Mothers and Motherhood in Tokyo Ghoul
This is a (revised) repost from my tokyo_kushu_posts Insta account from 2018.
I just wanted to quickly talk about mothers/motherly figures in Tokyo Ghoul, because I feel like the impact mothers have had on the story is enormous, and that the power mothers have is definitely a recurring theme. Have you ever heard the quote "mother is god in the eyes of a child"? Well, I feel like it definitely fits in Tokyo Ghoul.
Mothers are people who shape their children. Mothers will do incredible things for their children. Some mothers are amazing, and nurture and raise their children to become strong, wonderful people, while other mothers are horrible and hurt and wound their children in awful ways. We see this demonstrated throughout Tokyo Ghoul through several different characters:
Juuzou developed many of his attitudes and behaviors as a direct result of Big Madame's "parenting". He learned to be sadistic towards his opponents as a scrapper directly due to her actions and encouragement. At first Juuzou was so appalled by having to kill others that he was shown vomiting, but by the time he is found by the CCG Big Madame has taught and manipulated him into enjoying killing his opponents sadistically.
Kaneki developed his fear of lonliness, his desperation to not be left alone, from his mother, who was his sole caretaker but spent so much time working right up until she died from it. Her abusing him is also doubtlessly a root cause of his insecurity and the social alienation he faced as a human, not to mention the way he internalized and adhered to the various philosophies that he took from her.
I feel like Ishida gives more attention and acknowledgment to mothers and the influence and impact they have on their children than you see in many other manga. Like having mothers who don’t just exist because a character needs a mother, but so that we can see how these characters become the people they are under their mothers’ care. Going over individual examples:
Ryouko comes off very much as a sort of generic type mom character - she’s a soft, sweet and caring woman who loves her daughter and husband dearly. But Ryouko and her family are ghouls, meaning they need human flesh to live off of, and they must live in hiding under fear of being hunted down and killed. After the death of her husband, Ryouko is left responsible for both of these things for her and her daughter, something she is ill prepared and suited for - which I’d like to point out is perfectly reasonable for a person. But despite the harsh circumstances she and her daughter are placed in, Ryouko does her best for her daughter. There is a scene where Kaneki reflects on how the love of a mother is strong whether human or ghoul, and this is important narratively and for his character as at the time, Kaneki largely thought of ghoul society as monstrous. The introduction of Ryouko and Hinami was one of the first and also most significant instances of him finding out that this wasn’t true, that ghouls were as much people as any human, and they just had to deal with different circumstances due to the way they were born and the society they lived in as best they could.
Ryouko’s death was the first major death in the story, as well as the first death to majorly impact Kaneki as a character. Ryouko died selflessly giving her life so that her daughter might live, and she was slaughtered brutally on the street like a rabid animal despite her complete lack of aggression or resistance while Kaneki watched on, paralyzed in horror, only able to shield her crying daughter’s eyes from the sight. Ryouko’s murder was the catalyst which first saw Kaneki wanting to train and get stronger with his ghoul abilities. More than just serving as a catalyst for Kaneki’s narrative and character arc, I would argue that we see the influence Ryouko had over Hinami as well in :re, as we see her become a nurturing and caring figure to the young Aogiri orphans, despite being an orphaned teenager herself. Ryouko was a representation of pure motherly love: selfless, nurturing, and wiling to do whatever she needed to do for her child - all with a smile on her face.
We only see Hikari in flashbacks as she is dead long before the start of the managa; however, she still carries significance narratively and thematically, as well as the importance of her relationships and impact on living characters. Like Ryouko, Hikari is a mother her sacrificed her life for her children, and her place in the story revolves around her death and how this affected her family. Arata and Renji were deeply pained by her loss and sought power in order to avenge her. Her surviving children were left motherless - soon also fatherless - which obviously shaped their childhood and the people they grew up to be.
Yet another dead mom who gave her life so that her chid(ren) might live. Ukina might have given her life for Eto’s, but in doing so she was still unable to protect Eto from all the suffering and hardship she would then later face in life. Eto grew up as a ghoul without her mother - or her father - and the resulting hardships shaped her into a twisted person. Eto never knew her mother, but read her diaries and developed a high regard and admiration for her through them. Eto dedicated her life to exposing the same truth which Ukina sought to expose, yet along the way she became such a cruel person who experienced and did things her mother would have never wanted for her. The absence of Ukina in Eto’s life is what defined it, and Eto never forgave her father for Ukina’s death, despite it being Ukina’s own will in order to protect Eto. I really do think that not having her mother growing up, that only being able to read her diaries and imagine her later, is a huge part of Eto’s character and heavily influences her behaviour - including her own forays into being a motherly figure that we see throughout the manga.
We never learn Mrs. Kaneki’s name because we only ever see and her about her from Kaneki’s perspective: and to Kaneki she was Mom. His mother who raised him, who shaped him into the person we meet at the beginning of the manga and continues to have a deep-rooted influence on his psyche and behaviour all throughout the rest of the story. Kaneki developed his philosophy of it “being better to be hurt than to hurt others” from her (whether from her directly telling him this or him coming up with it own his own as a result of her behaviour (either her being taken advantage of by her family, her abusing him, or both - remember, Kaneki is an unreliable narrator when it comes to his mother). A lot of Kaneki’s other initial personality traits - his timidness, his want to help others, his social awkwardness - can likely be traced back as developing under her as she raised him.
I am particularly reminded of the saying “to a child, mother is god” with Kaneki and his mother. Kaneki was too young to remember his father before his death, and he is shown to have no friends prior to meeting Hide after his mother’s death. So for that entire period of his childhood, his mother is not only his only parent, but his only friend. The single most important and influential person in his life during his most formative years. Imagine having all that power, influence, and responsibility over a child - it almost is like being a their god. But people are not gods, and as we know, Kaneki’s mother was flawed and made mistakes - they kind of mistakes that irreparably scarred her son. We know Kaneki’s mother was physically and emotionally abusive towards him, and that he then later suppressed and lied to himself (and others) about that abuse, but we don’t really know the exact details of or to what extent either those things go - like I said, Kaneki is not a reliable narrator when it comes to his mother.
We don’t (reliably) see all the exact details of and happenings regarding Kaneki and his mom, but we do see their effects. Everything Kaneki’s mother did to or failed to do for him played a role shaping him into the young man he became, which is honestly kind of terrifying when you think about it. That a person can hold so much power over another person, and that people are flawed beings who will make mistakes - both deliberately and unintentionally - which will permanently affect those under their power. Kaneki’s mom doesn’t even have to be in the story for her effect on Kaneki to play such a major role - she shows how impactful mothers are to their children.
While not an actual mother, I feel like Eto is presented as a mother figure in a certain way - or rather, she presents herself as a mother figure in a certain way. It’s certainly not a traditional take on motherhood - nor a happy or healthy one - but Eto seems to portray herself as something of a motherly figure towards several of the characters she takes under her dubious care throughout the series. I’ve not posted about it on Tumblr before, but I have this sort of theory that Eto, whether consciously or subconsciously, seeks to create her own makeshift family as a replacement for the one she never had growing up. She does this largely through coercion and manipulation - and/or just outright torture, like how she “remade” Kanae through pain and suffering: just as she herself was shaped in the 24th ward growing up. Eto is also recurrently compared to a god in the manga - both by herself directly and through Ishida’s symbolism - which harkens to that theme of mothers being like gods who shape their children.
Another character who isn’t technically a mom, but who I grant a spot here due to her acting as one - albeit a horrible one - to Juuzou, who also saw her as his mother himself. She undeniably is responsible for the person Juuzou grew up to be - she is responsible for his abduction from his parents, his life as scrapper, and even “raising” him during that period of his life. The Juuzou we first meet in the manga is a direct result of Big Madame’s influence, and she is the biggest, most obvious example of what a cruel and unloving mother can do to a child. Her “love” for Juuzou was only ever shallow and self-serving, yet her power over and influence on him was still just as powerful.
