Translator’s note: This collective response belongs to a March 2019 debate about Kaguya-sama: Love Is War. Miyuki Shirogane, Shuchiin Academy’s student council president, combines intensive study with a part-time job; Kaguya Shinomiya comes from a conglomerate-owning family, Chika Fujiwara from a political family. See the official first-season character profiles. The title plays on Nikolai Ostrovsky’s How the Steel Was Tempered: Shirogane’s surname means “silver,” a pun developed in the imagined romance below.
Anonymous 1
Recently, I—a spectral plural subject—came across the following article about Kaguya-sama (hereafter “the earlier article”):
Breaking the Barrier Between Fiction and Reality: On Real-World Love in Kaguya-sama (Yanye Culture)
When I saw the title, I expected a serious, structuralist-inflected reading. What I found instead was an “overinterpretation” that was largely a playful distortion (ha, of course, that label is a joke too—our humble publication is often accused of the same thing). We must defend freedom of interpretation. So this article is certainly not a rebuke saying, “You shouldn’t offer readings so far beyond what ‘shallow viewers’ can understand”—to borrow a phrase from a top comment on Bilibili. Still less is it a demand that critics treat one interpretation as gospel and permit no others. Let us quote a few passages from the earlier article out of context (though we should immediately point out that this is to make our own article self-contained; if you suspect us of taking things out of context, by all means read the earlier article in full before reading this one):
For Shirogane, his disadvantaged family background means that, from the moment he enters Shuchiin Academy, he will face this fate no matter whom he marries. He might as well choose the Shinomiya family, the most powerful among them. Since he already has to sell himself, he might as well get a good price, and he and Lady Kaguya also happen to have some romantic feelings for each other. As for looking elsewhere for other girls, Miyuki Shirogane urgently needs time and energy to improve himself; having come this far, he effectively has only two choices left: Kaguya Shinomiya or Chika Fujiwara, one a BOSS in politics, the other a BOSS in business. Shirogane naturally chooses Lady Shinomiya, who likes him and whom he likes more. Once he joins the Shinomiya family, using its influence to enter politics and rise further would naturally become the logical next step.
What, then, is this article trying to do? To oppose an interpretation I find thoroughly inappropriate: to offer a counter-criticism. I distinguish two levels in the earlier article. One is its author’s interpretation of Kaguya-sama, which turns Shirogane into someone who uses romance and marriage as stepping-stones to wealth and power. The other is the interpretive logic and attitude this reading reflects beyond Kaguya-sama as a particular work. Our counter-criticism will broadly proceed on these two levels.
One thing needs clearing up about the first level of counter-criticism. Perhaps, as our opening paragraph suggests, everything in the earlier article is a playful distortion understood as such by author and readers alike. Why take it seriously? First, neither its claims nor its style consist entirely of the sort of joking distortion that says, “We both know this is absurd; let’s have a laugh and move on.” On the contrary, it contains plenty of categorical assertions about what motivates Shirogane and exposés of the way things stand in reality: “This is normal,” “The answer is, of course, valid,” “Once you understand this, you will understand…,” “therefore he might as well choose,” “…would naturally become the logical next step,” and so on. These pronouncements come with troubling value judgments. Is all of that entirely a joke? Doesn’t the author’s opening promise to look at things “from a real-world perspective” indicate that they are also expressing a non-joking attitude toward reality? If the author tries to escape criticism by declaring, “This is only a joke; I actually don’t endorse it at all,” we might as well do a little more deconstruction (if it even deserves that name), letting the earlier article itself argue back against its author’s retrospective declaration.
Second, when an article has acquired considerable influence, we must ask: even if the author originally intended nothing but a joke and does not in the least endorse Shirogane as portrayed here, or the interpretive logic and attitude the portrayal reflects, is the same really true of the overwhelming majority of its readers? Might they not accept something on either level—the interpretation of a character within the work, or the logic and attitude behind that interpretation, extending beyond the text? That gives me and the ghosts below grounds for counter-criticism.
Ghost 1
What the earlier article’s author displays is a skepticism that leads toward money fetishism. Their interpretation of love is that it is nothing but a disguise for filthy desires: all so-called “love” can be reduced to self-interested exchange. Under this interpretation, “love” ultimately returns to “relating to oneself through another person.”
But we all know that this is not the truth of love. If a difference in the lovers’ social standing is enough to make us interpret “love” as a filthy exchange of benefits, then we seem to find ourselves once again at the door of “class” (or, indeed, rank). Extend that logic and “love” becomes possible only between people of equal rank. Clearly, no one would think that right.
Borrowing from Badiou, “love” is not about “two” but about “one.”1 And:
“Lovers in the throes of passion know that love is here, like an angel watching over their bodies. When they wake in the morning, both bodies hear love’s declaration and feel an inexplicable serenity.”
—Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love2
If we roundly condemn something so beautiful as a deceptive wrapping for self-interest, how can we acknowledge the presence of the passion named “love”? Returning to the text of Kaguya-sama, isn’t it “love” that suspends the vast machinery of capital behind the story? It is precisely this love—passionate, even excessive enough to keep the audience outside the story laughing—that offers us the possibility of breaking out of the vicious circle of self-interested exchange. Only love transcends “controlling/being controlled.”
Nameless 2
I will not say that this article overinterprets Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, because the birth of the audience rests on the death of the author. That is, viewers do have the right to interpret a work; the distinction is between interpreting it well and interpreting it badly. But the earlier author’s way of interpreting it is plainly hard to agree with.
The article’s greatest problem is that it turns romance into a means of gain, spreading a vulgar interpretive logic that makes money supreme—which I find rather vulgar. Taking reality as its subject, it attempts to give readers a primer on the Shinomiya family’s wealth and then analyze the male protagonist’s relations of power and interest within this romance. It has clearly departed from what the original work is trying to say. This departure does not show us the possibility of breaking with “reality” as the earlier article depicts it. Instead, its joking tone makes readers bow before that “reality,” before omnipotent Money with a capital M. Nowhere in the work does Shirogane say he is this sort of petty fellow whose eyes light up at the sight of money. On the contrary, he is an upright person who earns his own living, insisting on supporting himself through part-time work despite his many rich and powerful friends. Shirogane scarcely ever suggests that his love for Kaguya is mixed up with the self-interested dealings of the adult world, and the work clearly offers many more angles to discuss and possibilities to explore. The article advances the skewed assumption that, after working his way into the student council, “Shirogane has only two romantic options: Chika, the BOSS of politics, or Kaguya, the BOSS of business.” It tries to lead readers’ thinking in a bad direction.
If I wanted to offer a joking distortion of Kaguya-sama, I might play on the literal, metallic meaning of Shirogane’s name, grafting it onto How the Steel Was Tempered to write an amusing little spoof for my own entertainment, “How Shirogane Was Tempered”: Shirogane, born among the workers at the bottom of society, falls hopelessly in love with Lady Kaguya, a sheltered young woman born into the corrupt big bourgeoisie yet unsullied by the mire from which she emerged… Kaguya’s father obstructs their love; with their friends’ help, the two set out to elope. Perhaps the ending brings neither reconciliation nor a happy resolution, but they insist on living together all the same… And so on and so forth. The attitude and logic of this playful distortion are clearly not the same as those of the earlier article.
We generally avoid statements that tie love to financial interests, yet the earlier article uses precisely this sensational claim as a gimmick to catch readers’ eyes. I know its title conspicuously announces “real-world love,” in an attempt to evade some responsibility. Even so, couldn’t the article give more careful thought to whether this interpretation is appropriate?
Anonymous 2
As anime and manga criticism, the earlier article has lost some of the purity of criticism that certain critics insist on: organizing the text’s material into a coherent interpretation and, apart from the industry, saying little about anything outside the work. It ventures into social reality. There is nothing wrong with that in itself.
From a social-scientific perspective, the article introduces and analyzes “reality” within an exchange-theory framework, but its understanding of that framework goes no further than “folktale”-style joking and sensationalism. It lacks serious argument from multiple perspectives. Of course, by declaring that this is merely a playful distortion, the author can evade criticism demanding more serious argument. But from the perspective of critical theory, the problems are a whole lot bigger. They include its vulgar understanding of “love.” The earlier article is also a focus of online attention and an example for others, and its prose exerts an influence whose consequences are unknown. In this respect, it has something in common with articles that make a great deal of the connection between men’s and women’s financial resources and their prospects for romance and marriage in society. Those articles, too, like to insist that they absolutely do not endorse such values in love and marriage, yet their dubious, inflammatory tone stokes readers’ anxiety and encourages their acceptance of the status quo. The earlier article happens to use Kaguya-sama as its example; other articles or answers on Zhihu may use mainstream films or television dramas. What we have here is a performative act and a reality, both brought into being through language.
Isn’t this familiar? Interpretation is free. There is nothing wrong with going beyond the text, taking hold of a work’s premises and expanding on them. But when a dish like this is served up, are we to eat it while exclaiming, “So true to life! This is reality!” (“So true to life!” is also a common refrain among the top comments on articles that peddle anxiety)—and, knowingly or unknowingly, come away with the impression that “vegetables like these (Kaguya-sama and the like) really do lend themselves to a dish with this flavor”?
Anonymous 1
All right, let me briefly sum up this counter-criticism. Counter-criticism does not oppose freedom of criticism; it refutes the content of a reading such as the earlier article’s. I hope responses to this article—not the earlier one—will spare us “Why shouldn’t someone be allowed to interpret it that way?” They can. But I oppose that reading. And spare us “The earlier author is just joking for everyone’s amusement; they don’t think Shirogane is really like that, and they don’t actually endorse the values in their humorous article.” Please first try to grasp the two paragraphs at the beginning of this article; you can then continue your defense on that basis. I firmly reject this vulgar, supposedly “hardcore” sketch of Shirogane, in which he treats other characters solely as tools for his own success, and affection and romance are mere seasoning—he “happens to like” someone (who also has money and power).
The earlier author might ask themselves: what does such a reading offer its readers? Just a laugh, quickly forgotten? Or is some disturbing contamination silently eating away beneath the surface? Might it even be strengthening the “reality” the text ostensibly exposes through its joking? And when the author attempts this sort of “hardcore” interpretation that reaches beyond the text, have they seriously considered whether the “reality” they arrive at requires much more careful thought? Of course, there are minor issues too: in what sense can bloodline “purity” and “bloodline optimization” coexist? And why does one paragraph say that “control of shares is far more practical than marriage alliances,” only for the next to forget about shares when discussing outside capital, without considering a straightforward transfer of shares—or other ways of exchanging benefits through that much more practical means? We will not pursue these details further. They are not the principal issue that needs discussing.
We anonymous ghosts are, of course, well aware that questioning the earlier article in this way is a distinctly hostile act. But we really do bear its author no personal hostility. We are challenging the interpretation, not attacking its author as a person.