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I'd like to propose an unlikely comparison between the Omega Gang and a savage gang of 13-year-old boys in the Japanese author Yukio Mishima's allegorical novel of post-WWII Japan, The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea.
Mishima was born into a samurai family and imbued with the code of complete control over mind and body, and loyalty to the Emperor - the same code that produced the austerity and self-sacrifice of Zen. He was also gay and a sadomasochist and committed ritual suicide at the age of 45 upon completing his masterpiece, The Sea of Tranquity tetralogy.
The Sailor who Fell from grace with the Sea centres around 13-year-old Noboru, his mother Fusako, a wealthy widow, and her lover, Ryuji, a ship's officer.
At first, Noboru idealises Ryuji - the sailor whose life is a great adventure, rugged and unhampered by emotion, he is a heroic archetype rather than a father figure.
But as Ryuji's affair with Noboru's mother develops, the boy and his gang of friends concludes the sailor is in fact soft and romantic. They regard their dissapointment in him as an act of betrayal on his part, and react violently.
At the beginning of the novel, the elements of land and sea are in harmony, as represented by the delicately told consummation scene in which man (Ryuji), woman (Fusako), earth and water are united on the backdrop of a ship's passionately moaning horn.
But as the plot progresses, Fusako's desires drown out the gentle whispers of the noble woman sea, and Ryuji becomes dissatisfied with the quest which once filled his heart. He becomes impatient and dissatisfied with the life of a sailor, and gravitates more and more towards the life of land.
As Ryuji becomes emesched in shore life, Noburu is entangled in his own struggle to find some connection to the universe. While he once found an incredible clarity in the unison of opposites he witnessed as his mother and his hero (Ryuji) had sex, he now finds that the only way to gain the same sense of power is from the rigid control of his passions that he finds in violence.
His initiation into the gang - by killing a kitten - expresses this awakening into the clarity of mind that comes with power over nature. He, like the sailor, gains an understanding of the great adventure, only with a powerful blood lust.
The stark contrast between the two most vividly described scenes in the book - the consummation of Ryuji and Fusako's relationship and the killing of the kitten - show the difference between the passive and active powers in which Noboru finds fulfillment. Killing the kitten seems to return the sense of order over chaos that Noburu glimpsed through the peephole as he gazed on the sailor and his mother.
Noburu regards the sailor's increasing domesticity - and his attempts to act like a father to him - as signs of weakness. In turning his back on the great adventure - travelling the oceans - in favour of the comforts of his mother's home, Ryuji is also regarded by Noburu to be emasculated by his affections.
The book's setting - Yokohama, a Japanese port, in the wake of the Second World War - adds a further layer of meaning. The town is caught between the combating ideals of American and Japanese culture. So the story not only represents the clash of generations and masculine vs feminine ideals but can also be considered a metaphor for the occupation of Japan by US militia and the deterioration of the strong Japanese samurai tradition.
Fusako owns a shop that imports Western goods, so represents the growing influence of the West in Japan. Noboru, upholding rigidity of spirit, stoicism, and the strength of manhood, seems to symbolize the power of patriarchal Japan.
This metaphor turns into a political statement when Ryuji (at first living in accordance with the morals Noboru holds dear, but then falling tragically under Fusakoís lifestyle), succumbs to the violent judgment of the gang and is returned to grace by death alone. In other words, Japan will become mighty again when the western values are forcibly cut out of her.
The novel climaxes when these motifs culminate in a single scene. Ryuji is killed by the gang on a deserted US army base hill which overlooks the sea. In a lightning flash of realization, he understands his weakness, and that the only way to be purged of his grandiose mistake is death alone.
How does this connect with NXM? - well firstly there are parallels between Noburo's initial idealisation of the sailor and his great adventure and Quentin's idealisation of Xavier and his dream ( - although we never see this, it is implied with Emma's comment that Quire is the professor's star pupil).
In both stories, patriachy and the absent father/father figure loom large. Quentin, having just discovered he is adopted, rejects Xavier's role as the father of the mutant nation. They consider him a collaborateur for enjoying human culture - going to the Opera - instead of tracking down Jumbo Carnation's killers. (Note, how in contrast to the professor's urbance tastes, they deck their dorm with posters of mutant bands.) Similarly, Noburo and his gang reject fathers as emasculated, unrealised men:
"There is no such thing as a good father because the role itself is bad. Strict fathers, soft fathers, nice moderate fathers - one's as bad as another. They stand in the way of our progress while they try to burden us with their inferiority complexes, and their unrealized aspirations, and their resentments, and their ideals, and the weaknesses they've never told anyone about, and their sins, and their sweeter-than-honey dreams, and the maxims they've never had the courage to live by - they's like to unload all that silly crap on us, all of it!"
Compare the tone of this diatribe to Quentin's arguments.
Another parallel concerns the issues of morality and justice. The boys in Noboru's gang, determine that they must commit a murder now, before they are adults, because the law will essentially allow them to get away with it. Quentin believes he can get away with murder because the X-Men are too weak to act, they "stare at our shoes and do nothing" - Xavier's mutant justice is ineffectual.
The father figure, representing the imposition of internalized moral - and in NXM, human - inhibitions, is a threat to both gangs. Ryuji, in refusing to punish Noburo when he is found to be spying on his mother and the sailor in bed, is confident that the lesson can be learned and internalized without external punishment. But it is this very attempt to transmute the boy's values that guarantees the gang's enmity and results in Noburo's death sentence. Similarly, the Omega gang rejects Xavier's pacifist solutions.
Finally, there are the political parallels. Switch the destruction of Hiroshima and Hagasaki for the genocide of Genosha. Noburo rejects the Westernisation of Japan, just as Quentin rejects Xavier's assimilation of human values - in admitting human students:
"All you rehetoric about man/mutant brotherhood sounded really inspiring when I was thirteen, Professor but I grew up ... and the world looks a little different when you're a little taller. Your 'dream' has failed the mutant race at every turn, professor. Human's can't be reasoned with. And the only thing we haven't actually tried yet is Magneto's way the total extermination of the human race." |
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