Book Review -- YOU GOTTA HAVE WA by Robert Whiting

The cultural differences between the United States and Japan have fascinated many, many more people than just myself.  Although I'm not a huge fan of baseball, I can still appreciate it and the cultural impact that it has had on the United States and on many other countries that have adopted it as a professional sport.  What is so interesting about Japan with regards to baseball (in Japan, "野球"--yakyuu) is how the Japanese adopted the sport but not the American approach to the game.  Indeed, they approach it from a very similar standpoint that they do martial arts.

This is where Robert Whiting's book, You Gotta Have Wa, comes in.  First published in 1989, shortly after the height of the Japanese economic invasion of American markets, the book took advantage of the cultural climate in the States which, in the 1980s, was suddenly fascinated by the exotic strangeness combined with technological newness in the floating Japanese world and imperturbable stoicism of the Japanese businessman.  Films like Gung Ho, Mr. Baseball, and Rising Sun explored the American interaction with the Japanese in a way that was actually more revealing about American attitudes and prejudices than it truly managed to uncover the mysterious culture of the Land of the Rising Sun.

Decades later, the American public has a much greater appreciation for and understanding of Japanese culture.  Nevertheless, this can create a vast number of false assumptions and expectations for those Americans exposed to Japan only through their consumer culture and entertainment.  Japanese business and Japanese sports are still war and are still governed by the principles detailed in Sun Tzu's The Art of War.  In 2009 Whiting updated his book to incorporate the sudden and tremendously influential influx of Japanese players into the American MLB and consider recent developments in Japanese baseball, demonstrating that although there is a lot more cross-cultural understanding between the United States and Japan there are still very firm barriers between the two societies and their approach to the sport.

Whiting's book focuses on the concept of wa (和), the Japanese idea of harmony (which is, also, coincidentally, an ancient name for Japan itself derived from the Chinese name for the country, using a different ideograph--倭).  Harmony is integral to Japanese society and dictates almost all social interactions between Japanese people.  This both causes and is caused by the emphasis on the group welfare.  The individual is expected to sacrifice for the group.  Whiting explores the rigorous and demanding training regimen a Japanese baseball player is subjected to, often in direct conflict with what Western sports medicine determines as beneficial or harmful.  To the Japanese, though results are incredibly important, victory is attributed not to skill, ability, health, or anything physical at all but to attitude--the willingness to sacrifice oneself, the display of fighting spirit, determination, and will to do one's best.  Thus, the typical Japanese baseball team will wear itself out in pregame practice for four hours whereas an American player will engage in a few brief warm-up exercises.

Whiting explores the deep, cultural rifts between the Japanese and American approaches to baseball through the American players that head off to Japan, detailing their stories, their struggles with coaches and the companies that own the teams, their depiction in newspapers, their bitter fights against racism, and the hardships they endure because their teammates often resent their "special treatment."  Whiting injects thoughtful analysis of the damaging shortcomings that are harming the Japanese game, their inflexibility and inability to adapt to the Western model--a model built on science and medicine and an understanding of how the body conserves and expends energy.  Whiting does not use these analyses to attack Japanese society as a whole, and indeed demonstrates a deep appreciation for Japanese baseball.  His critique also serves to highlight the shortcomings of the American game as well--the frequent misbehavior of prima donna players, a lack of team spirit, poor attitudes, narcissism of American players, etc.  While the Americans have a lot to learn from the Japanese, it is also clear that we're a lot more accepting to an international approach to the game, as is evidenced by the frequent inclusion of South American, Caribbean, and Mexican players, and the fantastic success of Ichiro Suzuki with the New York Yankees.  The Japanese might adopt some practices of Western baseball but Whiting explains how the Japanese culture surrounding baseball is still very closed to foreign ideas.  Indeed, Whiting describes how the Japanese adaptation of the game makes it almost seem as though the Japanese believe they actually invented baseball.

Whiting's book was an absolute delight to read.  His narrative is heavy on facts and details without being over-encumbered by them.  His style of prose is evocative, clean, and direct, never turgid but still displaying a depth of vocabulary and a command of the English language that keeps the book vigorous yet tightly composed.  His analysis and criticism are not heavy handed and well-spaced throughout the narrative, which is well-sourced, documented, and researched.  Whiting brings a thoroughly professional level of scholarship and personal experience to his narrative.  I flew through this book and was determined to read more of Whiting's works the moment I set You Gotta Have Wa down.  Whiting has been quite prolific, especially on the subject of baseball and a number of his works have been translated into Japanese.

This book came to me with high recommendations and I cannot help but praise it as well.  I heartily encourage anyone with an interest in Japanese culture, baseball, the foreigner experience in Japan, or a combination of the three, to read You Gotta Have Wa.

You Gotta Have Wa by Robert Whiting
Style:  A
Substance:  A
Overall:  A

Genshiken Nidaime: Victims, Villains, and Gender Relations among Japanese Otaku -- PART FOUR

Introduction
Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Madarame's Perdicament
No matter who Madarame chooses, somebody is going to lose and get hurt.  It dawns on him when he asks Hato if he can bring Sue with him next time he comes over to cook for him--an extremely feminine move that screams "I have romantic feelings for you."  Hato is visibly hurt by this and Madarame realizes that in the manga and anime, the protagonist in the harem always seems to resolve all conflicts in a way that is noncommittal and maintains the status-quo.  Nobody is hurt or rejected.  The power balance, the detente between the other harem members, is perpetual.  To an American, this is absolutely boring and why I can't watch Ranma 1/2 or any other harem anime (especially after I heard about how the ending of the manga resolves absolutely nothing).  To a Japanese person, this is reassuring because wa--harmony--is maintained and Japanese values are reaffirmed.

Oh the humanity!!!

Mada knows he's not equipped for this.  One misstep and somebody gets hurt.  The resulting chain-reaction could lead to him in an even worse social position than he is.  All of his friends could be lost.  What's worse is, Mada can't not do anything because even that could lead to a disruption of harmony.  He never knows if an off-hand, innocent comment could completely blow the whole situation apart and lead to hurt feelings, anger, and all kinds of other social eruptions.  In the latest issue, Hato gives him an escape hatch--he's perfectly happy maintaining the harem's balance-of-power.  He's willing to take the reins of control from Mada.

Here, Mada has a dilemma.  Does he take agency or surrender it to Hato?  To Mada, if he accepts control over his actions and authorship for what he says and does, it seems inevitable that someone will get hurt and harmony will be lost.  Male authorship, male agency, results in a cascade of catastrophes in the female-oriented Genshiken.  Hato's agency doesn't count as male--he's in female mode, possessed of the spirit of a woman and actively annihilating his male self (psychological self-castration, perhaps, or do I go too far?).

Poor Mada.  Just become an herbivore and tell everyone to screw off.

Or is that where Shimoku is headed?  Will Mada become another statistic and simply swear off love and become a grass-eater?  There's a sort of depressed fatalism in that.  Frankly, if Mada chooses the herbivore path, it will result in a regaining of dignity, empowerment, and agency.  It may even be a choice he can make without alienating the rest of the harem, letting it dissolve gently and easily without conflict.  However, it would simply be another wall, another defense mechanism to protect his heart, a tatemae over his honne.  He'd be back to where he started when he first was introduced in the very beginning of the original Genshiken.  His illness would be the same, it's just the symptoms that would have changed.

Unless Shimoku pulls some awesome stunts, Mada is going to either break Hato's heart and end up a bad guy or Mada is going to succumb to Hato's advances and be unmade, annihilated, nullified as a character and turned into an empty plot device.  Mada's biggest problem is that he cares.  Yoshitake is just amused by the whole thing.  No matter what happens, she wins.  It's everybody else that gets hurt.

Yajima, the Female Mada
Yoshitake is the stereotypical fujoshi.  She's not a real person but a literary device.  Like I said, she's the villain of the comic (cue the hatemail and angry comments!).  She might look like she's the female Madarame, what with her tendency to go on long diatribes, but that's all an illusion.  It isn't a defense mechanism.

Yajima, however, is the prototypical fujoshi.  She embodies the same sort of fringe mechanic Madarame does, and indeed, does it better than Ogiue did.  Yajima needs to protect herself and her feelings as much as Madarame.  Her crush on Hato puts her in a predicament as painful as Mada's crush on Saki.  Is it possible that in a Genshiken Sandaime she'll find herself surrounded by a male harem?  One can only hope.

In this regard, Yoshitake is a psychologically violent person.  Disguised as Yajima's friend, she pushes, prods and eggs Yajima on.  It remains to be seen (in my opinion) if she is actually Yajima's friend and not just Loki putting the mistletoe javelin in Hoder's hand.  (Really bad metaphor, I know.)  If Yajima gets shot down by Hato, will Yoshitake cackle and cavort and humiliate Yajima as Keiko did when Saki shot down Madarame?

Who knows.  These may become moot points and Shimoku could completely upend everything and Yoshitake actually comes out being the hero of the whole darn story.  What a bait-and-switch that would be!

Sue is the Real Hero
Now Hearts of Furious Fancies had this to say about Sue being a hero (see here for the post):

Or something else is going on: With all the yuri teasing that Kio Shimoku has been dropping onto Sue, could she be watching, pining away as the girly-boy of her dreams dotes on an inappropriate guy? Heartbreaking! Nawwww… Sue too cool for that… But if she likes the soup, she should demand cooking lessons.If circumstances force Sue into doing something heroic we are more likely to get one smitten Mada and a full circular triangle; field strength %98 and holding.. We need a crisis, something that threatens the entire Genshiken. Saki was able to “save” the Genshiken from the stuco last time, Could a V.2 Sue do the same?Hero or not, Sue will not glomp onto Mada. Sue already has a more or less platonic hero fixation with Ogiue, and what Ogiue represents to her cannot be found (yet) in anyone else. Neither Mada or Hato can claim to have gone from shameful abject yaoi fiend to successful circle leader, dojin artist and semi-pro mangaka who won over the boy she once shipped, and who supports and protects her kouhais (- heh! Wait a second! Could Hato also be stuck in a loop of Ogiue worship ???) If Sue becomes heroic, she will do so in emulation of Ogiue and the needle of Hato’s heart will swing to her as to a lodestone. Madarame can’t do that. Then again if Hato becomes Ogiue-ish heroic, Sue would fixate on the new Hato. They would make one heck of a mutual admiration society.

And here I very much disagree.  Sue may have hero-worship for Ogiue but she's already a hero in her own right.  She just doesn't realize it.

Nobody else seems to, either.

Sue makes me proud.  She plays the stereotypical American loli fangirl but in reality, she's Angela's foil as well as Yoshitake's.  Sue is far, far more sensitive to the mood and tone surrounding her than any American would be assumed to be.  Shimoku has taken yet another trope and turned it on its ear.

Sue's actions and words are always calculated to have an effect on the group, an effect that redirects attention away from an uncomfortable situation, lightens the atmosphere, or otherwise helps to alleviate any actual, deep disruption of harmony.  Sue will play the dumb American and say something ridiculous, troubling the surface of the harmony briefly so that the deeper currents can remain untouched and preserved.  If anything, I'd argue that Sue has done far, far more to keep the Genshiken from fragmenting than most people think.

Dun, dun, DUUUUNNNNN!!!

Sue sees where Angela is going, suggesting a multi-partner sexual encounter involving herself, Mada, Sue, and Hato.  Sue fails to preemptively shut Angela down with her fist but that failure is unimportant.  What is important is that she tries.  Later, when Keiko and Angela compete at the festival to see who will "comfort" Mada while he is injured, Sue steps in, defeats them both, and preserves Mada's "virtue."  Sue disapproves of Mada's assignment as spy on Hato and his high school friends and tries to drive him out of his hiding spot.  Sue is the moral center of the group in this regard and her actions demonstrate an actual concern for Mada's feelings and the integrity of the group as a whole.

So, why is Sue and Hato now competing for Mada?  I think it is because Sue, despite her protestations to love only Ogiue, actually does care for Madarame.  I wouldn't go so far as to suggest she loves him but she does care about him and seems to realize the threat that Hato poses to both Madarame and himself.  Sue does care about Hato and his feelings and has clued in on the reality that Hato is going down a self-destructive path.  Perhaps setting herself up as competition is an attempt to save both Hato and Madarame.

Of course, it could be much more mundane.  I could be reading too much into Sue's character and behaviors.  However, Shimoku's been doing too much with her character, having her break the mold of what is expected of the waifish, loli-looking American stereotype.  Because Sue's Japanese speaking ability is limited (though improving) and she's often limited to conveying her thoughts and feelings through quotes and halting, stilted phrases.  Hence, her interactions are quite puzzling.  At first, she seemed to be trying to make Hato face his attraction to Madarame ("Mada is sou uke!").  Now, I'm not so sure.  Maybe she was trying to make Hato realize something else?  Sue's a tough nut to crack.

After all, in the Chapter 88 on 4chan an anon asked, "Why is Sue so best girl?" and another anon replied, "Because she's a fujoshi, anon.  In fact, not only is she a fujoshi, she's one that ships real people, and tries to force her ships onto them regardless of their actual sexual preferences.  If she wasn't cute and a wacky gaijin you'd hate her."

At the time that seemed plausible.  Indeed, at the time, I downright agreed with the second anon.  Now... I'm not so certain.  She's definitely jockeying for a position against Hato.  There definitely seems to be a degree of chemistry between her and Madarame as well.  And I cannot forget that innocent little kiss she gave him at Comiket to make him jump into view while he was supposed to be spying.

So... What Now?
Genshiken is, at heart, about friendship and mutual support.

Why bother? from the start, the Genshiken was not an allegory of otaku redemption, but one of accommodation and finding the strength of friendship and community. To find support from others you have to take the risk of rubbing up against others, and most of these others are not going to be completely to your taste. The situations that emerge are not all going to be within your comfort zone. In the Genshiken, the most important part of learning how to be open with others has been the breaking down of the walls that separate male and female fandoms as a microcosm of larger problems in Japanese society.  --Hearts of Furious Fancies, "Why Hato: Build Up Logically."

I won't disagree with this.  Conflict, however, keeps a story interesting and the conflicts within Genshiken Nidaime are far, far, far more complex than the ones in the original Genshiken.  Shimoku has really raised the bar for himself.  The above post is not a condemnation of what he's writing.  It is simply my attempt to analyze some of the dynamics between the characters that no one on earth has seemed to see.  The most important thing I can point to is that I do not perceive friendship and community at work except between the females.  The males are no longer overtly supportive.  Part of this is due to the obstacles of geography, employment, and other realities of the Japanese working-adult lifestyle.  Mada is not supported but objectified.

This is the core issue I perceive in Genshiken Nidaime.  Can males survive in a female-oriented space?  Are we human beings damned to forever live in clubhouses with painted signs saying, "No girls allowed" and "No boys allowed"?

I think Shimoku is building up to something in which this issue is resolved and not perpetuated.  I don't think Shimoku is saying that males must be objectified by and exiled from the female space.  I do think he is tackling gender-dynamics head-on.  I'm not sure where he is going with those dynamics but my analysis should reveal a lot of deeper, gender-driven conflicts and how these conflicts effect a number of these characters on a more psychological level.  At least, I hope.  I am, after all, not Japanese, I am American and I could have totally gotten the entire thing wrong.

And hey, I could totally, absolutely, 100% be mischaracterizing Yoshitake.  Except for seeing her as Loki.  She's definitely the trickster god.

Genshiken Nidaime: Victims, Villains, and Gender Relations among Japanese Otaku -- PART THREE

Introduction
Part One
Part Two

Mada also doesn't need a broken wrist but he sure as hell gets one.

Emerging Female Space
As Hearts of Furious Fancies cribbed in this post, "The arc of Genshiken is long, but it curves toward female agency."

Apparently it does so at the expense of male agency.  Or at least the agency of male otaku.  Madarame is the prototypical male otaku.  Or perhaps I speak too soon, because Shimoku isn't finished.  There's more to come and perhaps I speak too soon.

Thus far, however, the conversion from male space to female space has been violent to the males.  They've been expelled by graduation, employment, and/or the change in atmosphere or relegated to the fringe as buffoons, like Kukichi.  The only male who is truly accepted in the space is Hato and that acceptance is strongest when Hato cross-dresses and behaves in a female manner, fanning out over and drawing the fujoshi comics that the girls enjoy.  Mada is on the cusp of acceptance but the primary reason he has any level or degree of belonging is because he is an object of female machinations--they're conniving and plotting to direct his romantic involvements.  Not all of them are guilty of this by action but more by association, which I'll discuss more in a bit.  Nevertheless, after his wrist is broken, Mada completely abandons the club in a physical sense, although he remains a topic of conversation and machination within the circle.

Consider the facts--female agency resulted in Mada's "confession" to Saki, her shooting him down, and the subsequent nullification of his own agency, dignity, etc.  On top of that, the creation of the harem, the forward advances of Hato and Angela, the abusive psychic violence of Keiko, the isolation of Mada by from his male friends, the removal of a safe male space where he can be male in a secure place, all of this serves to rob Mada of free will and agency, dignity and respect.  He becomes an object to the other characters.  He becomes their MacGuffin, something they can ship and slash without considering the consequences of these manipulations upon his heart and mind.  Hato cares about Mada and his feelings, true... but as an object, an archetype, a replacement for his former senpai and not as Mada.

Sue, Yajima, and Yoshitake spying on Hato and Mada in the club room.

Apparently all gender agency must come at the expense of the adjacent gender.  (I say "adjacent," not "opposite," due to my own personal beliefs on gender.)  Hato is just as much a victim as Mada.  Unfortunately, Rika and Hato's hometown acquaintances have maneuvered Hato into a position where his own self-actualization relies upon the further destruction of Madarame as an agent.  He must be reduced to a role in a BL doujinshi in order for Hato to self-actualize.  And Hato has signed on.  In other words, Hato has acquiesced to the New Order.  Males are now objects, females are empowered.  Hato has opted for being a female in order to fit into the New Order.  Hato has now compartmentalized Mada as the recipient of his affections.  Indeed, Hato has also compartmentalized his male self, done psychic violence to his masculine side.  Hato is in the process of nullifying himself as a man just as much as Mada has been nullified.

Darkness and evil incarnate behind that cute smile?

The proof is in the comic itself.  Hato-chan/Kaminaga-simulacrum is always there, lurking, pushing, taking the form of Hato's former senpai, Kaminaga, the woman that Hato wants to be and cross-dresses as.  She has only vanished once Hato has drawn her into himself, accepted her as himself, and chosen to bury his maleness as anything more than a possible sexual encounter with Mada in a seme-uke relationship.  An objectified relationship.  A fantasy relationship.  An object.  Not people.  Things.

And Yoshitake is enabling this.  Everywhere there is an opportunity to disrupt the status-quo, to shake things up, she's there.  She is the very symbol of the new Genshiken, the embodiment of the very meaning of the club's emergence as a female space and a place of female agency.

Or is she?  She ruminates and vacillates.  Is BL like a king from a fairytale?  Or can we manipulate, cajole, push a little here, and pull a little there, and manifest that king in reality?  Yoshitake is the villain (I know people will hate me for this) but she's a very, very, very interesting villain.  First she seems to be encouraging and then she turns around and tries to disabuse Hato and everyone else with "reasons Mada is a loser."  Then she gives that up and just rides the harem-train while whispering in Yajima's ear.

Rika Yoshitake is the Devil.  Or maybe Loki.
The above are reasons are why I view Yoshitake Rika as the villain of the manga, if villain it would have.  She's the primary instigator and enabler of everyone's own inner dilemmas and instead of helping one-another cut through the complications and really, truly self-actualize, she's contributing to the over-complication of everything.  She waffles as to whether the wants Mada's harem to exist or not.  She pushes Yajima with regards to her crush on Hato but also encourages Hato's crush on Mada.  She encourages Hato's fantasies of slashing Mada and himself.  The entire time she does these things, she's smiling.

The Villain

Maybe I'm missing something, here.  I am an American after all and TONS of Japanese nuance is lost on me.  However, to me, Yoshitake seems to be the female incarnation of the trickster god of myth and legend.  She's the anti-Japanese.  Far more than Angela and Sue, the Americans of the bunch, she's disruptive of the harmony in the group.  As a literary device, she's fantastic.  As a character, she's the Devil, the Adversary, tempting the characters with tantalizing visions and fantasies of their desires.  Just sign on the dotted line.  In blood, please.  Thank you.

Mada's totally bewildered.  He's the Job of the group, beleaguered.  The rest of the club pretty much clocks in as Job's friends and wife.  "Curse God and die!" Hato seems to say.  I wonder who is going to appear in a whirlwind and set everything to rights as God in the end?

See, most people perceive Hato as the protagonist of the story and it is true that the story is centered around Hato.  But I do not perceive Hato as the protagonist.  Not by a long shot.  I may be really missing something, here, but for me Mada is the main character.  This has developed into Mada's story for me and Mada is cast in the role of Job for certain.

Reality vs. Fantasy
Baudrillard would have a field day.  When you watch the television, it also watches you, right?  The thing that is symbolized eventually becomes the thing.  Or something along those lines.  Whatever.  Baudrillard was French, after all.

The hilarity of it all is that when Genshiken was male-dominated, the men didn't try to make the women into manga and anime characters.  Oh, sure, Ohno cosplayed and even got Saki and Ogiue to do it, too.  That enabled the male characters to perceive different aspects of the female characters' personalities (yes, even Ogiue's, much to her chagrin).  The male club members struggled with the reality vs. fantasy idea and at least Tanaka and Sasahara managed to overcome any sort of desire to make fantasy reality.  Mada did so very gradually--after all, for him fantasy was a defense mechanism against reality.

Okay, here's where Baudrillard comes in.  It's all about Simulacra and Simulation, right?  (This is sort of revenge for Hearts of Furious Fancies referencing Lacan.)  Power relationships between groups and all that.  Signs and the signified.  Alright, let's be honest, nobody knows what the hell post-structuralists talk about, and neither do they, but everyone pretends they do and so do the post-structuralists, and Derrida recanted on his deathbed, so it doesn't matter what we say because everything has meaning in relation to the network of signifiers around it that it is not, so we can only truly talk in double-negatives and ohmygodIjusthadananeurism.

Anyway, back to Baudrillard.  The fantasy BL manga is likened to "a king from a fairytale" by Yoshitake.  The drive, the desire of Yoshitake is to see their king from a fairytale realized.  They consume the fantasy, an unrealistic simulation of homosexual partnerships, and in response the fantasy begins to consume them.  Just like the citizens inhabiting not the empire but the map of the empire Baudrillard discusses (taken from Borges' "On Exactitude in Science"), the girls in Genshiken inhabit not the physical space of reality but the imagined space of the doujinshi.  Therefore, reality starts to decay around them.  Their will and desire is pulling their fantasy into reality, or conversely, themselves into the doujinshi they read.

But see, there's this reverse of Baudrillard going on.  These characters in the club live vicariously through their consumed entertainment and always have, even since the very first issue of the original.  The attachment to reality has always been strained to breaking.  I don't know if you can ever take narrative and picture and so divorce it from reality that it has no attachment whatsoever to said reality, as Baudrillard posits in the fourth stage of simulation.  Nevertheless, there is a gradual psychological detachment the otaku in the manga make from real life.  That they, themselves, are simulations makes it even more amusing because is creates a sort of infinite reflection loop like in a hall of mirrors.  They inhabit a mise en abyme.

Remember I mentioned Hato is perhaps a personification of Genshiken and not, actually, just a character?  Hato's own schizophrenia is a manifestation of this breakdown of reality in favor of the simulation.  Indeed, Hato's own simulacrum of Kaminaga within himself has become more real than Hato.

Now that Genshiken is a female space, making fantasy into reality is the name of the game.  Reifying the fictional as factual is their primary focus.  Yoshitake is the spearhead of this.  The thing is, this reification will inevitably result in psychic violence and objectification.  In this case, that violence is being done to Madarame.  It is important to note, however, that it is also being done to Hato.

Yeah, Ogiue slashed Madarame with Sasahara but she was doing so as a means to come to terms with her own feelings for Sasahara.  She was struggling with something and this provided an outlet for her to explore her attraction for Sasahara.  She never once attempted to maneuver Sasahara and Madarame into a romantic situation.

Yoshitake isn't like that.  Yoshitake has seized upon Hato, however briefly, as a way to make fantasy into reality.  Now that reality is dawning on her that it can only end in tears, she laughs maniacally and seeks to prod Yajima into positioning herself to play "hop on pop" in order to assuage Hato's broken heart once Mada breaks the news that he's straight and cis-gendered and not into people with male anatomy.

In the end, the real loser is going to be Mada.  He has done nothing to ask for this harem.  He's not responsible for its creation.  However, all of the accountability for its continuation and the responsibility for the hearts of the girls that are vying for his attention is placed upon his shoulders.  Like Governor Tarkin, Yoshitake has rolled up a Death Star on Mada's planet.  Hato is Darth Vader.

Concluded in Part Four.

Genshiken Nidaime: Victims, Villains, and Gender Relations among Japanese Otaku -- PART TWO

Introduction
Part One

Sexual Dynamics:  Hato
Hato Kenjiro is confused.  Supremely.  Other bloggers have commented that homosexuality and transsexualism do not manifest as they do with Hato--not even when a person is "in the closet."  Hato, in my opinion, has no idea who he is or what he wants.  Indeed, he's extremely troubled and not at all attached with reality.

Hato and his alter ego--based on Kaminaga

I don't even know where to begin with Hato.  Perhaps with the fact that he began to cross-dress as a girl and draw BL comics out of his infatuation with his upperclasswoman/elder brother's girlfriend (now fiancee), Kaminaga.  Hato seems to need a senpai upon whom he can fascinate.  The problem is, he's not really being himself.  Indeed, I, as a reader, don't know who Hato is.  He's cloaked in so many personas within himself, constantly struggling to figure out which one he is that it is ridiculous.

It doesn't bother me that Hato cross-dresses.  It doesn't bother me that he's trying to figure himself out.  What bothers me is that he isn't taking steps to actually resolve his issues but exacerbate them, and he's dragging Mada into the mix.

As Hearts of Furious Fancies notes, Hato doesn't wish he was born a girl.  He appears to be a female trapped in a male body, but none of the typical internal dialogue about being so is presented to the viewer.  Hato is in conflict but the whole why is really obscured and obfuscated.  We get a lot of factors involved in his conflict but the nature of it is one of self-denial on some level.  Hato wants to embrace his female side but that female side evolved as a sort of redirected infatuation with Kaminaga.  This woman invaded Hato because he couldn't express his feelings for her--she was his brother's girlfriend!  So, instead of just carrying a torch along like Madarame, Hato created her clone within his own psyche.  Hato tried to become her.

This is extremely telling.

Down this path has led madness.  Hato is a hot mess.  He doesn't want to be a woman because he was "born that way," Hato made himself that way.  It is a coping mechanism gone all wrong.  Hato's been conquered by a Kaminaga clone he created.  The poor guy is an emotional train-wreck waiting to happen.  He's got far, far too much baggage he needs to sort out before he is even remotely ready for a relationship.

Hato cannot even draw unless he's dressed as a woman.  This is not a symptom of a well person.  It hints at schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, you name it.  Perhaps I'm bringing far too sober and serious an eye to this entire thing but there is a powerful subtext of dysfunction that has surrounded Genshiken from its very beginning.  In the first generation, it felt very supportive and accepting.  Ironically, Hato gains acceptance but it is as a female.  The moment Hato attempts to accept his male self and stop cross-dressing, the entire dynamic of the club changes.  The female-dominated space feels slightly perturbed.  The female characters react to this with varying levels of acceptance to silent disagreement but no one really actually supports Hato's choice... except Madarame.

Why?  Because Madarame got what he actually needed, something he's been missing since Sasahara graduated and went off to work.  Madarame got a friend, a male companion... a bro.

'Sup, brah?  Or not...?

Mada Needs a Guy Friend
Although it crushed Hato on some level, the fact that Mada had found a guy friend with whom he could relate had been a huge boon to him.  Mada has, throughout Genshiken Nidaime, been shedding the layers of belligerent, geeky otaku-ness for a more mature definition of self.  It appears that he's been growing a degree of self-confidence, baby-step by baby-step.  Interestingly enough, despite the stripping of his dignity after Saki breaks his heart and douses his torch for her, Mada seems to still be building himself up as a mature adult.  He's still confused and trying to find his niche in the world but he's doing it somewhat calmly and in a relaxed, laid-back manner in contrast to his former self.

Mada's maturity is accompanied by his loneliness.  His old friends are scattered, living their own lives, busy with their own attempts at finding jobs, livelihoods, and enter the adult, Japanese, workaday lifestyle.  His closest friend was ostensibly Sasahara Kanji, who rarely ever pops up in the manga anymore.  Through his arrangement with Hato (who gets changed at his apartment), Mada has actually gotten to know Hato as a guy and not as a cross-dresser.  Mada has found a companion in male Hato.  The thing is, male Hato and female Hato are different people outwardly (although inwardly they're conflicting poles of the same persona).  Mada can deal with male Hato as a male friend--something he desperately needs.  Female Hato only confuses Mada more at first.  Gradually, Mada comes to accept both as two sides of a coin but he feels far more comfortable and safe with male Hato.

Female Hato has finally announced his affection for Mada, exacerbating the harem situation in which Mada finds himself.  (Use of pronouns here is getting... sketchy... so I'm going to use pronouns based on biology).  The thing is, Mada is straight and Hato is trying to validate his own confused needs and desires by latching onto Mada and making him the object of his infatuation and a replacement for his former senpai.  This is not only unfair to Mada, it robs him of what he really needed--a male non-romantic, non-erotic, entirely non-sexual friendship.  Comrades.  Pals.  Bros.

What Mada Doesn't Need
Mada doesn't need to be a replacement for Hato's former senpai.  He needs to be Mada.  He doesn't need to be Hato's uke or seme either.  He needs to be Mada.  Mada is a straight cis-gendered male.  (I swear to God, I'm going to burn my Genshiken tankobon if Shimoku is so gauche to magically turn Mada gay for Hato.  I think Shimoku is better than that--so far he's lampshaded most of these manga tropes and the whole, "I'm not gay I just love you" guy-on-guy romantic arc is a definite fujoshi-manga trope.  Nevertheless, I've been disappointed by cheesy dei ex machinae before and that one would just infuriate me because it wouldn't be true to Mada's character.)

Hato Doesn't Know Who He (or She) Is
Hato can't really get true, honest support because Hato isn't ever honest with himself.  Hato hasn't really come to grips that his female persona is entirely fabricated as a coping mechanism.  He may have admitted it but he hasn't really done anything about it.

No, strike that, he has.  He rejects it, stops cross-dressing, tries to accept that he's a straight male who likes BL and still tries to hang out with all the girls.  He tries.  He gets and A for effort.  Then Mada tells him how happy he is that he has a male friend again.

POW!  Hato is crushed.  Kuchiki tries to "go gay" with Mada for Hato but that guy is such a clown that all it does is make everyone look and feel ridiculous.  In the end, Hato throws in the towel and starts to gradually merge himself with his Kaminaga-clone self and start seriously and deliberately indulging in--and exacerbating--his crush on Madarame.  The sexual tension continues to ratchet up and Mada is caught in the middle.  In the end, Madarame has lost a friend and gained a harem member.  Mada cannot entirely be himself anymore because of this.

What has me tearing my hair out is... why?  Why has Hato fixated on Madarame?  Is it because he is desperately trying to manifest himself in one of his BL fantasies?  Is it because he actually is gay and in love with Madarame?  There is the constant reminder through the manga that reality and fantasy are not the same but that doesn't seem to be stopping Hato from trying to create some sort of romantic relationship with Madarame.  And all this seems to belie the fact that Hato is not a transsexual.  He is comfortable with his male anatomy even though he's emerging as a female persona.

Or is Hato a personification of Genshiken as a whole?  If that is so, then Shimoku is saying something really twisted about what happens when male spaces convert to female spaces.

Continued in Part Three

Genshiken Nidaime: Victims, Villains, and Gender Relations among Japanese Otaku -- PART ONE

Introduction

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

The Harem Problem
The Harem is a common trope in Japanese manga and anime.  From Ranma 1/2 to Genshiken Nidaime itself, the harem situation is often used in a sit-com manner.  The thing is, Shimoku is turning this trope on its ear.  Since Genshiken and Genshiken Nidaime are "slice-of-life" and strive somewhat for a realistic depiction of otaku interrelations within the larger macrocosm of Japanese relationship dynamics, Shimoku is constantly struggling against the tyranny of trope and audience expectation.  What makes things more interesting is that the characters are genre-savvy.  They become aware of the harem situation and begin to take actions in accordance with this awareness.

Japanese society is predicated upon the maintenance of harmony between all the members of a social group.  The harem situation is humorous from a Japanese standpoint because it creates a uniquely Japanese problem--how to maintain the status-quo between members of one's social circle when a number of females are crushing on a single male (note that the reverse-harem situation is not unheard of--not by a longshot).  That status-quo is harmony.  Thus, how does one maintain that harmony, especially if one is the singular object of romantic affection?

To an American, this situation is easily resolved.  Who do you love?  Pick her (or him) and the rest just have to get over it.  This has happened constantly before my eyes in high school and college.  Sure the status-quo is disrupted and harmony broken but just as often than not, people find a way to recover and preserve the social circle without the sense of weirdness and alienation.  We're far more used to the boat getting rocked, even though (given the situation) such boat-rocking may often be seen as bad form.  We're more forgiving, especially depending upon the situation when the boat is rocked.  We ask ourselves, "Was the boat-rocker justified in doing so?  Do they have a good excuse?"

In Japanese society, so much social capital is based on maintaining tatemae, face, and an avoidance of shame, that harmony becomes integral to every single social situation.  Criticism is not well-received, even between friends (indeed, less-so than in American society) unless very, very serious social and linguistic precautions are taken.  Hurting someone else's feelings is a moderate faux-pas in American culture--in Japanese society it is a grave offense.

What does this have to do with Genshiken Nidaime?  Simply put, Madarame has been placed in a situation that is far, far beyond his capabilities of handling.  And he knows it.  The poor guy is in so far over his head that it is a serious problem.  While Shimoku may be playing with the harem idea and its lampshading for laughs, the situation that the character finds himself is potentially destructive and could result in his alienation from anyone and everyone for whom he cares.  The stakes are incredibly high for Madarame and this is no laughing matter.

Mada's Dignity
Put simply, Mada has none.  Mada has no tatemae.  Mada is stripped, weak, and open.  Vulnerable.  These things are absolutely dangerous in Japanese society.  As my friend once said, a girl won't even admit she likes a guy but instead frame it as a double-negative: "I don't not like you."  There's always that shield, that barrier, that (to crib from Anno Hideaki) A.T. Field (you see what I did there?) between two people in Japanese society.  Trust is paramount in being able to reveal honne.  Unfortunately, Mada has no tatemae.  He has no defense.  He's honne to everybody.

Dousing the torch.

The most poignant moment is when Mada is shot down by Saki.  He's crushed on her since very early on in Genshiken.  She was always with Kousaka and Mada came off as this creepy otaku guy who masturbates to cartoon porn.  He'd go off on long soliloquies (much to Saki's annoyance and disgust) in order to push her away as a form of self-protection.  This is a defense-mechanism.  Girls aren't yucky and have cooties but instead are this mythical creature that exists somewhere else, somewhere where the guys are handsome and athletic, in shape, tall, cool, attractive and completely and utterly unlike the guys in Genshiken.  Many geek girls complain about how they're perceived and treated by geek guys but what they don't understand is that none of these guys have any idea how to relate to actual women.  Tanaka and Sasahara both manage to make the adjustment and get girlfriends but that step actually helps them overcome their situation and begin to view women in a much more egalitarian manner.  It is through their relationships that they achieve that maturity.  Madarame gains no such advantage.

Let's all celebrate the destruction of a man's dignity.

To overcome his social dysfunctions and his romantic disabilities, he cloaks himself in a tatemae intended to reinforce the disgust of females.  In doing so he exercises a degree of choice, of free will.  He cannot get a girl to actually like him but he can make her find him repulsive.  When given a choice between "do nothing and fail" and "do something and fail gloriously" Mada chooses the latter.  So long as failure is his conscious decision, he can exercise agency and is therefore empowered.  He is not a victim of social prejudice and misunderstanding.  While this refusal is empowering in that it allows him to keep his own sense of dignity through an act of free will, it is a hollow victory, a Maltese Falcon ending where Sam Spade surrenders love because he cannot bring himself to trust.  It's not healthy but it is what he has.

All of this comes crashing down when others gradually clue into his crush and orchestrate his "confession" of love to Saki.  I almost cheered when instead of confessing he attempts to maintain his dignity by saying "you had a hair sticking out of your nose."  Bravo, Mada!  You already know you don't have a shot with her, accept it, move on, and keep your dignity!

But I'm an American.  The Japanese don't approach things in that manner.  Mada would have continued to carry a torch for Saki and not been able to move on.  This I realized in retrospective.  Mada needed to be shot down.  I may be wrong in seeing this as a part of the Japanese character--as an American, I'd have told Mada to get over Saki and move on.  Perhaps Mada needed to be shot down because he is Mada, or perhaps because he's Japanese.  I am not sure where the one starts and stops, blends into the other, etc.  I'm not Japanese so my insight here is limited.

Anyway, Saki shoots him down and leaves him with no illusions.  Mada must douse the torch.  Now he can grow and move on.

And he's met by all of his supposed friends and... .  I found the reaction absolutely repulsive.  Again, maybe it is because I'm an American and not Japanese but Sasahara's sister does her utmost to utterly humiliate him.  She cheers that he got his heart broken.  No one stops her, no one says anything about it and his male friends don't come to his rescue in any way.  They don't extradite him from the situation as quickly as possible and get him into a new situation where he can a) get his mind off of what just happened and b) rebuild his dignity.  Mada even attempts to go on a repulsive diatribe and it falls flat, fails to restore his defenses, and just ends up making him look ridiculous.  As a result, Mada's dignity is utterly demolished, eradicated, and any real sense of agency or control, any capacity for free choice and self-empowerment, has been entirely nullified and stays nullified for quite some time.

What really bothers me is how his guy friends all mentally and emotionally just sort of check out when this happens.  They don't try to rescue him at all.  Frankly, they should all drag him off someplace away from Saki and Keiko.  They should take him to a baseball game, movie, or maybe even an izakaya where they can get him drunk and talk about anime and manga--anything to get the poor guy's mind off of the fact that he's been both humiliated and heartbroken.

This has set up a situation in which others can exercise choice and empowerment at Mada's expense.  This dynamic seems to have been utterly missed by every commentator and blogger I've read.  Mada is utterly and completely objectified by everyone around him (with, perhaps, the exception of Sue, which I'll address further below).

Love Among the Ruins of Mada's Dignity
With everything above considered, it should come as a sudden shock, both to reader and to Mada himself as a character, that there are a number of females (and one very confused and confusing male) who are crushing on Mada.  At face value, none of them are good choices for him.  Let's run through the list briefly.

It gets worse...

Angela Burton:  The blonde bombshell.  Well-endowed, exquisitely beautiful, the pinnacle of physical perfection.  Korean men speak of having a "white horse" at least once in their lives and if there is a Japanese equivalent, then Angela is the Platonic ideal of the "white horse."  She's ferociously attracted to Mada in a very predatory manner.  The phrase "virgin-breaker" comes to mind--the fantasy "first-time" for a young guy who has no sexual experience.  She's American (and so, stereotypically "slutty"--perhaps American girls have a reputation in Japan for being "easy" or something).  She doesn't speak Japanese but seems to understand it well enough.  She's also a complete bull in a china shop when it comes to Japanese social dynamics.  She has no concept of wa--harmony--and barrels her way through social situations that rocks the boat so hard as to nearly capsize it.

While on the surface, Angela seems like the ideal rebound for Mada.  She's in Japan once every six months.  That nixes any chance of a real relationship.  If she wasn't so utterly carnal and sexual (i.e. "stereotyped" and "objectified") she might be a decent match for Mada.  As it stands, she's only around for a few brief issues and therefore never developed past being a stereotype or an object.  As she is, she'd actually leave Mada far more emotionally damaged and romantically broken than he already is.  To her, Mada is a conquest.  If there was any evidence that she actually loved and cared for Mada, an encounter between the two may have massive healing potential for his character.  However, there's no evidence that she, herself presented as an object/plot device/stereotype, views Madarame as anything more than an object in return.  To be treated in such a manner by her would actually do more harm than good.

Sasahara Keiko:  Keiko sees Mada as a challenge much as Angela does.  Humorously, the two of them become heated rivals for "who gets Mada" and both are roundly defeated by Sue (who saves both the day and Mada's sanity).  Whereas Angela is sexually aggressive, gazing hungrily upon the hapless Mada like a female mantis, Keiko is flat-out abusive.  She purposely gets his name wrong, calling him "Wantanabe," conveying the very poignant insult that he isn't even worth her learning his name.  Keiko has no respect for Mada and did much to not only orchestrate his "confession" to Saki but also to spearhead his humiliation and the stripping of the remaining shreds of his dignity in the aftermath.  Any relationship with Keiko would be abusive and further damaging to Madarame.

This leaves Hato and Sue.

Hato... confused...

Continued in Part Two.

Genshiken Nidaime: Victims, Villains, and Gender Relations among Japanese Otaku -- INTRODUCTION

A quick warning:

THIS IS AN ANALYSIS OF A WORK OF FICTION.  IT IS NOT ABOUT ACTUAL, FACTUAL, REAL-LIFE GENDER DYNAMICS.  If you disagree with my observations and analysis, please keep that in mind and don't make assumptions about my actual thoughts/ideas on actual, real-life gender relations.

I've always enjoyed reading Genshiken from its inception.  Currently, I'm reading the sequel, Genshiken Niidaime and I've watched as the years have turned and the club has changed as the "old guard" graduated and moved on (or tried feebly to move on) and a new "generation" of students has taken over the club and dominated it.  This post is primarily in response to a number of posts made on Hearts of Furious Fancies regarding Genshiken Nidaime in specific but for the uninitiated reader, I will give a bit more of an introduction to my thoughts, which I'm airing out here to help me organize them a bit.  After all, that's what this blog is really for--its my own personal soapbox from which I can think aloud and help organize my own throughts and ideas as well as keep myself somewhat sharp in an environment that can easily result in myself growing duller.

Genshiken is a Japanese manga about an university otaku club--basically geeks and dorks who are on the fringes of Japanese society.  The otaku boom/Akihabara boom last decade and the success of such stories as Densha Otoko brought a degree of sympathy for otaku and their corollaries (such as the hikkikomori, cf. Welcome to the NHK, for example).  The boom did not result in the superlative mainstreaming of this fringe element the way that the success of "fringe-demographic" films, such as the Avengers and related Marvel films, the Star Trek reboots, the Game of Thrones HBO series, The Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit films, etc., mainstreamed American "geekdom."  The otaku was, is, and will always be on the fringe of Japanese society and the otaku hobbies must always be buried and hidden with shame from the steely gaze of Japanese culture, a culture which perceives strength in uniformity in ways American society does not.

The author and artist, Kio Shimoku, created Genshiken around 2002 and it ran in Afternoon until 2006--right smack dab in the middle of the otaku boom.  Through the manga, he explored the dynamics of otaku interrelations, friendship, and even romance.  His characters are all rather flawed and very much human.  The original run ended with the characters graduating from college and (hopefully) getting jobs at the end of their final year of college.  Genshiken Nidaime takes place after the old characters have graduated and the new circle is predominately female.  Whereas the first iteration of the comic had to deal with females invading a male-dominated space and disrupting the safety and security of that space with their femininity, their sexuality, and their own tastes in the erotic (which brought interesting levels of tension to the comic), the new generation is centered on a club that is now a female space, is female-safe and female-friendly, and the only male that actually fits into the group comfortably and contribute constructively only does so when dressed and acting as though he were a female.

There is a great deal of detail that I am leaving on the cutting room floor and this blogpost isn't entirely for the uninitiated.  I'm going to be throwing names out there so it may be useful to the reader to at least have read the wikipedia entries and maybe Genshiken Nidaime itself, if not the original Genshiken in order to be up to speed.

With this caveat and preamble, I'm going to dive into a sort of dialogue with Hearts of Furious Fancies spurred by this post on one of the main male characters' romantic attraction to heroic females.  Other posts have also given me a great deal of food for thought and after a few discussions with friends who understand Japanese culture far better than I, I've just gotta put my ideas down in print to see where things go.  So, let's jump right in with both feet, shall we?

Continued in the Part One.

Ruminations--Narrativism, White Wolf's EXALTED, and "Buying In"

For a year (with about nine months' of hiatus) I've been running an Exalted game for Luke and DJ.  Exalted was originally White Wolf's answer to D&D, released around 2001 with much fanfare.  For those of you who don't know, White Wolf arose in the late 1980s as an answer to the "dungeon crawl" model of D&D adventure.  It touted itself, through its original game and flagship line, Vampire: The Masquerade, as an edgy, mature, and literary role-playing system in which the aim wasn't to acquire loot and level up but instead to deliberately and consciously tell a story.  In a lot of ways this was a response to the growth of railroads in modular D&D game design (cf. Grognardia's ruminations on the Hickman Revolution) like the original Dragonlance modules.

The problems with White Wolf are legion, true.  If you subscribe to Ron Edward's theories on game design and implementation, White Wolf appears to be Story Now (a.k.a. Narrativist).  A lot of this comes down to application and the Storyteller System indeed has the trappings of Narrativism on the surface.  The games have a mechanic to enforce dramatic tension absent in most other role-playing game lines--Vampire has Humanity, for example.  Dramatic tension increases as player-characters lose points in Humanity and begin to succumb to the animal urges and wanton blood lust of the Beast within them.  Unfortunately, White Wolf as a whole and the Storyteller System as an engine fail to actually elucidate how, precisely, to run a truly Narrativist chronicle.  Numerous "stories" (read: modules) and "chronicles" (read: campaigns) have been produced for many a White Wolf line, the most noteworthy being The Transylvania Chronicles.

I both love and hate The Transylvania Chronicles.  Why do I love them?  Well, coupled with Transylvania By Night, a sourcebook (more properly, a toolbox) full of people, places, and objects with which the player-characters can interact, these books craft a wonderful setting and track the events of Transylvania through the late medieval period into the modern era.  What I hate is that The Transylvania Chronicles are a complete and total railroad--a set of encounters to navigate the players through and giving them little or no actual choice or agency in the long-run (the type of game a Typhoid Mary GM would run, cf DM of the Rings and So You Want to Write a Railroad?).  They are complete and utter pawns throughout the entirety of the campaign.  Granted, one of the major themes of Vampire: The Masquerade and its Dark Ages adjunct line is the power-relations between Kindred and their Elders, Childer and their Sires, young versus old, and how the frustrated childer are always oppressed and kept carefully in check by those vampires who embraced them.  However, The Transylvania Chronicles handles these themes artlessly, bullying the players into obeying their sires even after they've become Princes of their own cities.

This is not Narrativism.  Heck, for most imaginative and intelligent players, this isn't even fun.  Indeed, Ron Edwards argues that playing these sorts of White Wolf games can actually damage your brain, causing emotional trauma that inhibits your ability to comprehend and appreciate stories.

White Wolf lacks a defined mechanic for the very social contract that needs to take place before the players even sit down to play.  As a Narrativist game (or at least, a game that claims to be Narrativist in nature), Vampire: The Masquerade, its fellow White Wolf lines, and its successors (such as Vampire: The Requiem), really require rules for establishing the game's Premise even before the characters are rolled up.  This is something I've only recently realized through playing Exalted.  The various Storyteller Guides and Storyteller chapters of the book are rife with ideas on how to incorporate themes into the story, weaving mood and premise, thematic elements, and other literary concepts into each chronicle.  This is great... but there is no such advice for the player.  Instead, all the player gets is advice on how to roleplay a convincing vampire from Clan Tremere in its attendant splatbook.

What is required is for the Storyteller System is a mechanic or section where the players and Storyteller sit down together, before the characters are even created or the first statistic is jotted down, and decide in concert, what the game's premise will be.  And by premise, I don't mean "the quest to kill the dragon" but rather some sort of situation that will 1) resonate with everyone at the gaming table as a reflection on the human condition and 2) will be resolved through 2a) the choices the characters make and 2b) the Storyteller's fair adjudication of the setting's reaction to those choices.  This not only gives the players agency as characters, it explicitly makes them the protagonists of the story and the narrative resonance of the game's subsequent themes is doubly poignant because they are going to identify with their characters more than they would with the protagonist of a book.  The problem is, do they "buy in" to this sort of social contract about the game?  It requires the players being extremely proactive in deciding some very, very major aspects on the tone, theme, and mood of the game and may even weigh heavily on some fundamental elements such as time and place.  It demands that the GM/DM/RM/ST/etc. effectively cede control of a huge amount of creative authority to the players before the game has even begun.  It also demands that the players actively keep these themes in mind when creating characters and role-playing those characters' decisions.

Take, for example, the Eberron game I mentioned in my previous post.  Let's assume that we all sat down together and together we created an idea for a game like the one I had proposed.  Now, let's assume that the players all agree to the various tropes, setting details, tone and mood, time period-appropriate behaviors and speech, and dramatic themes.  If the players, then, failed to create characters that satisfied these genre-specific elements nor evoke the necessary atmosphere or role-playing required to capture and explore these elements, then the failure of the Eberron game to get off the ground would not have been my fault (as it actually was) but 100% their fault.  In this sense, the players must "buy in" not only to the campaign's style but also to the concept of Narrativist play as a whole.

How does this translate to a game like Exalted, which I've been running for some time?

Last Winter and Spring, I ran a game for Luke and DJ in which they started out as unExalted mortals.  The game was extremely challenging and the lethal nature of Storyteller System's combat resulted in the players having a profound respect for their own mortality and an awareness of just how fragile life is.  Near the end of last year's games, they finally Exalted, imbued with the Essence of the Unconquered Sun.  As Chosen of Sol Invictus, they are closer to being divine, similar to demigods of Greek myth.  They heal faster, they can fight with insane moves like characters from a wuxia martial arts movie or an over-the-top anime, they can use magic powers to speak other languages and punch down buildings, live for about five thousand years, and they can even soak lethal damage (as opposed to just bashing, like a mortal can).

The hiatus allowed me some time to get a breather and figure out how better to run this new sort of game and deal with all the new thematic elements and dramatic tension.  The "Limit Break" mechanic now functions as a source of dramatic tension--each character's highest Virtue (Compassion, Conviction, Temperance, or Valor) is matched with a Virtue Flaw (haughty arrogance, for example, with high Valor and low Temperance and Compassion; a character with high Conviction and Valor but low Compassion might have a Flaw in which they are willing to do anything to achieve what they see as the Greater Good, even if it means being an absolute murderous genocidal monster).  This can lead to some fantastic role-playing and some incredible drama if done properly and, frankly, has worked better as an inspirational guide and personality metric than D&D's Alignment system ever was (at least, in my personal experience).  When a character acts against their highest Virtue they have to roll dice--if they fail, they can act as they wish (the Virtue fails to force the player to act in character, essentially) but if they succeed they must either act in accordance with their Virtue or they must tick off a point of Limit and spend a point of Temporary Willpower to act against their own character.  If too many points of Limit are acquired, the character has a Limit Break, during which they have a meltdown of some sort appropriate to the Virtue (they may go completely berserk and kill everything around them or they may collapse into a sobbing puddle of tears, for example).

With that in mind, let me summarize a bit of the last few sessions now that we've started the game back up.  Luke's character, Ren, is trying to make the opium trade in the city go out of business by essentially creating his own syndicate, bullying, bribing, and buying up all the small-time dealers in the slums and 1) forcing them to sell only to those of whom he approves and 2) taking a substantial cut of their profits--if they refuse to comply, they most likely wake up in a crate or box in one of the haunted and ruined sections of the city (effectively a death sentence).  Ren uses the profits he gains to build an orphanage, the youth of which he intends to raise as his own small army of spies, assassins, and Batman-style vigilantes.  The payments are made through a dropbox in a ruined building, from which an old beggar retrieves the money and drops into another dropbox for a small fee, which is then retrieved by one of the orphanage workers.

Ren gets word that a new opium merchant has moved into town.  After digging around, Ren and Dekland (DJ's character) find out that one of this secretive, anonymous merchant's distribution centers.  Ren wants to start destroying the competition and, once he has total control of all of the city's opium distribution, cut it off entirely and destroy it while setting up safeguards that the drug will be kept out of the city thereafter.  Hence, Ren wants to take this up-and-comer out.  So he and Dekland concoct a plan to infiltrate one of the distribution centers (a bathhouse for nobles) with Dekland disguised as a slave working there.

Dekland is a soldier and is used to following orders so it seems like a good idea.  However, he's not a slave-soldier but an honorable, highly respected soldier in his homeland so his demeanor comes off as "uppity" to the managers and paid staff at the bathhouse.  This creates dramatic tension.  They start putting Dekland into situations where he's tempted to fight back (his highest Virtue is Valor, which means every time he backs down from a challenge or has to run away, he has to roll against his Virtue).  Finally, they begin to openly mistreat, abuse, and beat Dekland, forcing a couple of rolls for his Valor.  Dekland snaps and begins to beat the everliving crap out of these guys, forcing Ren to come in and help him.

In this way, the system works well--dramatic tension is heightened through a situation in which, in D&D, wouldn't have nearly as much dramatic tension because there is no such associated mechanic enforcing players to deal with the various side-effects of their character concept.  By statting out Virtues and their attendant heroic flaws, methods for dilemmas are introduced that can be mechanically resolved but also give the players the necessity to make meaningful choices because of those mechanics.  DJ could have spent a point of Temporary Willpower and ticked off a point of Limit (bringing him closer to a Break) or he could cut loose, drop all pretense of disguise and infiltration, and just wreck house.  DJ weighed the various consequences and was happy to let Dekland give in to his nature.  Skulls were cracked with big, meaty fists.

As the story progressed, Dekland and Ren made their way through a series of tunnels that night beneath the city and burnt down six out of seven different bathhouses--all containing hidden opium dens.  This made waves.  The merchant, furious that half of his distribution centers were destroyed (he also owned a number of bodegas in the city but the bathhouses were the most profitable), as well as his hub, set his two henchmen after Ren and Dekland.  The henchmen called on connections and contacts, greased a few palms, and ran across one of Ren's slum dealers.  The two henchmen began tracking them all down and killing them.  Then, they tortured and killed Ren's homeless drop-off man (who managed to warn Ren that he was being followed before he was captured, so Ren could tell his orphanage workers to lay low and not make any more pick-ups lest they be next).

So, because of Ren and Dekland's actions, an innocent man died and a number of other not-so-innocent drug dealers died.  Ren's highest Virtue being Compassion, he was pretty upset that his actions led to the death of the old homeless guy.

We can see a number of themes developing from this but the big premise that comes to the fore is that actions have consequences, good deeds often come with a high price, and power and responsibility go hand-in-hand.  I never planned for these themes to happen--they just emerged.

The thing is, I've failed at running a Narrativist game.  This was more Simulationist.  If it was Narrativist, DJ, Luke, and I would have sat down together and hammered out those themes as the central theses of our story.  It would have been a deliberate, not an accidental, exploration of those themes.  I had not initiated these gaming sessions with the intention of having Ren's entire network slaughtered in response to his actions.  I had no idea that it would happen.  I simply rolled for the various stages of the henchmen's investigations and decided what they were most likely to do given the results of their rolls and their particular motivations and personalities.

Running a Narrativist game is something I've never done and am not sure how to do effectively while still preserving a realistic set of consequences.  I think, instead of considering what would be realistic, I would have to react to player choices with the guideline "what would make a good story given our game's overarching premise?" instead of "what would realistically occur?"  Right now, we're just Ouija Boarding, essentially acting as though Simulationist play will yield Narrativist play "without any specific attention on anyone's part to do so."  Currently, I'm running Dekland's quest for his previous incarnation's tomb--something he requested as a story arc.  While this is a step in a Narrativist direction, I'm still in control of where it is, what is there, who is there, what he'll encounter, etc. while he only controls when he goes there, with whom he goes, and (to a degree) how he gets there.

I did warn DJ and Luke that, being Exalted, they're going to be much more like Hercules, Achilles, and Odysseus.  There's going to be a lot of death and tragedy around them.  Hercules killed his entire family.  Achilles lost his best friend/lover (depending on your interpretation) and died after defeating the only man who had a hope of matching him in combat, and Odysseus was away from his wife for twenty years fighting a war and sailing around (not to mention directly and indirectly getting every single member of his crew killed).  They were on board with that but they weren't explicitly involved in the creation of that concept.  It was great that they got to experience it first-hand as players but they were not fully co-authors of the tale.  They didn't craft the overarching premise of that story with me.  They didn't consciously "buy in" to the Narrativist take on the story.