A Princess Is Still A Person
I’ve talked at length about Yukiko’s relationship with power that is the crux of her character, but I’ve decided I want to talk about her relationship with fame and how it affects her social life and bounces off her personality.
Yukiko is one of the most well-known Inabans, probably the most well-known as a member of the Amagi clan, outside of Rise Kujikawa. Chie cites her family’s inn as why Yukiko is so well-known, and asserts that it’s one of, if not the most important economic and cultural structure in Inaba. Which would give Yukiko a reason to be a household name.
This actually has a pretty big effect on Yukiko’s reputation. She’s the heiress, or wakaokami (若女将), to the Amagi Inn, a huge weight on her shoulders. There are tons of expectations put on her just for that. And that’s implied to contribute to the Amagi Challenge. Being an okami (ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) manager) is insanely important. She basically is supposed to run the show of the inn.
The okami not only bears the greatest responsibility for waiting on and taking care of guests but also acts as the chief service manager on behalf of the ryokan. The okami's role corresponds to that of a general manager in a Western hotel. In many cases, the okami is the owner of the ryokan or the wife of the owner, which means that the okami, as the representative of the ryokan, attends to all external affairs such as business matters and cooperation with the local community. [...] In the majority of ryokans, the role of the okami is handed down from mother to daughter or to daughter-in-law. In either case, the younger generation studies under the older generation, and devotes herself to mastering the responsibilities and principles of the position of okami.
[Source]
And people constantly remind her of that importance and the weight put on her shoulders as the only Amagi child, something that puts stress on her, as her dungeon is in part about escapism. One of her floor dialogues shows her thoughts demanding interviewers stop talking about her status as wakaokami altogether, then quietly mumbles about her desire to run from Inaba.
Yukiko's public perception and relationship with connection cannot be completely separated from her status as an Amagi, so I want to cover initially the expectations and ideals placed on her shoulders.
One of the expectations placed on her once she becomes okami is that she’s supposed to marry and raise a child in order to continue the family line. And a lot of the other kids at her school are very much aware of that, repeatedly attempting to hit on her in order to become that person she marries. Yukiko is also considered a Yamato Nadeshiko, which means she confirms to traditional Japanese femininity, in part because she is a wakaokami. The actual flower Yamato Nadeshiko is called the "frilled pink carnation" in English, and is the namesake of this archetype. But first we need to define what exactly constitutes a Yamato Nadeshiko. It's mainly the appearance, honestly. And the ideal of what a Yamato Nadeshiko is stems from geisha (芸者), performers who dance, sing, and play musical instruments for gatherings.
Yamato-nadeshiko indicates women who appear fragile, but at the same time have a strong mind, elegance, and beautiful looks. As already noted, most women in bijinga [Note: artwork of beautiful women, which I would translate as "muse art"] from the Asuka to the Edo periods had small almond-shaped eyes and small lips. In terms of eyes, Edo women used face powder to make their eyes look smaller. Considering these characteristics, women whose face parts are small might be described as yamato-nadeshiko. [...] As previously mentioned, some beauty pageants were held for geisha, and many male customers participated as voters. Before mass media developed, geisha were some of the most outstanding, famous women, and many people regarded them as fashion leaders. Moreover, since geisha had to acquire beautiful behavior before they took customers, geisha became a symbol of beauty and elegance. Little is known about who took over from the geisha as style trendsetters, but in Shufu no tomo, January 1, 1934, Shinsui Itō commented about the transition of beauty from beautiful looks to beautiful behavior: “When geisha, Manryū or Yachiyo’s postcards were still popular just like the bromides of current film actresses, women having well-defined eyes and noses like dolls," being the most important condition. Considering Ito’s comments, it seems that the trendsetters had shifted from geisha to screen actresses as of 1934; further evidence is provided by an article on beauty-trend transitions released by Shiseidō, which states that screen actresses were the fashion plates in the 1930s.37 However, even though these new trendsetters had appeared, geisha were still one of the perfect models. Women’s magazines introduced geisha’s aesthetic values, such as their recommended face powders, foam cleansers, or kanzashi hair accessories. The geisha’s hairstyle was the model for general women, and hair catalogues like the figure on the left in Figure 8 below, became popular. One of the main reasons that geisha were famous was that everyday women (and some modern girls who wore kimono at home) could easily imitate geisha hairstyles and cosmetics. In other words, geisha beauty was more practical and feasible for everyday women, especially in the Meiji and Taishō periods.
[Source]
I connect this to her status as a wakaokami as managing a ryokan and being a Yamato Nadeshiko are seen as two undeniably Japanese "actions." They're also seen as things only able to be done by specifically Japanese women. Which Yukiko is. Not to mention the imagery of geisha, performing for clients that pay for them through cordiality and musical performances, and their status as prized for beauty and intelligence. It's strongly implied by post-exam conversations that Yukiko is academically talented, adding to the idea of her being akin to geisha due to her intelligence. Furthermore, as a wakaokami, she has to entertain guests, as okami perform the more active role in making sure ryokan guests are comfortable and their needs are attended to, which is a performance in its own right. We see this mentioned above!
I have covered the mistreatment many famous people get due to said fame in writeups about Rise, who is a teen idol. But what I have not covered is the reasoning why this is so consistent across different famous people's occupations, only the specific case of pop singers and especially Japanese idols. This absolutely deserves to be covered here, as fame leads to not just parasocial relationships, but people around the famous person putting them on a pedestal of ideals. This specific paper covers adolescent worship of pop singers, and points out how these famous people are not treated as the humans they are, but as symbols. Obviously Yukiko is not a pop singer, she is a wakaokami. But in her case, she is stated to be responsible for the public reputation of Inaba, which leads to her being symbolized, and therefore dehumanized. Put a pin in that!
The present study attempted to illuminate the phenomenon of idolization, which is especially characteristic of the period of adolescence. The study focused on the idolization of pop singers, but some of its findings can be extended to figures in other domains such as sport champions or movie stars. [...] Of special importance in youth culture music are those singers and/or bands who are seen to represent symbols. They become alternative figures of identification in the youth culture, and become the objects of idolization, worship, and imitation. The study of adolescents' idolization of pop singers, thus, is not only a study of youth culture, but also of the psychological processes characteristic of adolescence.
[Source]
Famous people, no matter how skilled or kind they are, need to have the emphasis that they are people. I find actually interacting with those individuals to be a fairly strong reminder, but some people do not entirely process it and will still behave according to their preconceived notions of the individual, even if said individual is exposing a more human side. This can be shown through how Yukiko's classmates think of her.
Yukiko in the beginning is shown to be fairly aloof and mentally distant from most of the other Yasogami kids, formally declining to discuss Yamano’s presence at the Amagi Inn, turning down Mitsuo Kubo’s very pushy request for a date, and having it repeatedly pointed out that she has never been in a relationship. I also want to point out that Yukiko, unlike her shadow, almost never uses profanity, as opposed to her friends who swear fairly often.
She also is sought after because she has never had a boyfriend in her life, and when Chie brings it up to Yu, she gets uncomfortable and attempts to defend herself.
This aloof and romantically distant behavior is actually seen as attractive by the boys around her, as composure (or, what they perceive to be composure) is part of what being a Yamato Nadeshiko is, since it's a modern portrayal of the traditional ideal of Japanese femininity. Dr. Shizuko Koyama discusses the beginnings of the a sister ideal titled "ryousai kenbo" (良妻賢母, English: "good wife, wise mother") in her book entirely covering the topic.
In the Edo period, girls born and raised in samurai and high-class merchant families were expected to become proficient in the “Four Virtues” (shikō) (of a woman ready to be recognized in society. These were: feminine virtue (futoku, the various virtues a woman had to display); feminine speech (fugen, the language used by a woman); feminine form (fuyō, appearance, dress, and deportment proper to women); and feminine skill (fukō, the practical skills appropriate to a woman). The cultivation of futoku, the feminine virtues, was considered particularly important, and a great number of instructional texts for girls were published to help accomplish this. [...] Specifically, the motherly virtues consisted, on the one hand, of personal virtues, such as diligence, simplicity, thrift, and straightforwardness; and on the other hand, of family-oriented virtues, such as the “Three Obediences” (sanjū) and “Seven Divorces” (shikkyo). The ideal woman was one who would serve her husband as one served a feudal lord and obediently perform her duties as a daughter-in-law for her mother- and father-in-law. In short, the message of these books was that the meaning of a woman’s existence was limited to her roles as wife and daughter-in-law. The expectation at the time was not for a “good wife and wise mother,” but only for a “good wife.” And the education of girls was necessary only for the purpose of creating women able to adequately do their duties as wives and daughters-in-law.
[Source] Translated by Stephen Filler.
This is relevant due to them coming from similar beginnings--an ideal about what Japanese femininity is. I can only really focus on the ryousai side, as Yukiko is obviously too young to be a parent. Ryousai kenbo gives more of a behavioral idea, such as the fact Yukiko canonically does not like standing out, only wearing red due to Chie saying it looked good on her.
Q1: Why does Yukiko always wear that red jacket? A1: Yukiko fundamentally dislikes standing out, but she likes red despite its flashiness because Chie complimented how it looked on her. She then started to make everything in her life a bit more red.
[From the club book, translated by me]
Furthermore, fugen has been covered by Dr. Miyako Inoue, as she covers the diversity of Japanese women's language versus how it's portrayed in media. I would like to share an anecdote about an older husband cracking a joke to her about his wife swearing too much. (With this I want to point out that Yukiko rarely ever uses profanity.) She points out it's an ideal.
One day when Hashida-san's husband visited her in our room, he snatched a few moments to talk with me, while Mrs. Hashida went to the bathroom. Having heard previously from his wife that I was doing some kind of research on women's language, he mischievously lowered his voice and said to me jokingly in the absence of his wife: "Please teach my wife how to speak. She doesn't have onna-rashisa [femininity] in her speech. She has such a bad tongue. She would not be ashamed even of saying 'You bastard [konoyaroo] !' and 'You worthless thing [dekisokonai] ! ' "
[Source]
(Also, I really think you should read the whole book of hers. As someone who speaks Japanese and also heavily deviates from what is "standard" and "ideal" due to my own Japanophonic(?) community, it's really interesting.)
Mr. Hashida is being playful here, but he is giving a great idea of what the ideal of a woman's speech is. And of course, I want to point out that Yukiko almost never says any of the things mentioned. (Konohana Sakuya does, however!) In short, they see her as "pure" thanks to her tendency not to swear and to prefer visual simplicity. Furthermore, she comes off as calm and composed, giving her an air of dignity. This all combined with her status as a wakaokami (prompting her to wear traditional Japanese clothes), leads to the public seeing her as a beacon of Japanese femininity as a result. This of course has her male classmates practically hounding her trying to ask her out, something that discomforts her, since she has no interest in a partner at the moment.
But the first thing to signal that Yukiko’s aloofness isn’t what it seems is that Yukiko genuinely did not understand that Kubo was asking her out, wondering out loud what he wanted before Chie explained. She just doesn’t quite understand what most social norms are and can’t read people very well, so she can’t always tell when she’s being flirted with or harassed.
She is capable of picking up on hints if they’re repeated enough to her, like when she misidentified Yosuke’s request for tutoring as a come-on, implying she’s heard it enough to know. She's feminine for sure, but she's more than an ideal.
When we get a better sense of her real personality—we find that she’s actually bubbly and cheerful, and has an odd sense of humor that not even her best friend understands. She laughs at almost anything. Even though her aloof and solemn demeanor was not necessarily an act, it is a misreading of who she is. That behavior of hers gets better contextualized the more time we spend with her—Yukiko is genuinely spacey, and easily gets distracted even if there should reasonably be nothing to distract her. When Teddie is trying to stop the group from being so uncomfortable in Rise’s dungeon by making a joke, Yukiko genuinely was zoned out and didn’t realize what the topic of conversation was.
It’s implied that in part Yukiko’s more solemn side was from stress relating to the inn, as after she embraces Konohana Sakuya as part of herself, she shows off that more goofy side of her out in public. She doesn’t seem to lose her aloofness to the rest of Yasogami, but does seem to drop the more sorrowful demeanor as she feels less stressed by the ordeal.
I also want to point out that Yukiko furthermore does not totally fit within traditional feminine norms—she’s an atrocious cook, mainly because she’s easily distracted and can’t quite remember the ingredients she’s looking for. The club book states that she often gets ingredients wrong, and just picks what sounds healthiest.
Q2: Yukiko is never asked to buy ingredients, is that because of an accident…?
A2: Luckily the Amagi Inn has yet to deal with anything like that. However, when Yukiko was sent on an errand to go buy some ingredients, she ended up buying hard flour instead of soft flour, and buying broccoli instead of cauliflower because it looked healthier… it’s to the point she’s obtained a terrible track record for buying ingredients. So nowadays it’s common sense that she’s just not allowed to go on those errands.
(Translated by me)
Furthermore, in her Rank 3, while going through Junes to attempt to learn how to cook, she gets distracted and tries to find lobster. There was no chance that was something she was planning, especially since she later states in her Rank 6 she wants to study the “basics of the basics,” but she had an idea anyways and wanted to try it out even though she had a task at hand. Yukiko is just easily distracted and truly can’t read people very well.
With that, I’m going to go out on a much larger limb than I usually do: I actually believe Yukiko is meant to be written to be mentally disabled. I think her signs specifically imply her to have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD. I want to add that I truly do not know if ADHD in particular was meant to be woven into her character, but I believe her being portrayed with behaviors typical of people with ADHD was written on purpose to show her deviation from not only the societal norm, and to contrast with societal expectations put on her. I believe she is purposefully written to be disabled without the authors choosing to use that specific language, due to the unique way mentally disabled people navigate the world in comparison to their non-disabled counterparts and how this causes many of them to have their own unique relationship with public image on a more micro scale. I will defend my reasoning for why I picked ADHD, however, by actually comparing her with the criteria.
I used this PDF of the diagnostic criteria as shown in the DSM-V. She can’t actually be diagnosed as we know too little of her behavior prior to age 12, but she seems to fit a lot of the Inattentive-type criteria, though not enough for Hyperactive. So, here we go.
1a. Often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, at work, or during other activities (e.g., overlooks or misses details, work is inaccurate).
We do not have any evidence that Yukiko specifically messes up her schoolwork--actually we find she's quite skilled academically. At work, meanwhile, we can look at her cooking. She attempts to learn to cook, and is trying to follow the directions, but for some reason or another she mixes it up and her food turns out to be a trainwreck. It’s implied that her cooking capabilities, or rather, incapabilities, are due to inattention, since though she attempts to follow the details she seems to never recall the steps, even if she says she’s following directions.
Furthermore, it’s shown through the club book that she in fact does misremember ingredients, but even when she gets them right, such as on the camping trip, she gets carried away looking at the ingredients, and messes up the steps. Of course this is in collaboration with Chie Satonaka, but Chie is heavily implied to be less experienced than Yukiko, judging from her own lack of confidence in the ingredients. But how do you get curry to look this bad? Also, I want to point out there’s no cookbook. She’s trying to remember the steps and failing.
Here’s an ACTUAL Japanese curry recipe. As you can see she wasn’t totally off, but decided Everything Curry is a great idea to make. Unfortunately she’s with Chie “What’s An Ingredient” Satonaka, which doesn’t help her.
1b. Often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities (e.g., has difficulty remaining focused during lectures, conversations, or lengthy reading).
We can look at a few examples for this one. For one, while shopping for ingredients. But I don't mean actual ingredient purchasing. To elaborate more on this specific aspect, when Yu joins her for shopping, she forgets that that's actually what she's supposed to be doing while she's at it. We can see an example in her Rank 6, where she talks to Yu about her family enthusiastically hopping in to help her learn how to cook, and temporarily forgets what she's doing.
Furthermore, her laughing fits actually help to fit her within this criterion, considering on May 15, she unintentionally derails the conversation about Kanji's status upon thinking Chie's repetition of Yosuke's statement is funny. She manages to get back on topic, but for a few lines while Yosuke and Chie are talking, Yukiko is still stuck in the giggle fit, and even then, she struggles to focus because she's just too busy cracking up. And when Chie gets annoyed, she just laughs harder.
1c. Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly (e.g., mind seems elsewhere, even in the absence of any obvious distraction).
She does this quite a bit, but there are two really obvious instances. The first one is above, when Teddie is trying to cheer everyone up with a joke, and Yukiko questions what the conversation topic is because she was simply too distracted. The other is when the Investigation Team plans a trip to the beach, and everyone starts cheering. It takes Yukiko a second to realize what's happening, as she initially goes "Huh?" in confusion before cheering along.
1d. Often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores, or duties in the workplace (e.g., starts tasks but quickly loses focus and is easily sidetracked).
We can look at her running errands above for that. She’s so terrible with remembering what ingredients were the correct ones because she just has a view that ingredients should "look healthy," without realizing what goes well together. Also, see where she decides to make lobster in her Rank 3, despite later saying she wants to learn basic meals, implying she got sidetracked by a more creative idea since lobster is not easy to make, or something you'd put into bento like she made in Rank 4. Especially considering Yu's reaction of slight distress, he definitely knew that's what she meant. (Most easier bento has chicken...)
(The reason I use this example a lot is because I believe there are multiple aspects going within it, with mini-examples within--it's a series of behaviors and not just one. Such as the struggling with the directions and remembering ingredients being 1A, but the fact she just gets wild ingredients for fun sometimes to be 1D.)
1h. Is often easily distracted by extraneous stimuli (for older adolescents and adults, may include unrelated thoughts).
Actually, her laughing fits fit within this criterion too! We see a situation where she just totally gets distracted by something she finds funny, such as the fun little details above. Furthermore, she often spaces out, as shown with Teddie trying to calm the rest of the team down by making that joke above and Yukiko just legitimately not paying attention because she's just spaced out looking at the scenery.
Also, while practicing for the Junes concert, she isn't even remotely paying attention to the heartfelt conversation, more focused on getting a damn sound out of the saxophone, and celebrating when she does.
1i. Is often forgetful in daily activities (e.g., doing chores, running errands; for older adolescents and adults, returning calls, paying bills, keeping appointments).
Aside from the repeatedly covered ingredients, Yukiko also is implied to be forgetful when it comes to appointments as well. During her Social Link, she forgets when her interview from a supposedly credible news station is supposed to be.
We don’t actually see much of her getting interviewed, as it happens all of twice. The first time she’s totally unprepared for the event because the reporter shoved a mic in her face. (We don’t actually know whether they were permitted on the property, it was implied they were and may have broken protocol by interviewing a distracted Yukiko).
Furthermore, the events at the Amagi Inn on October 30. She misremembers the times that men and women are supposed to have the bath open after she and the other girls wrongly chase the boys out of the onsen, much to her embarrassment. This is part of her job, to remember when the onsen schedule is supposed to be open for what sex.
We cannot say for sure whether these symptoms first arose before she was 12, though there is an implication from Chie that she has behaved like this from a very young age. Furthermore, her behaviors not only impair her at her job, where I have beat you over the head with this fact, but her relationships with her peers, as the Investigation Team is pretty much her entire friend group. I also assert that her behaviors can't be explained by other disorders, as she to my knowledge does not fit the criteria for any known mental disorder, which fit with the rest of the necessary criteria. Some people have argued that Yukiko has Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), but I disagree with this, as you have to fit within both criteria A and B, and though Yukiko fits A, there is nothing to prove she fits B at any point.
So, that about covers my assertion. With that, I want to point out again that ADHD is a mental disability. Mentally disabled people are often misread by society simply because their brains just do not work the same way as that of someone without a disability, and since they are in the minority, others usually just don’t expect their presence. ADHD is documented in only 1.6% of the Japanese population, which makes it a very unusual occurrence, and therefore misunderstood.
According to the results of the knowledge section of the current study, which contained 10 items, a teacher's average score was 5.67 out of 10. Most educators in Japan knew the causes of ADHD; however, they showed a significant lack of knowledge about its characteristics, prevalence, and secondary risks, and about the side effects of medication among the ADHD population. Many educators who participated in the study answered several question by choosing I don't know. On some items of knowledge assessment, more than 40% of educators answered that they did not know.
[Source]
I also want to point out that women and girls are even more likely to have any disabilities present fall under the radar than their brothers. Furthermore, potential inability to completely understand societal norms causes them communication problems, which leads to further misunderstandings. Of course, I’m mainly going to use people with ADHD as an example, as they are what I believe are the closest to Yukiko's situation.
Page 5: The relationship between social problems and working memory deficits in children with ADHD has not been investigated directly, despite consistent evidence that working memory is impaired in ADHD (Martinussen et al., 2005), and is linked functionally to both inattentive and hyperactive behavior (Kofler et al., 2010; Rapport et al., 2009). Other studies, however, have reported a significant relationship between working memory deficits and social problems in preschool children (Alloway et al., 2005) and children with 22q11 gene deletion disorder (KileyBrabeck & Sobin, 2006). Recent experimental evidence (Phillips et al., 2007) also supports the involvement of working memory in social interactions, and indicates that increasing concurrent working memory demands significantly disrupts an individual’s dynamic social decoding ability (i.e., the ability to rapidly interpret nonverbal social and emotional cues in others). [...] Page 23: The phonological storage/rehearsal component’s unique contribution to children’s hyperactive/impulsive behavior problems, which in turn adversely influence their social interactions, could be due to any of three related processes associated with this component: an overly rapid decay of information held in the store, deficient rehearsal processes, and/or a greater vulnerability to interference effects (i.e., irrelevant thoughts replacing what is stored currently in working memory). Deficits in any of the three processes would make it extraordinarily difficult to engage in the give-and-take, listen-and-wait behaviors required for adept social interactions (Rapport et al., 2008b). This explanation is also consistent with the observation that a majority of DSM-IV hyperactivity/impulsivity items refer to intrusive verbal behavior and the inability to maintain thoughts and forestall action (e.g., blurts out answers, interrupts conversations, trouble waiting one’s turn, talks excessively, trouble playing leisure activities quietly). The finding that visuospatial storage/rehearsal and central executive processes demonstrated similar magnitude indirect effects on social problems through their impact on inattentive symptoms was consistent with previous studies indicating that deficits in both working memory components negatively impact children’s inattentive behavior (Kofler et al., 2010). These findings suggest that an additional reason that children with ADHD experience social problems is that their visuospatial storage/rehearsal and central executive deficits result in impaired sustained attention (Kofler et al., 2010) and less frequent visual orientation to others during social interactions (Stroes et al., 2003). These behavioral outcomes, in turn, are interpreted negatively by others and are associated with peer criticism and rejection (Andrade et al., 2009). The direct and indirect effects of working memory explained a substantial percentage of the variance in parent- and teacher-reported social problems (R2 range = .22 to .27), considering that we were predicting global ratings of children’s social behavior using brief laboratory tasks.
[Source]
We can see this with Yukiko’s interactions, as she is easily flustered during interactions because she does not know what to do and just tries to shake everything off. In part, her solemn demeanor is her trying to keep herself closed off in order to hide that she truly does not know how to navigate her own situation.
Yukiko’s spaciness is misinterpreted, and that misinterpretation is fetishized as it’s believed she is doing it on purpose to play hard to get and find the person worthy, when she really is just not interested and does not even want to think about having a partner.
Furthermore, a friend of hers, Yosuke Hanamura, even stumbles, believing that Yukiko likely is a skilled cook thanks to her being a wakaokami--he does not actually seem to be thinking of a Nadeshiko ideal in this moment. He does flirt with Yukiko at one point, but doesn’t see it as a challenge. He is, however, using the framework of what okami typically "should be" and using it as a standard on Yukiko... and he does not realize that Yukiko's more scattered side might interfere with her daily life, such as her cooking abilities. We really should have just let Yu cook.
So, how does this impact Yukiko? It’s made clear that these misconceptions isolate her from her peers. In her Rank 1 with Yu, she explicitly tells him that she’s never had a male friend in her life, and it seems that aside from her support network in the Amagi Inn that she purposefully distances herself from, Chie is her one and only friend her age prior to the formation of the Investigation Team. Because people assume she would want a partner due to her status as a wakaokami who is most likely looking for a fellow manager, they mainly approach her for that.
Her connection with Chie helps her navigate the world better. Chie is much better with social cues than Yukiko is, and as a result is able to chase off anyone being creepy towards her. Furthermore, Chie actually takes the time to understand Yukiko—she struggles, not getting her sense of humor and not realizing Yukiko’s conflict over the inn, but knows that Yukiko’s aloofness is in reality genuinely her being spacey and playfully jokes about it with her.
In a sense, Yukiko is near-dependent on Chie when it comes to her social life, something that Chie’s well aware of and does not know how to feel about it. But since Chie doesn’t know Yukiko is conflicted about inheriting the inn, she expresses joy in the idea of her inheriting it and also places importance on it, which bothers Yukiko. And this is where we get to Konohana Sakuya.
Her perception also dictates Konohana Sakuya’s appearance as a Shadow… she’s a European style princess.
So, I want to cover the damsel in distress trope in media, and I want to cover media with it. The damsel in distress trope is straightforward: There’s a girl, usually a princess, who’s trapped by the villain. The hero has to save her, and this is the "challenge" of the story. Rescue her. Konohana Sakuya, Yukiko's Shadow, plays into this trope when she calls the person who will rescue her her "Prince Charming," challenging the viewer to rescue her. I’ve covered the side of it that’s her being fetishized and Konohana Sakuya playing into it before, implying that Yukiko definitely has a clue of the treatment she faces, but I want to point out that she is a princess. I’ve covered how on one hand this represents her own sense of powerlessness before, but I also want to point out that princesses are basically the epitome of fame. One American corporation, Walt Disney Productions, practically made their career off of just writing about princesses, and tabloids around the world love to focus on either their own royal families or that of nations nearby. Even in Japan, there is a large celebrity culture around the Yamato clan, the Japanese imperial family, such as the marriage of Prince Akihito (who became the Heisei Emperor--the current emperor as of the events of Persona 4) to Michiko Shoda, which has a lot of similarities to Yukiko's situation. Although Yukiko is a girl, she is part of the "family" by birth like Akihito. It could also be argued that she is much like Michiko as well.
Prince Akihito appeared in women's magazines before the entrance of Michiko Shõda, and sympathetic characterizations of him remain as an integral part of their love story. For all his wealth and fame, Prince Akihito feels that much is missing from his life. Like Princess Ann in Roman Holiday, Prince Akihito is unnaturally confined by his royal status. He longs for the freedom to walk outside palace walls unrecognized and unguarded. Although constantly surrounded by officials and servants, Prince Akihito feels lonely. Following palace custom, he has lived separately from his parents since childhood and feels bereft of a family life. More than anything, the prince yearns for the happiness he can share with a wife and children. As Fujin Seikatsu reports in 1958, even before his engagement, Prince Akihito has begun building a home for his future family with rooms for the children. The magazine asks, "Who will the heroine of his sweet home be?"
[Source]
Furthermore, it’s a reference to how Yukiko, due to her status as wakaokami, is seen as basically the Princess of Inaba, since, as Chie said, the Amagis are among the largest supporters of Inaba’s economy, only rivaled by Junes. Even Chie sees her as this savior princess to an extent, and Chie is her best friend.
Yukiko's fame is actually tied to her relationship with power, since though it is proven later that her family and the inn staff are totally fine with her leaving the inn, and will never hesitate to support her even if she goes, the general public will not be so kind. We hear throughout the game how rumors treat the people of Inaba, such as in Saki's dungeon showing how the rumors circulating because of her working in Junes negatively affected Saki's mental health, since they kept swirling in her head.
With that, I want to talk about how fame negatively impacts mental health. This is something I've discussed before, but it makes you hyper-aware of how people perceive you, since they won't shut up about it, and it will lead to the erosion of privacy. This can be a massive stressor on you, since you are simply not supposed to be so scrutinized as a person, and can be a huge damage to your mental health. Take for example, many singers.
Figure 1 presents the age standardised relative survival in both continents by years of fame. Relative survival is consistently below 100% for both European and North American artists (ie, pop star survival is always below that of the matched general populations). In the first year of fame, the upper confidence limit exceeds 100% of the matched population survival for both European and North American artists, and for North American artists this is also true for the second year of fame. However, with the exception of the European sample in year eight when the upper 95% CI for European pop star mortality exceeds expected mortality for the general population (fig 1), pop star mortality exceeds matched population mortality for all other years until after 25 years of fame. Further, European standardised pop star survival is consistently better than North American standardised survival (beyond the second year of fame) and, as length of fame increases, the gap between European and North American pop stars widens (fig 1). During this period, both North American and European artists experience mortality rates more than 1.7 times those for their counterpart general populations (table 3). However, after 25 years of fame the European and North American experiences differ sharply. [...] Consequently, despite some signs that mortality associated with pop star fame may have reduced in recent decades, the continued excess health risk experienced by such artists should be further examined. In particular, in the music industry, factors such as stress, changes from popularity to obscurity, and exposure to environments where alcohol and drugs are easily available, can all contribute to substance use as well as other self-destructive behaviours.29 Here, just as in the general population, levels of substance use, suicide, violence and other risk behaviours can be reduced not just on an individual basis but through altering the environment.35
[Source]
This is especially distressing on a mentally disabled person such as Yukiko, as the disabled already have to operate in a system unintuitive to them, and it is not an easy endeavor to blend in--if it's even possible, as many disabilities, even mental like Yukiko's, are visible. I asserted above that Yukiko's behaviors line most closely with ADHD, a neurodevelopmental disability. Neurodevelopmental disabilities, alongside other mental disabilities like personality disorders, shape the behavior of the individual, leading to them being exposed as "unusual,” and this leads to more eyes on them. Moreover, they are often mistreated for said "unusuality" (such as Yukiko being sexually harassed by her peers). So Yukiko is dealing with not only actual problems her disability causes, but problems such as her innocuous odd behaviors leading to her being dehumanized and being treated like a mythical figure, which isn't good for the dehumanized's mental health. She is dehumanized on two separate fronts.
Overall, regarding adult forms of mental disorder, much of the documented approbation and rejection applies to underlying symptoms rather than the diagnostic label itself (see extended discussion in Hinshaw, 2007). On the other hand, a mental illness label can add to related stigma and in the absence of specific information about (or observation of) underlying behavioral and emotional patterns, lead to significant denigration and even dehumanization (see Martinez, Piff, Mendoza-Denton, & Hinshaw, 2011) What about ADHD in particular? In a sample of 120 school-aged children in England, Law and colleagues found that the majority of children held negative attitudes toward a fictitious child presenting ADHD symptoms in a vignette. Moreover, no labelling effect was documented, as the descriptions of ADHD behaviors were enough to engender rejecting views (Law et al., 2007). Similar patterns were also observed in a sample of 135 college students and again it was found that ADHD behaviors were associated with stigma whereas the label alone was not (Thompson & Lefler, 2016). It appears that ADHD symptoms, especially those in the externalizing domain, are clear sources of rejection, discrimination, and stigmatization.
[Source]
I also want to point out the particular danger of dehumanization is the potential to internalize that dehumanization, which will damage the mental health of the dehumanized further in an aptly named phenomenon called "self-dehumanization." (Also, this specific citation mentions suicidal ideation in these disabled people, because there's a dangerous pipeline you can go to where if you see yourself as "inhuman," you see any damage done to you as deserved.)
Self-dehumanization is the perception that oneself is less than human. Fontesse and colleagues [14•] found that meta-dehumanization was related to anxiety, depression, and the maintenance of drinking habits in people with alcohol use disorder. However, importantly, these relationships were fully mediated by self-dehumanization, suggesting internalization of dehumanization (self-dehumanization) may better explain poor mental health outcomes than meta-dehumanization. This aligns with previous correlational research suggesting an association between self-dehumanization and anxiety, negative affect, and physical symptoms of distress [15]. Self-dehumanization may stem from the nature of mental health difficulties, cognitive perceptions, and social interactions [14•–16]. Additionally, continued experiences of meta-dehumanization may be internalized into one’s self-concept, resulting in self-dehumanization[14]. [...] Theoretically, self-dehumanization could act as a conduit between thought and behavior. To highlight how this may impact extreme forms of self-dehumanization, we present a novel explanation from the lens of death by suicide. Suicide accounts for around 1.3% of global deaths [26]. Though death by suicide is less common than other causes of death, it creates considerable alarm due to its tragedy, scope of impact, and preventability. As preliminary evidence supports a relationship between dehumanization and suicidal thoughts and behaviors (Robison, under review), there is a critical need to framework how dehumanization fits into ideation to action theories. The Interpersonal Theory of Suicide (IPTS) identifies how self-inflicted lethality occurs at the convergence of suicidal desire (i.e. perceived burden and thwarted belonging, both viewed as intractable by the individual) and one’s ability to behaviorally enact fatal self-injury (i.e. capability for suicide [27,28]). Self-dehumanization has been shown to amplify a sense of ‘otherness’ and social isolation [29,30], which, when coupled with thoughts of death, could potentiate further disconnection from others. Although not yet empirically supported, feelings of inhumanity could spur the incorrect belief of one’s inability to constructively contribute to society (e.g. perceived intelligence, selfsufficiency, and skill specialization), leading to the perception of burdensomeness (i.e. indicated through qualitative accounts [31]). Furthermore, self-perception of nonhumanness has been shown to decrease bodily value and/or sacredness and has been preliminarily related to self-harm [32,33].
[Source]
The way the public eye looks at Yukiko, as a princess, a symbol of the person who will return Inaba's individuality through the ryokan, leads to them having high expectations of her. So, how does this impact Yukiko? Well, this is mainly the fear that makes Yukiko nearly cut herself off from her family. Because of the sheer number of eyes on her from the Inaban public, she knows that she will be judged for leaving Inaba. Furthermore, the rest of the world refuses to sever her from the Amagi Inn. Because she's had so much of this ingrained into her by people she does not know around Inaba, she's afraid her family will too. She's just so used to it. This is another part of why Konohana Sakuya makes this rant. Yukiko is afraid, and willingly sacrificing her own power. She is afraid that her family is included within the public that has these specific expectations for her.
This is also part of why Konohana Sakuya rejects the idea of Chie being Yukiko's Prince. Because Yukiko is on the defensive, fearing Chie's support is conditional too. She loves Chie, and sees her as her only support network outside of her family. But like with her family, she fears if she makes her choice to leave, she will lose her too.
However, Chie, for her part, attempts to understand Yukiko beyond her status as a wakaokami, and realizes that she has been failing at this, since she wanted to help Yukiko and encourage her. Yukiko is her best friend, after all.
But what about people beyond Chie? Well, you remember Takeshi, in Chie’s social link? No? Good, because Yukiko doesn’t either. The thing about fame is you’re going to be judged, positively and negatively, by people who honestly do not have much of an idea who you are. People who are disconnected from you even if they don’t realize it. In this case, Yukiko is constantly being judged inextricably from her relationship to the inn by people who don't know her, putting societal pressure on her from people who shouldn't matter. This pressure around Yukiko to inherit the inn from the public led to her blurring the lines between people who knew her and people who didn’t, because she was so used to the input of those who didn’t. She wasn't able to parse between it and her actual loved ones' opinions. We actually see it in her dungeon dialogue—not once does anything pressuring from her family come up, but instead her memory is from that reporter. As opposed to Saki, who does actually recall a memory from her father as part of her dungeon--she was genuinely under familial pressure and societal pressure.
But that reporter, those peers of hers that see her as a princess, honestly should not matter to her. They don’t know Yukiko. We see this in Chie’s social link when Takeshi judges Yukiko’s more bubbly and giggly side, and Chie defends her. Takeshi does not know Yukiko and isn’t entitled to what she does with herself.
What matters to Yukiko is her family, which she mistakenly believes shares the same opinion, but she slowly comes to realize this isn’t true. Partly through them pretty much enthusiastically trying to help her at any turn humanly possible, between riding a motorcycle and cooking. They don’t care, they just love this kid.
And the reason Yukiko needed to hear this is because she's actually getting input from people who love her for once. She hated how inextricably she was made to be from the inn, because she wasn't treated like the human being she was and feared she would never get that treatment. People who love you and understand you will never be this controlling of you. And this love she was shown, separate from the voices of people who have no part in her life, allowed her to view everything she loved and hated with a clear eye. It's been said throughout this writeup, fame can be really damaging to your health. But you can make it out okay so long as you have people who really know you and treat you like the real person with thoughts and feelings that you are. Even if you aren't famous, if you're just misjudged as a person, you deserve people who understand you. Especially as I asserted Yukiko to be disabled here, if you are and it's impairing your social life, you do in fact deserve the love and understanding that your nondisabled peers do. You're worth it.
