Hi! Your posts are really insightful so i was wondering about your views on the nature of doumeki’s love? It seems unconventionally strong and unwavering but also controlling and desperate like a double edged sword so can it compliment yashiro’s need for the kind of love that helps him overcome the part of his trauma that stems from the absence of his mother’s love? I am hopeful but also apprehensive narratively speaking
Hello Anon, I share your feelings about being hopeful and apprehensive about the possible resolutions of the situation between D and Y. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how unlikely it would be that everything will be tied up nicely. There are in my opinion certain things that will remain unsolved, if the narrative keeps adhering to the reality of living life. I believe that feelings will be addressed and confirmed from both sides and D and Y will make a mutual commitment that hopefully surpasses the dimension of sexual partnership and force them to reveal their thoughts and fears to each other. After all I believe a main theme of the story is that love is a transformative force, but not a solution for anyone’s problems, those just don’t go magically away.
About Doumeki, I underlined a few times already that he fell in love while his life had been radically altered and he had not much else: he gave himself to love without any fear of losing himself in it since he already was in the position of having to reimagine a new life for himself. He was ready to follow Y regardless of where that choice would take him. Isn’t D the most relatable character of the two for most readers? Falling in love for the first time, and in a moment when he desperately needed a new direction, any caution went out of the window and he was ready to give himself up in every way possible, as long as he could have and keep the object of his affection near. That is a scary thing about love isn’t it? It changes our perception so much that it is hard to keep our judgment. When D is on his knees in front of Y, a gun pointed at his head, he says words that don’t have any other logic except that of an enamouredness that had transformed into blind and desperate devotion. At that moment, D seems completely broken over Yashiro’s rejection, with only his conviction to sustain him, because Y had become the sole focus and reason for living. That is an extremely dangerous position to be, that deadly nature of love that won’t listen to reason that is an extreme literature had exploited greatly. Juliet thought that Romeo was dead and the only course of action that grief and love suggested to her was dying too. If in love we find the greatest affirmation of life, then when we feel that we are losing it we are closer to death than ever. But the playwright is representing the extraordinary, an extreme of passion that cannot be taken as a model that can be seamlessly copied from in a reenactment of the “authentic” forces of love. This scary potential for love to make someone forget themselves in Saezuru is shown in the negative - D being carried by his feelings and forcing them and himself on Y, and later forfeiting his life for Y - and in the potential for the positive - Y confronting his convictions and fears.
chapter 33, confront these words with those Doumeki said in chapter 41
Love brought about an imbalance and disruption so great that the temporary separation was necessary: for D a chance to rebuild his autonomy and confidence in himself, but with that came a form of resentment, nurtured further by his misunderstanding of the nature of the relationship between Y and Inami. Why not him? So the bigger problem in my opinion has always been the fact that D has no real understanding of Yashiro’s situation, he doesn’t know much about his past, about his family’s dynamics or the relationship with Misumi, and he never quite realized how little power Y had over his circumstances, because Y is extremely good at making people believe that he had more agency and made his own choices in life, he built his understanding of himself on the idea of as a strong and willful person who was able to handle everything life gave him and transform his painful experiences into a more bearable and enjoyable and affirming image. Being confronted with the crude reality isn’t easy. D doesn’t know what he contributed to show Y: a worse set of memories than the ones Y had been carefully selected and manufactured during the years. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that D is at fault for what he doesn’t know, but he does make several mistakes in judgment and ultimately the habit of blurring the boundaries in the relationship first established by Y is exploited by D to a greater degree than what could still be treated as non particularly armful.
The fact is that even if Y was able to verbalize the dissonance he felt to D, he is aware that D might as well not be able to fully comprehend, and he has been proven correct in this regard previously. This is not only shown as destruction of trust, in Saezuru, I think that it is clear that Y thought that D is better off not having to bear any of Yashiro’s suffering, even if he will be hurt by the rejection of his feelings, Y thought that it would be better for him in the end instead of having to see or accept the parts that Y has yet to share of himself, an enormous amount of grief and insecurity, of baggage that Y wished to keep buried. Let’s be real here, love will always be a door opened to fear and grief for Y, because of memories he can’t erase. And he will need someone who would not waver to build a completely new habit of trusting another with his most vulnerable feelings. Even now, with D coming in between him and his self-destructive relationship with Inami (self-destructive and yet weirdly affirming to a part of himself that Y finds difficult to let go of), with D trying to reach Y again, without making his feelings overwhelmingly known this time, even now Y keeps thinking of Doumeki’s life as better without himself in it, with Izumi, with the Sakura group since Tsunakawa seems interested enough in keeping D around. Love once again left Y more aware than ever of his wretched existence, it had happened before, with Kageyama being the first person to make Y aware of his loneliness and uniqueness, and it hurt. And he doesn’t feel like he has anything valuable to offer to someone like D, especially if sex is involved, since sex to Y has always meant devaluation of himself and desiring a gentle touch from a man a sign of his wicked nature.
I think that Doumeki’s love has wavered during the years, it would be quite worrying if it hadn’t. Yoneda showed us that D was so affected by the discovering that Y went to meet Inami after D had thought he had given him the sexual release he needed (why else would Y need Inami? here we see the limit of D’s comprehension of the complexities of the situation Y is in as long as he is involved in the yakuza) that he took a step back and volunteered Kamiya to keep an eye on Y instead. Feelings were still there for D, and he was affected by meeting Y face to face once again at Kido’s restaurant, but not to the point of being unable to keep his distance, as he was able to do for four years. Love waits with a surprisingly strong persistence. Just by being a yakuza he had kept his connection to the life he wanted near Y. He wanted Y to choose him instead, when he saw that Inami had a relationship with him, when D was instead forbidden to keep one. That want stems from his incomprehension of a reality where someone like Inami has access to Yashiro. Inami is for both Y and D the ghost of their fathers that haunts their choices.
When I talked about D’s jealousy, my criticism was directed towards the actions that he took fueled by that emotion, in addition to some words he said and the ones he didn’t say. He wants to be on equal terms with Y, so he won’t clarify the nature of his relationship with Izumi unless Y admits to wanting him. If Y won’t break things up with Inami, D will forcefully take the place and function that he thinks Inami has in Yashiro’s life, not realizing that he is leaving Y with the feelings of being treated as a sexual object once again, of his agency being undermined repeatedly. Those aren’t equal terms any longer.
In my past analyses I wrote about the meaning of Doumeki’s first name and about the position of Saezuru as a story not written in compliance with the terms of the romance genre as we commonly see in the English-language market. Saezuru shows the contradictions between eros and love, doesn’t present them as synonyms, even when they coexist. Eros and love are treated as immense potentials for both affirmation and destruction of one’s self. Eros contains positive and negative qualities, the potential for love and for the opposite of it, being it cruelty or fear, it can bring us closer to life or drove us to our death, it promises happiness and can bring unmeasurable pain, being ruled by generosity or prevarication. Saezuru is a story that doesn’t treat us readers as babies and offer any simplification in showing the good and the bad in people or within the role of eros (hear! hear! sex isn’t inherently dirty either nor love is the secret ingredient that protect us from exploitation). Without darkness we can’t appreciate light, so we need to understand that everything is potentially good or bad, even love, we can only try to find a balance and an understanding so that we don’t hurt others in affirming ourselves nor we have to renounce ourselves to become dependent and subjected to someone’s else. That is why in Saezuru the answer could not have been a codependent relationship with everything else buried under the rug.
Anon, I don’t really know if I have managed to answer your question. The topic is tremendously difficult and Doumeki has closed himself up so we can only infer things. But I have blabbered quite a bit. I hope that some of it makes sense and thank you for reaching out to me and giving me an excuse to talk about this manga during this long period of hiatus.
