakura remarks numerous times on the similarity between the two. As a magician Eriol is secretive and often almost villainous-seeming. However, in either role he seems more sexless than masculine or feminine. His interest in Sakura is completely non-sexual, and his abrupt declaration of love at the end of the series for Kaho Mizuki, Sakura’s former substitute teacher, comes as an unforeshadowed surprise.
Shoujo manga is a highly idealized genre in and of itself. When compared with shonen (boys’) manga, shoujo manga “stress a more passive, inner world of dreams and endless musings about human relationships,” rendering them an appropriate forum for speculations about the nature of a perfect relationship (Schodt 88). Shouji Masako, a shoujo mangaka, observes that “in shoujo manga you can pursue dreams and readers would not recognize them as lies” (Shouji, cited in Ogi, Female Subjectivity and Shoujo Manga 786-7). While Shouji clearly views this as a flaw in shoujo’s audience, it is also an asset in its medium: shoujo is capable of presenting an “ideal world” or “ideal relationship” to its readers without being forced to conform to a standard of reality. The idea of a fourth-grade girl with magical powers is already outside the norm, and so the reader of CCS is not jarred by other differences between Sakura’s world and his or her own, while the surface similarities between the two invite a comparison. Specifically, CLAMP is able to offer a proposal for a suspension of fixed gender roles, while their audience, having already set aside reality to accept that Sakura can fly, is willing to to consider that she and her companions may step outside the stereotypes that their genders have determined for them.
It is not so much the idea that a female may act as a male (or vice versa) that is strange and wondrous, as the fluidity of the change back and forth. Even in presentations in other manga of situations where gender does not determine one’s career or role in a relationship, as Sean Ledden and Fred Fejes note based on a sample study of thirty different manga, “it merely allows women to exchange feminine roles for masculine ones. They are not allowed to combine elements from both” (Ledden and Fejes 172). Gender-ambiguous characters in CCS have not switched permanently from one sex to the other: they waver between them, or, as in the completely idealized case of Sakura’s father, consistently display aspects of both. It is also important to note that CLAMP idealizes gender-duality, not gender-neutrality. Persons without characteristics of either gender, specifically Nakuru/Ruby Moon and Eriol, seem calculating and inhuman, especially when compared with the warmly sympathetic portrayal of Fujitaka.
Similar to this use of an unreal universe as a backdrop to consider the ideal of gender is the appropriation, both in yaoi manga (a genre that depicts love between men, although usually authored by women) and CCS, of a foreign testing ground for female romantic ideals, i.e. a male homosexual couple. Kazuko Suzuki explains, “portraying homosexual relationships allows [the mangaka] to break free, rhetorically, from heterosexual norms and, by implication, the unequal relationships in which those norms are embedded” (Suzuki 248). Fusami Ogi concurs, noting that while Hagio Moto, the specific mangaka both critics are discussing, presents a world without female protagonists, her readers still see the relationship issues of shoujo, albeit expressed on the relatively blank slate of a couple undivided by their gender (Ogi, Gender Insubordination in Japanese Comics for Girls 181). Toya and Yukito can be considered such a pair. Toya is the more masculine of the two, and initially the more powerful; his greater physical strength and psychic abilities enable him to protect Yukito, as well as Sakura. However, Toya gives up his magic, and with it a great deal of his strength, to save Yukito’s life. This would seem to suggest that the romantic fantasy of the female mangaka in a relationship is that the stronger partner (following strict gender stereotypes, the male) should voluntarily surrender his power to the other. This, theoretically, places the two on an equal level in the relationship. Thus, through Toya and Yukito CLAMP also expresses the ideal of the elimination, not necessarily of gender, but of the barriers gender places between partners in a relationship.
This tactic of placing a commonplace dilemma into an alien environment to highlight it in contrast is not limited to gender or relationships, either. In an interview with Kat Avila, Carol Fox, an editor for the company that publishes the English translation of CCS, comments, “CLAMP seems very fascinated with morality — their characters are constantly wrestling with themselves over the right thing to do, something to which pretty much all of us can relate. And the fact that so many of their stories deal with magical or fantastic elements adds a whole other element to that” (Avila). The change in the surroundings has not altered the existing debate, but it makes the topic more accessible to readers, who absorb serious lessons along with the fantastical situations that contain them.
In Cardcaptor Sakura, CLAMP created a wide variety of characters, many with some form of dual gender. However, one must bear in mind that even in CCS, the ideal double-gendered characters are outnumbered by the normal inhabitants of the ordinary reality that exists side-by-side with the world of magic and Clow Cards. While CLAMP employs the manipulation of gender stereotypes to present an ideal where gender no longer dictates a person’s role in society or a relationship, it is still an ideal far from the reality in the world today, and especially in Japan – a reality that is reflected in CLAMP’s writing alongside their idealism. This paper has focused on CLAMP’s attempts to free their characters from the constraints their genders have placed upon them, but those constraints do still exist, and still exert restrictions on characters in contrast to the relatively liberated ones mentioned here. CLAMP’s double-gendered ideal invites the reader to compare the fantasy world in the manga with the reality both in the manga and her (or his) own life. Unless both similarities and differences between the real and ideal can be identified, idealism serves no purpose.
Works Cited
Avila, Kat. “15 Years of the All-Woman Manga Studio CLAMP: Interview with Carol Fox.” Sequential Tart. November 2004. Sequential Tart. 13 December 2005 http://www.sequentialtart.com/archive/nov04/art_1104_4.shtml
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Napier, Susan J. "Vampires, Psychic Girls, Flying Women and Sailor Scouts: Four Faces of the Young Female in Japanese Popular Culture." In Martinez, D.P. (ed.), The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries and Global Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 91-109.
Ogi, Fusami. "Gender Insubordination in Japanese Comics (Manga) for Girls." In Lent, John A. (ed.), Illustrating Asia: Comics, Humor Magazines, and Picture Books. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001. 171-86.
--- "Female Subjectivity and Shoujo (Girls) Manga (Japanese Comics): Shoujo in Ladies' Comics and Young Ladies' Comics." Journal of Popular Culture 36 (4) (2003): 780-803.
Robertson, Jennifer Ellen. Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Schodt, Frederik L. Manga! Manga!: The World of Japanese Comics. Tokyo: New York: Kodansha International, 1983.
Suzuki, Kazuko. "Pornography or Therapy? Japanese Girls Creating the Yaoi Phenomenon." In Inness, Sherrie A., (ed.), Millennium Girls: Today's Girls Around the World. London: Roman & Littlefield, 1999. 243-68.
