Coming Attractions: God's Own Country

A new trailer:

Brand new trailer for God's Own Country. In UK cinemas 1st September. You're welcome pic.twitter.com/VHxmAfylk1

— God's Own Country (@gocfilm) August 11, 2017

It looks like the release date is back to September 1. although IMDb is listing it as in theaters October 27.

Duh -- I just read the footer on the clip and noted it's in UK theaters on September 1. More coffee. Or maybe less coffee.

(And I just realized that September is next month! WTF?)

Some thoughts

on this week's FGB going through my head, but not yet ready for public display. Maybe something in the "Men with Men" series.

Later

Friday Gay Blogging, of a Literary Cast

This is sort of FGB -- not news of the day, but a look at a book that, among other things, was the genesis of the series "Men with Men." It's actually a hybrid, of sorts: half review, half essay. It started off as a review of Satoru Ishihara's Kimi Shiruya: Dost Thou Know and got a little bit out of hand. The review that finally got written is at Green Man Review; you can find a brief general discussion of manga there, as well as the basic outline of the story.

For those who don't follow the link, the basics are: Katsuomi Hanamori and Tsurugi Yaegashi are competitors in kendo, as are their younger brothers, Masaomi and Saya. The story follows the courtship of Katsuomi and Tsurugi and, in a parallel secondary story, that of Masaomi and Saya.

This is an essay, not a review, and I'm not concerned with spoilers. They're here. They have to be, for me to discuss what I found so compelling about the book.

This book is built on metaphors, both the central image of kendo, the Japanese art of the sword (and I admire greatly the way the Japanese have turned so many things into an art and a ceremonial -- it's something we need more of in our lives) and others that essentially structure the various chapters. The courtship here is cast as a duel: both Katsuomi and Tsurugi are fiercely competitive young men, heavily invested in the sport, and each sees the other as his chief rival, in spite of their immediate attraction to each other.

This in itself has more than one layer. On the one hand, Ishihara has based the central metaphor, kendo, on one of the most important characteristics of relationships between men: whether you ascribe it to nature or nurture or some combination of the two, men are competitors -- for many men, perhaps most, that's a central part of their identities as men, whether we agree with it or not -- which makes a romantic involvement edgy, at best. It's that phenomenon, more than anything else, that explains Tsurugi's motivations, his resistance to "surrender," not surrender to Katsuomi, particularly -- his attraction to Katsuomi is as strong as Katsuomi's to him, that much is obvious early on -- but surrender to the idea that there must be a loser here: he, like Katsuomi, is trying to take control of the situation, not to change the outcome as such -- he doesn't want that at all -- but to hold onto his dignity. (Ishihara has stepped right out of the standard seme/uke pairing here; while that stereotypical role-playing may have some basis in Japanese gay culture -- and I don't profess to know -- the relationship developing between Katsuomi and Tsurugi is, I think, more immediately comprehensible to Westerners.)

That works naturally into the idealism of the sport -- and I mean that in its most literal sense. The ideals of sport in general are, aside from the benefits to health of physical activity, the main reason given for teaching competitive sports in schools: teamwork, sportsmanship, dignity in defeat and magnanimity in victory. Add in the warrior's code, with its emphasis on ideals we no longer encounter on a daily basis -- honor, integrity, mercy, purity of purpose, the kind of self-respect that must be earned -- and you begin to get a very good idea of where both Katsuomi and Tsurugi are coming from. It's this idealism that sparks the relationship between Masaomi and Saya, as well: after being shamed by his older brother for leaving Saya to the mercy of the bullies among the older students, Masaomi realizes that Saya understands the honor of the swordsman -- there are things he won't do, even to defend himself -- and out of respect for that and for his own honor, he must step in.

I can't stress enough the role that I see the Ideal playing in this work. It is, indeed, almost platonic. (And keep in mind, these are young men, and the young are still idealistic.) Underlying the surface action is a pure form of the story: on the one hand, there is no compromise on either side, the situation is yes/no, surrender/conquest. That is what Katsuomi is consciously reaching for because that is what he understands at this stage of his life; and that is what Tsurugi is rejecting. But as it develops it transmutes itself: after all, no one in his right mind wants that kind of relationship with another human being if you're going to call it "love." As Masaomi observes, they're reaching for something new, something, as it turns out, "beyond gender, beyond viewpoints," beyond that win-or-lose dichotomy: as it grows, they grow into it.

In that intersection of the Ideal and what stands beyond it -- the competitiveness and the ideals of the warrior and the reality of learning to love -- lies the tension that supports the story and that provides the foundation for the relationship and the characters of the two men. Katsuomi is a "stampeding boar warrior," all power and speed, direct and unstoppable. He has the courage to lay all his cards on the table (as he does in one scene, when he tells Tsurugi "I've shown you everything I've got.") and the patience to wait for as long as it takes. Tsurugi is the wind, all grace and finesse, elusive but more than able to come back with a telling strike, sweeping through Katsuomi's defenses. And he has the will to play this game his way. Katsuomi may be the irresistible force, but Tsurugi is not an immovable object: in their final, climactic battle, Katsuomi screams at him to "stop dancing around -- stand and hold your ground." It doesn't only apply to the physical contest. (Tsurugi calls him a "log-splitter" and goes for the opening Katsuomi has left.)

Thinking about it, Kimi Shiruya is the most truly erotic yaoi I've read, in that Jungian sense of the erotic as a deep, fundamental drive that structures our relationships -- yes, sex is part of it, but there's much more. The symbolism of the central metaphor -- sword fighting -- is obvious, and one can easily imagine some of the dialogue, but that in itself is remarkable: in a genre in which everything is usually laid out plainly, this story moves by innuendo, by implication, ranging from blatant -- at one point early in the story Tsurugi says to Katsuomi, "I'd like to cross swords with you -- with real blades" (and you well know that the next kendo tournament is not the only thing on his mind: just look at his face) -- to extraordinarily subtle: there are many times when Tsurugi's response is no more than a barely lifted eyebrow over hooded eyes, the merest hint of a smile. And it's on their first meeting outside of competition that Tsurugi says to Katsuomi that he's going to breach his defenses -- just before we see Katsuomi thinking to himself "What if we were friends, closer than any others?" Given the layers of meaning in the dialogue, it's a revealing scene.

And they are friends. One thing that we must keep in mind: the two are rivals, not enemies. As the story progresses, we begin to understand that not only have they become friends, as we catch glimpses of their openness and honesty with each other, but we realize they have done so when we weren't looking.

There is a high degree of reticence in this story, not only in the absence of the nearly obligatory sex scene (which has led to the label "shounen-ai," about which more later), but in how much of the story is actually being shown to us: toward the end of the book, we begin to realize that there are events that we've not been privy to, and that a significant portion of the story has happened "off-stage." The primary example, if not the most subtle, is what I consider the key scene, a kiss shared on the night of the summer festival: we don't actually see the kiss at the time, we see some ancillary flashes -- a little tongue action, a hand parting a yukata to reveal a thigh. This scene -- witnessed by the two younger brothers -- echoes throughout the rest of the book, both as an image and as dialogue between Saya and Masaomi. (And it colors their relationship as much as that between their older brothers.) On a more subtle level, Ishihara has a knack for scattering clues throughout the story and then bringing them together with one well-placed scene -- or even a single frame, as happens with the Masaomi/Saya substory, in that case one that also reveals a great deal about Masaomi's awareness of his brother's situation and how his own echoes it: the two boys have been on the outs, and after their latest spat, which is completely Saya's doing, Masaomi's exasperated comment is "I'm probably going to have an even harder time than bro did." We already know that Masaomi knows what his brother has been reaching for, even if he doesn't completely understand it. Now he is beginning to see the shape of it. Saya, I think, is also beginning to understand: he's following Tsurugi's path, fighting to maintain some independence.

Some remarks about humor, generally an integral part of yaoi, although not always successfully incorporated: although the first parts of Kimi Shiruya are pretty much dead-on serious (with small flashes of comedy), in the last two chapters, from which the book takes its title, Ishihara turns playful (and a bit surreal), and it's once again a multi-layered thing: we are introduced to Katsuomi's coach, whom he calls the bear, who is actually portrayed in several frames as a bear, and who as a hobby collects folk tales -- even telling Katsuomi during one tournament to go ahead and lose, already, he wants to get to the storyteller's house that day. And we begin to realize the extent to which Katsuomi and Tsurugi are playing: something has happened in this relationship, it's arrived at a new stage. There's more comfort here, and although there's still quite an edge, it's become part of the game. Katsuomi is still following his "I'm naked before you" strategy -- nothing to hide -- while Tsurugi, from being enigmatic and resentful, has become almost kittenish, quite openly flirting with Katsuomi, goading him to take advantage of the situations Tsurugi creates -- itself a strategy. I think it's here, in these last two chapters, that a designation of "shounen-ai," which originally described a genre that was focused on the romantic aspects of same-sex love, eschewing sex, and was likely to incorporate references to art and literature, becomes convincing. (There's a wonderful scene in which Tsurugi and Katsuomi are lying on the deck watching the stars and quoting Kenji Miyazawa at each other -- all the more revealing when you realize that Miyazawa was noted for his children's books. Then Katsuomi says "I'm going to kiss you," to which Tsurugi responds "No. You can't control yourself." The kiss happens, of course -- the third kiss in the story, and the first that we actually see taking place, and Tsurugi, now supine on the deck, says "I told you not to." It's a terrifically romantic interlude, relaxed and playful in spite of the verbal sparring. One reads it with a sense that, in everything but the act, the two have become lovers.)

Ishihara notes that Kimi Shiruya took three years to complete, and the drawing reveals that in its variability and changes in character design. All things considered, I don't see it as that important. What's more germane is the way in which the illustrations and narration support this very reticent story, adding information in subtle ways that builds an amazing resonance. There's a wonderful sequence in the beginning of "Dost Thou Know, Part 1" in which Katsuomi is eating a ripe tomato right off the vine, marveling at how sweet it is, unlike the tomatoes that come to Tokyo, picked green to ripen in transit. The drawing somehow moves seamlessly through humor, sensuality, and an almost pristine purity within a metaphor that goes straight to the core of the story: the sweetness of fruit allowed to ripen in its own time. The contrast between the purity of that scene and the dense, violent activity of the final duel between Tsurugi and Katsuomi is amazing: the figures in the duel take on an almost sculptural weight, and Ishihara imbues the scene with a vivid sense of motion, reminding us once again of where these two men are coming from: fierce, aggressive, and determined, but finally, as it turns out, recognizing that they are equals and that victory for one is victory for both.

That comes home in the final scene, when Tsurugi, who has left kendo to focus on his studies -- he's starting medical school -- asks Katsuomi, "Why won't you call?" He is honestly puzzled, and we realize that the game is over, but that Katsuomi was so caught up in it that he didn't realize it.

One thing I've noticed about many manga, and particularly yaoi, is the degree to which the story will reach beyond straight narrative. There are, I think, two facets to this. One is narration, usually from the point-of-view character, rendered as captions aside from word balloons, and providing not only psychological insights but a context that I can only characterize as "poetic" -- there are things happening in the places between the words and pictures that the narration often brings out into the open. The other is a basic concept that seems to permeate all Japanese art: evocation. The artist evokes an image of the event, rather than portraying it. Ishihara uses these to great effect in the last two chapters, combining them in the repeated motiv "Dost thou know my heart?" and "Do thou knowest the tropic land within my heart?" It adds not only another level of meaning to the story, strongly reinforcing the romantic elements, but brings a dimension to Katsuomi that we might otherwise never have suspected. Ishihara applies that in the final scene as well, with a bit of irony that is almost palpable: Katsuomi has been so focused on the dream, on the game, that it comes as a shock to him to realize that the game is over and the dream has come true -- and, in fact, that what he wanted was always his.

There's always a question when looking at a work like this: how much of this did the artist put in there and how much did I supply? Let me state in my own defense my belief that if you only look at the surface of any work of art, you're missing most of what's there. My feeling in this case is that it's all there in the book, although I'll grant that a lot of it comes from me -- Ishihara doesn't spend time talking about men's self-images -- but that's where the book led me. I may, in fact, have only scratched the surface -- there are so many details, so many almost-hidden connections, so many delightful discoveries along the way that one can easily read Kimi Shiruya again and again for the pure pleasure of spotting them. The bonus, I think, is that one comes away with new insights into life and the way it works.

Men With Men: Teachers and Lovers

The relationships I've dealt with so far in this series fall pretty much within the "comrades in arms" category, although one can see quite readily that the relationship between Alexias and Lysis in The Last of the Wine starts off as a different sort of thing entirely. (Graham Jackson, in The Secret Lore of Gardening: Patterns of Male Intimacy, does an excellent job of typifying the kinds of male/male relationships and also points up the power of the erotic in defining those relationships.) This kind of initiatory relationship is one that has an equal, if not stronger, grounding in human psychology: it's instructive to note that in Western society for the past hundred years or better, men have been taught how to be men by women, as a function of negative reinforcement: after all, the ideal father is never around, because he's out being a breadwinner.

To get a sense of how the initiatory relationship has functioned in earlier societies, I'll quote myself, in a description derived from Jackson's:

Jackson’s discussion of initiatory relationships, of which the example best-known to us is the custom of “man-boy love” (the institutionalized relationship of the erastes and eromenos) in Athens of the 4th and 5th centuries BCE, also brings in discussions and descriptions of similar practices among the ancient Albanians, Germans, and Celts, positing that this institution is perhaps an ancient Indo-European custom. The point of this was that the boy learned from his lover the ideals of citizenship, integrity and honor. Jackson takes as his archetype for these relationships the myth of Apollo and Hyacinthus, and bases his discussion on a description of the custom as practiced in Crete in the 4th century BCE: the youth was “abducted” in company with a group of his peers; the group spent two months in the bush hunting, feasting, and making love. On their return to the city, the man gifted his beloved with military gear (at this period a knight was automatically a citizen), an ox (signifying that now the youth had the right to make sacrifices, i.e., participate as an adult in the religious life of the community) and a goblet (symbolizing the youth’s readiness to participate in the civic and social life of the city, i.e., host a banquet). In the myth, Apollo is, of course, the mature yellow man, the Hellenist, while Hyacinthus is the Flower Boy. Jackson takes Hyacinthus’ death as symbolic of his passage from childhood to adulthood: it is the death of his adolescence.

Please note that the "boys" described here are older -- what the Greeks called "ephebes," boys in their later teens who were finished with their formal schooling and preparing to enter adulthood.

We don't have quite the same scenario these days, first because we are rapidly losing the institutionalized rituals that mark our life stages, particularlyl "coming of age" ceremonies, which have become so muted as to be nonexistent -- high-school graduation doesn't really mean anything any more in terms of where you are in your life. Secondly, we have become conditioned to look askance at any relationship between older and younger men, typifying as necessarily predatory -- although no one seems to object to old straight guys and their trophy wives.

And yet we have a model -- an idealistic one, but this whole discussion as been about ideals. I think any of us can point to relationships between younger and older men that have been firm and rewarding for both partners, and I think it really does become a partnership.

A more contemporary literary example, and one that I think has great relevance to the world we find ourselves in, is Yun Kouga's Loveless, an anime/manga series that I've dealt with briefly here, both the manga and, somewhat more thoroughly, the anime. (If you wonder why I keep basing these things on cartoons, just remember that graphic novels became "literature" in the 1980s, and if you care to look, you can find what's really there.) The relationship between Soubi, twenty years old, and Ritsuka, age twelve, is largely an initiatory relationship, but, unlike Lysis and Alexias, Ritsuka is being introduced to a world that is deceptive, ambiguous, and sometimes incomprehensible. He's also being introduced to love, which is something that he feels at this point, but can't yet name with any surety: it almost becomes a litany in places, "I want to see him, I don't want to see him" -- an indication of how conflicted he is about Soubi and about the whole tenor of his life right now. And, while there is no real sexual component to their relationship -- Soubi says quite firmly that he doesn't want to have sex with Ritsuka, at least until Ritsuka is older -- there is a strong element of physical affection and tenderness between the two. There is one very appealing scene in which Ritsuka, quite unbidden, gives Soubi a kiss before a spell battle, and then wonders "Was that right? Did I do it right?" If that doesn't say student-teacher, I don't know what does.

(As a footnote, it's interesting to see how often student-teacher relationships pop up in yaoi. This kind of relationship obviously strikes a chord.)

And it turns out that the key element of the initiatory relationship is the same as any other real love relationship: each partner must respect the other, else you have something much less. (Without getting into the pros and cons of S&M, bondage and discipline, master/slave, or any of the other role-playing fetishes, I just want to state firmly that I am committed to equal relationships with mutual respect as a necessary foundation. This is not to say that mutual respect is not part of those types of relationships, but simply that I don't think most people are up to it: that takes a much stronger and healthier ego than I usually see in the world these days.)

I think the key difference is that the older partner has a certain authority as mentor, and consequently a greater responsibility for the care of his partner: it's really like raising a child (something that I've always been afraid to undertake, for fear I would be inadequate, even though I know better) taken to the next stage.

This is one that deserves more exploration, and I don't have the resources on it right now. Any comments are welcome -- help jump-start my brain, why don't you?

Men With Men: Romance

Going back to my recent post about relationships between men, it occurs to me that a subtext there, although I don't think I stated it explicitly, is that Ishihara brings us a highly romantic vision of relationships between men, not only in the sense of "moonlight and roses," but in a deeper sense, and one that I think informs works as diverse as Kimi Shiruya, Mary Renault's The Charioteer and The Last of the Wine, Jim Grimsley's Kirith Kirin, and any number of others.

It's a romance built on ideals, one that makes a place for passion -- indeed, the whole thing is founded in passion -- but that tries to channel that passion into something with integrity and a kind of nobility. We see that most openly in The Last of the Wine, in which Lysis and Alexias try to adhere to Socrates' ideal -- what we've come to call "platonic" love -- but ultimately give into the demands of their bodies. And yet the only thing that happens after that is that their love becomes stronger and surer: they have moved beyond the erastes/eratomenos arrangement into something that is much more a relationship of equals, two adults who love:

They are, in a sense, blessed because the love they share is genuine and deep, but in trying to live up to Sokrates' ideal of a love from the soul, they forget that Eros will have his due, and he is a much older, darker god than Reason. They must, somehow, make accommodation between their ideals and their natures and, when they have done that, their love becomes truly an ideal: a love founded on trust and generosity, engaging them on a mutual search for the best in each other and in themselves, to find the seeds of honesty and integrity that we all have and to make them flower. Renault has drawn this in such a way as to say, "Yes, we must have our ideals, for, being human, we must strive for perfection; and, being human, we will fail. That does not mean we are any less worthy."

In their case, there is a tradition that they are upholding, one that, as it happens, allows them to move past the mentoring stage into a truly adult relationship. So even from the beginning, they have guidelines, a framework to help put their feelings in perspective.

In The Charioteer, which relies on Plato's Phaedrus for its central image, Laurie is trying to make his ideals fit reality, or rebuild reality to suit his ideals -- even he's confused on it, I think.. Like Lysis with Alexias, he wants to maintain a "pure" love for Andrew, and at least has a chance on that score: as the story progresses, Ralph Lanyon becomes available for the necessities of "earthly" love, which makes its own demands -- but also provides vast rewards. Renault descibes Laurie as someone who's holding onto his few sureties with both hands, and I think that aptly describes many of us today: we've had to build our own world, bit by bit, and that includes how to love. Renault is telling us in this one, I think, that Plato's ideal is just that -- a dream, perhaps, and one worth reaching for, but not something that will ever exist in the real world. In this case, Laurie's dream of "perfect" love is shattered with one kiss -- he can't help himself, and of course they are caught. I think Renault is pointing out here that we are what we are, earthly as well as divine, and what we really need to do is learn to reconcile the two.

Kirith Kirin is a singular work, one of the more original fantasies I've encountered (and for those fans of fantasy who are reading this, I highly recommend it) In this case, his relationship with Kirith Kirin is perfectly acceptable among Jessex's people (although there are some eyebrows raised at his age, which is fourteen when the story begins -- being a forceful, if somewhat reticent young man, he eventually puts his foot down and moves in with his lover), but there is no particular tradition to reinforce their feelings: it's an acceptable love, but not an institution. And yet we see the same thing again that we see in the other books I've mentioned here: it's a love based on mutual respect and generosity -- in this instance between two men who are not competitors (and note that in this discussion, competition is not the issue) but who are searching for something that will unite them beyond death -- in this case, literally.

I think we can find things in all of this that apply to men who love men in what promises soon to be the twenty-first century. (I'm of the school that holds the new century doesn't really get its feet under it until about fifteen years in -- we're still working off the twentieth right now.) We've been building on these things for a couple of generations, and I think now it's time to take a look at what we can do from here. I think a romantic vision has a lot going for it -- it's an acknowledgment of the power of Eros -- in a nice, safe, bourgeois kind of way -- and I think for men it's a valuable antidote to the traditional ideas of masculinity, which don't make a lot of sense to me when I stop to look at them.

Friday Gay Blogging: Men With Men

This really is Friday's column -- yesterday was a bad day for writing. (Actually, it was a pretty good day for writing, just a bad day for focus.)

I'm fed up with commenting on the news, frankly, and I've found something more interesting to comment on under the heading of "gay issues." I'm feeling my way through this one, so comments and observations are very welcome. It may very well run into several installments, because it strikes me that it's a huge topic. This facet is specifically about relationships between men, and it comes from a couple of yaoi manga that I've read recently. The first is Satoru Ishihara's Kimi Shiruya -- Dost Thou Know?, which I reviewed here a couple of weeks ago, and which has a more substantial review coming up at Green Man Review on February 8. The core issue from that for this column is something I investigated a bit in an essay I wrote on the book (which may itself get published here, one day), in which I said:

This book is built on metaphors, both the central image of kendo, and others that essentially structure the various chapters. The courtship here is cast as a duel: both Katsuomi and Tsurugi are fiercely competitive young men, heavily invested in the sport, and each sees the other as his chief rival, in spite of their immediate attraction to each other.

This in itself has more than one layer. On the one hand, Ishihara has based the central metaphor, kendo, on one of the most important characteristics of relationships between men: whether you ascribe it to nature or nurture or some combination of the two, men are competitors -- for many men, perhaps most, that's a central part of their identities as men, whether we agree with it or not -- which makes a romantic involvement edgy, at best. It's that phenomenon, more than anything else, that explains Tsurugi's motivations, his resistance to "surrender," not surrender to Katsuomi, particularly -- his attraction to Katsuomi is as strong as Katsuomi's to him, that much is obvious early on -- but surrender to the idea that there must be a loser here: he, like Katsuomi, is trying to take control of the situation, not to change the outcome as such -- he doesn't want that at all -- but to hold onto his dignity. (Ishihara has stepped right out of the standard seme/uke pairing here; while that stereotypical role-playing may have some basis in Japanese gay culture -- and I don't profess to know -- the relationship developing between Katsuomi and Tsurugi is, I think, more immediately comprehensible to Westerners.)

Some observations: I tend to think that there is a strong biological component to men's aggressiveness: testosterone keeps you on the edge. Anyone who's ever had any sort of therapy involving either periodic shots of testosterone or drugs to mediate the action of testosterone knows this very well. That much, at least, is iinnate, and to a large extent it's historically been reinforced by the demands of "masculinity." I think, as gay men have become more visible in society and there are now male role models for younger gays, the old idea of "masculine" and "feminine" partners -- exemplified by the seme/uke pairings so common in yaoi -- are going by the wayside: as we learn to function in relationships in which both partners are facing the same emotional strictures and the same expectations, we learning new meanings to use to support those relationships. (I should also point out here that Kimi Shiruya is one of the very few yaoi that I can think of at this point that actually shows a relationship between men and not a heterosexual relationship transposed to two male partners -- the basis of the seme/uke pairing, and a cliche at this point in the real world. (I hope.) That's an important disctinction to keep in mind. Others that come to mind, for those interested, are Ellie Mamahara's Alley of First Love, Momoko Tenzen's Paradise on the Hill, and Isaku Natsume's Dash!, all of which are comedies, although in none of these are the participants seemingly as conscious of what they are doing as in Kimi Shiruya. They all also transpose the competition into a form of egalitarianism, at least in the emotional context -- and that, after all, is what's underneath this point of view.)

It's also instructive that the central conflict between the two characters is cast in terms of "surrender" -- something that is absolutely not allowed for men.

That works naturally into the idealism of the sport -- and I mean that in its most literal sense. The ideals of sport in general are, aside from the benefits to health of physical activity, the main reason given for teaching competitive sports in schools: teamwork, sportsmanship, dignity in defeat and magnanimity in victory. Add in the warrior's code, with its emphasis on ideals we no longer encounter on a daily basis -- honor, integrity, mercy, purity of purpose, the kind of self-respect that must be earned -- and you begin to get a very good idea of where both Katsuomi and Tsurugi are coming from. It's this idealism that sparks the relationship between Masaomi and Saya, as well: after being shamed by his older brother for leaving Saya to the mercy of the bullies among the older students, Masaomi realizes that Saya understands the honor of the swordsman -- there are things he won't do, even to defend himself -- and out of respect for that and for his own honor, he must step in.

That's one possibility for us: I think we can respect each other as men based on an ideal of masculinity that has as its basis those positive aspects of competition. And, at this stage of the game, if you don't respect each other, you don't have much of a relationship -- and there's another statement of an egalitarian basis for male/male relationships.

I can't stress enough the role that I see the Ideal playing in this work. It is, indeed, almost platonic. (And keep in mind, these are young men, and the young are still idealistic.) Underlying the surface action is a pure form of the story: on the one hand, there is no compromise on either side, the situation is yes/no, surrender/conquest. That is what Katsuomi is consciously reaching for. On the other hand, as it develops it transmutes itself: after all, no one in his right mind wants that kind of relationship with another human being if you're going to call it "love." As Masaomi observes, they're reaching for something new, something, as it turns out, "beyond gender, beyond viewpoints," beyond that win-or-lose dichotomy: as it grows, they grow into it.

I think we've made a lot of progress in this regard, but, like Tsurugi and Katsuomi, we're feeling our way forward.

In that intersection of the ideal and what stands beyond it -- the competitiveness and the ideals of the warrior and the reality of learning to love -- lies the tension that supports the story and that provides the foundation for the relationship and the characters of the two men. Katsuomi is a "stampeding boar warrior," all power and speed, direct and unstoppable. He has the courage to lay all his cards on the table (as he does in one scene, when he tells Tsurugi "I've shown you everything I've got.") and the patience to wait for as long as it takes. Tsurugi is the wind, all grace and finesse, elusive but more than able to come back with a telling strike. And he has the will to play this game his way. Katsuomi may be the irresistible force, but Tsurugi is not an immovable object: in their final, climactic battle, Katsuomi screams at him to "stop dancing around -- stand and hold your ground." It doesn't only apply to the physical contest. (Tsurugi calls him a "log-splitter" and goes for the opening Katsuomi has left.)

Looking at this passage again, and thinking about the characterizations in the book, it's apparent that Tsurugi is cast in a traditionally "feminine" role here -- at least, on the surface. The key phrase, I think, is "the will to play the game his way." That's something that I can't see as reflective of a particular gender role -- there are as many strong-willed women in the world as there are strong-willed men (hell, I was raised by one). There is also the fact, which I think I mention in the GMR review, but not specifically here, that these characteristics as stated are incomplete: Katsuomi does reveal a deep patience, while equally, Tsurugi shows a degree of stubbornness that's really almost admirable.

One thing that struck me about the portrayals in Kimi Shiruya: as the relationship develops and the boys become more comfortable with each other, they become playful. Maybe that's another aspect of that competitiveness that forms the core of the story: the last two chapters (which give their collective title to the book) are filled with scenes that demonstrate the degree to which Tsurugi and Katsuomi have become a couple in everything but the surface manifestation, and they play together, whether it's something as understated as sitting on the deck quoting children's books at each other, Katsuomi joking about how being assigned to share a room with Tsurugi is asking too much (he won't be able to restrain himself is the subtext), or Tsurugi setting up those room assignments to begin with.

Of course, there have always been male couples that fit into this framework. I think the importance of this is that we're now at a point where it is a norm, although that certainly wasn't the case. I think the real importance is, as I noted above, that here is a model not tied to heterosexual expectations.

I may come back to this -- it's gotten too big for my brain to encompass this morning -- both to comment further on the competitive aspect of male relationships and to examine some other types.