Arwen Spicer's Blog: Diary of a Readerly Writer (and Writerly Reader) - Posts Tagged "mirage-of-blaze"

(A Vintage Voice post: revised and reposted from my other blog long ago and far away...)

"History Was Created in This Way":
The Pregnancy Theme in Mirage of Blaze

Mirage of Blaze is a Japanese "light novel" series (really not "light" at all) by Mizuna Kuwabara, concerning the adventures of five samurai who died in the Warring States Period but have since roamed Japan as "Possessors" (of others' bodies) tasked with the mission of exorcising vengeful spirits for the safety of Japan and the world. The story focuses on the tempestuous love between their leader, Uesugi Kagetora, and one of his chief retainers, Naoe Nobutsuna. This essay presupposes some knowledge of the series and contains spoilers galore.

Warning: the series is dark and contains sexual violence.

For a story that seldom discusses its main characters as parents, Mirage of Blaze devotes a great deal of energy to reproductive themes. Symbolic and literal pregnancies form central events, yet (as far as I've read) they never result in offspring who become individuals independent from their parents. In MoB, pregnancy does not seem to signify creating new, separate individuals. It emphasizes a formative transformation of spiritual energy, which may be linked to changes in relationships or to changes within a character's self. Indeed, the resolution of MoB depends on Naoe's self (soul) being transformed through his impregnation by and with Kagetora. Through this transformation, I'll argue, Naoe attains his desire to achieve a Kagetora-like sense of agape (compassion / love of humanity). He will, further, disseminate this agape indefinitely throughout human society.

MoB's reproductive motif begins with the immoral act of Naoe's impregnating Minako and ends with the moral act of Kagetora's impregnating Naoe. The first act that shatters Kagetora and Naoe's already strained relationship is Naoe's rape of Minako. Minako scarcely has a chance to come to grips with this assault, much less with becoming pregnant with Naoe's child, when Naoe catapults her out of her body so that Kagetora's soul can take refuge there. This results in her soul's destruction but also in Kagetora's ending up pregnant with Naoe's child. For Kagetora, the situation could hardly be more nightmarish—for many reasons, one of which would surely be the amplification of his rape terrors. In 400 years, he hasn't been able to work through his own rape, but enforced pregnancy was one debasement he had been spared. Now, he is forced to confront that debasement at the hands of the most important person in his life. He doesn't confront it for long, of course. He is soon killed. Kagetora and Naoe's relationship will not recover for more than twenty years.

When they finally do make their peace, however, the theme of impregnation almost immediately resurfaces. In volume 20, Naoe ruminates on wanting to spiritually impregnate Kagetora. This time, however, the associations are positive, connected to love and redemption. Finally, in volume 40, Kagetora literally breathes the remains of his dying soul into Naoe, leaving Naoe pregnant with him. This, too, is an act of love, and it affects Naoe so profoundly that he vows to persist without being cleansed by reincarnation for as long as his (and Kagetora's) soul can survive.

In none of these cases, however, is an actual offspring—an independent third person—produced. Minako's child dies while still an undeveloped fetus, and Naoe and Kagetora share their souls with each other without producing a third entity whose existence is separate from each of theirs. On one level, this effacement of offspring suggests a Catherine-and-Heathcliff-like dual-solipsism. Naoe, in particular, loves Kagetora so much that he wants to share his very soul. Yet he loves him with such singular, central attention that he has no parental love to spare for a child. Their acts of reproduction remain more closely tied to sex than birth: an exploration of their love rather than a furtherance of independent life.

This obsessive love that idolizes the lover at the expense even of one's potential children is characteristic of Naoe. Broader commitments to people in general are comparatively difficult for him. Clearly, he has many emotional attachments: he loves the Tachibanas devotedly, for example, and of course, the rest of the Yashashuu. Yet he laments that he lacks Kagetora's love for humanity and his well-intentioned drive to serve it: "Kagetora's actions never seem to stem from any bad intent, causing Naoe to feel greater pain from the superficiality of his own good and bad intentions, his level was so low. He became clouded in darkness" (Vol. 20, ch. 4). Naoe holds his own self-interested motives in contempt yet is unable to overcome his egoism.

Kagetora, while his love for Naoe can be intense to the point of obsessive, is much more invested in others. He is a good parent: historically, he was supposed to have been deeply attached to his oldest son. His parenting skills also resurface in Takaya's solicitous protection of Miya throughout their troubled childhood. Kagetora is notably fond of animals (and stricken when his evil eye kills them), close to his family (sometimes even when they treat him horribly), dedicated to his clan and followers, and willing to let his soul itself be destroyed in order to fulfill his mission of protecting the human race from vengeful spirits. A stronger example of agape could hardly be imagined.

Naoe envies Kagetora's virtue. He wishes he could be as good—as great—a man but knows he is not and believes he never will be. Yet Naoe absorbs much of this virtue simply through Kagetora's influence. Ultimately, because he loves Kagetora, he agrees to let Kagetora's soul be destroyed, knowing that Kagetora considers the sacrifice worthwhile. In standing with Kagetora in this choice, Naoe himself embraces tremendous self-sacrifice: losing his greatest love, his reason for living. One might say he learns agape from Kagetora's example. But for Naoe, this transformation is not just a matter of mundane learning; it is an alteration in his soul brought about through exchange with Kagetora's soul, both through simple proximity and more intensely through having sex. For Naoe is dead serious when he opines that sperm is a vehicle for the soul. (As silly as "spiritual sperm" sounds in English, in Japanese, the two words are, indeed, closely etymologically—and symbolically—connected.)

Pondering his newfound sexual relationship with Kagetora, Naoe expresses a wish to spiritually impregnate him:

"It did not matter if this body had no way of giving birth,
as long as my sperm can stay somewhere in your soul,
as long as your soul becomes pregnant with a new spirit...
Even though we're not the people loved by God, we can still be redeemed.
My pain can be purified by the offspring of your spirit." (Vol. 20, ch. 6.)

Naoe sees Kagetora as a vehicle for their mutual salvation. If he can imbue Kagetora with his soul, Kagetora's goodness will purify his essence. He will be, as English translators often put it, "accepted" fully into the circle of Kagetora's virtue. He will be reborn. And Kagetora, too, through setting aside his resistance to Naoe, will cast off his fears and resentments and move forward toward "redemption."

The flaw in Naoe's reasoning is that it ultimately depends on Kagetora to solve Naoe's problems. He asks Kagetora to take responsibility for giving birth to the new Naoe, as if Naoe could be reborn by proxy. Finally, however, Naoe must take responsibility for his own rebirth. He must spiritually shift roles from seme to uke. He must not only beget this new spirit in Kagetora; he must conceive it, though Kagetora, in himself.

At times, Naoe clearly perceives this receiving aspect in himself. He muses:

"A person's reproduction does not only include the body. A soul can also reproduce. That has nothing to do with gender. Every individual has sperm, every individual has eggs, each person could mutually inseminate and become pregnant, and give birth to a spiritual infant.

"History was created in this way.

"My spirit has always been violated by you..." (Vol. 20, ch. 4).

Here, Naoe characterizes Kagetora's spiritual influence as rape, yet he does not express the idea of spiritual reproduction in negative terms. His own receptiveness to Kagetora both frightens and exhilarates him. By volume 40, however, Naoe's fear is largely quelled, and he is prepared, literally, to receive Kagetora's spirit into his body as a positive manifestation of their union and as a sacred trust: to preserve the remnants of Kagetora's precious soul. Through this impregnation, Naoe considers himself finally happy. He and Kagetora have at last achieved—or are in the process of achieving—the spiritual birth of a better self that Naoe has yearned for.

But Naoe's concept of spiritual reproduction is broader than his love-union with Kagetora. In volume 20, he thinks to Kagetora: "[Y]our sperm has remained in so many people's bodies..." (ch. 4). In this instance, he is not speaking of sex in literal terms at all. Rather, he is pondering the influence Kagetora has had over the lives of those he has known, led, protected. His very proximity has impregnated them, producing new souls, hybridizing their prior selves with his presence. "History was created this way," says Naoe ch. 4. The evolution of human society is predicated on a blending of souls that evolves the participants' selves. The use of this power—like sex itself—can be a violation, but it can also embody the most profound transformative power of love.

When ruminating on his sexual relationship with Kagetora, Naoe extrapolates on this reasoning in grandiose terms:

"Additionally, new life will be born.

"After that, our spiritual child will continue to flourish, after duplicating itself, if it can give birth to a new era, create history..." (Vol. 20, ch. 6).

The spiritual love child of Naoe and Kagetora will create a new era in history! If history is always a process of the merging of human souls, this statement is far from nonsensical. Yet why should Naoe and Kagetora's love, in particular, launch a new era? Is this simply an expression of Naoe's overwrought emotions? Or is he referring—perhaps without realizing it—to the depth of the spiritual union they must attain in order to defeat Nobunaga: a victory that presumably does literally affect the course of history? Both are doubtless true, but Naoe's premonition has another dimension, subtler but no less grand.

If MoB ends with Naoe pregnant with a new life that is a composite of his and Kagetora's souls, what will he give birth to? The story seems to end by repeating its motif of indefinite pregnancy without offspring. One could say that Naoe gives birth his new self, and this, indeed, is irrefutable. By merging with Kagetora, he becomes and will become more selfless, more compassionate, more Kagetora-like. But this transformation alone cannot represent the self-duplicating child that will change history simply because this duplication suggests existence outside of Naoe's self: the child born and individuated. How can this duplication occur?

The key, as always, is agape. Compassion is the highest virtue, represented in its most purified form not by Kagetora but by Naoe and Kagetora's mental image of Minako. Both liken her to the Virgin Mary, who, in Catholicism, is often presented as the ultimate force of compassion, the one to whom one prays for intercession when Christ himself seems unapproachable. In Naoe and Kagetora's minds, Minako is the ultimate selfless lover: she suffers the loss of her entire family, the violation of her body, the destruction of both her life and soul (and incidentally the loss of her child), and she forgives everything and asks nothing. Her entire joy—so Naoe and Kagetora hope—rests ultimately in knowing that others (such as Naoe and Kagetora) will find peace and love. The extent to which this idolization may resemble the real woman, Minako, is beside the point. It is the bar to which both Naoe and Kagetora attain. And while we may presume that even their united souls will never reach it, the furthering of their joined compassion is a principal aim of their union.

How can it be furthered? Through the process of history, the perpetual merging of souls—or, in mundane terms, through Naoe-Kagetora's influence on the people around him. A reasonable example might be Nagahide, still present at the end of MoB. Nagahide has always been deeply attached to Naoe and Kagetora. Indeed, his personal distress over their troubled relationship seems likeliest reason for his retreat from the Yashashuu. But though Naoe and Kagetora clearly love Nagahide, he has also been peripheralized by the inward-turning strength of their focus on each other. In the era of Naoe-Kagetora, reborn to compassion, this inward focus will turn outward. Companions like Nagahide will receive a more open, selfless concern for their own happiness. Nagahide will no longer be peripheral but cherished. This nurturing, in turn, should work to heal Nagahide's own wounds—artifacts of his exclusion, his aloneness. In time, Nagahide will become less self-protective and, thus, more openly compassionate himself. And he—and others—will, then, "pay it forward," uplifting others through agape. And, thus, compassion is duplicated in many reborn souls and, ultimately, human society will shift in shape, just like faces in response to spreading gene pools.

"A person's existence is tied to the future," Naoe asserts (Ch. 4). The Uesugi have always known this, committing their lives to opposing those vengeful spirits who seek to recreate the past. It is to the future that MoB always looks: not finally to the union of Kagetora and Naoe but to the offspring of that union, to the birth of a better world.

(Originally published 10/26/2007)

Note on translation: MoB has not been officially translated into English, and there appear to be no plans to do so. If this changes, I will be the first to advocate that everyone buy the official translation.