1 The Topic of Rape and Rape Trauma in Literary Texts by Japanese Female Authors

Although often overlooked in terms of its significance for the story, the widely tabooed subject of rape represents a recurring topic within literature authored by Japanese women writers. Japanese women have been writing about the experience of rape from a female character’s perspective at least since the 1980s, and among their “rape narrations” (cf. Milevski 2016) which emphasise different aspects of this topic, there are such accounts that attempt to portray how rape affects the psychological and somatic state of the female survivor, informing the readers on the existence of rape trauma, its genesis, and expression, thus serving “a crucial role in bringing the [individual] suffering of […] [rape survivors] to public attention” (Miller 2018: 228). Such rape narrations do not solely focus on psycho-somatic expressions of rape trauma as an imminent reaction to the forced penetration of the female character’s vagina by the penis of the (usually) male rapist,¹ but also on how the state of being a rape survivor affects the female survivor’s life and place within society. Finally, by problematising the reactions and responses of the survivor’s environment towards the victims themselves, these texts by Japanese women writers also help “elucidate the dilemma of the public’s relationship to the traumatised, made problematic by [the rape survivor’s] […] painful experiences and psychic defences that can alienate others, and by the public’s resistance” (Vickroy 2002: 2).

This article discusses four of such (fictional) literary texts written by contemporary Japanese female writers whose main topic focuses on the experience of rape and its aftermath from the raped female character’s perspective. Through the analysis by close reading of Uchida Shungiku’s 内田春菊 (b. 1959)² novel Fazā fakkā ファザーファッカー (Father Fucker; 1996) and its sequel Atashi ga umi ni kaeru made あたしが海に還るまで (Until I Return to the Sea; 1997),³ Yoshimoto Banana’s 吉本ばなな (b. 1964)⁴ “Marika no sofā” マリカのソファー (Marika’s Sofa; 1997), and Sakurai Ami’s 桜井亜美 (b. 1972)⁵ Sora no kaori o ai suru yō ni 空の香りを愛するように (To Love the Scent of the Sky; 2004), it will be shown the way contemporary Japanese female authors discuss the topic in their fictional stories, how they depict rape as a traumatic experience, what effects and expressions of rape trauma they portray, and what reactions on the part of the (Japanese) environment towards the rape victims they address. By portraying all the psychological and physical stages the raped protagonists go through, these literary works do not only break with the taboo of addressing rape publicly, but also form a diametrical opposition to the dominant discourses on rape and raped women which are predominantly shaped by an androcentric worldview aiming at justifying the rape of women by men (Künzel 2003: 16). In this light, Uchida’s, Yoshimoto’s, and Sakurai’s literary productions can be interpreted as an attempt for women to counter the ongoing male-induced discourse about the rape of/raped women and sensitise their readers for what it means for women to live as rape survivors.

2 Writing the Moment of Rape

In his book on rape in Western thought and culture, Victor J. Vitanza writes that there is “no act […] more impossible to think, read, write than rape” (2011: xiii). And although rape as a traumatising experience “eludes” language (Miller 2018: 226), since it happens, there is obviously a necessity to conceptualise it, which is reflected in the various depictions of rape within literature. How, then, does a female author textualise rape of a female protagonist? Or, rather, (how) can rape as a traumatising experience be adequately put into words at all? Whereas the actual actions of the raping character can be described, what goes on in the minds of the raped characters is often left as a blank space within the text. It is up to the reader to fill those purposely left out spaces with words, emotions, and images, and later on interpret them in accordance with the plot. In the case of rape narrations, those blanks within the stories serve to inform us that an inexpressible violent and traumatising event has happened and, given that traumatic experiences such as rape are very often narrated retrospectively, those experiences – as in the factual world – often cannot be entirely put into words if told by a first-person narrator.

This particularly applies to Uchida’s novels Fazā fakkā and Atashi ga umi ni kaeru made. Fazā fakkā’s protagonist and first-person narrator Tanaka Shizuko 田中静子 is twenty-seven years old when she allows her painful memories to surface, leading her to the night she was raped for the first (of many) time(s) by her stepfather at the age of only fourteen years. Even thirteen years later, Shizuko is still not able to fully confer and voice her rape experience(s). Instead, she rather implies, through the usage of metaphors for a penis, that a specific form of sexual intercourse took place while simultaneously exposing the metaphor as a metaphor:

The stepfather […] took me to the bed in his and mother’s bedroom. I woke up […] after some time. Someone had laid down [with me] on the futon. […] I knew that it was the stepfather. He put his finger in my bottom. […] But it wasn’t a finger (Uchida 1999: 160).⁶

At this point in the novel, Shizuko strongly indicates that she is being penetrated by her stepfather with his penis. Interestingly, she does not use the term penis but the term finger (yubi 指; Uchida 1999: 160) to describe her stepfather’s sexual organ although she already knows what a penis is and how it is used during intercourse, since at this point in the story she has already had sex with a fellow classmate many times. Therefore, the usage of a metaphor instead of the term “penis” could be interpreted as an attempt by Shizuko to accentuate that, from her point of view, the penetration does not feel like a penetration by a penis. The usage of the term “finger” can also be interpreted as a form of further dissociating herself from this (literally) unspeakable act her stepfather is forcing upon her and clearly differentiate between the consensual sex she was having with her classmate and the forced act she is experiencing through her stepfather’s actions. By using the finger-metaphor, Shizuko also brings up the metaphor of a hand that is supposed to feed and protect her, thus hinting at the power of the almighty (step)father whose grasp she subsequently will try to escape from, but who will remain superior and more powerful than her in the Japanese patriarchal society.

After that night, the stepfather continues to rape Shizuko at least once per month, and the rapes are subsequently only indicated by Shizuko’s remark that she is being called into the bedroom with the words “Come here!” (kocchi e koi こっちへ来い; Uchida 1999: 104). And although we do not get clear descriptions of the rapes, Shizuko gives the readers a glimpse of her behaviour during the rapes: she writes that she would wait for the time to pass “like a doll” (ningyō no yō 人形のよう; ibid.: 187) without being able to make a stand, while retrospectively equating her daily life to that of a prostitute (shōfu no seikatsu 娼婦の生活; ibid.: 194).

Shizuko’s inability to describe the act of how her stepfather rapes her continues in Fazā fakkā’s sequel Atashi ga umi ni kaeru made, which brings a minor change: from a first to a third person subjective narrator. Shizuko is being raped several times by her stepfather throughout Atashi ga umi ni kaeru made without being able to explicitly describe what the stepfather does to her. Instead of unambiguous descriptions, Shizuko would say that she is been called to see him: “[…] Again I was called (yobareta 呼ばれた) to the bed of the stepfather (gifu no beddo 義父のベッド; Uchida 1998: 59).” Yet again, like in Fazā fakkā, by naming the location she has been called to, she gives a strong indication about what is happening, and through the usage of the passive voice Shizuko indicates how little power she has over the situation she is being forced into.

Yoshimoto’s text “Marika no sofā” proceeds in a similar way of narrating the act of rape. Since Marika’s マリカ rapes occurred in the past, they are only vaguely suggested by her. Hints that ultimately lead to the conclusion that the main character was raped are scattered throughout the text so that the reader must actively link and put them together. Of course, this also means that the interpretation of Yoshimoto’s text as a rape narration can be put into question, but my analysis has yielded that it does provide firm clues that “Marika no sofā” is a rape narrative: At the beginning of the story, second main character Junko states that Marika was “abused by her father” (chichioya ni gyakutai sareta 父親に虐待された; Yoshimoto 1997: 20). Here, however, it is not clear whether the abuse was sexual since Junko uses a very general expression with the word “gyakutai.” Her later statement that Marika’s father “did [things] to her body even before it was fully mature, […] as they are done to prostitutes (baishun 売春; ibid.: 23)” is more upfront, strongly indicating that he had sexual intercourse with Marika and/or possibly even forced her to have sexual intercourse with other people, since the word baishun (prostitution) is used to refer to paid sexual intercourse. Marika’s own statements also support the assumption that she was raped, given that later on she states that “she” “had sex with many people” (takusan no hito to sekkusu o suru 沢山の人とセックスをする; ibid.: 74) before finally disclosing that she was raped at the end of the story (okasareteru 犯されてる; ibid.: 98). Despite the gradual lead up to the conclusion that Marika is a rape victim who has developed severe traumatic sequelae because of her rapes, the moment of rape is not narrated by Marika but by one of the four identities that she created as an expression of her trauma. Among those identities, there is one named Orenji who – even in a rather indirect form – hints from his own point of view at how Marika experienced being penetrated:

There are incomparably cruel things. […] Marika was only looking at beautiful things (kirei na mono きれいなもの) at the time [when she had to endure the abuse/rape]. Like the curtain blowing in the window or the light dancing in the window (Yoshimoto 1997: 64–65).

By describing Marika’s thoughts and doings during the rape acts, Orenji does not only shift the perspective away from the rapist – which continues to be the dominant perspective of most rape narrations within patriarchal societies – but he also indirectly conveys that describing how rape happens is rather impossible from the perspective of the victim. Instead of trying to describe what Marika cannot express in words, Orenji gives an impression on what she did while she was being penetrated. She was apparently trying to distract herself from all the feelings and sensations arising within her mind and body by “only looking at beautiful things” – a description, which in direct contrast, underlines how ugly rape is. By choosing to describe Marika as looking at the window during the forced sexual intercourses, Orenji also indicates that she wanted to escape from the situation but apparently could not do so due to her powerlessness and defencelessness as a child. Besides hinting at a potential way out, the window symbolises how there is an outside world, buzzing and turning right in front of her, yet she is only able to look at it from the confinement of her home, which becomes a prison. The window also indicates how easy it would be for someone from outside to see what is happening to her and maybe help her, but no one is there to actually look through the window and at her situation. And since Orenji is another identity (and thus in some sense a part of her) which is able to observe everything Marika sees, Yoshimoto’s text implicitly suggests that – even though rape survivors are not able to speak about the hideous act – somewhere in their memory they do remember what was being done to them or how the rape happened, but, since they are severely traumatised, they try to suppress the memory using all their strength to survive. In Marika’s case, as I will explain further below, her mind even created stronger versions of herself who were able to protect her from the painful experiences and their memories while being able to endure the unspeakable.

Whereas Shizuko is only able to describe a tiny fragment of her stepfather’s acts of raping, and Marika is not able to talk about what was done to her at all, Ayado Momiji 綾波紅葉, the protagonist in Sakurai’s novel Sora no kaori o ai suru yō ni, gives a more detailed illustration of the act of raping from the perspective of the victim. Momiji, who is under the influence of drugs and unconscious during her forced penetration, regains consciousness for a short period and describes her rape as follows:

“[S]omeone” lifts me up and puts me on a kind of mattress, lifts both my knees and opens them wide. My dress is unzipped, my underwear is taken off and I am made completely naked. What are you doing? You’re not going to […]. In other words, they brought us here to gang rape us. […] Someone holds up both my legs left and right and violently inserts his penis (penisu ペニス) into my dry vagina. My vagina hurts as if it would tear, and I reflexively contract it to push out the invading object. […] I want to resist but the muscles of my whole body are as heavy as a sandbag that’s been soaked with water; it won’t follow my orders. It feels like a dream where I’m desperately running away, but my body doesn’t move a single millimetre and only fear comes out of my throat. […] With my eyes slightly open, I watch unconcernedly as a blurry white lump moves up and down. It seemed to me as if I was put under general anaesthesia and was escaping my lower body into which a scalpel (mesu メス) was inserted. It is as if cuts were carved into my skin with a knife (naifu ナイフ) in lukewarm sea water (kaisui 海水). This kind of pain and sensation, mixed with uncertainty and disgust, spread throughout my body starting from the mucous membrane of my vagina. When one lump was done, another lump plunged a knife into it. At some point, it became too tedious to watch and I closed my eyes. The pitch-black tide of a deep sleep washed over me and soon everything dissolved into nothingness (Sakurai 2004: 19–24).

Despite her cloudy consciousness, Momiji describes precisely what is being done to her and how she feels about the actions of the raping male characters: she compares the penetration by her rapist’s penis to a scalpel cutting into her body, thus creating the image of a (surgical) knife cutting into her tissue (i.e., her vagina), creating the image of a wound cut open that must be bleeding as well. Thus, the lukewarm seawater can be interpreted either as a metaphor for streaming blood caused by the violent penetration and insufficient lubrication of Momiji’s vagina or as actual blood flowing from injuries the penetrations inflict to her vagina. While possibly serving as lubricant for the penis of the raping male character, this blood emphasises the violence of the act of rape, and the fact that the sensations she feels in her vagina spreads throughout Momiji’s entire body makes it clear once again that it is not a single part of the body (i.e., her vagina) that is being affected by rape, but that the forced penetration spreads over the entire body and into the psyche.

By comparing the act of rape with a surgical act on a patient who is fully conscious, Sakurai indicates that rape is a form of torture. Additionally, the use of a scalpel – a knife so sharp that it effortlessly cuts skin, the most elastic organ of human beings – as a metaphor for a penis emphasises that, although Momiji’s vagina is figuratively cut open, it is not sewn up again so that the patient is sure to survive as it happens during surgeries. Instead, Momiji ends up having a “wound” cut open by a penis (i.e., the scalpel) that she carries around with her for the rest of her life. Since this wound can never heal or “close up” like a regular incision, the reader can implicitly imagine how it continuously affects Momiji’s body and mind until she faces the trauma that this figurative wound has caused and learns to cope and ultimately live with it.

These four literary texts exemplify how hard it is to write about the act of rape and how some female writers have tried to put this into words to narrate the unspeakable. In the case of the four fictional works analysed here, both a continuation of the inability to narrate the moment of rape (Uchida and Yoshimoto) and a detailed and metaphor-infused narration of such moment (Sakurai) could be identified. A broader spectrum emerges when one focuses on how the effects of the rapes on the state of the mind of the victims are described.

3 Psycho-somatic Reactions in Fictional Rape Survivors: The Case of Fazā fakkā and Atashi ga umi ni kaeru made

Rape is an extremely traumatic experience, with the ensuing trauma being so deep that it often cannot be expressed through language – but even if it eludes language, it is necessary for the survivor to express it in some way in order to overcome it. And just like the descriptions of the rape act from the survivor’s perspective vary from story to story, the psycho-somatic reactions to the experience of rape, the expression of the trauma, and the consequences for the protagonists are manifold. In Uchida’s Fazā fakkā, what immediately follows after the rape is confusion and the inability to somehow classify the act as such. In the passage after the scene in which Shizuko described her stepfather putting a “finger” into her bottom, she has already left the bedroom and is trying to comprehend what had just happened, unable to find the right words to describe what she had just endured:

[T]his thing (koto こと) from before is still circling around in my head. […] I no longer understood anything. […] I couldn’t find a single answer. Instead, something (nanika 何か) [bad] spread in my chest; my tears flowed in streams. […] I wanted to be saved by someone. But I knew that no one would come to save me (Uchida 1999: 162–163).

Shizuko’s inability to describe her state of mind shows how difficult or impossible it is to verbally grasp what rape did to her body and subsequently to her psyche. Instead of naming the rape act with common terms, Shizuko calls it “thing” (koto こと), hinting at how deficient the existing terms for rape are in their significance from a survivor’s perspective. Being unable to comprehend the condition she is into, Shizuko only feels “something” (nanika 何か, i.e., the trauma) spreading in her chest that brings tears to her eyes. Besides her inability to communicate verbally, those tears represent the only direct expression of her feelings, and they indicate the trauma that arises within her while simultaneously visualising how it eludes speech.

This verbally inaccessible trauma accompanies Shizuko for a long time. As for factual rape survivors, it takes time until Shizuko finds the strength to set off her healing process and chooses the art of writing to do so. Apparently, at some point in her life, the rape of that night (and many other days/nights) evolved into a blank space within her memory, one that was thenceforth upheld by both her inability to classify the rape experience and probably her resistance to remember. Now, as an adult woman at the age of twenty-seven, she still strives to suppress her memories and likely will continue to do so if her surroundings will not stop triggering her memory by repeatedly telling her that she had the “face of a prostitute” (shōfu no kao 娼婦の顔; Uchida 1999: 5). The reference to a prostitute makes Shizuko recall that period that she would retrospectively call her “time as a prostitute” (shōfu no koro 娼婦のころ) – a time when her stepfather repeatedly raped her. One day, she “finally remembers” (yatto omoidashita やっと思い出した; ibid.: 6), a moment that marks the beginning of her healing process given that she is expressing it in the form of writing – for to start processing traumatic experiences, trauma needs to be expressed in some way.

Shizuko is trying to express her trauma through the art of writing, but she stresses that it is abhorrent and repulsive (iya 嫌; Uchida 1999: 7) for her to go back to her traumatising childhood past. She further comments that she still has only a vague memory of certain events and that she is not sure whether they truly happened or if they were all just a dream (yume 夢). It is still easier for her to recall those things as a dream than to admit to herself that what she remembers actually occurred in reality. Her cloudy memory can be interpreted as a sign that, even after a decade, she is still trying not to remember what happened to her, still suppressing her memories to protect herself from a breakdown. The latter demonstrates not only how severely traumatising rape is, but how enduring its aftermath is as well. German sociologist Wolfgang Sofsky, who named trauma “soul-murder” (Seelenmord), describes the aftermath of trauma exactly as Shizuko does in her novel. Sofksy writes that “even if it [the traumatising event] is long past, fear and pain remain within the body. They have latched themselves onto the nerves, the brain, the joints, the skin [of the survivor]. […] The inner protective shield […] was shattered. This catastrophe is irreversible. The soul-murder is absolute […]” (Sofsky 1996, cited in Milevski 2016: 79),⁷ and Shizuko’s writing attests to Sofsky’s assertion. Thus, Uchida’s text reflects not only what a traumatised individual is mentally and physically going through, but also corresponds to scientific conclusions on trauma.

In addition to remembering that her stepfather raped her, Shizuko also remembers her attempts to prevent him from doing so – but to no avail as there was no one around to come to her aid. Shizuko even tries to commit suicide by taking pills, but not even this desperate attempt to end her life has any effect on people around her who should have the means to help her. Thus, as the rapes continue, mental dissociation becomes Shizuko’s only way of escaping the violence her stepfather inflicts on her. Ultimately, Shizuko becomes “like a doll” (ningyō no yō 人形のよう; Uchida 1999: 187), a human shell ceasing to feel. The violence she is exposed to is not only unbearable but also ineffable, as demonstrated through the omissions on the textual level. The trauma shows itself both in Shizuko’s inability to remember and talk about the rapes and her inability to retrospectively differentiate between reality and dream (or fiction), as well as in her complicated relationship to sexual intercourse.

The idea that female sex exists solely for the purpose of male sexual satisfaction becomes evident to Shizuko already in her very first heterosexual relationship. Just after turning fourteen years old, Shizuko starts having consensual sex with a boy named Masuda Hiroki, leading to her pregnancy due to her lack of knowledge about contraceptives.⁸ For Shizuko, who at this time has already been enduring being touched inappropriately by her stepfather, Hiroki functions rather as a dialogue than a desired sexual partner, and she would name him her “emotional support” (kokoro no sasae 心の支え; Uchida 1999: 133). Having sex with Hiroki does not really serve the purpose of fulfiling her sexual desires, but rather to “purify” (kirei ni きれいに) her from the “dirt” (yogore 汚れ; ibid.) her stepfather brought upon her by touching and groping her. If they cannot have sex, Shizuko satisfies Hiroki either manually or orally, accompanied by the feeling that she is slowly becoming his “tool” (dōgu 道具; ibid.: 137) for his own sexual fulfilment. In this light, female sexual desire appears to be unnecessary for intimacy and/or sexual acts to happen; it is rather only the male sexual desire that is the driving force for their establishment. And since Shizuko never orgasms during sexual intercourse with Hiroki, she learns that sexual relationships are for men’s sexual satisfaction only, which is then mirrored in the rape acts following the breakup with Hiroki, where her body is also used by a male figure for his own sexual pleasure.

After she breaks up with Hiroki and her stepfather starts raping her, Shizuko gets involved into a relationship with another boy named Tsukada. Shizuko did not like him that much, that is, she was not in love with him, but she describes him as very intelligent and recalls that he was teaching her lot of new things. Nevertheless, she (soon) had sex with him and even experienced an orgasm – something that she had never experienced with Hiroki, with whom she claimed she was in love. However, Shizuko states that she was very confused when she orgasmed, because that feeling was completely new and strange to her, and she did not know how to interpret it. Moreover, Shizuko’s statements on the sexual acts with both Hiroki and Tsukada strongly indicate that she has accepted patriarchally-inspired heteronormative perceptions of sex in exchange for the sole purpose of having someone to talk and lean on to. In other words, she was paying for male friendship with sex – which again broadens the meaning of her statement that back then was her “time as a prostitute.”

Shizuko’s rape trauma evolves further in Fazā fakkā’s sequel Atashi ga umi ni kaeru made, with the latter beginning after Shizuko ran away from her home at the age of sixteen. The sequel is basically a story about Shizuko desperately trying to flee from her stepfather and her abusive family – from physical violence, rapes, and the trauma those acts brought about. The novel also documents how difficult it is for rape survivors to free themselves from their rapists, even more so if the culprit is a parent, close family member, or legal guardian, and how impossible it is to heal from the experience of rape. In the novel, it takes Shizuko about six years until she finds the strength to “move on” in the sense of not letting her trauma control her present and future. It is not until the age of twenty-four that Shizuko starts taking control of the trauma by suppressing it, and – as learned in Fazā fakkā – it takes her more than a decade to be able to confront her traumatising past through writing.

In Atashi ga umi ni kaeru made, Shizuko’s rape trauma is expressed on different levels and in different ways. On the textual level, it is reflected by a permanent change in her locations: at the beginning of the novel, Shizuko is in Ōguma, then she moves to Hakata, back to Nagasaki, then Tōkyō’s Nippori, Komagome, and Iidabashi. Lastly, she is back in Nagasaki, but still continuously moving and changing her whereabouts: she is at friends’ houses, then with Tsukada, in a ryokan 旅館 (Japanese inn), a restaurant, dance clubs, or various workplaces. This constant change of locations reflects Shizuko’s restlessness, her fear of being found, and her persistent desire to flee her parental home and thus from (the source of) her trauma. But just as the mind cannot free itself from a traumatic experience, Shizuko keeps ending up back in her parent’s home. Eventually, it is due to her skills as a mangaka that will allow her to leave Nagasaki for good: at the age of twenty, she receives a call from a Tōkyō-based publishing company. When she moves there to become a mangaka, she finally manages to escape to a “place the stepfather’s hand can’t reach” (gifu no te no todokanai tokoro 義父の手の届かないところ; Uchida 1998: 5). Note how she uses the term “hand” like in the scene where she describes the first rape. In this sense, the benevolent hand of a parent who should be protecting, feeding, and guiding her through her child- and adulthood is perverted into a menacing one that is constantly trying to catch, torture, and suffocate her.

Apart from a change in location there is also a frequent change of sexual partners, indicating Shizuko’s desperate attempt to escape loneliness, as she would instantly remember her past once being by herself. The first time she is left alone, she weeps bitterly. Later on, she would start drinking alcohol, sometimes so much that she could remember what she had done (Uchida 1998: 190). This happens primarily when she marries at the age of twenty and becomes a full-time housewife (sengyō shufu 専業主婦; ibid.: 249) following her husband’s demand. At first, Shizuko would spend her lonely time sleeping, but soon after she started drinking heavily. Fortunately, she manages to pull in the reins on time, hence avoids slipping into alcoholism. Her need for sleep or alcohol during lonely times is an expression of her trauma because she attempts to either switch off her consciousness by sleeping or numb herself by drinking.

The frequent change of sexual partners shows that Shizuko – despite being unable to talk about what happened to her – craves (male) protection from the stepfather who continuously finds a way back into her life. Even if nearly all the men she dates commit violence against her, Shizuko continues to seek their company. This is certainly due to the perceived ideal that men serve as protectors, so all her male sexual partners virtually act as a protective shield against the stepfather. However, due to her nymphomaniac behaviour and insufficient contraception, Shizuko often gets pregnant and has abortions – also because she avoids visiting a gynaecologist and asking for contraceptive pills. According to Shizuko, asking for the latter is more difficult than getting an abortion, given that women who ask for the pill are judged as “lecherous women” (inranjo 淫乱女; Uchida 1998: 168).

Treating herself like a trading object attests again to how indifferent Shizuko has become towards (and how detached from) her body, a consequence of her severe rape trauma. Shizuko has learned how to distance herself emotionally during the rapes, resulting in her ability to physically become numb towards any form of violence and emotions. In her own words, due to her stepfather’s rapes, she has “cooled off emotionally” (tsumetai kimochi ni nari 冷たい気持ちになり) to the point she would not even be able to cry anymore (namida mo denakatta 涙も出なかった; Uchida 1998: 66). Furthermore, she continuously describes herself as a doll or tool and thus literally keeps objectifying her own body and self. Along with her desire for constant company, her ability to detach herself emotionally are certainly the main reasons why Shizuko is able to endure so much violence. Generally, the Japanese society portrayed in Atashi ga umi ni kaeru made is an extremely violent one. While Shizuko encounters violence in different forms everywhere, she learns that there is no one – no other individual characters, no institutions, etc. – that would even try to stop violence, even if they witness it themselves. In the end, Shizuko does not only get used to the violence from her stepfather, but to the violent and ignorant nature of the majority of people around her as well.

As established in Fazā fakkā, Shizuko keeps “exchanging” her body for protection while choosing her male partners according to their conversational compatibility. And although she cannot talk about what her stepfather did to her, she always “hungers for a conversation partner” (hanashiaite ni ueteita 話相手に飢えていた; Uchida 1998: 26). But even if one of her partners asks her to talk, her voice gets stuck in her head and “won’t leave her mouth” (kuchi ni wa dasenakatta 口には出せなかった; ibid.: 18). Only in a few instances she manages to talk about the rapes to men who pay for her service as a hostess, as this ensures that they will not pass on her story to others. Some of them respond emotionally to her story and thus will not get aroused sexually (tatanai 勃たない; ibid.: 168) around her anymore, but the majority remains indifferent.

As shown, Uchida’s novels Fazā fakkā and Atashi ga umi ni kaeru made present multifaceted responses to trauma, which intriguingly align with prior discoveries within the academic discipline of psychology. Shizuko’s writing allows the reading audience to dip into a rape victim’s emotional world, experience the loss for words, and understand how rape trauma impacts the survivor’s life, their behaviour, and their relationship to the surrounding world. In Shizuko’s case, rape trauma is often expressed indirectly, but its traces can be found throughout the story. Yet, there are texts that make use of other kind of references to express rape trauma, such as fantastic elements which would allow the trauma to (diegetically) become independent from the survivor and articulate itself. Such is the case with Yoshimoto’s “Marika no sofā” and Sakurai’s Sora no kaori o ai suru yō ni.

4 Psycho-somatic Reactions in Fictional Rape Survivors: The Case of “Marika no sofā” and Sora no kaori o ai suru yō ni

In contrast to Uchida’s novel Fazā fakkā and its sequel Atashi ga umi ni kaeru made, Yoshimoto’s text “Marika no sofā” and Sakurai’s novel Sora no kaori o ai suru yō ni take on a different approach in expressing the severe effects of rape on their abused characters. Whereas both texts conceptualise rape as an experience which gravely traumatises the victims, Yoshimoto and Sakurai accentuate just how the act of being raped affects the survivors through particularly severe mental disorders that manifest after the forced intercourse(s). In Yoshimoto’s novella, Marika suffers from dissociative identity disorder (DID) because of her rapes, having created four different personalities to help her live on. Sakurai’s main character Momiji creates an alter ego to help her overcome her urging death wish after she becomes the victim of a gang rape. Thus, instead of expressing trauma through verbalising the protagonist’s feelings as in Uchida’s novels, Yoshimoto and Sakurai create individual side characters, born out of the respective protagonist’s trauma, who will ultimately keep them alive and give voice to their thoughts and feelings that cannot be adequately put into words by themselves.

Yoshimoto’s Marika has four differing such personalities: Pein ペイン, Mitsuyo ミツヨ, Happii ハッピィ, and Orenji オレンジ. All are expressions of the feelings Marika experienced during her rapes, thus bearing witness to (the existence of) the rape trauma from which she suffers. Her personae also testify to the fact that Marika received very little or no help at all from other people, thus being entirely on her own to find ways to escape her terrible reality, which she did by creating other versions of herself who would help her through the extreme violence she was exposed to as a child. By the time Marika is nineteen years old, the four additional identities have become her “true friends” (hontō no tomodachi ほんとうの友達) who “shared her fate” (unmei o tomo ni shita 運命を共にした; Yoshimoto 1997: 28). She is aware of their existence and even communicates with them, but she can only do so through dreams, which could be interpreted – similarly to Uchida’s case – as Marika’s inability to accept what was done to her during her childhood.

The persona Pein – most probably an allusion to the English word “pain” – is the first to appear in the story, and according to Marika the one that is always suffering (Yoshimoto 1997: 25). Due to Pein appearing first, we learn that emotional and physical pain is the first feeling that enters the body and mind while a person is being raped, and this pain would evermore stay with the victim who is then constantly suffering to a degree so overwhelming that – as in Marika’s case – it is literally mind-bending. Therefore, Pein is an expression of Marika’s inability to cope with the intensity of the pain inflicted on her body and simultaneously her desire to reject, encapsulate, and thus separate it from herself. Marika is still never fully protected or severed from the feelings of physical and mental pain, which reach her in a filtered form through Pein. However, we learn from the plot that, at some point, the pain that was being caused by the continuing rapes became too overwhelming even for Pein, indicating that every rape added to the intensity of pain, leading to the birth of the persona Happii (“happy”).

According to Marika, Happii always took her place when her father forced her to perform certain actions (Yoshimoto 1997: 24). Happii is a much stronger version of Pein: Marika’s friend Junko describes Happii as “strong (tsuyokute 強くて), a little hurt (sukoshi kizutsuite 少し傷ついて), joyful in a desperate way (yakekusomitai ni akarukute やけくそみたいに明るくて), yet graceful and dignified (demo yūga de dōdō to でも優雅で堂々と)” (ibid.: 92). It is striking that Happii is the one identity which is least described within the narration, and this is certainly not coincidental. Given that Happii is the only persona being able to witness and endure the unspeakable, Happii is a testament to all the horrible memories of what was done to Marika and what she had to do and did. In this light, the fact that the identity is named after happiness may also be interpreted as Marika’s wish that all the ugly things that were done to and did by her would eventually transform into something cheerful. In the end, however, Happii is labelled as a “troubled child” who had sex with many people, and Marika and the other identities would thus isolate Happii. Concurrently, Happii is a symbol of the human ability to adapt and survive, no matter how cruel the circumstances may be. Marika, who was still a small child, had no way to defend herself against her rapes. Happii accepted the rapes and the extreme pain as part of everyday life. Yet, after the rapes stopped, Happii is ostracised, becoming an identity the others are ashamed of.

The remaining two personae are Mitsuyo and Orenji (“orange”) – the latter appears also to be Marika’s alter ego. They are not only conceptualised as opposites due to their gender (Marika is female and Orenji is male), but also due to their characteristics and strengths. Marika is described to be “like a trembling flower” (furueru hana mitai 震える花みたい), who speaks with a “cute, quiet voice like a little bird” (kotori mitai na kawaii chiisai koe 小鳥みたいなかわいい小さい声), whose “psyche and body are still not one” (kokoro to karada ga barabara 心と体がばらばら), and who “[…] cannot express things she would like” (iitai koto ga dōshitemo umaku kotoba ni naranakattari 言いたいことがどうしてもうまく言葉にならなかったり) (Yoshimoto 1997: 15–47). Due to her unstable mental state, Marika often switches between the first and third person narration in the chapters when she speaks, making it difficult for readers to identify with her character, but which simultaneously attests to the effects of the trauma Marika is suffering from (Milevski 2016: 88–89).

Alternatively, Orenji is described as a proud (hokoridakai hyōjō 誇り高い表情) thirteen-year-old boy (jūsansai no shōnen 十三歳の少年) who is very perceptive (surudoi chisei 鋭い知性; Yoshimoto 1997: 19–40), extremely empathetic, and tremendously healthy. Unlike Marika, who is unable to utter the things she would like to say, Orenji is straightforward and stubborn, and, according to himself, he exists to protect Marika (ibid.: 49). Orenji thus embodies strength, protection, and the freedom to express oneself – characteristics that Marika seems to have lost due to her trauma.

In this light, Orenji – in his role as Marika’s alter ego – embodies qualities that are socially not expected of a traumatised female “victim” like Marika. Based on Marika’s character, we can conclude that silence, restraint, fear, and general weakness/passiveness represent those traits that are demanded (or rather expected) from a traumatised female person to be identified as a victim. On the contrary, Orenji is allowed and supposed to be everything that Marika is not, and thus can never be considered a victim of anything. His existence could therefore be interpreted as a reminder of the fact that generally there are various ways how individuals express traumatisation. And yet, there are certain (mainly passive) behaviours in female rape survivors which are encouraged (or coerced) as an essential precondition for the acknowledgement of a rape survivor being a rape victim (cf. Burns 2005). In this regard, Orenji embodies the part of Marika who does not want to comply with the “common,” accepted way of dealing with a traumatisation solely through tears, fear, and sadness – although she must do so in order to be acknowledged and treated as a victim of rape.

The fourth persona Mitsuyo is the only one that was created based on a diegetically existing character, namely, Marika’s neighbour Mitsuyo. The latter is described as a “nice aunt” (yasashii obasan 優しいおばさん) who would take on the role of a mother for Marika (okāsan no yaku お母さんの役) (Yoshimoto 1997: 17–19). Marika was obviously desperate for love and care, and the neighbour Mitsuyo filled that need. At some point, Marika was separated from Mitsuyo, so she created the persona to take her place. The diegetically “real” Mitsuyo knew (or at least had a strong clue about) what was going on with Marika and her family, but refrained from notifying the authorities. It seems as if this “real” Mitsuyo used the desperation of an abused child to fill her own void of not having children herself. Nevertheless, and at least for a period of time, she was the only source of love and care for Marika. The “imagined” Mitsuyo is thus a reminder that there are not only direct but also indirect forms of abuse.

Every depiction and portrayal of Marika serves to underline the severe effects of rape on both mind and body. The fact that Yoshimoto has Marika develop DID refers once again to how – in this case, literally – soul splitting rape trauma is while concurrently functioning to express its many facets within the plot of “Marika no sofā.” The identities Marika created represent her emotional status during the rapes, strategies to survive those overwhelming feelings caused by rape, qualities she lost due to the rapes, and emotional needs that were not met. Finally, Yoshimoto made Marika infertile to stress even further the ruining nature of rape on the (here, female) body. After the character Junko reports Marika’s case to the authorities, Marika gets examined in a hospital and the doctors find that she would never be able to get pregnant and have children. The doctors conclude that the abuse has irrevocably damaged Marika’s uterus, stressing the violent and injuring aspect of rape on a female body. At the same time, the irreversible damage of Marika’s uterus resulting in her infertility refers to one possible outcome of rape which is often disregarded given that rape is rather associated with unwanted pregnancies than with the possibility of infertility for women. Yoshimoto here implicitly conveys not only how injuring the forced penetration of a uterus can be for a (female) survivor, but also for the generations to come. In this light, rape is not only portrayed as impairing the victim’s body and mind but also possibly the future of the collective.

Sakurai Ami takes a similar approach to addressing the severe effects rape has on the survivors’ psyche and body by introducing a side character named Mitsuru into the plot, who helps the main character Momiji to survive her rape trauma. Although Momiji initially tries desperately to “forget” everything about the gang rapes by “covering her memories with a lid” (kioku ni futa o shime 記憶に蓋を閉め) and “burying them in the ground of the unconscious” (muishiki no soko ni shizumeta 無意識の底に沈めた; Sakurai 2004: 9), the memories and the feelings of being gang raped keep haunting her, reappearing constantly like “a snake raising its long neck” (hebi no yō ni kamakubi o motage 蛇のように鎌首をもたげ; ibid.: 35). After a parachute jump, which she experiences as ultimately liberating, she starts longing for that same feeling of detachedness in her life. Therefore, she decides to break any ties with the world (even with her long-term partner Kō) and, when she contemplates on how to proceed, a young man named Mitsuru appears in front of her, warning her not to “run away” (nigenaide 逃げないで) but to face the “shadow” (kage 影) which “feeds off human insecurity” (kyōfu o umidashi ningen o shihai suru 恐怖を生み出し人間を支配する; ibid.: 52). Momiji does not understand his cryptic message. However, the moment she meets Mitsuru, she has the strong feeling that she has seen him before. It is only when she dreams of him that she remembers him: he was the young man she watched jumping from a multi-storied building the morning after her gang rape.

Sora no kaori o ai suru yō ni starts the morning after the gang rape with Momiji observing a young man (Mitsuru) falling like a “shooting star” (nagareboshi no yō ni 流れ星のように) from the twelfth floor of a skyscraper, hitting the asphalt upside down but not injuring himself. Momiji immediately doubts that her observation is real but thinks it is merely a realistic dream as the young man survived the fall without a single scratch (Sakurai 2004: 5–7). After concluding that she dreamt this event, Momiji remarks that her “memory has already been suspended for a few days” (kioku wa nannichi mo keika shite 記憶は何日も経過して) and is only “gradually returning to proper form” (yōyaku tadashii katachi o torimodoshita ようやく正しい形を取り戻した; ibid.: 7–8) – however, the reader will learn of the true meaning of this statement later on. In the course of the story, Mitsuru keeps showing up in front of Momiji whenever her urge to detach herself from life takes a hold of her, with Momiji continuously doubting his existence and wondering whether he is not just a hallucination, whether she does not actually hear her own voice (jibun jishin no koe 自分自身の声; ibid.: 104) when she is talking to him and whether he is not “a guy that her thoughts would summon” (“omoi ga yobu” to iu yatsu 「思いが呼ぶ」というやつ; ibid.: 75–76).

Thus, from the beginning of Sakurai’s novel, it is difficult for the reader to differentiate between the diegetic reality and Momiji’s dreams. The first encounter with Mitsuru is already surreal as him hitting the ground without any injuries would be almost impossible. As the plot unfolds, the reader is repeatedly confronted with the character Mitsuru, who eventually turns out to be created on the basis of a diegetically existing figure. However, Momiji cannot get a hold of the diegetically “real” Mitsuru; instead, he appears only at his (and not her) own will, making Momiji continuously question her own sanity. Momiji’s inability to determine whether Mitsuru is (diegetically) “real” or not is an expression of the intense and penetrating impact of rape trauma on her memory as a survivor. Although Momiji is fighting to suppress the memories of that night, they keep hunting her in different ways/forms. The fact that Mitsuru manifests as an individual character can be interpreted as a reference to Momiji’s wish – just as with Yoshimoto’s Marika – to reject the trauma, as well as encapsulate and separate it from herself. In that regard, Mitsuru becomes a remembrance of the gang rapes because his very first appearance happens directly after, forever connecting her first memory of him to the memory of that night.

The impact of the rape trauma, however, is not only reflected in Momiji’s ability to remember and/or perceive the world around her. The plot is nonlinear due to ongoing temporal leaps and breaks, so that the reader is asked to actively engage in rearranging the events to make sense of the story. This again is an integral characteristic of trauma literature as it reflects the survivor’s inability to remember chronologically (Milevski 2016: 88–89). In the factual world, the inability of rape survivors to remember their rapes and tell a linear narrative presents an obstacle for legal authorities who need to reconstruct the events in order to take legal action. As a result, survivors are often met with doubts from legal authorities who are often not trained on how to adequately work with traumatised individuals. Additionally, there are still “no definitive conclusions on how […] [it] affects individuals or on how it impacts their ability to remember and narrate” (Miller 2018: 234). In this light, fictional stories like those by Uchida, Yoshimoto, and Sakurai, which thematise the trauma-impacted mind and memory, play an important role in teaching us of the possibilities about how a traumatised individual’s memory could work in the aftermath of a rape.

Besides embodying the memory of the gang rapes, Mitsuru also serves as an expression of the rape trauma, or, more precisely, as a reflection of what rape causes to the person: death (as reflected in Wolfgang Sofsky’s term for psychological trauma: Seelenmord). Compared to physical death, however, “murder” regarding trauma does not imply the soul’s ultimate cessation: the soul survives its murder, but it changes profoundly. Therefore, Seelenmord creates a different soul, new behaviour, and a different perception of the world to the survivor – all fundamentally shaped by the traumatising experience, and thus an expression of it. Momiji’s Seelenmord is poignantly described when she reminisces about Mitsuru and realises the following:

I happened to look up […] and I saw [Mitsuru] leaning out from the 12th floor of the fire escape. The moment he fell, I split in two and could see both from below and above because of the after-effects of the drugs and the rape shock, since my soul was in a state of limbo, and I could not go back to being just a human. At the very worst moment in my life, our fateful encounter happened (Sakurai 2004: 25–26).

This excerpt suggests that Momiji was in unbearable physical and emotional pain the morning after she was raped, and, the moment she witnessed Mitsuru’s suicide, the pain in her body had already become so insufferable that her psyche underwent a split and a part of it resurrected within Mitsuru’s dead body. The description of Mitsuru hitting the ground headfirst emphasises the serious damage rape causes to a survivor’s mind, even if it is not apparent to others. Just as Mitsuru remains outwardly unharmed after his fall in Momiji’s eyes, so does Momiji after the night of the gang rapes: she goes to work and is still able to fulfil her duties “while enduring the pain in her womb, which feels as if it’s dying, and the headache“ (shinisō na shikyū no itami to zutsū o koraenagara 死にそうな子宮の痛みと頭痛をこらえながら; Sakurai 2004: 26). Since her injury is not visible to the world, it is solely up to her to express her trauma in some way for others to see, which she vehemently refuses to do because she does not want to hurt others despite hurting herself by keeping silent (ibid.: 33). This could probably be read as Momiji’s attempt to at least morally rise above her rapists whom she could not overpower on a physical and emotional level. However, Mitsuru’s recurring appearances remind Momiji of the rapes and the effects they had on her, of which she is unaware – just as she cannot ascertain whether Mitsuru actually exists or not. Mitsuru serves to remind Momiji that something utterly evil happened to her body and soul and that it ought to be acknowledged in order for her to be able to survive. Since her ability to rationalise the rape events is near impossible, Mitsuru also becomes the voice of reason while she is overly controlled by destructive emotions.

In his role as the voice of reason, Mitsuru ultimately becomes Momiji’s non-traumatised male alter ego. Momiji was enjoying her life prior to the rapes: she had a job and a stable relationship with a beloved partner, whom she wanted to marry and start a family with. Yet, after the gang rapes, she slowly but steadily starts detaching herself from life. It is when she first contemplates on how to cut off every human relationship that Mitsuru appears, telling her not to run away from the shadows (i.e., the rape trauma). Mitsuru would keep reminding Momiji of her love for Kō and repeatedly ask why she would throw this away. Eventually, Momiji confesses that she feels devalued as a person, and that she is convinced that Kō would leave her anyway after learning about both the rapes and her being a forever traumatised woman. In the end, Momiji needs to realise (and acknowledge) the true reasons she wanted to leave Kō, which all lie in her own inability to accept herself and live as a traumatised individual that is still worthy of love. When Mitsuru urges Momiji to visit Kō together for a final time, it is Mitsuru who (seemingly) interacts with Kō whereas Momiji functions as an “observer.” However, while watching Kō with (the imagined) Mitsuru, she remembers her deep feelings (fukai omoi 深い想い; Sakurai 2004: 166) for Kō and forgets all the reasons for leaving him. Mitsuru finally dies in Kō’s arms, symbolising the initiation of Momiji’s healing process.

Kō is aware of the changes within Momiji from the moment he meets her after the rapes. She appears tense, and their conversations are unusually “meaningless” (kūkyo 空虚; Sakurai 2004: 55). Although he reminds her not to keep any secrets from him, she remains silent since there is “too much she can’t tell him” (atashi ni wa ienai koto ga ōsugita 言えないことが多すぎた; ibid.: 55–57). Later, she stops answering his calls. When he comes knocking at her door, she refuses to accept him, saying that her psyche has got an illness (kokoro no byōki 心の病気; ibid.: 99).⁹ Kō urges her to go through this together, but Momiji keeps insisting that “it will take time until she heals because it’s an illness (byōki 病気) that she must cure by herself” (hitori de naosanakucha naranai 一人で治さなくちゃならない; ibid.: 100). When Momiji visits Kō with Mitsuru, Kō hints at Mitsuru being Momiji by telling him that he does not mind whether Mitsuru is “a man or a woman” (otoko de mo onna de mo 男でも女でも; ibid.: 166). Kō appears to have understood that – despite not knowing what happened to Momiji – her “illness” manifested itself as an apparently male alter ego named Mitsuru. Because Kō wants to help her, he accepts Mitsuru or Momiji, respectively, in the condition that s/he is (in).

In his role as an non-traumatised alter ego, Mitsuru eventually symbolises Momiji’s willingness to survive her rape trauma, with the latter growing within her to an extent that it becomes life-threatening for her. Soon after the night of the gang rapes, Momiji would see her own reflection, describing it as “an ugly, wrinkly face of a ghost from the underworld” (shiwa no yotta minikui chiteirei no kao 皺の寄った醜い地底霊の顔; Sakurai 2004: 74), and she would hear voices calling her to the world of the dead. At this point, Momiji still resists their call, telling them to disappear. But as the longing for oblivion and detachment grows, Momiji soon finds herself in a condition where she would oscillate between life and death, describing it as such: “It carries the feel as if my nerves (shinkei 神経) are cut off (shadan sareteiru 遮断されている) from my feelings (kanjō 感情), an unusual feeling of alienation (kimyō na kairikankaku 奇妙な乖離感覚)” (Sakurai 2004: 49). This feeling worsens even further, leading her to quit her job and move to a place where there are no people who know her, where she can live in solitude (ibid.: 77). There she lives “as a dead person” (shinin no seikatsu 死人の生活; ibid.: 107), only lies in bed, does not eat, and her “thoughts circle around suicide” (jisatsu o kuwadateteiru 無自覚の自殺を企てている; ibid.: 147). However, Mitsuru saves her by urging her to see Kō one final time. At this meeting, Mitsuru “dies” while Momiji reunites with Kō.

Similar to Marika, Momiji’s rape trauma does not only manifest on the mental but also on the physical level – for the latter, in the form of a tumorous tissue within her womb. After Momiji learns that another girl who was gang raped the same night had a positive HIV test, she visits a hospital to be tested as well. There, during a pregnancy examination, a gynaecologist discovers “something that equals a white ball” (shiroi kyūtai ni nita mono 白い球体に似たもの) within her womb that is “suffocating surrounding cells of oxygen” (shūi no saibō kara sanso o torikondeiru 周囲の細胞から酸素を取り込んでいる; Sakurai 2004: 43–44). A physician concludes that the “white ball” is “some sort of a reaction to pregnancy” (ninshin hannō no isshu 妊娠反応の一種; ibid.: 46), which will prevent Momiji from ever getting pregnant as it is growing together with her fallopian tubes. The diagnosis that the “white ball” would deprive her of her reproductive capacity was shattering for Momiji because she wanted to have Kō’s children. Now that she became infertile, she starts perceiving herself as entirely worthless – especially regarding Kō, whose children she cannot bear anymore. This alleged deprecation of herself indicates an environment in which a woman’s reproductive capacity is perceived as her sole raison d’être, which can also be interpreted as Sakurai’s critique of the prevailing patriarchal ideas reducing women to their reproductive organs. By discussing infertility in women, both Marika’s and Momiji’s stories can be interpreted as attempts to break from and criticise the patriarchal notion that deems only fertile women as valuable and thus worthy of love and respect, as well as a reminder to women that their value does not exclusively lie in motherhood.

The “white ball” becomes a strong metaphor stressing the fact that rape trauma affects the survivor’s mental and physical constitution concomitantly. Interestingly, the doctors who examine her cannot adequately diagnose what the “white ball” occupying Momiji’s womb is but are only able to describe it and compare it to perceivable and defined objects like a ball or – as Momiji herself does – a bird’s egg (tori no tamago 鳥の卵; Sakurai 2004: 44). With the “white ball,” which can be interpreted as a physical manifestation of Momiji’s rape trauma, Sakurai again stresses the rape trauma’s ineffability and intangibility, given that neither Momiji nor the medical professionals are capable of adequately naming it. Despite being incapable of finding adequate words (or terms) to define the “white ball,” the doctors can determine what it does, that is, depriving other cells of oxygen or killing them. Again, if we consider the “white ball” as a physical manifestation of the rape trauma, its impact on surrounding cells resembles the effects the rape trauma has on Momiji herself: just as the “white ball” deprives surrounding cells of oxygen (the source of life itself), the rape trauma deprives Momiji of her will to live – it is literally suffocating/killing her from the inside. Also, by indicating that the “white ball” would grow together with Momiji’s fallopian tubes, which would prevent her from getting pregnant in the future, Sakurai highlights that acts of forced penetration can cause severe damage to a woman’s womb. Finally, by the doctors describing the “white ball” as “some sort of a reaction to pregnancy,” Sakurai’s novel is the only one among the three authors to hint at (unwanted) pregnancies as a possible effect of rapes.

Just as the tumorous tissue fuses with her inner organs, the trauma merges with Momiji’s whole being, and she must learn to live with it in order to overcome it. However, her ability to survive does not only depend on herself. As shown, she cannot survive her rape trauma on her own, but she needs someone to assist her. Just like Marika and Shizuko, she depends on her surroundings to help and support her. How the surroundings react to characters suffering from rape trauma is discussed in the next section.

5 Amplifying the Suffering: Responses from the Diegetic Public to the Raped Characters

Besides striving to describe the violent nature of the very act of rape and convey an idea of how overwhelmingly it affects the female survivor’s physical and mental state, Uchida’s, Yoshimoto’s, and Sakurai’s stories serve as an enlightening insight into existing (and problematic) public responses to rape survivors. Their stories do not only address how bystanders react (or not) facing a female rape survivor, but they also give an insight into how the former’s lack of reaction additionally impacts the latter’s perception of themselves, their environment, and thus any form of social relationships. And while the reactions of both parties within the fictional stories may always vary to some extent, bystanders in Fazā fakkā, Atashi ga umi ni kaeru made, and Sora no kaori o ai suru yō ni are predominately described as amplifying the suffering of the victims.

Each of the discussed novels addresses the private and public reaction to rape survivors, with the former being defined as the family and/or that of close relationships and friendships. In the case of Uchida’s Fazā fakkā, the protagonist Shizuko is repeatedly raped within “the privacy of her home” where her mother supports the stepfather in his despicable actions. Before the arrival of the stepfather, Shizuko’s mother (who remains nameless) first appears to be very protective of her adolescent daughter’s chastity, forbidding her to even sit in shorts on the balcony during summertime because she fears perverts peaking at her. However, her protective nature does not extend to the stepfather and his actions within their home; on the contrary, she consciously allows him to touch her daughter inappropriately from an early age. Shizuko is only eleven years old when the stepfather starts “tapping” (hataku 叩く) her breasts and backside and he starts groping (nigiru 握る; Uchida 1999: 94) her when she gets her period. He even threatens that he would rather deflower Shizuko than giving her away as a bride, but all those threats and verbal abuse seem of no (or very little) actual concern to Shizuko’s mother. Whether her reactions are a deliberate and/or conscious choice or not is debateable given that she and her daughters depend on the stepfather’s income, and there are indeed some moments when Shizuko’s mother attempts to protect her daughter from the stepfather, but he keeps convincing the mother that the sexual violence he inflicts upon Shizuko is necessary, and he always succeeds. Thus, the mother turns against her own daughter and criticises and/or blames her for his behaviour. When the stepfather rapes Shizuko for the first time, the mother insists that he was only penetrating her to push out the foetus that she previously conceived with her boyfriend, thus unambiguously taking his side, and even going so far as to “justify” his actions. After Shizuko aborts the child and is raped again by the stepfather, the mother again puts the blame on her, telling her that the continuous rapes are due to Shizuko doing “things that are unusual” (futsū de wa nai koto 普通ではないこと; ibid.: 187). Since her mother is the only other female adult within the household, Shizuko believes that the mother is the only one she can turn to for protection and female understanding. However, as motherly protection is not provided, Shizuko loses trust in every other adult she encounters. From the moment the mother becomes the accomplice of the stepfather, all adults outside the private realm also appear as accomplices whose role is to keep Shizuko tightly in the stepfather’s grip.

Fazā fakkā and its sequel Atashi ga umi ni kaeru made also discuss other forms of relationships and friendships, as well as the reactions Shizuko faces when revealing that she has been a rape survivor. Her biological sister Chie 知恵, with whom Shizuko lives at home, appears to be aware of what is being done to her older sister but chooses to turn a blind eye on the violence Shizuko suffers, presumably out of fear of becoming a target of the stepfather. Thus, since the ongoing violence inflicted upon her cannot be discussed within the home, and other adults are not trustworthy in her view, Shizuko reaches out to those outside her home by confiding in her boyfriends. However, the latter would either react by not responding at all, or by suggesting that she turn to an adult (like her biological father) for help – neither the police nor other institutions are ever discussed as help options. Consequently, Shizuko lives with a profound mistrust in both adults and institutions. Even when she runs away from home, she constantly fears adults who would usually insist for her to return to her parents, legitimately asking herself whether it is right to tell those who run away from home to go back to that very home (Uchida 1998: 13). The only time Shizuko is actually supported by an adult is when she encounters the stepfather in broad daylight in the middle of a shopping street. The stepfather, who would grab her publicly and attempt to drag her home, is observed by a lot of people, but only one elderly man intervenes, asking the stepfather what he did to her if she appears to be “that afraid [of him]” (konna ni obieteiru こんなにおびえている; ibid.: 124). Apart from this elderly man, there appears to be nobody who would genuinely want to help Shizuko without having some sort of self-interest, so that every relationship becomes a “barter trade,” in which Shizuko would for example provide sexual services for conversation.

Close relationships with people that do not belong to one’s home do not guarantee help, as it is also shown in Yoshimoto’s short story with Marika’s neighbours Mitsuyo and Junko. Marika befriends her (female) neighbours, who become her only refuge from the home in which she is abused and sexually exploited. But although both women surmise that Marika’s home is not a safe space, none of them reports her case to the police or child protection services due to their own selfish interests. Both Mitsuyo and Junko are childless characters, longing for the company of children. Their desire to keep Marika around for their own satisfaction of becoming (at least) temporary mothers blinds their judgement, eventually adding to Marika’s suffering by prolonging the period of her sexual exploitation. Junko meets Marika at the age of eight years old, but she reports her case to the authorities only after she turns eighteen. Compared to Shizuko’s boyfriends, who are teenagers and thus maybe uninformed about proper reaction in the case of sexual violence and/or child abuse, Mitsuyo and Junko as adults are indeed aware of the legal system and could readily report her case to the proper authorities. However, they refrain from taking action, and in doing so they also intentionally misuse Marika. Those closest to the main characters are thus not presented as safe spaces, but rather as characters that – in one way or another – contribute to the rape survivors’ misery by further exploiting them.

Apart from the confined context of home and close relationships with other characters, the texts also broach the issue of police force. When Shizuko is caught at the train station in Nagasaki two weeks after she had run away from home in Atashi ga umi ni kaeru made, she is being interrogated by policemen on her motivation to run away. She cannot answer although she would like to, because one of the policemen happens to be a close friend of the stepfather whom she suspects to be one of his loyal supporters. Likewise, in Sora no kaori o ai suru yō ni, Momiji also refrains from reporting her rape to the police. Only in Marika’s case is police action involved, resulting in the arrest of her father. All other rapists within the fictional texts remain unreported and unprosecuted, which highlights the fact that the crime of rape is not legally sanctioned in most cases.

Besides the police, Sakurai, Uchida, and Yoshimoto address medical institutions and their treatment of raped women, as well as their attitude towards women in general. Shizuko discusses how gynaecologists treat unmarried and sexually active women on a side note. As an adult, Shizuko has many different sexual partners, and she would often suffer from vaginal injuries and unwanted pregnancies. But instead of seeing a gynaecologist and asking for treatment or a prescription for contraceptive pills, she prefers to endure the pain of abortion every time. Talking about issues such as contraceptive pills and abortions in 1994, when Atashi ga umi ni kaeru made was first published, indicates how they were associated with lecherous women. Women like Shizuko would rather endure pain (and infection), risk unwanted pregnancies, and undergo abortions – and all the risks and consequences deriving from them – than face medical staff who would judge them for having extramarital intercourse. A similar perception can be found in Sakurai’s novel, which was released a decade later. When the protagonist Momiji fears having been infected with HIV during the gang rape and visits a hospital to be tested, the medical staff urge her to do a pregnancy screening, in which a gynaecologist discovers the egg-like tumour within her womb. Although the sight of this tumour disgusts her, it is the medical staff’s behaviour towards her that is far more intrusive and startling. Besides demanding that Momiji explains the reason why she would need an HIV test in the first place and talking her into a pregnancy test, she is being interrogated on her sexual partners, their number, if she was engaging in “abnormal” (abunōmaru アブノーマル) sexual practices, if she has contracted sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and so on (Sakurai 2004: 45). The (male) gynaecologist examining her even implicitly accuses her of having done something “terribly rough” (hidoku arappoi koto ひどく荒っぽいこと) and that she ought to know that “unnatural acts lead to unnatural outcomes” (fushizen na kōi ni wa fushizen na kekka ga tomonau 不自然な行為には不自然な結果が伴う; ibid.: 46) as manifested in the tumour in her womb. He also tells her unemotionally that the tumour cannot be removed and would finally prevent her from getting pregnant in the future. Momiji is shocked and hurt by his words, thinking that there is no reason for such a “cruel” (hijō 非情; ibid.: 47) treatment, but her thoughts remain only within her mind, and she leaves the hospital in silence.

Marika is the only raped character receiving a rather unbiased treatment, probably because she has a long history of hospitalisations prior to the sexual abuse she endured her whole life coming to light. It is this abuse that leads to irreversible injuries of her womb, resulting in infertility – something the medical staff reveals to Junko “looking very sad” (totemo kanashisō ni とても悲しそうに; Yoshimoto 1997: 74). The doctors’ findings thus do not only attest to the severity of the violence Marika experienced throughout her life, but also to the notion that an infertile woman is “lacking” something considered essential to a female identity, since otherwise there would be no reason to show sadness. This interpretation is backed by Marika asking herself if there was any man who would want to marry her if she could not bear him a child. Interestingly, in Yoshimoto’s text, Junko’s husband functions as Marika’s counterpart as he is also infertile but nevertheless married to Junko. Thus, in the sense of iyashi 癒し literature which Yoshimoto’s works represent, the reading audience can still hope for Marika to become someone’s wife one day and live a “normal” life according to Japanese – or, rather, heteronormative – ideals. However, whether a “normal” life is possible after becoming a rape survivor is a highly debatable question.

6 Conclusion

The authors of the discussed literary texts embark on a journey to challenge and shake up dominant notions of rape by emphasising the violent and non-consensual aspect of the act of rape as expressed in the form of rape trauma. The novels make very clear that only the rapists see their act of raping as a form of justifiable sex. Neither Shizuko nor Momiji ever refer to their rapes as “sex”; and Marika only uses the word “sex” to describe what her identity named Happii did, whom she actively ostracises for this very reason.

The experience of rape leads to trauma that eludes language and silences rape survivors. At the same time, it completely permeates the characters and wrenches their will to live. The characters fight to survive their rape trauma(s) by attempting to escape them mentally (Shizuko, Marika, and Momiji) and locally (Shizuko), but they all fail in doing so in the long run. The rape trauma keeps hunting and tiring each character; this is expressed in different ways, like in the characters’ acts (for example, Shizuko’s abuse of alcohol) or even in the manifestation of imagined characters (Orenji in Marika and Mitsuru in Momiji). Interestingly, both Marika’s and Momiji’s rape trauma personifications are male, thus showing that female rape survivors do not categorically condemn all men of being potential rapists or foes. On the contrary, it emphasises that female rape survivors do need the support of men as well in order to overcome their rape trauma.

Each character faces the impact of hegemonic androcentric notions of rape(d women) that eventually shifts the blame away from the rapist and onto the women themselves, resulting in rapists remaining unreported and unprosecuted within the texts – with the exception of Marika’s father, who is being sent to jail but who yet managed to sexually abuse his daughter for the longest time of her life. The other two protagonists are either consciously avoiding representatives (police, medical professionals) of the patriarchal system they live in to escape being blamed for the rapes (Shizuko) or seek help only to realise that the blame (and shame) is transferred onto the raped victim instead of the rapist (Momiji). Because of the former, both unrelated and related bystanders within the texts become conscious or unconscious supporters of rapists.

By introducing infertility as a possible consequence of rape, the stories also problematise the notion of women as reproductive tools within patriarchal societies, as reflected in the treatment of Marika and Momiji by medical professionals. By exclusively narrowing the effects of rape down to damaged uteruses, medical professionals – as representatives of the diegetical patriarchal system – reveal that women are still being primarily reduced to their reproductive capacity, which is internalised also by the portrayed characters to the extent of questioning their entire worth and life’s meaning for the diegetical societies they live in.

In sum, Uchida’s, Yoshimoto’s, and Sakurai’s depictions of raped female characters emphasise rape trauma, actively breaking the taboo surrounding rape, and thus serve as enlightening resources of how to reconceptualise rape from the perspective of the raped as well as a critique of patriarchal societies’ prevailing inability to discuss rape as an extremely traumatising form of violence. To be definitively eliminated, it needs to be addressed and especially viewed from the perspective of the victims.