#how to control on weight | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

swallowerofdharma · 3 months

Text

Imagine this one in video format maybe? To start looking into chapter 4 of Saezuru Tori wa Habatakanai we take the physical tankōbon: it is at the very start of volume 2, I’d like to show you the cover and and open it, turning the first color pages of it, Doumeki in his blue police uniform. Now let’s look back at both the first and the second volume for a moment. A thing I dislike about many cover illustrations of romance themed books is that they frequently showcase the main pairing and sometimes one of them, if not both, will look at you like it is a photo-shot from a fashion magazine. Don’t look at me please, I am here to intrude unseen in your most intimate moments and you aren’t supposed to know. Characters looking back at you makes your position as a voyeur more obvious. It makes me self conscious, I don’t want to be in the story, I want to immerse myself and disappear while others take the stage and action!

Yashiro looking back at us in the cover of volume 1 is calling us out, but also offering himself willingly, in the first part of the story he is both a voyeur himself (with Kuga and Kageyama) and an exhibitionist (calling out Nanahara for example and later having Doumeki openly looking down at him). He often flaunts his sensuality and he lets others look at his sexual encounters that aren’t in any way related to sharing intimacy, only performance and pleasure. The cover of the first tankōbon is an incredibly eloquent portrait of Yashiro, a powerful introduction to the story. His vulnerability coexists with the empowerment of the submissive role when the rules are laid out clearly in a BDSM scene. Now take the second volume, the cover illustration is strikingly different, and it remains quite unique at the moment: the majority of these covers are centered on the characters and sometimes the background disappear completely. In this case it is likely that you wouldn’t even notice the characters at first. It’s the city at night, the urban lights, the street wet with rain that is predominantly portrayed: the atmosphere, other people under their umbrellas, only looking carefully you see Yashiro waiting at the red light and then Doumeki following behind: they rain is falling on them, they don’t have an umbrella. This is likely the same scene depicted in chapter 7 and on the cover of the sixth tankōbon as well. Imagine me showing you the movie version, if this was a video. Try to smell the rain on the concrete, it’s so real. Look at the lights reflected in the various puddles. The focus is on the environment, we are zooming back to the city, away from the characters, not a fashion magazine photo-shot, but urban photography.

Volume 1 was done, the characters introduced, the setting established, the readership established as well. It contained the first three chapters, but also two other one-shots that provided further details and insight into Yashiro and Kageyama’s relationship and backstory. Doumeki and Aoi, Misumi and Hirata have been also introduced, the set up for the first part of the story is complete, we are invested. Chapter 3 ended with maybe the first moment that is not only sexually charged, but very emotionally charged as well, the first moment where sex happens when there is intimacy. Even when Yashiro asks for Doumeki to pull his hair harder, it’s probably the gesture of Doumeki reaching out to touch Yashiro tenderly that makes it different, makes it the moment Doumeki starts to wonder what if.

I have maintained a special interest and attachment to chapter 4 for a long time now. Although I was invested in the story, characters and style, chapter 4 really solidified for me the complexity of levels that Saezuru has, made me reassess my first impressions, made me wonder if I was trying to read too much into something that just wasn’t that deep, but no. That feeling of knowing “there is something there” wouldn’t go away. I wasn’t sure though so I just asked Georgie @itwearsadress back in February 2023 and I am very grateful for their very thoughtful answers. I will use their explanations on the terms and specific language Yashiro and Doumeki are using in their “scene”. And I am also grateful for Benvey’s observations about the same scene @nanayashi-agenda further confirming that I wasn’t imagining things, that it was possible to read something more into it.

I am going to quote parts of the exchange I had with Georgie, while also adding to it my updated analysis, now that I am a little more confident in my own understanding of things. So initially, I formulated my questions as follows. Yashiro dressed Doumeki up as a policeman and tried to role play as the criminal/aggressor, aiming to be “arrested and punished” - while Doumeki instead wasn’t able to fully comprehend the assignment and act properly, refusing to acknowledge that Yashiro was doing something wrong in terms of infringing real laws. Doumeki simply was direct and literal all the time, while Yashiro was looking for an excuse to create a scene. He was probably randomly referring to potential charges that progressed to the topic of sexual misconduct, because Yashiro was leading the play towards a sexual play. Besides the humor resulting from Doumeki’s straight face and answers - while he doesn’t fully comprehend the assignment - that entire exchange ended with Yashiro being upset and truly angered and I was very dissatisfied with my comprehension of the dialogue. And here came George to my rescue. The number three works really well in storytelling, I have always considered the fact that Yashiro tries three times here as a deliberate choice. So he tries three different charges and for each one Doumeki replies. There is no crime. Yashiro can’t be recognized as the aggressor in Doumeki’s eyes, so as a policeman he doesn’t have to act. There is nothing there.

First. I am referring to the very first page of chapter 4, the one in color. Here’s George’s take:

Now to the particular point you mentioned - Yashiro wants to do some police/criminal role play so he starts riffing some random sexual crimes. The first charge that you referred to is 公務執行妨害罪 or “interfering in the duties of an officer of the law” or something like that. Aside from it being a sexy pretext to do a police role play, it might be a reference to Y being an obstruction to D returning to the straight and narrow after getting out of prison. 🤔 I mostly tend to think it’s just Y being cheeky.

Then after the chapter’s illustration cover, we have skipped a little forward, we didn’t hear if Doumeki answered to that one, which would have probably applied: when we go back to the moment Yashiro is giving him a blowjob, while we follow Doumeki’s thoughts and see some flashbacks of his time in prison. It ties together nicely, when we discover that Yashiro isn’t the first man to do that.

Doumeki recalls how he discovered that he had become impotent, not able to respond to direct stimulation. If in the present he has the police uniform on, in the flashbacks he instead has the prison uniform, the two attires contrasting very loudly, until following his thoughts we go back to the probable cause of Doumeki losing any desire and becoming unresponsive to sexual stimulation: he is shown in his police uniform, his real one, that he was wearing the day he caught his father forcing himself on Aoi. In his self analysis, Doumeki attributes his acceptance to his new reality to two things:

Please, pay special attention to the fading-to-black on those last words: “… and the confirmation that I am not like my father”. That black isn’t only a choice to transition from the past to the present, the black background when scenes are meant to be flashbacks, it is also a choice that puts those words apart and enlightens them more, while also giving them an ominous feeling.

In the present, Yashiro is oblivious to Doumeki’s stream of consciousness, who is looking down at him while also comparing him to his sister Aoi, becoming soon distracted and redirecting his thoughts and focusing on touching Yashiro’s hair. For Yashiro the role play is ongoing, thinking that they are both sharing the fantasy, until Doumeki takes them out of it with his responses to Yashiro’s second and third attempts at provocation. Here’s Georgie:

The second is 淫行罪 or “sexual coercion”. Doumeki then responds that the victim must be underage for the charge to be appropriate. Yashiro comes up with a third charge - 強制わいせつ罪 or “indecent assault” (also known as “carnal indecency”, this law is basically the same as sexual assault - an unwanted sexual advance of some kind) to which Doumeki responds that the victim must protest the sexual act in order for the charge to be valid.

Back when I asked Georgie to clarify the terminology of this scene, I was not sure what I was seeing in here. Was that little dialogue a subtle social commentary about the limitations of the legislation and the insufficient ways the law speaks to the survivors? Was I just reading too much into it? Was Yoneda really going there? Did I want to go that far myself? But I could see that there was something in this exchange that makes Yashiro pause. That reaction Yoneda captured: it truly spoke so much to me and it is so real, I just knew this had to be meaningful. He stands up, kicking the chair, letting his emotions clearly visible, and upset and angry expression, the fleeting promise to not touch Doumeki’s limp dick ever again. It is very rare that Yashiro shows that he is troubled and angry specifically about the recognition of what constitutes rape.

When I recently decided to revisit these few pages from chapter 4 and put together a post to encourage readers to revisit the story once again, I also tried to do a little research into Japanese law. This is just a very superficial review though and I am only very lightly touching on the subject. After the conversation I had with Georgie, in July 2023 Japan's sex crime laws were significantly changed.

Japan's sex crime laws will be significantly transformed from mid-July, as parliament passed a law Friday raising the age of sexual consent and expanding the definition of nonconsensual sex as part of Penal Code reform. (…) As a part of Penal Code reform, the new law raises the age of consent to 16. The legislation also criminalizes nonconsensual sexual intercourse where physical coercion or violence is absent, taking into consideration various factors affecting the victim's ability to consent, such as a power imbalance, that were previously deemed as being difficult to prove. Use of violence, intimidation, alcohol, drugs, or economic or social status are among the factors that will be considered when determining whether an act is consensual. Cases in which a victim has a mental or physical disorder can also be deemed nonconsensual.

Karin Kaneko, What you need to know about the revision to Japan's sex crime law, “the japan times”, June 19, 2023 https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/06/19/national/crime-legal/sex-crime-law-revision-explainer/

In the same article something specifically caught my attention as relevant to what Yoneda might have been showing in chapter 4.

In 2017, the law related to sex crimes was revised for the first time since 1907, imposing longer sentences on rapists and recognizing male victims, in addition to categorizing forced oral and anal sex as crimes as well. However, the amendments only recognized nonconsensual sex as a crime if there was an act of violence or intimidation. The absence of violence on the part of the perpetrator was seen as indicating that the victim didn’t resist, therefore making the sex consensual. The age of sexual consent also remained at 13 years old, which many deemed inappropriate.

I’d like you to remember: chapter 4 was published in 2013, well before 2017, the year considered the starting point of the reform and the culmination of the #me too movement in Japan. In 2013 then the law was still the one first written in 1907: forced oral or anal sex weren’t considered or any penetration done with something else that a male penis would not have constituted a case, because the law was written to protect property, not people and only female victims could get pregnant and thus hereditary issues were considered (this not only in Japan). And even after the first reforms in 2017 a male victim who not only didn’t fight back enough to show very visible signs of violence, but had also shown arousal would have not been seen and recognized as a victim of rape. The whole thing is too complicated for me to go into it. But what can be taken from it is that Yoneda was writing about Yashiro in that scenario. That like the cover of volume 2 suggests her characters’ story is set in a bigger and broader context. Remember now how teenager Yashiro used to seek partners that would leave visible signs of violence on his body and, although he would cover himself in school, it was enough for someone to notice. That the fact that violence or pain didn’t impede but instead triggered pleasure had to mean for Yashiro that he had always wanted it and willingly participated in it.

Even when Doumeki would recognize what his father was doing was wrong and was sexual violence - because Aoi was unmoving, she cried when she saw him, but she wasn’t showing any response to what their father was doing to her body - the law as it was when this manga started wouldn’t have been for sure on Aoi’s side. But more so with adult Yashiro, Doumeki didn’t think about it until Nanahara made him realize it during their conversation on the rooftop of the hospital. From the point of view of the law, a man couldn’t be raped.

#saezuru tori wa habatakanai #saezuru analysis #eri reads saezuru #yashiro #yoneda kou #manga analysis #that’s it for the moment #the post is long enough although incomplete still #how deeply troubled Yashiro has been all his life with the weight of acknowledging his experiences #until Doumeki Yashiro has been replaying the part of the victim in situations progressively more in his own control #Doumeki being impotent is a factor of even more safety but also #Yashiro here assumes the role of the aggressor until he realizes that with Doumeki this dynamic isn’t working #mostly because Doumeki isn’t able to play the other part in this scenario #thus Doumeki doesn’t validate or recognize Yashiro as the aggressor #lost in translation

33 notes · View notes