Shônen manga (少年漫画), which literally translates into Japanese comics for young teen male, has been one of the biggest global cultural phenomenon since the 1980s. First meant for a Japanese male teenage audience, it is today one of the most globalized cultural goods, comparable to Disney or Hollywood movies. Every year, hundreds of million copies of manga are sold around the world, and the figures keep increasing. And among the different genres, shônen manga is by far the most popular, with series like Dragon Ball, Naruto, One Piece, Demon Slayer or Attack on Titan. To clarify, a manga refers to a comic book, while anime describes an animated series, often derived from a manga.
Written by men, for men, and depicting mostly male main characters, shônen manga are often rightfully criticized for perpetrating sexist and often harmful representations of women. Female characters are indeed usually support characters with less agency and backstory, depending on the male character to save them and unconditionally subordinated to him. Although there are different kinds of typically strong female characters like the tsundere onna (ツンデレ女), their apparent roughness is usually hiding their secret love for a male character, thus reducing them to sentimentally-driven female stereotypes.
In this article, I aim to analyze a popular shônen manga from the 90s and 2000s, Inuyasha, under a gender theory perspective. Very interestingly, this manga focuses on a female character, Kagome, the reincarnation of another female figure, Kikyo. Yet it is titled after the male hero, Inuyasha, the romantic partner of both Kikyo and Kagome in two different lifetimes. Even most interestingly, Inuyasha was written by a female manga artist, Rumiko Takahashi. Looking at scenes from episode 31 of the anime, I aim to explore the depiction of two conflicting types of masculinities, toxic masculinity and positive masculinity. By doing so, we can infer on both the realistic and idealistic assumptions on how a man is and should be, as embodied by the character of Inuyasha.
Inuyasha (犬夜叉) is a manga series published from 1996 to 2008 on the Weekly Shônen Sunday (週刊少年サンデー) by the Japanese publisher Shogakukan. It is written by female mangaka Rumiko Takahashi, also known for other popular works such as Ranma ½ (らんま½) or Rinne (境界のRINNE). The 56-volume long manga depicts the story of Kagome Higurashi, a typical highschool girl, who gets transported into 16th century Japan where she meets a half-human, half-yôkai (妖怪, which could translate into demon) man called Inuyasha. Together with other characters they meet on their journey, they travel around a mythological medieval Japan in order to assemble fragments of a sacred jewel, fight an evil force and restore peace. With over 50 million copies sold and multiple awards, Inuyasha is a best-selling manga series.
The anime series ran from 2000 to 2004 and then from 2009 to 2010, also with success. Episode 31, titled "Jinenji, Kind Yet Sad" (心優しき哀愁の地念児), first aired in June 2001. In this episode, Kagome and Inuyasha encounter Jinenji, another half-human and half-demon, wrongly accused of devouring humans and bullied by villagers. The duo help him prove his innocence and Jinenji ends up killing the actual demon that was eating people, causing the villagers to owe and respect him.
The storyline clearly establishes parallels between half-demons Jinenji and Inuyasha, both dealing differently with the bullying they have been facing for being different, inflicted by (presumably mostly male) humans. At the core of this exploration, it is their personality development that is being scrutinized, or more precisely the construction of their masculinity.
Researchers Stephen Whitehead and Frank Barrett (2001) describe masculinities as "those behaviours, languages and practices, existing in specific cultural and organisational locations, which are commonly associated with men, thus culturally defined as not feminine". As they importantly note, masculinities can be understood as plural, as there are different widespread behaviors performed mostly by men. In her canonical book Masculinities written in 1995, Australian researcher R.W Connell (1995) identifies 5 main categories of masculinities. The following list was taken from the webpage "Masculinities" of the Council of Europe, which summarizes her argument:
"Hegemonic masculinities [They] are masculinities that are highly visible, respected, and occupy a position of authority in relation to other masculinities, within a particular setting. (…) Hegemonic masculinities can be seen as dominant in the entire gender order. (…)
Complicit masculinities (…) Complicit masculinities are those that benefit in general from the social dominance of men, while not actively seeking to oppress women. (…)
Subordinate masculinities Within the overall framework, there are gender relations of dominance and subordination between groups of men. The most common example is the dominance of heterosexual men and the subordination of homosexual men. From the point of view of hegemonic masculinities, homosexuality is easily assimilated to femininity, and is therefore seen to be inferior. Other examples include men who have made a conscious effort to contest and 'exit' from hegemonic and complicit positions, or those whose physical appearance does not conform to standards set by hegemonic exemplars.
Marginalised masculinities Marginalised masculinities are those that are categorised as different, on the basis of class, ethnicity or status. They may display and enjoy masculine power in certain contexts but are always ultimately compared to the hegemonic norms and images.
Protest masculinities Protest masculinities represent a pattern of masculinity constructed in local working-class settings, sometimes among ethnically marginalised men (…)."
Considering that Inuyasha and Jinenji both possess visible features marking their difference (cat hears on one side, a monstruous morphology on the other), one can argue that they both fall into the marginalized masculinities, discriminized for their physical otherness. They both indeed report having been bullied by dominant groups.
These groups are typically structured by hegemonic and complicit masculinity behaviors. Although non of the villagers bullying Jinenji stand out as a leader imposing his rules, hegemonic masculinity performs in a way that crowds falling under complicit masculinity behavioral patterns will perpetrate discrimination that both impose and support hegemonic masculinity. In other words, hegemonic masculinity is so embedded in their society that it does not need to be embodied in order to perform its authority.
While this article does not aim to dig too deep into concepts, we may note that Raewyn Connell's work on hegemonic masculinity is a continuation of Antonio Gramsci's work on cultural hegemony in the 1930s, Michel Foucault's concept of biopower in the 1970s, and Judith Butler's contribution to gender theory in the 1990s, just to mention but three key thinkers. Not to mention the numerous thinkers that have consolidated the knowledge that gender is a social construct.
Hegemonic masculinity performs in a way that complicit people will perpetrate discrimination that both impose and support hegemonic masculinity.
Going back into character analysis, while Jinenji and Inuyasha share this common history of being bullied, they each developed opposite strategies to cope with it. We can analyze it again using Connell's 5 categories of masculinities. On one side, Jinenji falls into the subordinate masculinity type. He resigns himself to being bullied and demonstrates a typically feminine behaviour such as empathy for the ones suffering and caring for his mother. Besides, he befriends Kagome during the episode, in a manner than one might interpret as flirtatious, and others as a gay man/straight ally woman dynamic.
On the other side, Inuyasha clearly asserts himself as a dominant figure, fighting, giving orders, hiding his weaknesses. By resisting being assigned to a marginalized masculinity label, he has constructed an image of himself borrowed from the typical standards of hegemonic masculinities.
The narration establishes contradictory injunctions for Inuyasha in terms of characters, or masculinity, development. Indeed, is it expected from him in every episode that he saves Kagome and the rest of the team, while in the meantime he is also tasked to learn to rely on others and to accept his non-almightiness.
In this particular episode, an interesting implicit agreement is made between Inuyasha and Jinenji's mother during the climactic scene. As Jinenji is fighting against the monster killing the villagers, Inuyasha rushes in to help, but then stop, summoned to do so by the mother. Then they both watch Jinenji demonstrate his strength, or one could say his virility. This scene is typical in many narratives on harassment, where the person bullied needs to prove themself in front of the bullies in order to win their respect.
On a side note, let us point out the unfairness of the situation, between Inuyasha that is very charismatic and handsome, and Jinenji that is depicted as quite monstruous. While Inuyasha encourages Jinenji to go through the same path he did, that is asserting his virility to win respect, at no point could Jinenji win Inuyasha's hegemonic status.
Interestingly however, by the end of the fighting scene, Jinenji manages to kill the monster. He wins the respect of the villagers while also demonstrating empathy, giving them herbs to heal their wounds. Such display of attributes typically considered as feminine surprises his mother (see picture above), which again resonates a homosexual coming out story, or in any case an assertation of both masculinity and femininity within one male body. The two protagonists then leave Jinenji who can now live happily as he is, a half-human, half-demon, with both masculine and feminine personality traits.
As usual in shônen manga, the most important lessons are not the ones learnt by side characters such as Jinenji, but how their personal growth echoes the hero's own storyline.
Inuyasha owns a history of failure. He acted recklessly and solitarily (both features of hegemonic masculinities) after feeling betrayed by his previous love, Kikyo. For that, he payed the price of remaining dormant for 50 years. In this new lifetime with Kagome (Kikyo's reincarnation), Inuyasha is thus on a quest to learn from his failure in order to succeed in restoring peace. From a psychological and gendered analysis of the plot, he thus needs to abandon the toxic masculinity behavior that caused him to fail, in order to embrace a more positive masculinity.
The notions of "toxic" (assimilated to "hegemonic") vs. "positive" (or "healthy") masculinities are buzzwords, popularized since the 1980s by feminist movements and somehow borrowed by the international development field in order to describe the cultural stakes inducing gender inequality worldwide, and to offer a model of how men could (or should) behave in a gender-equal society. This is a very short and surely reductive description of those terms, but what interest us here is the dichotomy between toxic/positive, strong/weak, current/future, real/ideal notions of masculinities.
The 31st episode of Inuyasha ends with the eponymous character confessing for the first time to Kagome his coping strategy of using power to resist oppression, and the loneliness that resulted from doing so.
This introspection is a rare moment of sensibility for Inuyasha, which Kagome points out and congratulates him for having. Her exact words are interesting to analyze :
うん、だから時々は弱いことも見せてね！ Uh-huh… So sometimes, you can show me your weak side.
Three elements need to be highlighted from this statement. Firstly, Kagome is encouraging Inuyasha to express himself. She thus performs the role of the adjuvant in Inuyasha's quest towards positive masculinity, an identity where he can accept his weaknesses, that he does not need to be the one always saving the others (and particularly women) or again that he can rely on others to help him too. Secondly however, the use of "sometimes" (時々) is a reminder that in a shônen world, heroes might explore the spectrum of positive masculinities, but it is still expecting from them to save people at the end of the day. This limitation in frequency illustrates that positive masculinity is and shall remains an ideal, but it is neither expected nor desirable that it becomes a new full-time norm.
Thirdly, the fact that showing vulnerability is called "showing one's weak side" also signifies that attitudes often considered as feminine, such as being in touch with one's feelings, are to be associated with a weakness. While this weakness is valued by Kagome, calling it a weakness further fuels the overall ambiguity about the real end of Inuyasha's quest for a positive masculinity. He himself reacts to the mention of the word "weak" (弱い), feeling attacked.
It is thus a very complex and contradictory quest that was set for Inuyasha. Beyond the actual journey around Japan, the manga can be read as a personal journey towards redemption and self-improvement.
This 31st episode is key on exploring the different masculinities that interact in this shônen manga and anime. The comparison first between Inuyasha and Jinenji vs. the villagers gives us a glance of the psychological depth of Inuyasha, who has been suffering bullying for being neither a human nor a demon. Besides, the close comparison between him and Jinenji highlights his virility, but also shows his growth by the end of the episode as he eventually is able to express more vulnerability (like Jinenji).
While touching the issue of hegemonic masculinities, this episode does not call for a transformation of our value system. Indeed, by the end of the episode, Inuyasha is praised for making one step further towards a more positive masculinity, but is also reminded what is expected of him a the male hero of the story. Besides, Kagome remains a support character in this episode, mostly there to encourage and comment on Inuyasha's progress. Finally, the two protagonists conclusion on what is desirable, that is the feeling of being surrounded by friends, but also implicitly by a loving woman, consolidates a heterosexual and patriarcal take on an ideal society.
One thing that I decided to leave undiscussed in this article is the social construction of toxic vs. positive masculinities, both of which, as we see in this episode of Inuyasha, are quite diverse and not so dichotomic. A final thought I have is that while those terms clearly convey a bad vs. good expression of masculinity, we might all have different definitions of "toxic" and "positive" masculinities. Consequently, such remark calls for a deeper understanding on the diversity of masculinities, and on their construction.
As to whether Inuyasha succeeds in his personal journey by the end of the manga… I have no idea yet, as I stopped watching after episode 31 to write this article… I shall discover about it soon!
I wrote this article in August 2022. I am currently working as a project coordinator for a NGO on gender equality, and remain an unconditional lover of manga and anime culture, despite being quite critical on their usual gender representations. I talk about it a little bit (in French) in this Tiktok video. I also wrote this article out of a growing interest in the construction of masculinities around the world… Feel free to reach out to me if you want to share your thoughts on that topic!