#They’re made to be outcasts of society. Acting like they’re just like all workers does more harm than good

[stillness-in-green]

Shigaraki, the League and “Redemption”

(In this post: 1700 words about how much I feel like stories/meta in which Shigaraki is rescued or redeemed miss the entire point of Shigaraki.)

It's a big open question how much of Shigaraki's backstory was engineered by All For One.  We're not even sure if AFO is the villain who killed Nana's husband, the event that kicked off the entire downward spiral of the Shimura family, much less what degree of involvement he had in Tenko's manifestation of Decay.  There's a tremendous amount of well-thought-out, interesting meta and fic about what will happen when Shigaraki finds out the truth, whether he can or should still be redeemed as he currently stands, or how Tenko might have been saved from ever becoming Shigaraki to begin with.  While I have read and enjoyed quite a lot of those theories and stories, I still find myself bothered by the prevalence of that line of thought because it ignores the fact that hero society stands condemned regardless.  

Whether or not AFO gave Tenko the Decay quirk knowing what would happen, whether he found out about Tenko the night of the accident or never lost track of Kotaro from the very beginning, in truth, none of that matters to the narrative of the League on the whole.  Nothing about Shigaraki's past has any bearing on the pasts of the other members. Trying to decide how to "save" Shigaraki avoids the fact that he is the leader of the League of Villains and their pain still stands regardless of their leader's history. 

You cannot act as though saving Shigaraki--with All Might, Inko, Izuku, Eraserhead, anyone--would redeem hero society, because Shigaraki is not hero society's only victim. He's not even its most straightforward one!  The condemnation he articulates of the world he lives in can't be addressed by him realizing he was manipulated by AFO all along or getting a good therapist in prison, because the world he lives in has failed a good many more people than just him. 

Let's break it down.  

The League Members

Twice fell through the cracks because of a lack of social support after his parents were killed in a villain attack.  He was just a teenager back then--what arrangements were made about where he was going to live?  If he was old enough that foster care/being placed in a group home wasn't a good option, did he instead have a stipend from the government?  Where was the social worker who should have been overseeing his case?  Where was his homeroom teacher when he dropped out of school?  What support should have been available when he wound up homeless on the streets?  Heroes stop villains and are rewarded both socially and monetarily for doing so, but the much more difficult and involved work of dealing with the fallout from those battles is clearly undervalued, badly so, in comparison.  Hero society, which prioritizes glamorized reaction over everyday prevention, failed Bubaigawara Jin.

Spinner had the wrong kind of face.  X-Men-style mutant discrimination left him isolated and alienated, shunned by the inhabitants of his backwater hometown because of his animal-type quirk.  To say nothing about the threat of violent hate crimes implied by the existence of a KKK analogue!  But it goes further than just the bigotry of his neighbors--Spinner's quirk was also unremarkable, meaning that, in a society that prizes flashy and offense-based quirks in its heroes, Spinner would have had few if any role models.  Given how many heroes there are, it seems strange to consider that there isn't a single straightforward heteromorph for Spinner to idolize, but given how strongly he latches onto first Stain's warped ideals and later Shigaraki's nihilistic grandeur, Spinner is clearly a young man desperate for a role model--if a hero that fit the bill existed, he wouldn't be a villain today.  So he's failed directly by his community for their bigotry and indirectly by society for the way it told him, in a thousand ways big and small, that Iguchi Shuuichi was not a person worth valuing.

Toga had the wrong kind of quirk.  It's true that, more than anyone else in the League, she feels like a character who would always have struggled with mental stability, even with the best help imaginable--but she didn't get the best help imaginable, did she?  She got parents who called her a freak, who berated a child barely into grade school about how unnatural and awful the desires she was born with were.  She was put into a quirk counselling program that apparently only caused her to feel more detached from society.  If Curious' characterization of quirk counselling is at all accurate, it seems to focus not on how to manage one's unusual or difficult quirk in healthy or productive ways, but rather on stressing what society considers "normal," on teaching its participants how to force themselves into that mold.  Hero society wants people with different needs to learn how to function like "normal" people; it is unwilling to look for ways to accommodate such people on a societal level.  Toga Himiko was failed by a society that demonized and othered her for a trait that she did not choose and innate desires that she never asked to experience.

And then, most prominently of all*, there's Dabi.  We all know where the big Dabi backstory mystery is going, and his is the most open condemnation of hero society of them all.  Dabi was raised on a heady cocktail, parental abuse mixed liberally with unquestioned acceptance of the fundamental importance of having a powerful quirk.  Whatever else can be said of Endeavor's path to redemption, the old Enji is emblematic of everything wrong with hero society: the fundamental devaluing of those without power, the fervent strain to push oneself past one's limits over and over and over again, regardless of the consequences to your health or your relationships, the practice of raising children to glorify a dangerous profession that fights the symptoms of societal ills rather than the root causes.  The ugly secrets hidden in the Todoroki house are the ugly secrets hidden within hero society's ideals, and because he embodies those ideals so thoroughly, of course Endeavor is lionized and well-paid by a society that never had to see Todoroki Touya's scars.

Mirror of Reality

All of these issues map to things in real life, and I don't only mean in a vague, universal sense--I mean they reflect on specific and observable Japanese problems. Read up on koseki family registries and consider how the dogged insistence on maintaining them impacted the Shimura family, tracked down by a monster.  Look into societal bias against orphans and imagine how it shaped peoples' reactions to teenaged Jin and his alleged 'scary face.'  Read up on how Japan approaches mental and physical disabilities, on what it regularly does to homeless camps, on what responses get trotted out when someone comes forward with a story about closeted abuse.  The League embodies these issues in indirect, sometimes fantastical ways, but they're not what I would call subtle, either; there's a reason the generally poor, disenfranchised League members are contrasted with powerful, urbane criminals like All for One, callous manipulators like Overhaul, and entrenched pillars of society like Re-Destro.  

Hero AUs are a fun thought exercise and all, but the League exists to call out and typify very real problems in heroic society and, by metaphorical extension, modern day Japanese society as well.  Hero society studiously looks away from its victims.  It doesn't want to see them and it thinks even trying to talk about them is disruptive and distasteful.  There's no indication in-universe that there's even a movement trying to change this state of affairs.  Certainly there are a great many things that could have changed to spare the BNHA world Shigaraki Tomura, but none of those quick, easy solutions would have saved Twice or Toga, Spinner or Dabi.  The League of Villains is the punishment, the overdue reckoning that their country will have to face for its myriad failures--for letting its social safety nets grow ragged, for failing to stamp out quirk-based prejudice, for allowing its heroes to operate with so little oversight.  For growing so complacent that not one person had the moral wherewithal to extend a hand to a bloodied, lost, suffering child.  

Shigaraki, Past and Future

One of the most heartbreaking and yet awe-inspiring aspects of Shigaraki's characterization in his Deika City flashback is that he was thoughtful and compassionate enough to reach out to other kids who were being excluded and teased by the rest of his peer group.  The League is foreshadowed for him even as a child, because even back then, he was a kid suffering repression and repudiation and so had empathy for others in similar straits.  Young Tenko is the person who would have reached out a hand to the scary but obviously needy Tenko wandering the streets; Tomura, despite everything All For One did to him, still retains that core of fellow-feeling that invites other outcasts to play with him.

"Saving" Shigaraki without addressing the societal flaws that created the people gathered under his banner negates the entire point he and the League exist to raise. I think readers will be forced to confront those flaws alongside Midoriya and the rest of his classmates, who the story has made a point to keep mostly isolated and on a steady PLUS ULTRA diet of all the same rhetoric that leads to consequences like the League to begin with.  I only wish more of the fandom--hero and villain fandom alike--was on the same page and writing their fic and meta accordingly.

Footnotes and Etc.

*The only characters in the League whose backstories we don't have much window on are Mr. Compress and Magne, both of whom are framed as seeing society as repressive.  Magne openly says as much to Overhaul; Mr. C intimates it to the 1-A kids during the training camp attack.  I'm inclined to hold off on commenting on them very thoroughly, though, because in neither case do we know exactly what drove them to crime in the first place. That's not a huge problem for Sako--if anyone on that team is into flamboyant villainy for the sheer joy of it, it's him--but I would definitely want to know more specifics about Magne's personal history before I correlate her experience as a trans woman with her portrayal as a violent, even lethal, criminal.  That would get right into the problematic elements of portraying all these societal outcasts as villains, people who undoubtedly have a point, but have taken to terrorism to illustrate it.  It's very possible that, for all that the League maps to real problems in Japan, we're still going to get a very mealy-mouthed, "But it's still wrong to lash out when you could protest nonviolently and work with your oppressors to seek a peaceful solution," moral from all this.

P.S.  None of the above meta even takes into account the multiple non-League characters whose stories illustrate various failings of hero society--Gentle Criminal, Hawks, Shinsou, even Midoriya himself, as those endless reams of Villain!Deku AUs are ever hasty to expound upon.  Vigilantes touches on the idea of "hero" and "villain" categorizations as being almost entirely political in their inception, as is also hinted at with historical characters like Destro.  Seriously, the mountain of problems with hero culture just looms higher with every passing arc!  

P.P.S.  I absolutely do not mean to imply with this meta that Japan suffers uniquely from any of the problems discussed above.  Other countries obviously have their own difficulties with homelessness, accessibility of care, victim blaming, and so forth.  Horikoshi is writing in and about his own culture, though, and stripping Shigaraki of his villainous circumstances in the interest of making him happier and/or more palatable strikes me as being kind of culture-blind in a way that it’s very easy for Western fans to unthinkingly slip into.  Just some food for thought.

[popwasabi]

“Joker” Review: Send in the (Problematic) Clowns

Directed by Todd Philips

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beets, Frances Conroy

 “Joker,” on paper at least, has a message most us can all agree on.

Over the last five or six years, mental health has been a subject of increasing importance for a variety of reasons from millennial burnout, substance abuse, increases in suicide and the stigma is slowly dying away. People are more concerned than ever about it and, generally speaking, everyone wants the system to do better at addressing it in society.

(”Office Space” continues to be more and more relatable every year...)

Throughout its two-hour runtime “Joker” makes the case for better mental healthcare and a society that’s more empathetic to the mentally ill. For some viewers this is a much-needed discussion on a complicated topic through the medium of pop culture’s most famous psychopath. 

For others (me), the problem is it goes about this in an extremely problematic way that grossly mischaracterizes the problem, the people afflicted by it and namely who the victims really are, making some of the pre-film controversy unfortunately not all too inaccurate.

“Joker” takes place in early 1980s where a man named Arthur Fleck cares for his disabled mother in an increasingly hostile Gotham battling the unfair social structures of society. Arthur struggles with his mental health, seeing a social worker each week, taking multiple psychoactive drugs to keep his mind intact, and failing to keep down a Tourette like laugh that estranges those around him. As the world gets increasingly more difficult to live in around him Arthur begins to see himself in a new way and wonder’s what the point of participating any longer in it, thus beginning a series of events that will change his life and the city forever.

One of the core appeals of Gotham’s most sadistic psychopath, The Joker, has always been that the motives behind his violence have rarely had a clear reason behind them.

Other than to piss off Batman, The Joker just kind of does things because he can and kills for the exact same reasons. There’s no reasoning behind it, he just doesn’t believe in much of anything. It’s just chaos and he loves it. There’s some twisted nihilistic appeal to that in a cruel world that relentlessly reminds us many times of it and it’s what made the Clown Prince of Gotham such an iconic villain across all forms of media.

Because we all kind of want to stop caring, even just a little.

(Iconic.)

But what happens when you try to give a character like this a reason behind his twisted psyche? Does it take away or enhance the character? Many writers have toyed with this concept but never concretely answered it whether it was Alan Moore alluding to him having a “bad day” in “Killing Joke,” or the intentionally vague and confusing backstory Christopher Nolan gave the character in “The Dark Knight.”

The question behind who The Joker is, and why he is, is never truly answered in any case. They still tend to keep it mysterious because well, giving a concrete reason to this character’s particular madness kind of takes away from what makes him interesting. To quote Ledger’s Joker he’s an “Agent of Chaos” and nothing more. The Joker doesn’t care so why should we?

(Let’s really not care about this version though. Like seriously. In fact, throw it in the trash and shoot it into the sun...)

But director Todd Philips decided to give the character his first real motive behind his psychosis in “Joker” and while it can be admirable that he attempted something no other writer or director has done, and in some small way has a positive message to it, the results is at best a boring slog of a movie and at worst a problematic depiction of the mentally ill.

“Joker” certainly get’s A-pluses in plenty of areas of course; Joaquin Phoenix probably deserves an Oscar for his twisted depiction of a pre-clown prince Joker as he fully takes on the character’s twisted, emaciated skin and Philips certainly creates a believable pre-Batman Gotham city with some effective Scorsese-esque shot creation and sets. The movie though is extremely predictable as nothing all that surprising happens from beginning to end. It’s just one shitty moment for Arthur after another, culminating with (SPOILER) Arthur’s encounter with a young Bruce Wayne that leads to the final moments of the film.

(Did we really need to put Bruce through this again onscreen? The MCU gave Uncle Ben a reprieve at least...)

I wish I could get into the more superficial reasons this movie doesn’t work, such as its overly self-serious dialogue, Philips making some perhaps unintentionally humorous moments in the movie but the problem is truly it’s muddled script that appears to not really understand what mental health issues look like and who the real victims are.

“Joker” appears to make the case that society has largely ignored and left behind those with this stigma, that we are responsible for not engaging with the problem actively and not caring about the problem. Throughout the film, Gotham and its inhabitants are relentlessly cruel to Arthur, sometimes to the point where it can be over the top, showing that this is what we do to people like Arthur in the real world. They are beaten both physically and mentally and we refuse to understand or acknowledge their existence and their problems.

In this way the film almost endorses Arthur’s eventual turn to violence as the price paid for ignoring people like this.

(I’m amazed how literal some of these memes ended up being after watching this movie...)

Again, the problem with this film isn’t that this isn’t a tremendous issue in society because it is; suicide rates are climbing, despite progress in mental health awareness many country’s still stigmatize it as a “you problem,” and healthcare in this country, well you know the drill. The problem is the film seems to make the claim that these folks who are left behind by these broken systems are in danger of becoming violent monsters and it’s fucking gross.

I cannot stress this enough when I say this but there is NO CONNECTION between mental health problems and an increase in violence. In fact, they are far more likely, ten times more likely in fact, to be the victims of the kind of monster The Joker is in this movie.

The idea that simply better healthcare will make those with mental health issues less likely to commit violence isn’t a new one. The NRA and other small-brained politicians (left and right) have been scapegoating them since the days of Columbine and our doofus of a “president” isn’t far behind in licking those boots. 

In the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting, as protesters did walkouts to decry gun violence, the mental health “advocates” made a counter protest called “walk-up” encouraging students to talk to each other more and engage with the outcasts in their schools.

While I certainly can agree that we should all try to be nicer to each other instead of not at all, it grossly ignores the fact that the shooter, Nicholas Cruz, was reportedly abusive, sexist and racist to his fellow classmates. Tell me, in what world would it be smart or safe, especially for a female student, to engage with a guy like this? Cruz didn’t kill people because he had “mental health problems,” he killed people because he was evil asshole.

(Yup, these people definitely look just some misunderstood social outcasts who were just in need of a few more hugs and some happy pills. Yup....)

Again, I can’t stress this enough lack of mental healthcare doesn’t make super villains; it’s pure fiction like this movie. Throughout the film Arthur is bombarded with slight after slight after slight be it from the institutions that leave him in the dust or the people around him. The movie kind of wants to state that the intuitions need more help but weirdly at the same time shouldn’t be trusted as Arthur is openly hostile with them throughout the movie. It’s almost comical at times as after a while and some viewers might find themselves after a while going “ok, we get it. The world is really mean to this guy, when does he become The Joker?”

The point is though, the motives behind great acts of violence have rarely, if ever, been about not being able to get access to some guy’s prescription drugs. In fact, the truly mentally ill are far more likely to be a danger to themselves than to others (as stated in a few of these articles linked already).

But for argument’s sake let’s pretend that this is not meant to be a literal depiction of how mental healthcare in society has failed people. Let’s say its metaphorical instead, that those with mental health issues become monsters within their own minds, hell the movie kind of alludes to a bent reality that may or may not have happened within Arthur Fleck’s mind.

(It’s actually one of the few narrative choices I liked about this movie, so A for effort, Mr. Philips.)

The problem with that is that again it depicts the mentally ill as monsters instead of the victims of those kinds of people. The movie does make a point of depicting the system as monstrous but again a person like The Joker as a product of that is misleading of what is actually going on.

Depicting the mentally ill as monsters, be it metaphorical or literal, will do more harm than good to those who are afflicted by these issues.

While I do not subscribe to the idea, necessarily, that movies create shooters these films definitely don’t exist in a vacuum either. Afterall there are still d-bags who think Tyler Durden is the real hero of “Fight Club,” and idolize maniacs like Al Pacino’s “Scarface” because they’re “badass’s.” I went into this movie thinking the pre-trailer controversy was likely overblown but I came out of it thinking some incel asshole could absolutely find something to relate to in this particular version of The Joker.

This movie has proven to me that the Joker’s origins are simply best left mysterious. He is just best used as a stand-in for chaos and anarchy with no specific goals or ideologies. Though his psychosis has certainly been the stuff of speculation behind his motives for decades by the fans its never been about him being crazy so much as it is about him being the antithesis to Batman’s ridgid sense of law and order.

(Probably the best cinematic depiction of that clash of ideologies.)

The Joker is a fascinating character and there’s a reason fans have gravitated to him for so long and inspired plenty of writers, directors and actors to try their hand with him. But any amount of understanding regarding what’s going on with mental health in society will take you out of this movie almost instantly for most people.

I think fans of this movie have perhaps latched on to the right messages of the movie, namely that we do need to do better with mental health and the mentally ill in this country, and I definitely don’t disagree with that, but the conclusions this movie appears to come to just aren’t right and it makes the movie damn near unwatchable for myself at least.

I’ll close with this though, “Joker” is inspiring in one way and one way only for me and that’s that it may cause a change in the way Hollywood see’s this genre of movies. I’ve written extensively myself about how, at times, the MCU has too rigidly adhered to the blockbuster formula and created almost a factory-line style of movies for the general populace to devour but a film like this, that is enjoying quite a bit of success right now, could change the way major studios approach these characters.

(The blockbuster formula can be great though sometimes if done right. Exhibit A ^)

Superheroes are modern Greek myths these days and have tons of source material and nuance to mine for directors and writers. Restricting them just to simple heavily CGI, action blockbusters is a disservice to their extensive catalog of stories and the comic book writers that made them famous.

While “Joker” is definitely not my favorite comic book movie of all-time I can respect that it took the risk of doing something different and going against the grain of most of the rest of the genre. If it inspires Hollywood to greenlight newer and more unique depictions of these characters I’m all for it.

In the end though, “Joker” is a mess of a movie that sends some right messages but ultimately the wrong one. If you enjoyed it great, I won’t stop you but I do ask  you to think about how this movie could be twisted in the wrong ways as well.

After all, we live in a society...

 VERDICT:

2 out of 5

Can we all agree at least this is still the best version of The Clown Prince of Gotham?

[arashi-astrology]

Arashi Astrology: Ohno’s Chart Ruler

This post is completely inspired by @transiting‘s BTS Astrology post! Despite knowing little to nothing about BTS, I enjoyed reading it and wanted to try doing something similar for my favorite boyband, Arashi. Fortunately, Arashi’s members are among the few Asian celebrities whose birth times are publicly known, due to their fortune telling segment in their SP 「真夜中の嵐」. This means that I can do a much more detailed reading, but I decided to keep this post focused on one component of the Natal Chart, the Chart Reader, so that it’s easier to digest. If you enjoy this post then PLEASE let me know, so that I can gauge the level of interest there is for this kind of content.

For obvious reasons, we’ll start with the group’s beloved leader, Ohno!

Ohno Satoshi November 26, 1980 / 9:07 A.M. / Mitaka, Japan

Let’s begin with the rising sign (AC), the sign that symbolizes how you generally act and behave. It is the strongest impression you give to the people around you, and the way you instinctively examine and move in the world. Ohno’s birthtime makes him a Capricorn Rising, which initially surprised me (I had him pegged as a Taurus Rising), but on second thought, it makes a lot of sense. Although Ohno doesn’t really fit the ambitious, go-getter image of a Capricorn, he is known as a hard worker and comes off as a serious person (people even say he’s like an old man). The rising sign affects your resting face and Capricorn Risings usually have serious, stony resting faces, as Ohno does. When he talks to people, it is through simple, matter-of-fact sentences, especially if its their first interaction. Just as Capricorn is known for its ambition, it’s also known for its caution and hesitance, due to the heavy feelings of responsibility and self-doubt. Ohno’s expression of these traits were more obvious in his teens and in his 20s. If one looks at his TV appearances back then, he was even more silent, serious, and cautious than he is now. He’s become much more relaxed and confident in the past decade—another Capricorn Rising trait, as it’s ruled by Saturn, the planet of time, and those ruled by Saturn tend to bloom in their 30s or 40s.

Being a Capricorn Rising makes his Chart Ruler Libra Saturn in the 9th house. As the name suggests, the Chart Ruler is one of the most important components of the chart; you could say that it symbolizes the main theme of a chart. With Saturn as the Chart Ruler, that theme becomes one of diligence, responsibility, and hard work. Saturn promises difficult challenges, but if you manage to hang on and do your best, your struggles will bear fruit and you will become a better person for it. Having Saturn in the 9th house, the house of college, travel, and knowledge-expanding adventures, suggests that Ohno’s difficult challenges were about knowing what direction to take in life, especially between the ages 18-21. He might have felt trapped and suffered from low self-esteem. We do know from interviews that Ohno had thought of leaving Johnny’s as a trainee and that in the early years of Arashi he felt inadequate and like he was lagging behind the others, so that might be what this is referring to.

This is also evident in how his Saturn squares Capricorn Mars in the 12th. Mars is the planet of energy and action. A Capricorn Mars indicates someone with a subdued but determined approach to life. Picture someone whose response to the towering mountain in front of them is to grimly push their sleeves up and get to work with a ten-year plan in their mind. But when you put that Capricorn Mars in the 12th house then things can get fuzzy. The 12th house rules “the collective unconscious” and planets here lie beneath the surface. Accessing these planets consciously does not come easily and in the early stages of life you might not be aware of them at all. Nonetheless, they’re there and their energy seeps out without you controlling it. As a result, others will feel this energy from you, even though you’re not aware you’re giving it off in the first place.

Mars in the 12th can be a particularly tough placement, because it means that Ohno was usually unaware of what motivated him and what angered him. He might’ve found it uncomfortable to try to understand and confront his anger, leaving it to fester in his unconscious until it found a way out. When it did, it expressed itself in a messy and uncontrolled way, perhaps through a sharp remark he didn’t mean or a bout of anger he couldn’t control. However, the other Arashi members have stated that they’ve never seen Ohno seriously mad, which means that Ohno handles this placement better than most. There’s a possible reason for this: his numerous creative outlets, in particular his dancing and singing. People with 12th House placements are usually artistically gifted, because their connection with the collective unconscious gives them a deep perception of the world that lends itself beautifully to art. Mars in the 12th, in particular, is great for dance because it’s literally creative action that expresses the drive and passion within that is otherwise repressed. That’s why when Ohno dances, he seems like a different person, giving off a commanding and determined aura that one wouldn’t expect from him. He’s probably been using dancing (and singing and drawing—jesus is there anything this man isn’t talented at??) as a way to release stress since he was young.

That doesn’t mean that he still doesn’t have trouble with the placement though; Saturn in the 9th square Mars in the 12th indicates that his struggle to decide his path in life was complicated by his low awareness of his motivations and desires, as well as by him being very critical on himself.

Yet Saturn is about overcoming those challenges and mastering those weaknesses, and Ohno has clearly made progress on both of those fronts, showing his true potential. Libra Saturn as the Chart Ruler signals leadership and diplomacy, someone who keeps the peace, values fairness, and guides others with a realistic worldview. Libra is the sign of equality and balance after all, and dignified Saturn is the most happy there, reveling in the firm and yet sympathetic laying down of the law. How many times have the other members said that if it wasn’t for Ohno, Arashi couldn’t have stayed together? That Ohno’s unique “leading by not leading” style was what kept the peace in Arashi and gave them a feeling of stability? And who can forget Nino’s account of the time when, in the midst of a disappointing period with little success or popularity, Ohno refused to stop their current activities and told the other discouraged members, “If people can’t do their current work properly, then they won’t be able to do anything properly”, inspiring them to continue. Prizing the value of hard work and cooperation, you can’t get more Libra Saturn than that. Even though Ohno had numerous misgivings about being the leader, he always had the makings of one within him.

Looking back at the chart, you can see that Saturn and Jupiter are very close to each other, making them conjunct. Saturn conjunct Jupiter, or “The Great Conjunction”, only happens every 19 years and has been linked to the rise and fall of great powers (the next Great Conjunction, you’ll be interested to know, is next year on December 21, 2020). Those born during the conjunction have extra apparent Saturn qualities (serious, cautious, diligent) due to Jupiter, as the planet of growth, expanding anything it touches. However, Jupiter is also the planet of beliefs and faith, and Jupiter in the 9th gives Ohno a great deal of positive energy in the form of a strong inner faith that allows him to believe that in the end, everything will work out. That, plus his Sagittarius Sun, causes Ohno to sometimes be laidback and to go at things at his own pace. Saturn’s influence restricts some of Jupiter’s buoyancy, but the two planets also work together, with Jupiter’s faith being the energy that powers Saturn’s labor. The position of Jupiter can also tell us how we attract good luck, and with his Libra Jupiter in 9th conjunct Saturn, Ohno attracts luck by not letting that faith die while continuing to work diligently and treat others fairly.

Ohno’s Jupiter in the 9th also shows that, more than anything else, he likes being limitless, free to do and explore whatever he wants. Here we can see a sign of the Ohno who said he liked fishing because of, “the freedom”, as well as the Ohno who can be a complete hermit at home, not answering anyone’s calls. We can also see the Ohno who wishes to take a break from Arashi in order to pursue other things in life, while he still can.

That desire for freedom is reinforced by his Sagittarius Sun in the 11th, which is also sextile his Saturn and Jupiter. The sun is our ego, that essential core of our identity that we discover and work towards throughout our lives. Sagittarius is embodied in the archetypal figures of the student, the traveler, and the philosopher. Exploration and the scholarly pursuit of higher knowledge, those are both encapsulated by Sagittarius (if this sounds awfully familiar then that’s because Sagittarius rules the 9th house and it’s ruled by Jupiter. Clearly this is a repeating pattern in Ohno’s life).

The 11th House, meanwhile, is what I like to call “the house of societal networking and groups”. This is the house that tells you how you are with acquaintances, specifically how you are at connecting and collaborating with them to work towards some common goal that will benefit society. In addition,those with planets in the 11th house can feel like a bit of an outcast, with an innovative streak that helps them think outside the box, leading to bursts of genius. Other people might not be able to understand your way of thinking and you may feel alienated as a result, but your experiences will also cause you to be more open-minded towards others. Sound familiar? Ohno has often been called “a mysterious person” by other celebrities, who find him hard to understand. And when it comes to art, Ohno can astound everyone by coming up with an artistic vision no one else could’ve. 

Having his Sun in the 11th means that Ohno’s identity as a curious explorer is carried out through collaboration with others. Even though he might not think so himself, Ohno thrives in groups; working together with others helps him come up with new ideas and projects, satisfying his wish for freedom and exploration (Sun sextile Jupiter), as well as giving him more opportunities to be a leader, which is good because Ohno finds purpose in taking responsibility (Sun sextile Saturn). 

And that’s what Arashi did for Ohno. By leading Arashi, Ohno found purpose, explored unexpected possibilities, and, with the help of the other members, provided something to society as a whole. 

And though Ohno will be taking his long-awaited break soon, the theme of his Chart Ruler will carry on. While I can’t know exactly what Ohno will be doing during his break (although I do want to write a post about what astrology says he’ll be doing), it seems pretty clear that his road to personal fulfillment is through continuing to work in collaboration with other people, and using that inspiration to take on new, meaningful projects. Whether that takes the shape of a group art exhibition working with a medium he hasn’t tried before or starting some sort of amateur dance project or getting better at sailing (or perhaps... dare I say... marriage??), only time will tell.