𓍢ִ໋ ˖ FISTULA༉‧ ₊˚ . !

[pheophoi]

Geto, Kenjaku, and the monstrous-feminine

While reading through JJK, I couldn’t help but notice that Geto and Kenjaku both fit pretty well into the monstrous-feminine trope— think the Queen Xenomorph in Aliens, the ghost mother in Dark Water, or the wife in The Brood. This post will be an attempt to argue that they are, in fact, examples of the monstrous-feminine, and to talk a tiny bit about what that means for the story overall.

Before going into the actual meta, I want to point out that (Source: interview in 2024 JJK exhibition) Gege didn’t decide on Kenjaku’s true identity until the Shibuya arc, even though it was always going to be fake Geto. I take this to mean that Kenjaku and Geto as characters are more intertwined than we previously or usually thought, with Kenjaku for at least the first arcs existing as “Geto that is a bit strange”— someone that resembles Geto in appearance and mannerism but is not quite him, whose true identity is blank (for now). This is why I’ve decided it’s best to analyze them together, especially in terms of monstrous-feminine symbolism (as to me in this regard they are even more so extensions of one another). 

This analysis will be based on Barbara Creed’s “The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis”. In this book, Creed defined the concept of the monstrous-feminine and discussed how its representations speak to deep patriarchal fears about (what has historically been regarded as) female bodies and reproductive processes. The book draws heavily from Julia Kristeva’s theory on the abject, which is defined as what does not “respect borders, positions, rules”, what “disturbs identity, system, order” and thus elicit within us the feeling of disgust and horror. The abject is what used to belong to or were us, that we must continually throw away and draw borders against in order to form and keep stable our identity. Excrements, bodily fluids, and corpses are all examples of inherently abject things. 

The archaic mother:

According to Kristeva, a huge example of the abject is the maternal figure as all individuals experience abjection when they attempt to break away from their mothers in order to form their own identities. As such, many horror films feature mothers as the female monster (Psycho, Carrie). Kenjaku through possessing Itadori Kaori and giving birth to Itadori Yuuji is quite literally a mother.

Geto can also be viewed as a maternal figure within JJK. His curse technique - Cursed Spirit Manipulation - functions like a womb. It takes in cursed spirits who remain separate entities from Geto with their own curse energy, and because CTs all cost CE it’s as if through CSM Geto is feeding these spirits CE and nurturing them in exchange for their obedience, making Geto into somewhat of a mother figure to his curses. Geto is also written with an emphasis on his protective, nurturing side— he is often seen caring for other people (checking up on Gojo, telling him to go easy on Riko, taking MimiNana to the crepe shop), his entire ideology is based on protecting the weak (even after he becomes a villain he still holds this idea, it’s just that who he considers weak and in need of protection changes), he’s family-oriented and in his cult family he is the heart, the emotional center that binds everyone together so that after he died they all splintered off.

This is not to say that these traits are inherently feminine, but rather in culture they are usually given to female, maternal characters, yet we are seeing them in Geto. There may be a reason why Toji’s worm called him “Mommy” (lol). 

The maternal figure within horror can be represented in a number of ways, one of which is through the archaic mother, who is “the parthenogenetic mother, the mother as primordial abyss, the point of origin and of end”. She can be seen within mythologies of several cultures around the world as the Mother-Goddess who alone created Heaven and Earth (Nu Kwa in China, Gaia in Greece, Nammu in Sumer). As the monstrous-feminine, however, she is reconstructed in a negative light as “the abyss, the all-incorporating black hole that threatens to reabsorb what is once birthed”, “the blackness of extinction - death”. She is a force that threatens to reincorporate what is once distinct into the original oneness, to the mother’s womb. She represents the fear of (and desire for) dissolution, non-differentiation, and death. 

Cursed Spirit Manipulation absorbs once-autonomous beings and submits them to the user’s authority. Its Maximum Technique is the dissolution of these beings into a single, non-identifying black mass (Uzumaki). Kenjaku's master plan is to merge the Japanese population into one entity. Both Kenjaku and Geto can be seen as maternal figures within JJK whose powers are destructive in their ability to absorb and dissolute. 

The monstrous womb: 

From fear of the mother’s generative power comes fear of the womb. In horror films, the connection between the womb and the monstrous is often invoked through womb-like spaces and objects or female characters capable of giving birth to monsters. Creed gave an example with the film “The Brood”, in which the central figure is a woman who through her rage manifests strange and dangerous creatures that resemble disfigured infants— the climax of the film is her revealing under her dress bulbous sacs hanging from her side from which she took out a fetus. Here, the womb is taken outside of the body, the birthing process made apparent. It is horrifying because we are confronted with the nature of reproduction and the maternal body— the alterations and even disfigurements caused by housing a life form.  

Geto and Kenjaku have the ability to store and “give birth” to monsters (given that CSM functions like pregnancy). Geto’s domain expansion is called “All-enveloping Garbhadhatu”, officially translated into English as “Womb Profusion” (because Yuuta in Gojo’s body has Unlimited Void as his domain, we can conclude that Womb Profusion is Geto’s even if we’ve only seen Kenjaku use it). In Esoteric Buddhism, Garbhadhatu (Womb Realm) is where compassion leading to salvation is born and sustained like a fetus being nurtured by the womb. The domain itself features headless pregnant women. 

In the Vol. 0 movie we can see images of pregnant bodies and babies in Geto’s Uzumaki while he’s summoning it. 

The manner in which Curses are summoned by CSM is also reminiscent of birth, through either a portal or an incision into space, accompanied by dark liquid pouring out (at least in the manga). 

When Kenjaku died and the cursed spirits were about to burst out of Geto’s body, we can see that his belly became swollen or convulsed. Afterwards, it was seemingly transformed into a womb-like structure carrying the Tengen fetus, which Kenjaku had absorbed and incubated prior to their death. In a way, Geto’s entire body after death has become a monstrous womb.

Fear of the womb is also tied to fear of a loss of boundaries, between the clean, proper body and the natural world, the abject. “…the act of birth is grotesque because the body’s surface is no longer closed,…rather the body looks as if it may tear apart, open out, reveal its innermost depth.” In the birthing process, new life forms travel from inside the womb to the outside, carrying with it blood, afterbirth, feces,…what is meant to be banished from the human domain in order to establish and preserve its identity, system, order. 

Within JJK, Geto or Cursed Spirit Manipulation exists with a similar ambivalence. In order for Geto to add a cursed spirit into his ranks, he must first ingest them. Cursed spirits are hyper-condensed negative emotions/curse energy that spilled out of humans— they’re basically human waste (and so naturally they taste like “rags used to wipe up vomit and excrement”). Yet, they reside within Geto, their curse energy adding to his own. With Geto, the border between the clean, proper body and the abject - cursed spirits in this case - was blurred. This makes Geto’s body uniquely abject within the narrative. He knows “the taste that no one knows”.

So what does this all mean?

The monstrous-feminine threatens the integrity of patriarchal order. In JJK, both Geto and Kenjaku aim to disrupt the patriarchal Jujutsu world: Geto, scorned by how the system treats him and people like him, tried to violently dismantle it (however flawed his plan and ideology was) while Kenjaku’s plan plunged the Jujutsu world into complete chaos. In a way, Kenjaku is an escalation of Geto’s monstrous-feminine, from Geto’s vengeful, misguided acts of violence in an attempt to disrupt the system, to Kenjaku’s meaningless, blanket chaos. In Kenjaku and their possession of Geto’s body, Geto’s righteous motives (his will, his autonomy) are gone - there remains only the monstrosity, destruction for its own sake. 

Still, Geto’s actions, misguided as they were, did eventually create real change. Gojo’s goal of raising strong allies and creating a better Jujutsu world was inspired by Geto. Although at first he opposed violent actions as he believed they wouldn’t be able to change anything, eventually, he came to the conclusion that violence was necessary, and in the moment where he massacred the higher-ups, he thought of Geto. 

[pheophoi]

Gojo, Geto, and the prohibition against looking

A while back, I found this little article written by a Japanese psychoanalyst that I couldn't help but link back to Satosugu (normal behavior, I know). It's about a psychological phenomenon that occurs in infants / small children that the author could see reflected within Japanese mythologies and folklores such as The Crane Wife and the myth of Izanagi and Izanami, where the child learns about the biological processes that give it nourishment (such as milk production) and the toll they take on the mother's body, thereby developing a more complete view on her.

So I thought, why not write something about it. More under the cut:

This article revolves around a concept called the "prohibition against looking" which according to the author, Osamu Kitayama, is a taboo in the pre-Oedipal stage of the mother-child relationship (when the child was still an infant). This taboo is reflected in several Japanese myths which follows the formula of:

A male protagonist marries a beautiful woman, who warns him against looking at her when she performs certain activities.

He does it anyway and discovers that she is in fact an animal, such as a crane, a snake, or a crocodile capable of turning into a human. The myths would end with the humiliated wife leaving the husband heartbroken and guilty.

It also doesn’t have to be the husband looking at the wife in her true, animalistic form, only that he looks at something forbidden by her, such as the box Otohime forbid Urashima to open, or Izanami’s fetid corpse.

Examples of the myths used by Kitayama are: The crane wife, The legend of Urashima-taro, The snake wife, the myth of Izanagi-Izanami.

According to Kitayama, these myths symbolize the infant’s transition from the idealized image of a nurturing, loving mother upon whom it can depend entirely, to the realization that her provisions come at a cost (namely, the bodily functions that are necessary to produce it - symbolized by the wife’s body parts or a certain object, such as the crane wife’s feathers, the snake wife’s lactating eyeball, or Otohime’s box) and the guilt of having “wounded” its mother for demanding/needing such provisions. Here the wife is split into two images, that of the loving, idealized and beautified woman and the impure and disgusting animal. Notably, the male protagonists of these stories are often kind and innocent, but demanding and passive in his receiving of affection, like a child. Conversely, the heroines are devoted, self-sacrificial and forward like a mother.  

When the male protagonists break the prohibition, he sees the heroines as an animal, as he struggles to reconcile the reality of her bodily functions / “animalistic” side and his idealized image of her. This disillusionment causes the separation. Later on, the shame and guilt comes as he realizes the animal and the woman are one in the same, and that he has “wounded” his wife/mother. 

I can see some parallels between this and Gojo and Geto’s relationship in HI/PD. According to Gojo’s VA, Geto was Gojo’s emotional support and with him, Gojo was free to act like a spoiled child. Geto would indulge Gojo, putting his needs second to Gojo’s, like when Haibara asked Geto what he should give him as souvenirs, Geto based his answer on what Gojo would like.

Gojo also viewed Geto as his moral compass and depended on him to make moral decisions, such as when Gojo asks Geto if he should kill the cultists. This points to a level of idealization.

Their separation came when Geto snapped and massacred an entire village. Though notice how the core of the conflict and Gojo’s anger at Geto is not because what Geto did was wrong according to some abstract idea of good and evil, but rather that Geto went against his pre-established morals (by killing meaninglessly) and thus shattering his idealized image of him. In this scene we also see Gojo without his glasses, which (aside from when he’s in battle) means that he’s being able to perceive Geto for what he truly is - he’s looking at a side of Geto he has never seen before, and he struggles to reconcile it with his idealized version. He views it, at least on some level, as a personal offense/betrayal (“Explain yourself.”). He reacts to the revelation with anger and violence, though like the male protagonists of the myths he ultimately resigns to Geto’s abandonment.

It should be noted that according to Kitayama, the prohibition against looking, unlike certain taboos such as incest, is to be broken as the child learns to view its mother as a full human being and mature, kind of like how Gojo only starts to mature after Geto left him. 

Kitayama also relates the personality and lifestyle of the heroines in the stories to the “masochistic caretaker”, which he defines as the type of person who “takes extremely good care of people who request help” who “tend to take on work beyond their capacity, have no time to rest themselves, and repeatedly find themselves in a state of exhaustion, both physically and psychologically. When they fail to take good care of others, they feel ashamed;...it is hard for them to receive proper assistance from others, even when they are physically ill and psychologically hurt…” who has a “self-tormenting nature.” I think all of this describes Geto quite nicely. 

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Obviously it isn’t a one-on-one parallel. For example, in the myths, the revelation that the male protagonists have is usually tied in some kind of bodily functions of the heroine, such as childbirth or lactation, thus exposing him to the crude reality of his source of sustenance and inflicting him with the guilt of having wounded his wife/mother by demanding from her, while for Gojo he was only being exposed to an non-idealized aspect of Geto that he struggled to accept and reconcile with his existing image of him, and this non-idealized aspect only coincidentally has something to do with having children (miminana) and impurity (murder or blood or whatever). Though the disillusionment and ensuing guilt is the same. Their dynamics are also quite similar, so while i was reading through this i can’t help but think haha isn’t this kinda like satosugu

[fstla]

PAUSEEEE why is no one talking bout how fine Hideo frm MIMIC book 3 ch 1 is? arf arf arf

[fstla]

A while ago I read this stsg fic abt marinebiologist!gojo x selkie!geto and it was so peak but i can't find it for the life of me. I *do* remember bookmarking it but it disappeared off of there so maybe the author deleted it *sigh* how cruel :<

[thesweetiepienovels]

Actually, you are enough. Even if you don’t work. Or study. Or go out. Or have friends. Or have family. You’re enough because you exist and your existence is enough to be enough because you are not a product. You are not a sum of output. You are not a task to complete. But because you are something the universe wanted and put here even if you’ll never understand why. Somewhere in the cosmos your existence makes a difference, even if it’s not the way others existences do.