people trying to connect mafuyu’s relationship with her mom as covert/emotional incest made me realize why they keep emphasizing in the classes I’ve been taking that it’s actually important to take into consideration culture within people’s traumatic experiences. It always annoyed me because for my personal experience, a lot of the abuse I’ve dealt with from my mom was rooted in cultural values (I’m Asian American).
What Mafuyu’s mom wants for her daughter falls under those values too: high achievement (good grades, choosing doctor as a career over just nursing), respect and obedience towards elders (in this case parents), strict discipline (in this case, the restrictions mafuyu’s mom places on mafuyu), collectivism -> the expectation that you prioritize community (the family) over the individual
Even though I always emphasize heavily in my sentiment that abuse (or rather abusive behavior) is universal, I think it would be wrong for me to say that Mafuyu and her family were supposed to represent what a “traditional” family living in a collectivist society (Japan) looks like. “Traditional” in the sense that it reflects both the cultural norms and beliefs of the older generation and the harm that can come with parents trying to enforce those norms (like how Mafuyu’s mom guilt trips Mafuyu so Mafuyu will feel bad and will do her best to not disobey. How she restricts who she hangs out with because she wants Mafuyu to have the right networking and not be surrounded by people who will “distract” her from attaining her “goals” [that her mom placed on her and are thus not her own.]
It’s because of this that I disdain how definitively a few people are saying mafuyu’s relationship with her mom is indicative of emotional incest because from the evidence I’ve seen, they frame mafuyu’s mom’s actions in a way that disregards these cultural norms that are baked into her story. And because it’s being disregarded, it’s easier to distort that harm into a framing pushed as definitive that Mafuyu’s mom is placing expectations of emotional fulfillment onto Mafuyu akin to a romantic partner. In my opinion, the story has not placed Mafuyu in a situation where Mafuyu was forced to support Mafumom in her own personal struggles removed from a position as a parent. Mafumom’s abusive behavior centers around a parent trying to forcefully guide their child to a “good” future only to harm them, which is why most of her concerns are about Mafuyu’s status as a student: her grades, her career path, her future goals. Even Mafumom telling us her backstory in their initial confrontation is to convince Mafuyu that she should not turn out like her mom and focus on her studies.
Basically, I think cultural norms of how a child is supposed to grow up in a traditional family is what’s defining the abuse and not emotional/covert incest. I think it’s so intertwined that I believe in order to make an argument for covert incest, a person would have to lay out what characteristics of emotional incest can be defined separately from the cultural norms that shape how some parents raise their children, especially because those cultural norms still assume a parent-child framing of the relationship, as opposed to the dynamic of emotional incest being a violation of what a parent-child relationship is supposed to be defined as. I have not seen that in a single analysis I’ve tried to read.
A more harrowing question that I’d propose on a bad day is, “If supposedly Mafuyu and her mom’s relationship is indicative of emotional incest, then what exactly does that say about the culture they both are meant to represent?“
And its why I finally understood that even though I despise and curse the values that shaped me into the person I became today, being able to understand those values and how they influence and shape people and their relationships with each other is really important in analyzing abuse stories.