Yuta, Sexual Violence and the Reproduction of Jujutsu
Content note: The following post includes close reading of symbolic and literal sexual harassment and sexual threats against teenage Jujutsu Kaisen characters, including mentions of incest. Also spoils JJK a lot of the way through.
(Many of the thoughts below developed in conjunction with @wellnoe)
I don't think I've seen a single person ever point out that Yuta is sexually harassed repeatedly throughout Jujutsu Kaisen, when it's a pretty relevant thread in how the series as a whole depicts sexual violence. A lot of people he fights are very, very weird in suggestive ways to him! I think that shonen as a genre primes the audience badly for thinking about this because it's so common for shonen to contain sexual harassment as either a joke or an Extra Bad Thing that is disconnected from the rest of the characters' social existences. But considering the ways in which Yuta's experiences of sexualized violence fit in thematically with the more overt and central examples, it's clearly done on purpose as part of how JJK portrays the patriarchal and eugenic nature of jujutsu society. (I will not be going in depth about Maki and Megumi's experiences of symbolic and literal sexual violence in this post, but they are highly relevant.)
In the literal first scene where we see Yuta, in JJK 0, a bully attempts to assault him. The literal words are about hitting Yuta, but the implications of the phrasing and the bully flushing, breathing heavily, and loosening his tie have strong sexual undertones. (The anime also makes the adaptational choices to have the bully tell Yuta not to be cold and keeping him on edge, and he approaches Yuta not with a raised fist, but with open hands to grab him.)
This is the first part of a pattern: People tell Yuta that there's something special about him that makes them want to hurt him, and it's his fault.
Close Readings: Consumed by Jujutsu
Later in JJK 0, Geto is immediately very touchy upon meeting Yuta, and Yuta is clearly uncomfortable, but he doesn't physically step away from Geto until Geto insults his friends. (The anime adaptation de-emphasizes Yuta's discomfort, perhaps because the 0 manga was written before Geto's character was further developed and they realized that him being creepy to Yuta wasn't in line with the character as portrayed in the series proper.)
We see Geto here describing Yuta's body to him very intensely, telling him what his embodied sensations should be like. There is also the articulation that Geto hurting Yuta is for "the future of jujutsu." The idea that Yuta being hurt is a medium for the perpetuation of jujutsu is one that comes up again.
Kurourushi, the cockroach curse, explicitly wants to consume Yuta as a medium for reproduction. Kurourushi's attacks include one that implants mini bugs in Yuta that eat him from the inside out.
The way Kurourushi and Yuta are framed here is very deliberate. The bug having human hands that grab Yuta up and down his body and throat is on purpose. This is imagery that suggests sexual assault.
And in this context, Yuta kissing the curse to kill it with RCT is more obviously rape-revenge imagery.
It is interesting to note that generally, hands and mouths are much more common symbols of sexual threat in JJK than phallic shapes. (The exemplar is Sukuna, who literally has more hands and mouths than other people.) Threats to bodily integrity are frequently about consumption and absorption into something else. (Again, Sukuna, as well as Kenjaku's merger plan, Tengen and the Star Plasma Vessels.) Wombs themselves are framed as a source of violence--Naoya's domain, Kenjaku's womb profusion, the very concept of a cursed womb. Reproduction is itself sinister. As a rule, imagery of sexual threat is circlusive, not penetrative. (The major exceptions to this are Toji and Maki, who occupy similar spaces of being symbolic negations of sorcery, but that could be its own post.)
Immediately after Kurourushi is Ishigori, who enters with using both a consumption metaphor for fighting and sexualizing the interaction between Yuta and Uro. (Uro herself does not behave sexually towards Yuta in the least, expressing only resentment and anger.)
Ishigori repeatedly harps on this metaphor. And he again links his desire to eat more with his desire to fight more men and be with more women--Yuta is framed as a means to him having all three of those desires satisfied.
There is not as intense a sense of danger with Ishigori as the previous examples because it's clear Yuta is the better sorcerer and in control of the fight. But it's also unsettling and insidious that Yuta does not seem to acknowledge the sexual overtones to how Ishigori interacts with him. This reads to me like the sense of sexual threat is entirely out of Yuta's control.
Depending on the translation, Ishigori calls Yuta "sweet" (which can apparently mean "naive" contextually in Japanese) or "soft" several times. (This language is reminiscent of the name of Ishiguro's Cursed Technique, "Granité blast," named after a frozen dessert.) He sees Yuta as easy to hurt, which is worthy of mockery but also delightful to him.
And, well, Yuta's heart is "melted" by Ishigori's dessert technique, by his desire to consume him by doing violence onto him. Yuta simply intuits this and just goes along with it!
And then Yuta fucking hangs out with Ishigori afterwards and genuinely engages in conversation while Ishigori refers to him and Uro as lovers and calls him soft/sweet again!
The consumption motif appears again with Sukuna upgrading Yuta from "dessert" to main dish. Sukuna wanting to "have a little fun" with Yuta is very reminiscent of his attitude towards Megumi at the detention center too.
Sukuna, interestingly, does not behave particularly sexually towards Yuta in his own body. He attacks Yuta much like he attacks Yuji (Who Sukuna notably lacks even a hint of sexual interest towards throughout JJK). In Gojo's body, however, Sukuna's fighting becomes more suggestive. Both abruptly bringing his face closer to Yuta's and that specific arm bar are moves he's used on Megumi before, who Sukuna unambiguously symbolically sexually assaults.
I don't have a firm reading on what this means, but it is interesting that Sukuna behaves more sexually towards the body of Gojo, who is framed as the character most similar to him. Sukuna seems to have little interest in literal reproduction, but he wants a world in which everyone is strong like him, for the philosophical reason of strength for strength's sake.
Conclusions: Sexual Violence as Disciplinary Tool of Gender
When discussing sexual abuse in JJK, Ui Ui is the most obvious early example. Mei Mei and Ui Ui's incestuous relationship is of a kind easily dismissible as shonen fanservice, but it does become clear as we find out more about the Zen'in that this is not a joke, but rather part and parcel of how jujutsu society treats children. The second thing we find out about Mei Mei and Ui Ui is that Ui Ui is willing to die for her, and that's a key part of how she fights. The exploitation of children is essential to the practice of jujutsu. Sexual violence against children is a specific patriarchal facet of this that is part of a larger system of abuse.
Megumi and Yuta are sexualized in ways that frame their bodies as desirable and useful, Maki is sexualized to frame her as undesirable, and Yuji is not sexualized at all. As Wellnoe points out, this is all interesting to read in context of eugenicist Jujutsu society. Megumi and Yuta are wanted by Gojo and the school and the clans (and they really are similar in this respect) for their strength. They want more of them--they want Megumi and Yuta to reproduce both literally and metaphorically. Maki is sexualized by Naoya as an attempt to discipline her. Her clan does want her labor and for her to be used as an example to anyone else who might defy them, but they don't want more of her. (Mai, who is also incestuously sexually assaulted, is the kind of person Maki is meant to be an example to.) And Yuji is a sin eater meant to be executed after he absorbs Sukuna. There is nothing about Yuji being eaten or absorbed himself--he is seen as entirely useless to the future of jujutsu.
Sexual violence against people seen as insufficient boys and men has two purposes: To discipline them into becoming normative men or to push them out of manhood and into a position of being a sink for violence. Yuta's experience before Jujutsu Tech appears to be more the latter. But within Jujutsu society, he's seen as useful. It is desirable that he become part of its patriarchal structure. (Formalized pederasty also often intended that boys would grow to become men and take boys as lovers in turn.) The ways that Yuta is sexually harassed can be read as symbolically grooming him into patriarchal manhood. And grimly, it seems to succeed.
Yuta's Copy technique has the condition of part of another sorcerer's body needing to be consumed. His technique requires this act that is often coded as sexually violent in JJK, but "Rika" is the one who eats people. Copy is his intrinsic Cursed Technique, and logically should not require a Shikigami who is explicitly stated to not be his Cursed Technique. Thus, Yuta is likely deferring this violence onto "Rika," and distancing himself from cannibalism while still benefiting from it.
Yuta making himself more like Gojo is the thrust of his character arc in the second half of JJK. The culmination of Yuta inhabiting Gojo's body is framed as a grim tragedy that Yuta doesn't even get the intended results from in his battle with Sukuna. The text is very clear that the creation of more Gojos is in fact a bad thing, and a dead end for Jujutsu. It is admittedly hard to interpret the epilogues because the information given is so minimal and Akutami last minute seems to give up and portray a return to the status quo as positive. But considering the story outside the final 3 chapters, the epilogue where Yuta is stated to have become the Gojo clan head is incredibly sad. The tragedy of Yuta is that he becomes a man, fully devoured by the clans and Jujutsu society.
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