“Singularity”- Escaping the control of “relationship”: 2DK, G Pen, Alarm Clock explanation

(Kaede/Nanami)

1.

First love is not the happy and fantastic experience the world supposed it is. Instead, it’s the first unfortunate event we met in our lives. Even though we felt unfortunate, on the significant aspect we should just say it’s the “first experience”. The two people who don’t need language to communicate suddenly enter the situation as if they are unfamiliar with each other. Basically, it’s the awareness that the common language between two people is not applicable anymore. …Why do two intimate people suddenly feel deeply attracted to each other when they stay in harmony at first? That is because they suddenly found a sense of “otherness” in each other. Mishima Yukio

Starting with the previous research, I define the relationship with the following features as the “intimate relationship”: (1) The relationship that has an inseparable connection on certain emotional, physical, or message aspects. Or the relationship that is about to develop these connections; (2) Always happened in the commonly acknowledged “private” zone- although I know this genre has a constructive aspect; (3) It always stems from love or sexual desire/connection, but, this condition is not necessary. Alison Alexy

“Just like how I support her, the insurmountable wall can also be overcome with her support. If you need me like this, I can take back my usual self”. Under the context of how Nanami incorporates “love interest” as part of her “life plan”, the “self” she’s referring to here should also be positioned on the aspect of “living”. Here, the “objectifiable self” that comes from the dimension of interpersonal relationships reversed its position with the “unobjectifiable self”, the structure’s appearance of heavily focusing on “relationship” forms also comes from this fundamental perversion. “Rather than live for love, they love for living……the environment didn’t allow one to intoxicated in love, but they fall in love anyway, their lives thus turned into a mess.”. Aside from describing the character, 大沢やよい’s words also show that these “relationships” have the “fundamentality” to affecting life itself. In other words, that integrity contained inside the unchangeable relationships without breathing room is also the true reason why Nanami and Kaede’s feelings can’t reach out. “Feeling the life that is used to is gradually changing, no wonder Kaede-chan would become indecisive”. When Nanami says this in Chapter 32, she clearly knows Kaede’s reason for avoiding her is that “life will be influenced by changes in relationships”, it’s what created the vacillated attitude, and being “dramatic” has nothing to do with it.

The fluidity of the“unobjectifiable self” makes it possible for one to live “ethically” by treating different “others” through the ability to be aware of respective and “specific people”, but the absolutization turned the relationships into the “situation ethics” that generalizes peoples seen by the eyes of characters like Nanami and Koyuki. The connection between the “unobjectifiable self” and a certain relationship fragmented their recognition, it makes them couldn’t truly “see” others and even themselves. “Because Kaede-chan is just a flatmate…there is no reason for that type of feeling to appear inside my heart…” In Chapter 1, we know that Kaede is the “flatmate she has to take care of” for Nanami, and Chapter 2 points out her feeling of losing herself after Kaede stops relying on her. When she is questioned by Aoi in Chapter 14, the limited definition of “relationship” enables her to wipe out the “otherness” on Kaede that makes her feel attraction. “What the hell…!! Am I just becoming a bauchle after couldn’t draw manga anymore? Am I just not important after couldn’t teach you anything more?” Compared to relationships’ “absolutization”, Koyuki’s frustration in Chapter 10 is meant to reveal what happens when the “objectifiable self” takes the center. Unlike the absolute position of “situation ethics”, Koyuki’s “self-identity” is extremely unstable and incoherent, her failure to recover self-values by getting good remarks in Chapter 9 is the perfect example, it’s noticeable that the line also hinted at her past of being easily abandoned by “others”. Regardless of what happened, it’s important to see that she feels others’ change of attitude is nothing but a “sudden betrayal”. In this case, her ways of viewing others in relationships as “princesses” or “rivals” should be taken as her defense mechanism before Chapter 10, it’s meant to protect her from facing others with a heart she can’t see through.

Instead of just being a “characteristic”, the way this series applies “relationship” makes it closer to a will to keep the world “transparent”. “I just react to others with a perfunctory attitude, conducting flirtation without losing my heart, but that is exactly the feedback everyone wants”. Such lines in Chapter 29 show the shallow relationship Aoi had with this world, her later monologue about having “no interest” in others confirmed that a world like this is a transparent landscape in which others are nowhere to be found. Even though this also makes people like Koyuki feel “safer”, the undeniable fact that this world represents “adulthood” makes the characters couldn’t “be frank” is the best reason to deny it. Both Aoi and Nanami can perfectly fit with Kaede’s lifestyle, but trying to position the feelings that are cultivated day by day inside a certain interacting mode is impossible, to begin with. Under the harmonious surface between Nanami and Kaede’s daily life, there lies the contradiction caused by the mislocation of different “selves”. The structure of “2DK、Gペン、目覚まし時計” is completed in the process of “exposing” it, and one should also notice that the method of exposure is not facing the dilemma through inward reflection but “attack from the external perspective”:

Grammar is not a rule, it’s a regularity. If there is no grammar, learning a foreign language would become extremely inefficient. But, to the language we use every day, “grammar” is unnecessary and also impossible. Thus, before the prosperity of modern nationalism, one couldn’t imagine the spoken language used in daily life had a grammar. The so-called “rule” of a language does not come from the perspective of those who use it every day, it’s from the perspective of the “foreigner” who intends to learn a foreign language. Karatani Kojin

“Living under the same rooftop; Meeting every day, sharing the time more than anyone else. Such are the reasons why we think we know each other well. And yet, turns out those are the words that only apply in that small world”. In Chapter 11, Nanami and Kaede get a rare chance to have a meal outside, it’s also this chance that makes Nanami see Kaede’s different sides. The essential part here is her “awareness” toward the “grammatical aspect” of the daily life she had. Not that she needs to against it, but she realized that their daily life is not “natural” or equal to everything. In short, their daily life is a type of “relationship” with “limits”. She can’t realize this with reflection, only by going outside can the supposed “natural dailiness” reveals its “Artificial nature”. On the same horizontal line of “introducing externality”, Aoi as an “outsider” becomes the one to make Nanami realized the limits of their current relationship. “If things keep like this, I am nothing but a person who lives with her”. In Chapter 13, Aoi implies her relationship with Kaede in the past. Before this, Nanami makes a promise to Kaede to live with her until she fulfills her dream of publishing an offprint in Chapter 3. Only by Aoi’s appearance did she realize that this “promise” with Kaede is not necessarily the strongest.

As how Karatani puts it, we can say their “daily life” before chapter 13 is a type of “spoken language”, and “getting used to it” makes it just unnecessary for them, specifically Nanami, to be “aware of the relationship”. “Now, we need a reason and term to stay together” is the hidden fact under their cohabitation. Combined with her awareness that Aoi may have a deeper connection with Kaede, we should say it’s the “reason” inside the relationship of “flatmate” that keeps Nanami from “asking more”, Kaede also shows this attitude in Chapter 14 when she mentioned that she thinks she has no rights to ask where did Nanami go last night, while she also shows an intention to “know more” in the end. Without a doubt, the truth of their relationship is the “intimacy” described by Alison Alexy, but we shouldn’t forget that this dynamic is built on two people with totally different paths, which makes it understandable why a “reason” is necessary. “In the end, there is a type of wonderful relationship that is unrelated to love after all”. Nanami takes their relationship like this at the end of Chapter 1. As how Alexy would emphasize, what her mindset demonstrates is also a type of “intimate relationship” based on the aspect of “living”. To reveal its dilemma, we should also bring up the origin of these characters.

In her interview, 大沢やよい admits that basically, all the scenes where Kaede’s manga gets criticized are from her personal experience. “Nanami is a capable woman, her image is filled with my aspiration, her somehow stubborn and clumsy parts are also my shortcomings, to be honest”. Compared to Kaede’s image that carried her experiences at work, Nanami is the one who represents 大沢’s personal characteristics, while Nanami’s image at work is something she constructs through the information provided by her father and editor. Under this arrangement, Koyuki’s words “Whether it is the past I want to erase or the reality I want to deny, all of them are nothing but my script at this point, it all thanks to a manga series that changed me” in Chapter 10 are most likely not fictional monologue but her genuine thoughts. And yet, there is more to it. In correspond to Nanami’s image at work, Kaede’s characteristics ought to be the fictional side of her character. In other words, this “living” that serves as their common ground is the combination of the “others” the authors met in two different fields. Whether it is Kaede’s fictional character or Nanami’s character that would be covered at work, overcoming their differences through the basically universal aspect of “living” is exactly a method that shows an indifferent attitude to the “otherness” of each other. It’s not serious to the extent of the “disconnected dependence” Alexy refers to, but the image they see through the lens of this relationship is just “incomplete”.

“Even though there would be no point for me to live had I not drawing manga… If I am not allowed to draw, then I also don’t need love”. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi promoted his policy of Neo-liberalism at the beginning of the 21st century. Ever since that, individualism began to become popular in Japan with the narrative of “working” as a symbol of self-actualization, Nanami’s image of a “capable office lady” and her motivation to leave her hometown to work in Tokyo in Chapter 7 is undoubtedly a revelation of its influence. As Kaede addressed her reason for avoiding love in Chapter 17, “work” was further positioned on the reversed side of “relationship”. Literally interpreting it as individuality couldn’t coexist with others would be absurd, the reason why Kaede doesn’t want “love” is not referring to its emotional aspect but her awareness of the “interacting mode/norm” instead, which is a result of how “love” was practiced throughout the modern history. Before the end of WW2, traditional patriarchal values were directly linked with the nature of “love”, the phenomenon still remained for a long time in the post-war period. “If this type of feeling was exposed, our current life would be ruined”. The way Nanami puts “love” and “work” correlates with the concept of “situation ethics”, and the artificiality was discovered through the “grammatical perspective”. The thing that also needs pointing out is that Nanami and Kaede still stay in a relationship of “codependence”, which shows how Neoliberalism actually increases people’s needs of “dependence” when society is only willing to provide little or even no help out of the belief that one should live on their power. On a more active aspect, Nanami’s desire to be “relied on” enables us to see that Japanese women’s attitude toward Neo-liberalism in the 21st century with the new position they had is still just “partial acceptance”, the thing they refused to yield grounds is also the final goal of the series. To reach that state, we also have to bring up the artistic expression.

Among all aspects of manga expression, “perspective changing” has a dominant role in the series. Before Chapter 30, Nanami is the only person with an “inner monologue” in her dynamic with Kaede, this expression puts her both in the position of “observation” and reversed causation at the same time. In Chapter 2, she gives Kaede positive remarks about dedicating to her dream inside her heart, the problem appears in the further comparison of how Nanami puts Kaede’s concentrated dedication together with those self-conscious people she met in her work field, which is the solidification of the image that Kaede is what she seems, and that is exactly a mindset of taking the discovered phenomenon as the very origin itself. Kaede’s pure reaction when it comes to eating and sleeping also enhances how she is viewed despite neither of these equaling her inner side, the misleading effect stemming from the inevitable limits of her perspective is just incredible. After Kaede seems to not aware of her confession in Chapter 21, how Nanami takes it as a hint that “she should then just try more until it conveys” which means she literally believes that what Kaede shows is just who she is, the possibility that it’s one of her personas didn’t happen to her. To make another example, we can point out that Aoi in the past also encountered similar difficulties. Just like what we can see in her flashback during Chapters 28 and 29, her idea that “Kaede fully trusted me, and that just means she will never be aware of me as a person to develop a love interest” is also just seeing the surface but kept the truth hidden.

The line hints that “because she’s pure, the attitude she presented must be what she is”, and for us, it’s already obvious that this interpretation of Kaede is questionable. Even though it’s true that all the thoughts and actions of Kaede are visible to the readers, one shouldn’t forget that is just because the “perspective” forces her to express herself like this. This misconception of understanding Kaede from her surface turns out to be the barrier for both Nanami and Aoi in the past. But it’s also obvious that the image is problematic as soon as one notices that the reaction from Kaede that is derived from her image only happened in the place Nanami can’t see. For example, Nanami didn’t see Kaede’s shock reaction when she hugged her back in Chapter 14, and neither did she see her blush after she confessed in Chapter 21. This relationship cracks with the appearance of the “past”. Combined with the fact that the perfect mutual understanding between the two also loses its validity due to influences from “a friend in the past”, it’s hard to deny that the series has a similar story structure to the novel “The Gate” (門) written by Natsume Soseki. “On the other hand, they are also like two mediocre and inconspicuous persons, only staying together to become a couple out of customary”. The way Soseki describes his main characters Sosuke and Oyone shows that “living” takes a dominant role in their relationship, which is totally applicable to describe Nanami and Kaede. In Soseki’s novel, Sosuke and Oyone’s relationship is established through the “betrayal” of their friend, Yasui. Even though he only stays in the background of the story, the news that he is about to return to their life circle breaks Sosuke and Oyone’s synchronization of the heart, just like what Aoi did to the main duo of the series we are discussing:

Sosuke’s sight directly stares at the stage, he tries to pay attention to the plot of the Jōruri narrative music but couldn’t find any interest in it no matter how concentrated he is. He constantly turns back and peeks at Oyone, only seeing her sight project at the place she ought to project. Her expression when listening to the narrative music is so invested as if she has forgotten the existence of her husband. Seeing her like this, Sosuke couldn’t help but categorize his wife into those enviable audiences. Natsume Soseki

After hearing the news that Yasui is about to return, the anxiety of facing his sin makes Sosuke’s heart a mess. With this secret, Sosuke painfully realized that the so-called mutual understanding has limits. The fact that his wife couldn’t actively share his feelings just turns them back into “existences with otherness”, and Sosuke’s loneliness in this paragraph is also the loneliness Nanami felt when knowing that there is a person who knows Kaede’s parts that she doesn’t know. This “past” represented by Aoi is what turned the distance between their hearts into something visible. But, the series didn’t recover the “otherness” with Soseki’s purpose of conveying the message that “human is lonely”, the purpose of the otherness is rather to depict the stage of “love”. “Loneliness” is a topic for sure, but we shouldn’t ignore that “gradually cultivates the feeling of love” is the greater context that makes Nanami feel she’s not as close to Kaede as before. To understand the way love was discovered, we should then move to the discussion of the intention behind the rare intimate contact in the series.

“In 2DK, there are not many kiss scenes. If one must use mucosal contact as the standard to identify the relationship, then that shouldn’t be counted as Yuri”. Just like what the author says, there’s not much “intimate contact” in the series. Before Chapter 13, the two just lived their daily lives as I said above, and the sense of “dailiness” was conveyed through the slightly casual strokes and contour lines, while the overall aesthetic of the characters and the way she arranges different frames still shows strong basic skills. In series like this, using the “force kiss” or the “confession” to “discover” it’s Yuri would rather cover the essence behind 大沢やよい’s arrangement. According to her, everything that happened in the story was under the “temperature” she controlled, which means there are no such scenes created just to “emphasize” a certain point, the fact that these intense “moves” all share the same position of “introducing externality” proves her claim as valid. “Then why did you resist me? When we were dating, and when you were approached in bed, who is the one you think of in your heart?” One may criticize Aoi’s actions, but what needs to be noticed is the “effect” of this “kiss”, which is the “exposure” of Nanami’s incoordination between heart and actions.

Communication as a premise is unnecessary, Aoi’s direct action just appeared as an accident and shows that Nanami’s feelings are “not” synchronized with what she shows outside. The same goes for Koga’s confession in Chapter 16, her question for Nanami about why not just date her if she didn’t intend to “date” Kaede also exposing the “limits”. Instead of “presenting as an emphasis”, these actions are meant to demonstrate the other type of “life” and the “transition” between the two. “The one Kaede-chan relies on and whining at, only me is enough…”. After Aoi’s appearance, the life Nanami feels used to is not the natural background with absoluteness anymore, her desire to have her connection with Kaede be the strongest is also a will to “maintain its singularity”. In other words, Nanami desires a relationship with Kaede that won’t be dissolved by the commensurable standards, which is exactly a will of “forming” a unique, irreplaceable relationship “just with Kaede”. With this wish in heart, it’s inevitable that the “situation ethics” turned by the “relationships” would contradict her desire for the “special”. Rather than constructed by two people, “relationships” that turned to “situation ethics” hint at the supposition of “applicable” to everyone. At this point, the relationship becomes absolute, while the “subjects” that create relationships end up in the position of “replaceable objects” instead. “When it comes to the field of girls only, such intimate relationships would become more colorful and diversified…The most appropriate relationship for the two people, in one perspective we can also call the relationship “just for the two of them”.

When asked about her opinion regarding what makes girls-only relationships different from heterosexual relationships, “Not limited to a certain arrangement of interacting mode” is the answer from 大沢やよい. Among the countless romance series, that we see every day, 大沢 sees nothing but the solidified distribution of roles that recreates stereotypes. For her, female relationships have no presumptions, for the common “norms” regarding couples are for heterosexuals only, her further comparison between Yuri and Yaoi about Yuri having no specific “top/bottom” shows the hidden tone about a more equal way of “enjoying (sexual) pleasure” females can give to each other. And yet, how Nanami and Kaede mentally and mutually support each other becomes the perfect embodiment of this point. In her words, the “singularity” of relationships she tries to emphasize is noticeable, this is also a factor and aesthetic presented by the Yuri genre as a whole. No need to mention, that Nanami’s transitioning from just living to the desire of giving this relationship “singularity” is the way 大沢やよい shows us “the existence of beauty in the Yuri genre and its discovering”.

2.

It’s quite easy to point out that the literary criticism of Structuralism is too simplified. However, this can’t become the reason to deny Structuralism or Formalism with more universality. In fact, it’s because there is “the will to search for architecture” inside Formalism-and only in this situation will the ambiguity of the text become a “problem”. Formalism tries to systematize and rationalize the text but only reveals a reversed situation paradoxically. Thus, we couldn’t help but say that if one really wants to deconstruct the architectural knowledge system, it must be done in the knowledge field in which the architecturalization was the most completed. Karatani Kojin

Since we are alive, it’s inevitable that we have to keep contacting certain “someone”. So, it’s impossible that a new self will appear every time meeting a certain person. …The sun rises in the morning and goes down in the evening. We live in this repeated circle, our communication with the person beside us is also repeated like this. The so-called personality is the mode created through this repeated situation. Hirano Keiichirō

“It has nothing to do with gender. Before that, as a human, that is the relationship between two ‘humans’”. Inside the intellectual trend of the 20th century, Karatani discovered the limits of Post-structuralism. No matter how radical one’s position toward the structure, people would end up in different types of “formalism” after all. As an observation, he noticed that the way formalism tries to offer a “format” of living only means that it’s just “one among many”, which creates the chance of denying it, simply showing “other chances” is enough to do so. Just like how “text” becomes a field that allows multiple “formats” to interpret it, Karatani realized the true solution is to find a field that allows “infinite ways of constructing things”, and his true enemy has always been the “power that governs the ‘way of construction’”. In the field of equality, his words are also true. Rather than recreate the narrative based on sexuality which in a way leads to the limited imagination people put on “relationships”, 大沢やよい uses Koga’s line in Chapter 16 above to show that she does acknowledge “relationships” and her own “will of searching architecture”, but she achieves it in the dimension of “human”. She said it’s “female relationships” that have this wide of possibilities in the interview, but it’s obvious that “all possibilities are allowed” is her expectation of human relationships with the way the series puts it. Of course, the series is not afraid of showing sexualities and in many scenes used “sexual desire” as the standard of judging the relationships.

However, we also can’t forget Nanami’s awakened desire after Chapter 15 is because “Kaede is cute” rather than “Kaede is a girl”, which shows that she is desiring “Kaede” rather than “just a gender”. In this case, the author is indeed “constructing her architecture” on the dimension of humans. Now, we can also give another reason why “relationships” make the structure of the series become like this. Rather than a problem of writing, it’s the inevitable consequences, for the way Nanami and Kaede deal with things is nothing but “simply entering another architecture”. In other words, the seemly “exceptional” relationship they had is still an “architecture” that limits them with predetermiation. So, the developments they had were in fact always under the pressure of the “living”, and the “framework” of it is exactly from this “architecture” that exists. As we can see above, “relationship” didn’t get ignored by the author. For her, the problem is not to find a way to “break” the architecture. As we can see in Nanami’s genuine confession in Chapter 32, what architecture can people construct is what she truly cares about:

“…This ‘like’ is different from the ‘like’ between friends, it’s a special ‘like’. It’s the like that doesn’t want others to take you away, the like that wants to touch the parts where others are not allowed to”.

“If the method of thinking back and forth and keeping everything vague is the way of ‘adult’, I would rather be called childish”. By addressing this line, Nanami rejected the confinements given by the “situation ethics” between Kaede and her. To her, living as just a flatmate is not enough anymore. And yet, she is in no way saying that she doesn’t need any “relationships”. As Hirano said, constantly interacting with a certain person is already enough to create a “Dividual”, or you may say “personality”, that surely is fine. Compared to being forcefully incorporated in the grand architecture of “relationships” that exists before subjects, the relationship Nanami and Kaede obtained is “constructed by themselves” and can’t be commeasured by anything else. In Chapter 34, their feelings finally become mutual, but neither Nanami nor Kaede just suddenly behaved like the typical “lovers”. Nanami said “lovers” is just an agreement, we can be more exact. For these two, the very truth is they are quite special from the beginning, and becoming “lovers” is just a method of move in to the place that they made themselves, a relationship just for them.

Even though the title “ 2DK, G Pen, Alarm Clock” may not refer to anything specific, in the end, we know these together consist of the irreplaceable dailiness between Nanami and Kaede after all,

Works Cited

1. 2DK、Gペン、目覚まし時計. 大沢やよい.
2. Interview of the author: https://ddnavi.com/interview/423792/a/.
3. 新恋愛講座（明星 1955年12月-1956年12月）. Mishima Yukio.
4. Intimate Disconnections: Divorce and the Romance of Independence in Contemporary Japan. Alison Alexy.
5. 『畏怖する人間』（冬樹社、1972年). Karatani Kojin.
6. 『隠喩としての建築』（講談社、1983年). Karatani Kojin.
7. 『門』（もん）. Natsume Soseki.
8. 『「色」と「愛」の比較文化史』（岩波書店、1998年、新版2010年）. Saeki Junko.
9. 『マンガはなぜ面白いのか―その表現と文法』（NHKライブラリー、1997年）. Natsume Fusanosuke.
10. 『私とは何か 「個人」から「分人」へ』（講談社現代新書 2012年）. Hirano Keiichirō
11. https://disp.cc/b/ACG/g1uW