transfukawa

[transfukawa]

A Trans Reading of Touko Fukawa

I’ve been in love with Fukawa’s character ever since I first played Danganronpa - I think she has an incredible amount of depth and nuance that makes her really fun to dig into and think about. She’s kind of a rotten person, constantly petty and often incredibly cruel, but there’s a lot about her attitude and her pain that I find relatable.

For almost as long as I’ve been interested in her character, though, I’ve been thinking about the potential for her being read as a trans woman. A lot of her experiences, I think, align really well with what trans women go through, but I’ve never seen anyone else talking about this online! I’ve had a lot of time to roll this over in my head, so that’s what this post is going to be about.

I want to clarify before we get into this that this isn’t a theory, and I’m not looking to prove something or look into authorial intent. This is also not going to be me digging through official art to document shoulder widths or anything like that. What I’m articulating is a particular way of reading Fukawa’s character which I personally find interesting, but anything I bring up in this post can easily be interpreted differently. (reposted and edited, originally written in 2019)

Fukawa’s Distrust

The first thing that sticks out about Fukawa’s character is her wariness around other people. Her very first line - “Not that you’ll remember my name anyway, but…” establishes that she assumes the worst in everyone she meets, and almost all of her dialogue in the game cements this attitude. It goes beyond believing everyone hates her, or jumping to conclusions - she constantly berates other characters, calling Naegi an idiot and implying Asahina is a slut, etc.

This is of course a coping mechanism for her, albeit an unhealthy one. We know that she’s been ruthlessly bullied and toyed with by her classmates in school; “Yeah, he lost a bet with his friends, so he had to go out on a date with me… and there I was, spending three days to come up with something for us to do…” If you’re used to people lying about how they feel about you, if not outright abusing you from the start, it’s easier to assume everyone hates you from the beginning and work from there.

What is interesting about this facet of her character is how much it aligns with the experiences of trans people. You really have no way of knowing how anyone you meet will react to knowing you are trans, and you can’t even be sure who knows that you’re trans and doesn’t. Do I pass? Am I being clocked? Would this person think I lied to them if they found out? What do they think of me, beyond what they’re telling me? Am I in danger?

From this point of view, Fukawa’s reaction to getting to know new people is reasonable. She has no way of knowing how people will react, and realistically, as a trans person, it’s safe to assume people will be unpleasant. And once Fukawa assumes that someone will react poorly to knowing that she’s trans, why would she bother being nice to them? It’s a defensive attitude. Being trans compounds on everything else.

Fukawa’s Relationship to Men

This is an extrapolation on the last section. Fukawa’s attitude towards men is very complex - if she distrusts people generally, that distrust is magnified in relation to men. This makes sense, because in most of the examples given in canon of Fukawa being mistreated, it’s (almost) always men who stick out to her. It was a boy who hung her love letter up in class, it was a boy who asked her out as a dare, all of the people killed by Syo were male… I feel that it’s safe to assume that virtually every interaction she’s had with men in her life has been negative.

This stands out particularly because Fukawa is obsessed with men - or, at least the ideal of men. She dedicates her entire talent to writing out her ideal romance as a form of escapism and frequently goes on vocal spiels about her fantasies, even sometimes projecting onto other female characters (her gross comments about Aoi and on Mukuro’s tattoo come to mind).

So Fukawa’s relationship with men is complicated. She’s attracted to them, and believes that being liked by a man would validate her, but she also distrusts them greatly and assumes most men would be repulsed by her.

This isn’t an uncommon attitude, really… But I think for trans women, and particularly (though not exclusively) for bi and heterosexual trans women, this relationship is magnified. We’re hurt by heteronormativity, but many of us are also often drawn to engage with it and seek out men as a way to validate our gender identity. At the same time, we’re extremely aware of how cis men view us. If they don’t outright see you as repugnant, they worry that being attracted to you is emasculating. On the flip side, you have plenty of men who *are* attracted to you but are fetish freaks. Underlying all of this is the constant threat of transphobic violence.

I think this experience aligns perfectly with Fukawa’s attitude. She broadly hates men while being attracted to them and wanting them to validate her. Her being a writer who is driven by escapism and fantasy folds neatly into this - she says herself that you can be anyone in fiction, and so in her writing, her transness isn’t a barrier to being loved. All her heroines are presumably cis, but I imagine she doesn’t have to worry about the possibility of her fictional love interests being bothered by her being trans.

Returning to the love letter incident - I think looking at this event through the lens of a trans reading is really interesting. “I got to talk to him later on… Apparently he hated the fact that I talked to him so much. All of the other kids used to make fun of him for it…” If we imagine Fukawa living as a boy and being affectionate towards her crush, unaware that it’s socially unacceptable, her crush lashing out at her is re-contextualized. The entire event is magnified.

The capstone to all of this is Togami, the one male character who Fukawa doesn’t distrust. This seems weird at first glance, because Togami seems like the kind of person Fukawa would fear the most - he’s cruel, dehumanizing, judgmental… but from Fukawa’s point of view, and considering what it is exactly she worries about, it makes sense.

When people are nice to her, Fukawa assumes they’re lying or have an ulterior motive. But Togami, more so than anyone, is honest - about how he feels about other people, at least. He doesn’t hide how little he thinks of the other students, says outright that he thinks they’re idiots bound to get killed, and even reiterates almost every chapter (comically, in my opinion) that he plans on murdering someone to graduate. In other words - with him, Fukawa doesn’t have to worry about being lied to or misled. He’ll always say how he feels outright.

There’s more to this, of course. Togami is attractive, and on the surface, he represents the typical ideal for a male partner - he’s rich, educated, intelligent… but if this was all there was to him, I think Fukawa would still find him untrustworthy, like she does with every other male character. With Togami, Fukawa knows what to expect, and this is comforting to her.

Resources

This part doesn’t have much to do with Fukawa’s characterization as much as it does with the logistics of her being transgender. Being transgender is, um, pretty expensive? The process of getting what you need can be very costly and time consuming, even given you have the necessary support, which, knowing Fukawa’s parents, we can assume she doesn’t. Despite this, Fukawa seems to have gone through an estrogen puberty.

Many of the character backstories in Danganronpa are pretty ridiculous and tend to gloss over details, though, so I’m happy to extend this to Fukawa’s transition. She apparently published her first novel when she was a child, and this means she had an unusual access to money at the point in her life when she’d be beginning her puberty. Going through the official process for acquiring hormone treatment would have been impossible for her without support, but she could have ordered unregulated medication from overseas with the money she got from selling her books. Her parents, again, would not be supportive of this, but she’s also capable of placating them with money, which they likely would already be taking from her upon finding out she’s a famous author.

In real life this would all be incredibly far fetched, but it’s kind of cool to think about, so I’m sticking with it.

However, if Touko undergoing hormone treatment seems unrealistic to you, it’s possible that she simply hasn’t done so. Trans women are capable of achieving a more typically feminine voice through voice training (for those unaware, an estrogen puberty doesn’t impact the voice at all) and the conservative way she dresses (wearing a longer skirt, which none of her other classmates do) is a decent way of hiding her body. She’s able to create visible breasts by stuffing her bra - and this point might fall apart when considering all the times she wouldn’t be able to stuff her bra, which is why this scene…

Sticks out to me. (There are other reasons why Touko wouldn’t want to undress, but... trans people and pools usually don’t mix.)

The I-Novel

The content of the I-Novel Fukawa shows to Naegi in her final free-time-event is unspecified, but we know that it’s about her life and childhood, and that it’s “definitely some dark, heavy stuff.” Fukawa is only comfortable showing it to Naegi after she’s come to trust him (though, not to the point that she’s sure he won’t assault her), but she says that she plans on publishing the book.

Later, in DR:AE, we learn more about her childhood, and specifically some of the ways in which she was abused - stuff we can assume she goes over in her book. But later in the game, when the subject of her I-Novel comes up she discusses it with Komaru, we find out that not only was it not published in the interim between DR1 and DRAE, but that Fukawa doesn’t plan on publishing it at all.

I don’t think this is an inconsistency, really - there are a lot of reasons why she might change her mind about putting so much of herself out there. But viewing Fukawa as trans adds another layer to this. She’s not just baring her horrible trauma for the world to see, she’s outing herself to millions of people, which will permanently change how people treat her. Talking to Naegi about her childhood experiences and even showing him the start of her I-Novel and getting a positive, supportive reaction makes her confident in herself. Maybe it’ll be fine, she thinks - but years pass in between then and DR:AE, and it’s easy to imagine her realizing she doesn’t want to take that step.

Conclusion

I want to reiterate that nothing I’ve pointed to here is exclusive to the experiences of trans women. Kodaka wrote Fukawa as a cis woman, after all (and if he had tried write her as trans, I’m pretty sure it would have been a disaster.) So what I’ve laid out in this post are not instances of ‘evidence’ for Fukawa being trans, but the ways in which her character is compatible with the experience of being a trans woman and how this reading can enrich her character.

There are a lot of things that I haven’t gone into, like Fukawa’s masochism or Genocider Syo, which is a huge topic on its own. (note: I didn’t want to use anything exclusive to one of the localizations, so I couldn’t bring up the fact that in the official english version of the game Syo insists that people call her “Jill” and not “Jack”.) There’s really a lot you can read into with Fukawa’s character - especially if you’re willing to get into symbolic stuff - and I hope that I’ve established that here.

It’s hard to articulate how exactly this reading is meaningful to me. After writing that sentence, I was going to go on to explain why I like this headcanon so much, but it turns out it’s even harder than I thought… I guess it’s just nice to relate to a character and see yourself in them. With a character like Fukawa, who is a pretty awful person, there’s something cathartic about seeing your flaws, anxieties and the ways you’ve been hurt reflected back at you.

Thanks for reading.

[transfukawa]

A Trans Reading of Touko Fukawa

I’ve been in love with Fukawa’s character ever since I first played Danganronpa - I think she has an incredible amount of depth and nuance that makes her really fun to dig into and think about. She’s kind of a rotten person, constantly petty and sometimes incredibly cruel, but there’s a lot about her attitude and her pain that I find relatable.

For almost as long as I’ve been interested in her character, though, I’ve been thinking about the potential for her being read as a trans woman. A lot of her experiences, I think, align really well with what trans women go through, but I’ve never seen anyone else talking about this online! I’ve had a lot of time to roll this over in my head, so that’s what this post is going to be about.

I want to clarify before we get into this that this isn’t a theory, and I’m not looking to prove something or look into authorial intent. This is also not going to be me digging through official art to document shoulder widths or anything like that. What I’m articulating is a particular way of reading Fukawa’s character which I personally find interesting, but anything I bring up in this post can easily be interpreted differently.

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