Skip to main content

forbidden love

I have been wanting to keep a log of all the movies I watch, since I keep track of all the books I read on goodreads.com. It would be nice to get better at critically analyzing the movies I watch, just because it's so easy to watch a movie but to think about what I've seen is complicated.

So I will start today with a Japanese movie, made and released in 2006, called Boku wa imouto ni koi wo suru. My translation: "I fall in love with my sister." It stars Matsumoto Jun (he's in all the high-profile J-dramas these days like Gokusen and Hana Yori Dango, both of which were adapted from manga.) Not surprisingly, this movie is based on a manga of the same title, written by Kotomi Aoki and published by Shogakukan Publications, Ltd. Since I'm interested in social politics through manga as a medium, I'm going to talk about how the movie works in a social context.

There are two different issues I want to talk about: Japanese geographic culture and Taboos.

Geography and Culture:
Almost every little valley or coastline in Japan has a spot where tour-guides will stop and tell customers the following story: "Long ago, two lovers drowned themselves in this lake/pond/cliff/body of water when they found out that they were biological siblings." I haven't come across this phenomenon in other landscapes that I've visited, but of course, it may have to do with difference in context, access, etc. In any case, incest is apparently worth throwing oneself in a lake with your sister/brother.

Taboos:
In this movie, various people witness/find out/guess that the twins are making out with each other and try to tear them apart. One of those people trying to tear them apart is the brother himself. He feels so ashamed/guilty/abnormal for falling in love with someone he is not supposed to fall in love with that he sabotages his own relationship and constantly denies his right to express love for this person.
But incest is not the only taboo relationship in this movie!!!!!!!!!!
I don't want to spoil the plot but (I'm going to do it anyway) one of the male characters who seems to be in love with the sister... is actually in love with the brother.

Could this movie, while seeming to address the impossible love between twins, be making a broader commentary on societal taboos? Specifically societal taboos of a sexual/loving nature???? Hmmmmmm... Hmmmmm....

Finally, The Ending: no, they do not jump into a lake. It's a sad ending but not one that should leave the audience with the conclusion that sibling-love is impossible and can only happen if you decide to kill yourself in the end. But The Ending does emphasize the impossibility of societal acceptance.

Hmmmmm.... hmmmm... think about it.
Labels:

Comments

janeifer wang said…
mika, i started watching this movie recently and i didn't get a chance to finish it yet! but i had no context for it, and this is helpful. i wanna talk to u about it when i finally finish it!!
October 25, 2007 at 9:12 AM
giselle said…
i'm into calling out why incest is so taboo. lets watch this the next time i see you ok?
November 4, 2007 at 5:26 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Japanese Class in NYC - first lesson!!!!!!!!!!!!

(It's been a while since my last post! I have just begun my first job in NYC!!! Teaching after-school classes in Japanese Language and Anime Culture in a inner-city high school in dowtown manhattan! Welcome to the first installment...) "You better have a leg in it," said N__ when she heard how many students I had in my Japanese class: over 30. I had to ask what that meant, but I wasn't feeling any kind of ominous energy from the students who had signed up for after-school Japanese Language Club. What I mean is: Who signs up to stay at school for 3 extra hours unless they really want to be there??? After trying (and failing) to set up a DVD for the first hour, waiting for the students to trickle in, and being herded into a corner by a Student Government meeting, I began class. The first order of the day was to break up into groups and brainstorm what the students expected of each other, of themselves, and of me as a teacher. Many of them said the same things: for the t
5 comments
Read more

Japanese Class Downtown (Week of 10/23)

This week, we got around to talking about the indigenous peoples of Japan. Concepts that we touched on: - “Assimilation” - “History is written by the winners,” and therefore - “Losers are depicted by the winners.” - “ethnic groups” - “minorities” In the first half of the class, we watched a movie – 『もののけ姫』(Princess Mononoke) – which was the most popular movie in Japan until Titanic came out afterwards. It was also the most expensive animated movie to make, up until its release date (2004), at a production cost of about $20 million. I introduced the movie by talking about the setting – Muromachi Period (1336-1573), roughly contemporary with the Ming Dynasty and the arrival of C. Columbus in what is now known as the Caribbean. The main character of the movie is an Emishi prince, from a clan of natives who have continued to resist the Japanese Shogunal government. (Historians say that the Emishi natives were all assimilated by 1300.) The main character of the movie is based on a historica
3 comments
Read more

postcard poetry: here are some of my favorite postcards that i've sent to people so far 1

providence can be a brutal city, just like any other. in this glass box I watched the ocean fall in sheets outside computer clusters, braid inside the gutters. umbrellas made no difference. this is the version i actually ended up using: Providence can be and has been just as brutal as any other city in the country, but i was safe and desperately warm within the glass cage, watching the Atlantic fall in sheets, watching the acid rain braid itself into the gut- ters, wringing words like fair- trade coffee from my strained eyeballs to stain the imaginary page on my computer screen.
2 comments
Read more