May 3, 2020
Explicit content is considered "Art" when it serves a purpose, when it conveys a deeper meaning behind the images; otherwise it is just gratuitous sex and/or violence. But even in calling something "gratuitous", we are still acknowledging that it has a certain draw on us, precisely through its flouting of societal taboos, of what is and isn't appropriate to our sensibilities.
It is difficult for me to say what Hayami Jun's "purpose" is in this anthology. It doesn't appear to be wholly gratuitous, although some parts are deceptive in their simplicity, and others are confusing in their apparent incompleteness.
Hayami's girls are wholesome, sweet, shoujo types.
...
There is a running theme of the desire to break their haughty spirits through sexual dominance. In the opening story, the protagonist Naoko is multi-dimensional, well-rounded, as much a lover of the arts as she is an athelete. But her partner is fixated on her religious devotion; he wants to destroy and overtake what she holds most sacred, to pry open the depths of her core and extract the absolute beauty lying dormant within. This idea comes full circle in the final arc, where a goody-goody ingenue's path of self-discovery culminates in a tragic end.
There is a sense here of that old adage: "Be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it."
This is not, of course, to make light of the girls' plights. The motif of victimhood is ever-present in these stories. The girls' faces, their pained contorted physical forms, are clear against the backdrop of violent assaults perpetrated by nameless, shadowy offenders; their impotent cries of "yamete!" falling on deaf ears. There is a kind of placid passivity in these girls, reminiscent of Sakaguchi Ango's description of wartime citizens obediently surrendering themselves to their fate, going through the futile motions of life, marching to their deaths.
But here the victims are often jolted out of their resigned numbness by reminders of their own mortality. Their eyes fill with terror at the thought of all the things they will never get to accomplish if they were to die here, now, pointlessly, senselessly, by chance, as easily and breezily as if by a flip of the coin that would decide their fates.
Other girls here actively participate in their own objectification, in a way similar to Miley Cyrus acting out in order to shed her Disney image. I can't help but cringe at the futility of this type of self-destruction. There are many fully human yearnings that go way, way deeper beyond the physical act of sex. But we tend to direct our judgement and verdict at the sex itself. What gives?
Was it William Blake who wrote about capturing Eternity in an instant? Sex serves that purpose here too; a means of creation and condensation of human life. Hayami depicts men on either side of the spectrum: on the one end, those who fear the responsibility of insemination, and on the other, those with a sick fascination for distilling this process down to its essence through the sexual act. There is perverse logic in each transgression, no matter how unpleasant the idea may be for us to confront.
Following one of the stories there is a letter from a teenaged reader, who denounces Hayami's works as seriously sick and disgusting. At the end of it, however, she reveals her primary complaint - that the sensei's bishoujo are too unrealistic and she can't see herself mirrored in them. It made me wonder: is this what it comes down to? Is this our major beef with what we define as "immoral"?
I can't speak for anyone else. There are people out there who hold steadfastly to a rigid morality. Conversely there are those only looking for vicarious satisfaction of their, um, needs. What would they get out of a work like this one? I've heard it said that it's a good thing artists like Hayami have their art, otherwise they might become career criminals. I believe people like him take a very different view to the relation between art, narratives, reality, motivation and action, than we tend to do conventionally. This is something I'm still learning about through my ventures into more transgressive works.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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