Thoughts from Episode 16: Tsuwabuki, NO!!

The plot developments in Torikae baya – especially in recent chapters – have a bit of a trainwreck quality to them. Not just in the sense that you can’t look away from the ongoing disaster, but also in the sense that as each carriage derails one by one, the situation just keeps getting worse. And if you thought everything was going wrong in Episode 15, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

Last time, Tsuwabuki accidentally discovered that the colleague he’s obsessed with is a bit bustier than he expected – but he’s still not quite sure what that means. In the meantime, Sara avoids him, but wisteria-loving matchmaker Shikibu-kyo no Miya hears that they’ve fallen out and so invites them both to a poetry party on a hot summer’s night. Sara wants to just make a quick appearance and then leave, especially after Tsuwabuki’s awkwardly emotional recitation, but Shikibu-kyo insists that he perform next. The heat and stress cause Sara to faint, so Tsuwabuki rushes in to take him away before anybody investigates him too closely.

Once they’re alone (with Shikibu-kyo’s encouragement), Tsuwabuki decides he needs to know what’s going on. And when Sara awakens in a fresh change of clothes, he realises the secret is now truly out. After the two have another intense exchange, Tsuwabuki promises to keep Sara’s secret. Seconds later, though, he “can’t control his feelings”, so he does what Tsuwabuki tends to do in these situations.

Now that Sara and Tsuwabuki’s relationship has taken a terrible new turn, it seems like a good time to look at how the two compare. In particular, I’m interested in how they both relate to masculinity.

Tsuwabuki can be seen as a typical, even exaggeratedly typical, Heian romantic hero. He’s emotional and passionate, and he’s constantly thinking about romance. One of the first times he and Sara interact, he’s already trying to get closer to Sara’s sister he’s been hearing about. And he openly weeps when Sara tells him to give it a rest.

Sara, on the other hand, isn’t a typical Heian man, despite all his celebrated personal qualities. As early as Episode 4, we hear that people are gossiping about Sara’s apparent disinterest in chasing girls, and when he gets married, he just lies perfectly still next to his new wife. For that matter, he even learns about the birds and the bees from Tsuwabuki (wild foreshadowing in hindsight)!

But despite this, Sara doesn’t seem all that desperate to be more of a man. He’s willing to make an effort to fit in, but notably, when he has a vision of the tengu during the eclipse, he only wishes “to be a real man” to make life a bit less complicated. When the incident is over, he even feels relieved that his wish didn’t come true. He is who he is, and he’s more concerned about being able to continue living his existing life at court. And so, during this chapter’s disastrous sexual encounter with Tsuwabuki, he thinks:

SARA                 [thinking] There's nothing "lucky" about this.

What will become of my life as a man?

What will happen to me now?

Ironically, Tsuwabuki seems much more anxious about being a man than Sara is. To readers, it’s clear early on that he’s infatuated with Sara, but he keeps trying to find other explanations for his feelings. First, he assumes he must really be interested in Sara’s identical sister, and then he decides it’s actually just lingering affection for Shi no Hime. As time goes on, he gradually recognises that it really is Sara who he wants, but he fears that this would mean that he isn’t the ladies’ man he desperately wants to be. And as a sign of how important that identity is to Tsuwabuki, here’s what he thinks to himself in Episode 9, after discovering that he wasn’t really that into Suiren once he saw her in person:

Panel from volume 2, page 129.

©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

TSUWABUKI            [thinking] At the age of 18, am I already an old man?

Could I be sick?

I must get to the bottom of this.

As he and his men cross a bridge, he looks up wistfully at the moon.

TSUWABUKI            [thinking] If I don't,

my life as a man will be over!!

As always, Tsuwabuki is being terribly dramatic here, but he describes these feelings in almost the very same way Sara describes his own feelings later – and this goes to show how important Tsuwabuki’s “life as a man” is to him. Tsuwabuki causes a lot of problems in this story, and it all basically comes back to his anxiety over living up to this masculine ideal.

There might be a bit of a delay before the next post, as I’ll be presenting at the BAJS conference later this week, but once I get to it, you can see what happens next in this wild ride!