i don't know if i'd consider "avoiding yoko's wiles" to be much of a struggle on joe's part.
Yoshikuni Igarashi, "Jō & Hyūma: Kajiwara Ikki's Manga Heroes and Their Violence Quest for Historical Angency." in Japan, 1972: Visions of Masculinity in an Age of Mass Consumerism, (Columbia University Press, 2021), 213.
You know, this is an interesting article, and maybe there's more written here that wasn't included, but I think it misses a lot of important things about Yoko.
For one thing, it's true that Yoko is an extremely rich lady and that she does, on the face of it, control Joe's career, but I think that line about how Yoko tries to "channel Joe's wildness and free existence into pugilism through careful planning" misses the thrust of Yoko's characterization.
Yoko, just as much as Joe, feels deeply constrained by what she considers a "vulgar and materialistic modern world," and she implies as much. They're both trying to break free of constraints. I think the article misses this important point, unless it did note this, and it just wasn't in this particular passage.
Just as Joe initially gets torrents of abuse from the boxing world for being a "wild animal," Yoko faces a certain level of condescending behavior from the boxing presidents for being a "sheltered rich girl."
She uses this perception of her as a rich girl following her whims and fancies to her advantage, but I think she finds this stifling, patronizing behavior deeply disappointing, and more than anything else, Yoko, just like Joe, wants to break from these vapid constraints (money, fame, image) to have a pure and free existence. It isn't Yoko who stifled Joe's freedom; it's "vulgar and materialistic modern society" by turning Joe into a star after he gained popularity following his match in Hawaii.
Do you notice that Joe behaves exactly like Jose Mendoza here, the symbol of the materialistic success that Yoko dislikes? He has money, fame, a gentlemanly disposition, and a loving family, but all of it is a mask for arrogance and egotism that Jose carefully camouflages? Yoko hates this change in Joe's attitude.
She isn't truly a symbol of that society, though it may appear that she is at first glance. Jose Mendoza is. Yoko's the one who most appreciates Joe's wildness and freedom and tries to revitalize him when he loses that spark. Yoko doesn't want him to become like Jose, bloated with wordly success but hollow. Ironically, she does this by controlling his career by holding his world title match hostage, but in the end, she stops doing that entirely and just wholeheartedly supports him fighting all the way to the finish.
I think Yoko's an interesting character because she doesn't want Joe to be a typical pugilist. She doesn't want him to "channel his wildness" into something acceptable to vulgar, materialistic social forces, in her words. She doesn't want him chained into a life of insincerity. She wants to free Joe to be his wild self until the end, and uses her money and power to make it happen, and when that ran its course, her simple encouragement, because that is freedom for her as well.
She appears to be antagonistic to him, but she's actually his ally, which Joe understands when he gives her his gloves at the end of the series.
Sorry, @refractionfish, I don't mean I disagree with you personally, this is just my response to the article. I just think that author seems to be projecting his own views onto Yoko (incorrectly). Unless there's more written here that you haven't posted, which would change the context a lot. Haha. 😅
I'm just curious. If Joe actually died in the ending, then do you think it's possible for Yoko to love anyone else after that? I mean, of course she still has to move on for her own tomorrows and it's not necessary for her to involve herself in a new relationship. Therefore, i'd like to imagine what if she could find love again and be happy even though i'm a Joe/Yoko's supporter. What is your opinion? Sorry I just feel bad for her a lot:(
Hi! Wow, getting a lot of AnJ asks the past few days! Keep them coming!
To answer your question, it's certainly possible, but I think it's unlikely. She loves Joe, I think, because he's a "hungry" boxer, someone from a very specific time period (he was born sometime in the early 1950s, in a poverty-stricken Japan that was still rebuilding from WW2). I think he was a "furoji," one of those post-war orphans whose families either died, or abandoned them. They were considered a nuisance by the police, were often coerced by yakuza, and had to sleep in the train stations and beg for food. This is why he's so hungry and hardy.
It seems like Yoko wasn't satisfied with her life, rich and powerful but fundamentally unchallenging and lonely. She probably liked Joe challenging her and the rest of the world. Note that she didn't like his turn into celebrity after he became OPBF champion and thought it was something a consumerist and materialist society had turned him into. That's why she made him fight Harimau, to regain his "wildness."
By the early 1970s, when Joe fought against Jose Mendoza, that Japan was gone, and there weren't too many hungry boxers left. Joe was probably based on Fighting Harada, Jose Medel, and other famous fighters of that era. And Fighting Harada once said that as Japan grew prosperous, it stopped creating Fighting Haradas.
Here are some of his direct quotes from the article.
“When I began boxing, in the late 1950s, Japan was poor. The gyms were full, full of young men like me who saw opportunity in boxing. Today, our gyms are not very busy.”
“We all began to notice the difference after the (1964) Olympics, when we began to become more prosperous. But as we became richer, we lost a certain spirit, I think--the spirit that I had, and the men who boxed when I did.”
So the sort of man she loves would have slowly vanished too.
She could definitely be happy, though, and find fulfillment in her life. I dunno if she could have found someone else though. It's not impossible. She would just have to find someone similar to Joe before that "hungry" spirit faded completely.
Btw, if you feel bad for Yoko, I did write some fics on AO3 where Joe is alive and they have good times together! Check them out and leave me some reviews. It's lonely over there. 😅
I saw somebody on Reddit said that Yoko making Joe fight Harimau just fucked him up more than helping him, another person also said Joe could've had a "reasonable" life if he had lost his wildness to live like any normal humans. What are your personal thoughts of those takes?
By the way, Reddit has a lot of talkative Ashita no Joe's fans there so i think it might be a nice place for you to discuss stuff if you feel lonely here. Just saying through.
I think this is the same anon lol. True appreciation in a fandom is making people write huge posts 😂
Yeah, I've seen the Reddit page for AnJ but honestly I don't like it there too much lol.
About Yoko making Joe fight Harimau, I've seen that opinion a lot, and I think it's pretty unfair to hold her responsible for Joe's punch-drunk syndrome.
By the time manga Joe fought Harimau, Joe was already showing severe symptoms of it, from way back in Hawaii, and that was inherently due to his no-guard stance and his fighting style. He was always gonna end up that way, regardless of anything Yoko did or didn't do.
And people seem to forget this all the time, but Yoko made Kinninsky look at Joe's fight with Sarawak in Hawaii and he specifically told her that Joe was perfectly healthy. Manga Yoko was relieved and did not think Joe was punch-drunk when she made him fight Harimau.
Anime Yoko only comes to realize that Joe is punch-drunk after his fight with Harimau and she feels a lot of guilt because she thinks she worsened his condition, but really? It still isn't fair to blame people for not acting on information that they did not have, especially since Joe went out of his way to hide his medical condition by refusing to see doctors.
Another thing is that the narrative obviously agrees with Yoko. The Doya kids, Goromaki Gondo, and Danpei all express the same opinion as her.
She meant well and wanted Joe to be in the best condition for the final fight. She did the exact same thing by bringing over Carlos and that worked wonders for Joe by helping him get over Rikiishi, so it's no surprise that she wanted to try it again.
Ultimately, the only person responsible for all of that is Joe himself. He wanted to burn himself up. He did not want to quit. He did not care if he would lose, or die, or become a lifelong punch-drunk patient.
I can understand why people don't like Yoko taking Joe's career into her own hands without asking for his opinion or permission, though. That, I think, was her real flaw in dealing with Joe. I'm not really surprised that he was so hurt and furious over the Harimau debacle that he refused to speak to her.
However, I understand why she acts the way she does. She blames herself for Rikiishi's death and for sealing the water taps shut because he wanted to starve, as he told her that's just what a man's world is like. And she...let him, and even helped out. So of course she wants to control Joe's career. She doesn't want these guys she likes to keep dying on her.
So...for her to force Joe to fight Harimau against his will? It was pretty harsh and cold. Especially since she never explains herself.
Was she responsible for his medical syndrome or for his worsening condition, even in the case of Harimau? Nah, that was 100% Joe.
In fact, if Joe had not fought Harimau, he could well have never pushed Jose into insanity.
And that ties into the second question. He could have chosen a "reasonable" life, but the one person who earnestly tries to push him into it (Noriko) gives up on him and walks away. He would never have been able to live a reasonable life.
Joe wasn't meant to be reasonable. Jose Mendoza was. He couldn't have bleached Jose if he had been reasonable. He had to be wild.
He really thinks Yoko picked up a random magazine or something and got obsessed with a random Venezuelan boxer who she randomly decided needed to become a world champion.
Randomly.
Even after she says "please accept it as a token of my feelings [for you]."
AnJ peeps here, I had a whole bunch of Jose Mendoza revelations yesterday.
You know how he liked to hold his opponents' shoulders and let them hit him freely? But in reality, when your shoulders are held in place, your punching power decreases a lot, and this was just a bluff about how tough he was to hide his fragility?
That was not the only instance of Jose's fragility, even if it was the only thing mentioned.
The same goes for when he bruised Joe's shoulders at the party.
Yesterday, a lady at my office squeezed my left shoulder in a hug when I nominated her for this employee of the week thing, and her grip was firm. My shoulder hurt for hours afterwards and while she didn't leave a bruise, she did leave a faint dark spot where she squeezed me.
The skin of the shoulders is very fragile and breaks and bruises more easily than other parts of the body. That's why he could bruise Joe's shoulders so fast. Not because he was super strong. Normal people can leave bruises there too with little effort. It was all a tough guy bluff.
And as to why he gave Carlos horrific damage?
Check it out. This is a single blow to Carlos' temple. The temple, called the pterion, is one of the weakest parts of the skull, and among the easiest to damage with a rotational blow like the corkscrew punch (rotational blows increase damage). Four skull bones meet at the pterion and this intersection is very easy to inflict damage on because the bone is thin here.
It's why Joe accidentally killed Rikiishi -- he hit the temple, and the dehydration through Rikiishi's weight loss hastened the lethality.
Another thing is that not being prepared for a well-aimed head blow increases the chances of getting whiplash. Carlos went into that match with Jose under the impression that Jose was avoiding him because he was super strong. Whether that's true or not is another story, but he was not expecting that blow. This could be why Rikiishi knocked Joe unconscious during Joe's prison escape, and why Jose knocked Joe unconscious in Hawaii. They caught him off-guard. But this didn't happen during actual matches with them when Joe was prepared for blows.
Besides this, Carlos was reeling from his very recent bout with Joe and that obviously didn't help matters either.
You do not need to be a super strong person to inflict this kind of damage on someone. Jose just happened to hit a very fragile part of Carlos' head with a rotational punch.
But Joe went in there on guard, knowing he had punch-drunk syndrome and that his opponent was a heavy hitter, with first-hand experience in Hawaii. He was prepared for the worst and that explains why he lasted all fifteen rounds and was still in better condition than Carlos at the final bell.
In the end, everything that seems to prove Jose's invulnerability is actually a vulnerability.
Joe, fighting, and the way he connects with people
Just had a few thoughts about Joe, the meaning of combat in Joe's life, how it connects to his final match against Jose Mendoza, and how Yoko comes into it.
Something I noticed is that a lot of people online don't think Joe could have a friendly relationship with Yoko post-series because of how hostile, antagonistic, and vitriolic their relationship is during most of the series.
What gets brought up repeatedly are things like Joe grabbing Yoko's throat and telling her he doesn't care if she dies in a ditch somewhere, the time he throws water at her when she asks him to forfeit against Kim, the time in the manga when he teases her about her confession and tells her that women's magazines would love that scoop, Yoko forcing Joe to fight Harimau against his will, Yoko holding his world title match hostage, Yoko accidentally making his punch-drunk syndrome worse, Yoko actually telling him to die in the ring...
It goes on.
People who prefer Joe with someone like Noriko seem to want Joe to have easygoing and friendly relationships that don't have all these high-octane scenes.
And I definitely understand that discomfort. Joe thinks Yoko is actually his enemy for a majority of the manga and that informs his hostility towards her (in season 2, they are way friendlier so this doesn't really apply to their anime selves).
But does it mean that in light of all the insane things they do to each other, that after Joe is done with boxing, that they'd have an unhealthy relationship where Joe roughs her up or they'd still be antagonistic towards each other or something, like some people think?
Actually, I think it's narratively impossible for that to ever happen. If Joe and Yoko were to ever be in a relationship post-series, it would certainly be friendly and peaceful.
Why?
There's a very specific thread of frustration that runs through Joe and Yoko's relationship in the series.
Namely, fighting and exchanging physical blows is a very, very positive connection in Joe's worldview, and certainly the philosophy of Ashita no Joe.
Here, Joe says that communicating with Carlos by beating each other up has made them best friends, and that this was the case with Rikiishi as well.
Not only has fighting them given them a beautiful connection, Joe thinks it is superior to other connections. Closer than friends who've shared a million words together.
After fighting his rivals, Joe's feelings of antagonism towards them completely vanish and he behaves calmly and peacefully, trying (and failing 😭) to shake Rikiishi's hand, tearfully embracing Carlos after ages apart, and even refusing to let Goromaki Gondo say anything bad about Wolf.
Joe loves his rivals.
Now, what is the specific thread of frustration that runs through his and Yoko's relationship? Yoko certainly wishes to connect to the men in her life by understanding boxing. That's why she starves herself along with Rikiishi. She wants to understand the world of men.
Now, here is where people get off-kilter.
Joe wants to connect with Yoko too. He seriously desires a close connection with her, and when he says she's a woman in a man's world?
He resents this. He wants her in his world. His antagonism masks this, however...
He is frustrated that she doesn't seem to get it. He wants to understand her and for her to understand him.
He wants to have a close connection with her, a friendship, just as he does with Rikiishi and Carlos. That's why he visits Rikiishi's grave with her.
However, he does not think she reciprocates this desire for a close connection. He says Yoko doesn't care that he won the title (with the implication that he wishes she did?).
Just as he explains to Noriko his motivation for boxing, he does the same to Yoko here. Again, the antagonism does a great job of masking it. But he is genuinely trying to explain his heart to Yoko.
Why does he have to explain this to her, though? Because he is not allowed, narratively, nor by any legal standard, to actually exchange blows with her. Literally. He hits Danpei (and almost kills him twice). He hits Nishi.
Joe is a fictional character and not a real person, and his behavior is constrained by the narrative, which definitely forbids him from doing this. He cannot and will not exchange blows with Yoko, because she is a woman and not a boxer, and beating each other up is what he does with other boxers, in a world of men, not with her.
Because he cannot, and I do not think he has the heart to, despite what insane comments he makes, and some of the truly disturbing items on the list above (yeah, he's problematic...we know. I'm not his defense lawyer).
I think he was deeply frustrated at this, this inability of his to communicate with her in the language he knew. The best tool at his disposal, his fists, are totally useless to him here.
Do I seriously think he wants to commit horrible, misogynistic crimes of violence against a defenseless lady, however? No. I actually don't think that.
He never seeks mindless, sadistic violence. He does not desire this. He seeks understanding and true connection, and combat is legitimately the first time someone truly respected him as someone worth dying for, in the form of Rikiishi.
I think he honestly, truly wanted her to be his rival, an Atalanta to his Meleager, an equal to meet in combat, but he can't (that's why she keeps getting people to fight Joe by proxy; not just for Rikiishi, but for her too), for obvious reasons.
So what does Joe do?
Instead, he resorts to what he believes is an inferior method of communication. He tries to tell her about his feelings.
He says that exchanging blows is far superior to just talking, and yet he talks to her, and he talks to Noriko. Noriko doesn't understand, and she slowly fades from his life and marries Nishi instead.
Anyway, just as with Noriko, words fail with Joe and Yoko in that instance, though he tries. But unlike with Noriko, he does manage to have a soulful conversation with Yoko in the end, when she tells him to fight against Jose Mendoza with no regrets. When she does this, she understands him where Jose Mendoza, his actual opponent, fails.
I've said before that his discomfort with seeing Jose Mendoza's family in Hawaii did not come from being an orphan and seeing a happy family that he never had, but from the idea that he would lose everything he had gained. Joe does have a family he cares for deeply. But he must surely have been worried that his drive to become white ash was alienating them, just as it alienated Noriko.
On top of that, his final opponent, the world champion, was literally refusing the meaningful sparring and sense of friendship that Joe was trying to offer him in Hawaii, and was trying to offer him in the ring.
Yeah. Joe in the manga actually thought of Jose as a comrade and seeking him out in Hawaii was Joe's attempt to form a close relationship with him. This didn't happen, though, because Jose isn't that kind of guy.
That final match was such an ironic inversion.
Fist-fighting, his most meaningful way of communication, didn't help Jose Mendoza understand Joe as a person. It just terrified Jose and aged him prematurely.
Ironically, Yoko, a non-fighter, was the one who was finally understood him. And she did it with words of encouragement.
In the end, he gives her his gloves, inviting her into the world of men, without explaining a single thing, because he trusts her to understand. That was their version of the handshake he never got to have with Rikiishi.
In a way, the rival he made peace with was not Jose Mendoza. It was Yoko.
And, as I said, what happens when Joe makes peace with his rivals?
He drops all antagonism and all fighting. It's the end of combat and the beginning of peace. The cycle of combat was broken with the world title match, and Joe would stop fighting, because he reached the undestanding he was hoping for.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
tldr - Joe and Yoko would definitely have a friendly relationship with peace and calm if he somehow lived.
Joe is a Problematic Protagonist, but not as problematic as you think.
When did Joe start to display early punch-drunk symptoms?
I imagine he probably started getting damage as soon as he started pro boxing, or maybe even during his juvie days or before.
Danpei even told him after his very first match that the no-guard stance was very, very bad for his body, and that he would get punch-drunk if he didn't stop, so of course Joe kept doing it repeatedly and took tons of damage.
I don't think his boxing troupe days were any good for his body either. He was supposed to fight in fixed matches, but didn't, and got badly injured a few times way out in the boonies with limited access to doctors.
It's just speculation, but I think the onset of his punch-drunk syndrome might have happened here. The symptoms only became visible when they were severe and irreversible, so Joe must have been developing it before.
You can see him getting absent-minded and clumsy starting not in Hawaii, but way before that, right after his match with Carlos. I think he was mildly to moderately punch-drunk by the time this bowling scene happens.
He forgets where he kept his bowling ball and Yoko has to give it to him. And weirdly, he's not good at bowling even though Yoko notes that he's naturally talented at sports and should be good at this sort of thing.
He really did absolutely ruin his health way before anyone realized. 🥲
We all know that Joe was furious when Yoko forced him to fight Harimau against his will and afterwards, he refused to speak to her when she tried to warn him that he was punch-drunk. His being furious is much more prominent in the anime, but he wasn't exactly thrilled in the manga.
It's true that they have a very antagonistic and tumultuous relationship, but the way he outright refuses to speak to her later on is extremely new, and it was not actually a pattern of behavior he displayed before.
In the past, they did have unpleasant fights. But each time they met again, they were cordial to each other...sort of. At the very least, he didn't refuse to speak to her. He would even seek her out, not avoid her.
He lets her take him around the city, when the last time they spoke was during the blow-up over his fight money from his match with Carlos.
He feels regret when he thinks he goes too far. He apologizes for dumping water on her during his match with Kim and they visit Rikiishi's grave together. After winning, the first thing he does is look for her.
He's annoyed that she got a contract with Jose and even makes these accusatory comments towards Yoko, but again, this doesn't stop him from going souvenir shopping with her afterwards. In the anime, Joe makes an exasperated comment about Yoko playing promoter, but doesn't even mind that she got the contract. Either way, he's at best sort of annoyed or he doesn't care in either continuity.
I don't think he truly minded her acting as a promoter for his fights. He even asks her to do that here (and he requests her help in being Carlos' sparring partner as well), he was just unhappy that she suddenly blindsided him out of nowhere and threw a roadblock in his way by holding Jose's fights exclusive and making him go along with her without explaining anything.
I think besides being furious, he was hurt by her behavior. Why would he be hurt, though? Because even though they don't get along, they are close, in a weird way. They're linked by the shared pain of Rikiishi's death, and they do bond in their own way over it, visiting his grave.
Then comes the Harimau shock.
Remember, WE know Yoko was only trying to help him, but she never actually told him that. In fact, she refuses to explain her motivations for the Harimau fight even when asked. In Joe's mind, Yoko is an underhanded meddler who suddenly pulled a fast one for her whims and fancies. It doesn't help that she moves from telling people that she does things for charity at the start of the series to telling people that she only does things for business. This is incorrect, but it's the explanation she offers, and the explanation that Joe uncritically accepts.
And though it's subtle and not stated, it's clear that Yoko is deeply hurt by this assumption.
The subtle but incredible sadness here. All because of a big misunderstanding.
They're both sympathetic characters here and that's why this is so sad. The thing is, when she finally tells Joe why she does all this...he is much kinder to her. And he of course gives her his gloves.
