Such a concept called “beauty” didn’t exist inside the object itself. Instead, this concept exists in the shadows and lights born the gap between the objects.
-” In Praise of the Shadows”
Tanizaki Jun’ichirō didn’t just create his own theory to praise the handicraft in Japan. As a novelist, he actually tries to build the aesthetic of the “shadows” in the literature. In his case, he is famous for writing the special fetishes of humans and depicting the dirt or something we usually viewed as “disgusting”. Aside from that, he also uses the idea to refer to the “atmosphere” of darkness and the rather negative side of the story. The aesthetic of the shadows thus is a concept more than the direct interpretation of words, it is more like a “metaphor”.
When we look back at the artwork of Manio (まにお) nowadays, one may be shocked by her attempt of saying “cruddy” is something to be “loved”. However, the depiction of “cruddy” with the purposely beautiful and detailed art style already revealed the intention of the author is not just to reverse the common value system of the idea called beauty. Just like Jun’ichirō, one thing she presents with her series is exactly the aesthetic of the shadows, which includes nearly all the ideas different from the light or “clean”. Furthermore, the “cruddy” in the title is more than a straightforward depiction of sadism and masochism.
Then, let’s try to look into the theory from Tanizaki. Just like how he noticed, a single object can’t create shadows. Its appearance requires the presentation of the “other”, which may as well be taken as the other “concept”. For example, the concept of the “environment” is a necessary factor to set off the background of the object to let it project its shadows on it. Starting from the point of “presenting the ‘other’ “ in the concept of the shadows, I will say the “atmosphere” in a story is where the idea lies. The reason is that the “atmosphere” in a story is created by the interaction between at least two concepts. One example is the main character presents a sense of loneliness by walking in nature without the accompany of others. But in general cases, “atmosphere” is the interaction between characters and the direction of the story.
Then, this concept serves the function of explaining the core topic of the series I Love Your Cruddy (きたない君がいちばんかわいい), which I believe is the aesthetic of the shadows, and the special relationship between Airi and Hina is where Manio shows this theory. Sadism and masochism are not the actual focus of the aesthetic theory in the series, but they are not just meant to be the tool to hunt for novelty either. As I claim, the “shadows” in the relationship between Airi and Hina stemmed from their “preference” for “what is valuable” and the “gap” appeared from the difference. The existence of brutality in the series is then heavily associated with this point I raised.
Creation of the inevitable doom- from ontological to ethical
One thing people are often mistaken about in the series I Love Your Cruddy is the fundamental reason that leads to the shocking end of Airi and Hina dying and having their corpses buried by the heavy snow. Some people would try to connect this ending with the “immoral” aspect of their relationship. However, the inner monologue of Hina before she killed Airi in the finale says something different. That very monologue has the function of revealing the “reason” for the ending, and it’s just related to the issues of emotional aspect rather than pointing at the “SM” relationship as the direct cause.
In addition to that, the attitude of how the two main characters treat this physical relationship shows the truth that they think it is “acceptable”, this relationship only stopped after being “exposed”, which hinted the idea that it will continue if nothing happened. This didn’t mean the author shows her disapproval of Airi and Hina. Instead, by constructing the character that exposed them as someone who is selfish and showing “discrimination” to people she can’t understand, the author is actually telling the message that the problem is on those who think they have the right to “correct” the living way of others. As one of Hina’s friends said, the action of exposing people is no different from bullying.
According to the narrative, the external aspect of their relationship is thus unrelated to the ending. The problem then moves to the “structure” of the story. Their behavior of torturing and being tortured is not enough to completely match the extent of distress of their inner world. To make it clearer, the heavy focus on the SM’s actions in the story couldn’t fully express how Airi and Hina felt. And doing that type of action is not their motivation for doing it either. From the beginning, they are searching for the thing they couldn’t get from each other, the relationship of the SM is just their attempt to search for the unreachable but not the building up toward the ending, the reason that ending happened lies in their character trait itself.
Basically, the way how Airi and Hina existed as a character can be labeled as ontological and ethical respectively. One thing that needs to pay attention to here is my usage of these two terms is different from the common definition. My usage of these two terms takes reference from Karatani Kojin. He used “ontological” and “ethical” to refer to the “self” that couldn’t be objectified and the self that can be objectified in the social aspect of connecting with the “other”. After clarifying the different “self”, Karatani further relates this concept with the mental “hardships” faced by the characters. In his term, “ontological” means the character has a problem with how they themselves exist as a human. As for the “ethical” problem, Karatani means the distress or just negative emotions that happened in the efforts of building a connection with others.
In my own usage in the article, I transform a little part of how Karatani used the term. I used “ontological” and “ethical’ to refer to the perspective of the “values” of each character. “Ontological” means the character only values themselves, while “ethical” means the values of the character lie on the “other”. With this definition, I would say Airi is the “ontological” type of character. Despite being heavily influenced by others and ruining her own life, I would say she only “values” herself throughout the entire story.
“Values” is a movement to consider something as valuable, which is different from “care”. If I said Airi didn’t “care” about others, every reader can easily refute my point with how much she cares about her social image, and the danger of breaking it can even make her feel like vomit in chapter 10. So, I would say she only “values” the thing related to herself. She shows this in two aspects. The first aspect is her “genuine feeling” toward her seemly popular social life.
On the sixth page of chapter 8, Airi reveals with her inner monologue that “the time like this is painful” to say playing her role of socializing with others is extremely boring, this part shows that she didn’t communicate with others for the recognition of fulfill the emotional need of having a social life, she just used it to entertain herself. To put it simply, the values of social life for Airi are not about satisfying her demands of contacting others but just to let her “have fun”. This perspective makes her different from the common character writing of putting her own value on others for emotional acknowledgment and support. For her, “other” never enters her eyesight aside from being the tool of entertainment.
Another part that shows this trait of Airi is in the side story of the third volume in the hard copy version. Back in the timepoint when Airi started the SM relationship with Hina, she was asked why she didn’t interact with Hina in class, and she said “because being with that group is profitable for me”. This further correlates with the point that Airi never desires others with the emotional requirement. While she presents herself as extremely outgoing, the actual distance of her heart from others rather reveals she is the most “detached” one.
Another aspect of Airi being the “ontological” character is how she treats her relationship with Hina. At the very least, we can say Hina is the most important person to her in this story. However, there’s not really any actual “emotional connection” between them. Airi went through multiple states of transformation in the series, but the distance of her heart from people didn’t change in any of it. As she admits in chapter 2, she chooses Hina because she can gain many good comments by having Hina around her. And Hina is valuable because she will let her do anything on her body. But after Hina already became clingy to her, the instinctive reaction of Airi is “discard the relationship”. From the perspective of others, this may seem like she realized her “fault” for abusing people and decide to stop. But in the aspect of interpersonal relationship, this attitude of cutting off the relationship shows that Airi never really care about the emotional attachment of Hina towards her, and of course, she herself has none.
Even after turning into the one that got dominated, Airi never changed her perspective of Hina as someone that can be “of use”. After she quit school for fearing criticism from other students, Hina often visits her home to take care of her. Chapters 16 and 17 show that Airi surrendered to the relationship and let Hina dominate her everything, but one needs to notice that her reliance on Hina is to “escape from the troublesome thoughts”, as she said in chapter 18. So, cooperating with Hina and accepting her orders are just for Airi to free herself from the thoughts that were troubled her.
In conclusion, the eyesight of Airi never includes “other” as a person. The value of others is to profit herself, so basically Airi only values herself. With the meaning of “ontological”, the only thing Airi cares about is how she exists. Her hardships are rooted in the way she exists. Just like how she is being selfish relates to her existence of being emotionally detached from others.
On the side of Hina, she is the type of “ethical” character, even though “ethics” didn’t really correlate with her image. Just remember the usage is different. By defining her as “ethical”, I am referring to the idea that she only “values” the connection with others. However, one may say she looks extremely detached in her class, And she also constantly reveals in the series that she didn’t really care how others viewed her. One then needs to realize that before everything, she has the most important relationship to make her ignore the whole world, which is the connection with Airi.
The perspective of Hina on interpersonal relationships is totally different from Airi, and she also demonstrates such a concept with two aspects. The first aspect is the motivation of accepting the abuse from Airi. Humans basically have the tendency of protecting themselves, but Airi hurting her constant didn’t stop Hina from loving her. It’s fine to say she is just enjoying the sadism and masochism relationship. But it’s also necessary to know the fundamental reason for her to agree with all of these. Again in the side story of volume 3. After Hina feels the emotion of extreme distress for Airi seems to have forgotten the promise to stay by her side, she comes to the phase of acceptance for that Airi tells her they can still have the “most special” time together.
According to the words that make her accept the torture, it can be inferred that Hina desires to become the “special one” to Airi. Calling back to chapter 2, the way how Hina persuades herself to calm down is also “Don’t worry, I am her most special one”. It’s undeniable that her view of Airi does include a certain extent of self-interest, but the decisive difference between her from Airi is that her desire is to be “loved by the other”. In this “value”, the other is not just a tool for profits herself, she needs “the other as a subject to love her”, so that is why she cares so much about the way Airi views her. With the presumption that being tortured is equal to the expression of Airi’s love, Hina managed to accept nearly everything she did to her. In short, her “value” includes the complete presentation of the “other”. If we combined it with the fact that she didn’t try to protect herself from the strangling of Airi in chapter 16, we may also say she values the “ethical” aspect of having a relationship with others more than her own life. The other aspect of Hina is to think of others before herself. She has a clear awareness of what might be dangerous, the readers can see that in her inner monologue when she got abused.
Despite knowing it’s dangerous for herself, Hina still agrees to follow the will of Airi and even accompanies her on the trip of self-destruction. Such attitude is all because she values the relationship with Airi more than herself. But again, the important thing is Hina needs Airi to “loves her back”, she didn’t say she doesn’t need anything payment for her sacrifice.
To sum up the character of Hina, I will say her “ethical” side of character makes her follow the route of destructing herself. And the mental hardships or negative emotions she went through are all about how Airi treats her but not her existence.
Recovering the connection and things that were in vain
The characters of Airi and Hina hide a sense of irony if we try to compare their depiction. In the case of Airi, she needs the external aspect of others while she didn’t have any “other” in her inner world. As for Hina, she didn’t need any others from the external aspect but desired a specific other the most in her inner world. Both of them derived a bit from human nature. In the case of Airi, her emotional detachment didn’t mean she can live without having an emotional connection with others, this is where the abuse comes in. Based on her analysis, we can infer that it’s impossible for her to “feel” the connection of others in a positive way since her only value is herself. But also stem from valuing herself, the “connection” for her may still be necessary. As Yasunari Kawabata presents in his novel Thousand Cranes, there is another way:
Maybe it’s right. The ones you are more familiar with, the ones you are in love with, it’s hard to remember their faces. As for objects with an uglier appearance, maybe it’s easier to have a clear impression of them and leave it in the memory.
Just like how Tanizaki presents his theory of the “shadow”, Yasunari Kawabata didn’t put these lines in his work for just the metaphorical reason. He indeed has a point. When we are close to someone, we would have a clear impression of them, but the image will gradually lose its framework once the relationship is getting closer. In an extremely close relationship, the interaction didn’t require one to fully recognize the other, for communication already became natural and things just get done with basically the tacit agreement. But when the other is ugly (here I used the broad usage, so just take “ugly” as “unpleasant to you”), one can see its full picture because we are at a distance. Or we can say that unpleasant memories are easier to remember because it’s something with heterogeneity from our daily life. We have a standard of “what is acceptable”. This standard didn’t necessarily mean positive, it’s just we are okay with its existence, so it won’t have any impression. Compared with it, unpleasant memories with heterogeneity is not easy to forget because we don’t have that experience in daily life.
In short, leaving unpleasant memories is a way to let others remember you. At this point, the torture from Airi finally has a meaning. Because she’s unable to resonate with the memorial aspect of people, she needs to recover her connection with others on a different dimension of the mental field, which is the memorial aspect. The same goes for Hina.
In the end, the relationship between Airi and Hina matches the aesthetic of the shadows by showing the depth of things in vain. As I said at the beginning of the article, their characters already decide the very ending. Why? Because Airi doesn’t have the ability to treasure anything aside from herself, she won’t be able to respond to love of Hina. No matter how many sacrifices Hina made, it’s impossible that Airi will love her back. Thus, everything she did for Airi was in vain. In order to actively form a “meaning” for herself, her only choice is to finally let Airi puts her in the heart by killing her, she did succeed.
The aesthetic of the shadows lies in the relationship between characters in the fictional works. The story I Love Your Cruddy (きたない君がいちばんかわいい) is one example. The series didn’t just show pure gore and brutality in their relationship. Instead, Airi and Hina are the perfect contractions in both the value system and the perspective of the world.
The series surely covers by the shadow, but this shadow is not the shallow violence that most people can only see in it. Instead, the shadow tells you that there is indeed a thing that human power can’t reach themselves, the genuine feelings of the human heart. Surprisingly, this again proves the theory of shadows is “a theory that needs the presence of the ‘other’”. This series conveyed such a message with the story. It’s beautiful, but with depth.
Work Cited
1. I Love Your Cruddy (きたない君がいちばんかわいい). まにお.
2. In Praise of Shadows. Tanizaki Jun’ichirō.
3. 定本 柄谷行人文学論集. 柄谷行人.
4. Thousand Cranes. Yasunari Kawabata.
