Homusaki Shikibu
joined Jul 10, 2021
Although the matter is long done and dusted, I'd like to very briefly provide some alternative perspective into this. It seems this discussion has revolved around whether or not the manga espouses the view that sex is bad, due to the author seemingly expressing some sense of admiration for the "noble" or "pure" non-sexual relationship of her old schoolmates.
But I think judging such things purely on a "for or against" axis is a bit of an oversimplification of matters. One does not have to think that sex is inherently bad or deny the boons of sex in order to express admiration for a form of love that is closer to religious piety than romance; and I think that's all there is to this manga. The relationship between the two then-stagehands is described as 'pure' or 純粋 simply because fewer desires are involved, i.e. a more objective description rather than the presentation of a moral judgment.
Tamamusi herself once put down a similar thought in an old amusing musing on yuri:
性と聖が一体ってとこが百合っぽい。あと死が待つ恋って百合っぽい。新石器時代の女神信仰の像が女が２対で大地母神を表してて、これもなにやら百合臭い。この時代の女神信仰はある種、純粋な女性信仰と繋がってる気がするから。
The merger of the sexual and the divine: that feels yuri-ish to me. And so does a love where one is lefting waiting until the day they die. And the way they practiced goddess worship in the Neolithic period, setting up two pairs of idols to represent Mother Earth? Smacks of yuri to me. I think goddess worship of that era draws, in some sense, from a pure/fundamental worship of women. (Translation by me.)
Perhaps I am delving a bit into brackish waters here, but the puritanical idea that "sex is inherently sinful or impure" holds little water in the context of this manga nor the cultural backdrop within which this manga was written, even though it is -- I believe -- of great relevance to most posters here. My personal view is that, unlike countries with a Christian or general Abrahamic religious background, the resistance against LGBT in more conservative Confucian societies stems more from its defiance of the traditional famiy unit/structure and societal expectations rather than any code of intrinsic moral wrongness or order.
I would like to stop writing here for fear of dragging on and of dipping into topics I have no authority to speak on. I'd just like to end off by saying that there's no need to go through any mental gymnastics to make this two-pager more palatable. I don't mean to demean or argue against the validity of anyone's opinions or points here (except for this one); but it is inevitable that some things get lost in translation even when the translation is perfectly serviceable, and I thought to share more on this end since (very surprisingly to me) no one has raised similar points in the running of this thread.
.jpg?1658612246)
