So I went to see Inu-oh (2021)...
2025-04-17 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
croptoptux[reposted with some revision]
I went to see Inu-oh (2021) in theaters with some friends a million years ago, back when it was a hot new film. The morning after, my friend read me some absolutely horrible takes on this film from tumblr dot com. Everything was about shipping the two lead characters, focusing solely on the "gay rock band" element. And as someone who worked my tail off studying premodern Japanese stuff, this made me both irate and grievously disappointed. So I spent several days doing a research deep dive on all the cultural context the average western weeaboo probably never bothered to look into, so maybe, just maybe, there could be a greater cultural appreciation on the rewatch.
90% of what I am about to say can be verified via English Wikipedia. The rest comes from Japanese sources, including Wikipedia and Kotobank. Strap in. This is a very long post.
The Tale of the Heike, is an epic about the fall of Taira no Kiyomori and his subsequent extermination of his entire clan during the actual real-life event known as the Genpei War (1180-1185 CE). Science Saru has an excellent 11-episode anime that covers the whole epic. EVERYONE except the POV character DIES. The opening paragraph of this epic is:
Citation: The Tale of the Heike, Asia For Educators, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Crunchyroll subscribers can find it under “The Heike Story”.
Extreme TLDR: Taira no Kiyomori 平清盛 married his daughter, Tokuko 平徳子, off to Emperor Takakura 高倉天皇. They had a son in 1178. His majesty dies, and their infant son gets named Emperor Antoku 安徳天皇 at the age of three. When war breaks out, the Tairas take the baby and run. The final battle of the Genpei war 源平合戦 (1180-1185), the Battle of Dan-no-Ura 壇ノ浦の戦い, was a last-ditch effort naval assault that went horribly awry. Realizing there’s absolutely no way out of this but death, the Emperor’s grandmother/Kiyomori’s widow, Taira no Tokiko 平時子, grabs now seven-year-old Emperor Antoku and jumps overboard. A lot of the Tairas forces jump overboard after her—they’d rather drown now than be executed later.
There would undoubtedly be a mass of treasure to salvage from all those sunken ships. On the boat with the Emperor was the Imperial Regalia—three divine treasures you can read more about in the Kojiki 古事記, or if you played Okami back in the day. These were considered lost for a time, particularly the Kusanagi/“Grass cutter” sword. This legendary blade belonged to Shinto deity, Susanoō, and was used to slay the eight-headed snake beast, Orochi. To be perfectly frank, the Wiki page for the Kusanagi sword 草薙の剣 doesn’t seem to clarify whether the sword the Imperial Family has in storage today is in fact the original blade. There are a couple fingers pointed about how it went missing but not so many about its recovery. For the most part we normies should assume the one that exists today is the original sword. Also, according to Wiki sensei, no one outside of the imperial line has actually seen it and survived. We have one description of the sword from a high priest whose entire sect appears to have died shortly thereafter. Everything after that is artistic renditions. Hold this thought for a moment.
Biwa hōshi were a variety of traveling entertainers during this period. They dressed like Buddhist monks, though they weren’t necessarily affiliated with temples. They were medieval bards. Yes, they did employ the blind. They got super famous specifically for recanting the Tale of the Heike—enough that it became a separate genre. The first written version of the Tale of the Heike is dated around 1330. Akashi Kakuichi 明石覚一 (1299-1371) is credited with the most widely read account, which has the official compilation dated at 1371. Hold onto this for a moment too.
If you remember anything about the Tokugawa Shogunate from world history class, you might remember there are a few more shogunates that predate that. The Ashikaga shogunate (1336-1573), and very specifically Ashikaga no Yoshimitsu 足利義満(1358-1408), negotiated the end of a 57-year political conflict known as the Northern and Southern Courts period (1336-1392). This bureaucratic mess was nowhere near as exciting of a story as the Genpei War (1180–1185). In broad strokes, the country was split in half as a result of a hitch in the imperial line of succession from several factors, including: the failed Mongol invasion of Japan (1274, 1281), the overthrow of the Kamakura shogunate (1185-1333), the failure of Kenmu restoration (1333-1336) to restore the Emperor as de facto head of state, and some more civil war. The Ashikaga clan endorsed the Northern court. Yoshimitsu was a star negotiator—just read his wiki page—who consolidated his power and legitimacy by acting as go between for a while. He even convinced the Southern court to give up the imperial regalia to the Northern court. (This was later given back when the Northern court eventually fell. As history is written by the winners, it is generally accepted that the emperors of the Southern court were the true imperial line.) The sword that Tomona and his dad recovered for those noblemen at the beginning of the movie was the Kusanagi sword. Those noblemen were almost certainly sent on behalf of the Ashikaga Shogunate, and recovering the sword was probably part of a political ploy. Tomona went blind and his father died because they were not supposed to see it as they’re not divinities on earth.
Ashikaga no Yoshimitsu was also a fan of Kan’ami Kiyotsugu 観阿弥清次 (1333-1384)—author, actor, and musician who, along with his performer and playwright son, Zeami Motokiyo 世阿弥元清 (1363-1443), are credited for the foundation of Noh theater. Kan’ami’s troupe performed for Yoshimitsu around 1374. Yoshimitsu was totally enamored with 12-year-old Zeami’s performance and became a massive patron to Zeami. There are some scholarly accounts you can read and come to your own conclusions about the weeds of that relationship. I’m reasonably sure the child dancer in Yoshimitsu’s introductory scene is supposed to be Zeami.
Yoshimitsu’s legitimate wife was Hino no Nariko 日野業子(1351–1405). Nariko married Yoshimitsu around 1375 or 1376, and only gave birth to a daughter. Since daughters can’t hold office, said daughter’s birth date isn’t something I can easily grab without sifting through dense scholarly text, which I currently don’t have access to. If I could, I would probably be able to date this movie based on Inu-oh’s final performance being during her pregnancy. For reference’s sake, Yoshimitsu’s concubines had the sons, the first one having been born in 1386.
Inu-oh 犬王 (?-1413) was a real person. Not much about him is known other than he was a good performer. He respected sarugaku-noh trailblazer Kan’ami, and even performed for Kan’ami’s memorial service. He was also extremely well praised by Zeami. Ashikaga no Yoshimitsu, however, did not like Inu-oh. He eventually swayed the shogun’s forgiveness, but was still not all that much in favor. He was then subjected to an audit in 1408.
Based on the above information, and the fact that the passage of time in this film is specifically not marked, I guestimate that the opening scene happened sometime during 1360’s, and that Tomona’s execution was probably in the late 1370’s or early 1380’s. I might be able to pin this down a little further if I could get Nariko’s daughter’s birth date；alas, I'm not affiliated with a university, so I do not have the access required to go on a medieval Japanese scavenger hunt.
--
When I googled why Japanese people way back when could change their names on a whim, I couldn’t find any good English sources. A summary of my Japanese sources is that it’s not totally on a whim. It’s about census data and tax evasion. The Chinese Tang dynasty (618-907) had some really awesome stuff going on, so Japan decided to copy them. The Sinophilia is pretty intense. This legislation was called the Ritsuryō system (律令制), and was implemented in the 6th century CE. This introduced koseki 戸籍, the family register, which basically lists who is in your house: births, deaths, marriages, divorces, or adoptions. Legalese is boring. Laws have changed. Permanent identities like we know them now come out of the Meiji period (1868-1912), because they changed the tax laws and citizenship rules from fiefdom based to modern standards, and suddenly everyone needed surnames. If you were important enough to have a surname or a clan name, that was pretty much permanent throughout your whole life unless you were adopted into or married into someone else’s.
Personal names had more going on. When you were born, you got a name from one of your relatives. You’d eventually grow out of that. You had your adulthood ceremony and you gave yourself an adult name. Maybe you needed a court name because you had to deal with the imperial or shogunal court. Maybe you did something cool and got a title or a moniker. Maybe you were a famous artist and gave yourself a poetic artist name. Maybe you gave up the working world and became a monk/nun—then you got a Buddhist name. And then when you died, you got a posthumous epitaph.
But that’s just for important people! What if you’re a normie? To a certain degree, you really could just do whatever you wanted. The birth name stuff still applies; your parents usually gave you a name and hope you make it to adulthood. If you entered a skilled profession, clergy or otherwise, you got a name. Having a part of your name bestowed upon you by a celebrated personage was a huge honor. When Tomona joins the Kakuichi guild of biwa hōshi, he is given the character ichi 一 from Kakuichi, making his name Tomoichi, and cementing his membership in the guild. Emphasizing again here that Kakuichi is not any old blind musician but THE Akashi Kakuichi 明石覚一.
Lifehack analyzer lists three reasons for why you would not continue to use your childhood name as an adult.
1. Strangers don’t need to know your real name. If they did then they have the power to curse you.
2. The name your parents gave you expresses your thanks to them. As an adult, you want to express your thanks to someone else.
3. You need a public name. It’d be too intimate for a total stranger to call you by your kiddy name when, up until this point, the only people who knew you were family members, childhood friends, and people in the neighborhood.
Insofar as Tomona’s major life transitions, I would assess that changing his name to Tomoichi encompases point 2 and changing his name to Tomoari encompasses point 3. Changing it back to Tomona of Dan-no-Ura immediately before his execution is a strange flex in real life, but it’s important as a point of narrative catharsis. After Tomona’s story ends, and irl Inu-oh goes out to become the person history remembers, he also has a couple name changes. Pulling from Japanese Wiki: Ashikaga no Yoshimitsu’s Buddhist name was 道義 Dōgi. Inu-oh borrowed that and changed his name from 犬阿弥 Inuami (not getting any hits for this one) to 道阿弥 Dōami (finding a more entries under this name). Going out on a limb here and assuming that Inu-oh changed his name to Inuami because of 観阿弥 Kan’ami in the interim.
Have some non-encyclopedia sources (JP)
(LINK DEAD) Lifehack analyzer
Why did people of old change their names so much?, Net Lab
Yahoo!Ask
I’m not going to go into yōkai, cursed objects, masks, sarugaku or noh theater since that’s all well outside my wheelhouse. For yōkaiThe Book of Yōkai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore by Michael Dylan Foster. Honestly not sure where to redirect you for theater stuff.
--
Switching gears to the rock opera part. If you’ve seen Rocky Horror Picture Show or Jesus Christ Super Star, then you know what a rock opera is. It was breathing new life into the musical in the 1960’s. If you’re even vaguely familiar with the music and aesthetics of David Bowie, Alice Cooper, KISS, Mötley Crüe, Twisted Sister, Bon Jovi, and to a lesser extent Elton John or Queen, then you’re at least vaguely familiar with glam rock and hair metal. I am not going to post YouTube links because those get region locked by IP address. It was a flamboyant, consumeristic, androgynistic, and campy kind of style with emphasis on outrageous costuming, makeup, and hairstyles among other things, from the early to mid-1970’s. The point was counter-culturalism toward gender norms.
Now we move forward to the 1980’s to Visual-kei. It’s basically the same aesthetics but with arguably different underlying politics. This all begins with X Japan. Let’s take a pause here to listen to their 1989 album Blue Blood. Other bands of the era include Luna Sea, Glay, Pierrot, Malice Mizer. As we move later into the 1990’s and 2000’s we get bands like L’Arc~en~Ciel, Shazna, Alice Nine, Girugamesh, Miyavi, Antic Café, The Gazette, and Versailles. Wiki sensei claims that visual-kei is not only inspired by western glam rock, but also by kabuki theater. Kabuki is what happened when Noh got old, stiff, and no longer accessible to the masses. And the androgynous element of traditional Japanese theater IN GENERAL is probably more on the fact that women weren’t allowed to be employed in theater than anything related to #/gender. Quoting the X Japan wiki entry directly:
(I’m also going to shoehorn in here that in 1999, Yoshiki was formally requested by the Japanese Government to compose and perform at Emperor Akihito jubilee celebration.) The major criticism of later visual-kei is that the original spirit has been lost. That the bands of this movement started their fashion trend to stand out. Now new bands are doing it to fit in so the whole thing’s falling apart. I don’t have any more spoons to do a deep literature dive into the politics of what visual-kei represents over the past 30 years and how much the gay community may or may not have been involved. I haven’t found anything explicitly connecting the two communities at all. It’s been all set dressing and no soul, like Christmas and KFC.
Finally, subjectively, calling “Inu-oh” a “queer masterpiece” is giving credit where it is not due. The entirely of that claim hinges on a) two masculine characters experiencing friendship at all, and b) casting Avu-chan, the lead singer of fashion punk band "Ziyoou-vachi" (pronounced jo-ō-bachi, also stylized "QUEEN BEE"), as the voice of the titular sarugaku star. One queer personnel existing doesn't make a queer masterpiece. Perhaps some argument can be made about Inu-oh's personal character arc regarding a monster becoming progressively more human, but it is not my place to make that argument. Instead, I feel that the western fan base is getting too carried away with shipping to actually look at and digest a story about artistic expression vs state censorship to control a narrative when an objective truth no longer exists. And in today's political climate, that message really needs to get through.
I went to see Inu-oh (2021) in theaters with some friends a million years ago, back when it was a hot new film. The morning after, my friend read me some absolutely horrible takes on this film from tumblr dot com. Everything was about shipping the two lead characters, focusing solely on the "gay rock band" element. And as someone who worked my tail off studying premodern Japanese stuff, this made me both irate and grievously disappointed. So I spent several days doing a research deep dive on all the cultural context the average western weeaboo probably never bothered to look into, so maybe, just maybe, there could be a greater cultural appreciation on the rewatch.
90% of what I am about to say can be verified via English Wikipedia. The rest comes from Japanese sources, including Wikipedia and Kotobank. Strap in. This is a very long post.
The Tale of the Heike, is an epic about the fall of Taira no Kiyomori and his subsequent extermination of his entire clan during the actual real-life event known as the Genpei War (1180-1185 CE). Science Saru has an excellent 11-episode anime that covers the whole epic. EVERYONE except the POV character DIES. The opening paragraph of this epic is:
In the sound of the bell of the Gion temple echoes the impermanence of all things. … The proud ones do not last long, but vanish like a spring night’s dream. And the mighty ones, too, will perish like dust before the wind.
Citation: The Tale of the Heike, Asia For Educators, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Crunchyroll subscribers can find it under “The Heike Story”.
Extreme TLDR: Taira no Kiyomori 平清盛 married his daughter, Tokuko 平徳子, off to Emperor Takakura 高倉天皇. They had a son in 1178. His majesty dies, and their infant son gets named Emperor Antoku 安徳天皇 at the age of three. When war breaks out, the Tairas take the baby and run. The final battle of the Genpei war 源平合戦 (1180-1185), the Battle of Dan-no-Ura 壇ノ浦の戦い, was a last-ditch effort naval assault that went horribly awry. Realizing there’s absolutely no way out of this but death, the Emperor’s grandmother/Kiyomori’s widow, Taira no Tokiko 平時子, grabs now seven-year-old Emperor Antoku and jumps overboard. A lot of the Tairas forces jump overboard after her—they’d rather drown now than be executed later.
There would undoubtedly be a mass of treasure to salvage from all those sunken ships. On the boat with the Emperor was the Imperial Regalia—three divine treasures you can read more about in the Kojiki 古事記, or if you played Okami back in the day. These were considered lost for a time, particularly the Kusanagi/“Grass cutter” sword. This legendary blade belonged to Shinto deity, Susanoō, and was used to slay the eight-headed snake beast, Orochi. To be perfectly frank, the Wiki page for the Kusanagi sword 草薙の剣 doesn’t seem to clarify whether the sword the Imperial Family has in storage today is in fact the original blade. There are a couple fingers pointed about how it went missing but not so many about its recovery. For the most part we normies should assume the one that exists today is the original sword. Also, according to Wiki sensei, no one outside of the imperial line has actually seen it and survived. We have one description of the sword from a high priest whose entire sect appears to have died shortly thereafter. Everything after that is artistic renditions. Hold this thought for a moment.
Biwa hōshi were a variety of traveling entertainers during this period. They dressed like Buddhist monks, though they weren’t necessarily affiliated with temples. They were medieval bards. Yes, they did employ the blind. They got super famous specifically for recanting the Tale of the Heike—enough that it became a separate genre. The first written version of the Tale of the Heike is dated around 1330. Akashi Kakuichi 明石覚一 (1299-1371) is credited with the most widely read account, which has the official compilation dated at 1371. Hold onto this for a moment too.
If you remember anything about the Tokugawa Shogunate from world history class, you might remember there are a few more shogunates that predate that. The Ashikaga shogunate (1336-1573), and very specifically Ashikaga no Yoshimitsu 足利義満(1358-1408), negotiated the end of a 57-year political conflict known as the Northern and Southern Courts period (1336-1392). This bureaucratic mess was nowhere near as exciting of a story as the Genpei War (1180–1185). In broad strokes, the country was split in half as a result of a hitch in the imperial line of succession from several factors, including: the failed Mongol invasion of Japan (1274, 1281), the overthrow of the Kamakura shogunate (1185-1333), the failure of Kenmu restoration (1333-1336) to restore the Emperor as de facto head of state, and some more civil war. The Ashikaga clan endorsed the Northern court. Yoshimitsu was a star negotiator—just read his wiki page—who consolidated his power and legitimacy by acting as go between for a while. He even convinced the Southern court to give up the imperial regalia to the Northern court. (This was later given back when the Northern court eventually fell. As history is written by the winners, it is generally accepted that the emperors of the Southern court were the true imperial line.) The sword that Tomona and his dad recovered for those noblemen at the beginning of the movie was the Kusanagi sword. Those noblemen were almost certainly sent on behalf of the Ashikaga Shogunate, and recovering the sword was probably part of a political ploy. Tomona went blind and his father died because they were not supposed to see it as they’re not divinities on earth.
Ashikaga no Yoshimitsu was also a fan of Kan’ami Kiyotsugu 観阿弥清次 (1333-1384)—author, actor, and musician who, along with his performer and playwright son, Zeami Motokiyo 世阿弥元清 (1363-1443), are credited for the foundation of Noh theater. Kan’ami’s troupe performed for Yoshimitsu around 1374. Yoshimitsu was totally enamored with 12-year-old Zeami’s performance and became a massive patron to Zeami. There are some scholarly accounts you can read and come to your own conclusions about the weeds of that relationship. I’m reasonably sure the child dancer in Yoshimitsu’s introductory scene is supposed to be Zeami.
Yoshimitsu’s legitimate wife was Hino no Nariko 日野業子(1351–1405). Nariko married Yoshimitsu around 1375 or 1376, and only gave birth to a daughter. Since daughters can’t hold office, said daughter’s birth date isn’t something I can easily grab without sifting through dense scholarly text, which I currently don’t have access to. If I could, I would probably be able to date this movie based on Inu-oh’s final performance being during her pregnancy. For reference’s sake, Yoshimitsu’s concubines had the sons, the first one having been born in 1386.
Inu-oh 犬王 (?-1413) was a real person. Not much about him is known other than he was a good performer. He respected sarugaku-noh trailblazer Kan’ami, and even performed for Kan’ami’s memorial service. He was also extremely well praised by Zeami. Ashikaga no Yoshimitsu, however, did not like Inu-oh. He eventually swayed the shogun’s forgiveness, but was still not all that much in favor. He was then subjected to an audit in 1408.
Based on the above information, and the fact that the passage of time in this film is specifically not marked, I guestimate that the opening scene happened sometime during 1360’s, and that Tomona’s execution was probably in the late 1370’s or early 1380’s. I might be able to pin this down a little further if I could get Nariko’s daughter’s birth date；alas, I'm not affiliated with a university, so I do not have the access required to go on a medieval Japanese scavenger hunt.
--
When I googled why Japanese people way back when could change their names on a whim, I couldn’t find any good English sources. A summary of my Japanese sources is that it’s not totally on a whim. It’s about census data and tax evasion. The Chinese Tang dynasty (618-907) had some really awesome stuff going on, so Japan decided to copy them. The Sinophilia is pretty intense. This legislation was called the Ritsuryō system (律令制), and was implemented in the 6th century CE. This introduced koseki 戸籍, the family register, which basically lists who is in your house: births, deaths, marriages, divorces, or adoptions. Legalese is boring. Laws have changed. Permanent identities like we know them now come out of the Meiji period (1868-1912), because they changed the tax laws and citizenship rules from fiefdom based to modern standards, and suddenly everyone needed surnames. If you were important enough to have a surname or a clan name, that was pretty much permanent throughout your whole life unless you were adopted into or married into someone else’s.
Personal names had more going on. When you were born, you got a name from one of your relatives. You’d eventually grow out of that. You had your adulthood ceremony and you gave yourself an adult name. Maybe you needed a court name because you had to deal with the imperial or shogunal court. Maybe you did something cool and got a title or a moniker. Maybe you were a famous artist and gave yourself a poetic artist name. Maybe you gave up the working world and became a monk/nun—then you got a Buddhist name. And then when you died, you got a posthumous epitaph.
But that’s just for important people! What if you’re a normie? To a certain degree, you really could just do whatever you wanted. The birth name stuff still applies; your parents usually gave you a name and hope you make it to adulthood. If you entered a skilled profession, clergy or otherwise, you got a name. Having a part of your name bestowed upon you by a celebrated personage was a huge honor. When Tomona joins the Kakuichi guild of biwa hōshi, he is given the character ichi 一 from Kakuichi, making his name Tomoichi, and cementing his membership in the guild. Emphasizing again here that Kakuichi is not any old blind musician but THE Akashi Kakuichi 明石覚一.
Lifehack analyzer lists three reasons for why you would not continue to use your childhood name as an adult.
1. Strangers don’t need to know your real name. If they did then they have the power to curse you.
2. The name your parents gave you expresses your thanks to them. As an adult, you want to express your thanks to someone else.
3. You need a public name. It’d be too intimate for a total stranger to call you by your kiddy name when, up until this point, the only people who knew you were family members, childhood friends, and people in the neighborhood.
Insofar as Tomona’s major life transitions, I would assess that changing his name to Tomoichi encompases point 2 and changing his name to Tomoari encompasses point 3. Changing it back to Tomona of Dan-no-Ura immediately before his execution is a strange flex in real life, but it’s important as a point of narrative catharsis. After Tomona’s story ends, and irl Inu-oh goes out to become the person history remembers, he also has a couple name changes. Pulling from Japanese Wiki: Ashikaga no Yoshimitsu’s Buddhist name was 道義 Dōgi. Inu-oh borrowed that and changed his name from 犬阿弥 Inuami (not getting any hits for this one) to 道阿弥 Dōami (finding a more entries under this name). Going out on a limb here and assuming that Inu-oh changed his name to Inuami because of 観阿弥 Kan’ami in the interim.
Have some non-encyclopedia sources (JP)
(LINK DEAD) Lifehack analyzer
Why did people of old change their names so much?, Net Lab
Yahoo!Ask
I’m not going to go into yōkai, cursed objects, masks, sarugaku or noh theater since that’s all well outside my wheelhouse. For yōkaiThe Book of Yōkai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore by Michael Dylan Foster. Honestly not sure where to redirect you for theater stuff.
--
Switching gears to the rock opera part. If you’ve seen Rocky Horror Picture Show or Jesus Christ Super Star, then you know what a rock opera is. It was breathing new life into the musical in the 1960’s. If you’re even vaguely familiar with the music and aesthetics of David Bowie, Alice Cooper, KISS, Mötley Crüe, Twisted Sister, Bon Jovi, and to a lesser extent Elton John or Queen, then you’re at least vaguely familiar with glam rock and hair metal. I am not going to post YouTube links because those get region locked by IP address. It was a flamboyant, consumeristic, androgynistic, and campy kind of style with emphasis on outrageous costuming, makeup, and hairstyles among other things, from the early to mid-1970’s. The point was counter-culturalism toward gender norms.
Now we move forward to the 1980’s to Visual-kei. It’s basically the same aesthetics but with arguably different underlying politics. This all begins with X Japan. Let’s take a pause here to listen to their 1989 album Blue Blood. Other bands of the era include Luna Sea, Glay, Pierrot, Malice Mizer. As we move later into the 1990’s and 2000’s we get bands like L’Arc~en~Ciel, Shazna, Alice Nine, Girugamesh, Miyavi, Antic Café, The Gazette, and Versailles. Wiki sensei claims that visual-kei is not only inspired by western glam rock, but also by kabuki theater. Kabuki is what happened when Noh got old, stiff, and no longer accessible to the masses. And the androgynous element of traditional Japanese theater IN GENERAL is probably more on the fact that women weren’t allowed to be employed in theater than anything related to #/gender. Quoting the X Japan wiki entry directly:
Yoshiki briefly described their early years and the movement’s development, saying “when we started the band, the problem was we didn’t belong anywhere. Because we were playing very heavy music, we were wearing tons of make-up and crazy outfits. So we couldn’t belong anywhere”, “[We did our own thing and] that eventually became visual kei.”[183] He added “But visual kei is more like a spirit, it’s not a music style or, you know… I think it is a freedom about describing myself, a freedom to express myself, that’s what I believe visual kei is.”[183]
(I’m also going to shoehorn in here that in 1999, Yoshiki was formally requested by the Japanese Government to compose and perform at Emperor Akihito jubilee celebration.) The major criticism of later visual-kei is that the original spirit has been lost. That the bands of this movement started their fashion trend to stand out. Now new bands are doing it to fit in so the whole thing’s falling apart. I don’t have any more spoons to do a deep literature dive into the politics of what visual-kei represents over the past 30 years and how much the gay community may or may not have been involved. I haven’t found anything explicitly connecting the two communities at all. It’s been all set dressing and no soul, like Christmas and KFC.
Finally, subjectively, calling “Inu-oh” a “queer masterpiece” is giving credit where it is not due. The entirely of that claim hinges on a) two masculine characters experiencing friendship at all, and b) casting Avu-chan, the lead singer of fashion punk band "Ziyoou-vachi" (pronounced jo-ō-bachi, also stylized "QUEEN BEE"), as the voice of the titular sarugaku star. One queer personnel existing doesn't make a queer masterpiece. Perhaps some argument can be made about Inu-oh's personal character arc regarding a monster becoming progressively more human, but it is not my place to make that argument. Instead, I feel that the western fan base is getting too carried away with shipping to actually look at and digest a story about artistic expression vs state censorship to control a narrative when an objective truth no longer exists. And in today's political climate, that message really needs to get through.
