We Don’t Need Interpretation; We Need an Erotics of Art
Work that explores the relationship between Persona—and even Shin Megami Tensei as a whole—and analytical psychology can undoubtedly help us understand the foundations on which Atlus builds its worlds. It should never be dismissed as useless. Yet whenever I read this kind of interpretation, something feels strange. What do we mean by interpretation? Quoting the definitions of “persona” and “shadow” from Psychological Types? Explaining the “collective unconscious” with language originally meant to sort out relations between poetry and psychology? Have we gone astray? Are we still capable of returning to the starting point of interpretation? Extracting bits of knowledge, analyzing concepts one by one, patiently cataloguing the basic premises of a story—is there a task more primitive and more essential than these? I am in no position to decide whether other interpreters have set off in precisely the wrong direction, so I offer this clumsy essay only as an experiment: an attempt to revive the kind of awe Mr. Moretti speaks of. I hope interpretation of excellent works will stop being satisfied with the smug pleasure of spotting one or two minor references. I do not mean to claim that my own article stands above others. I sincerely hope that minds far more capable than mine will refuse to be confined to a single road. To borrow that old admonition almost literally: if all we can see is the splinter, where will we ever find the beam?
“suil, suil, suil arun, suil go siocair agus suil go cuin”—just as the person singing these lines can hardly avoid looking like a drunk wandering away from home, the Phantom Thieves, fixed addresses notwithstanding, often drift helplessly aboard Schopenhauer’s boat. After all, the game once wanted to tell of a wanderer’s great undertaking. Turn the Muse’s story of Homer’s man—Odysseus—inside out: the home-seeker arrives instead on a distant battlefield whipped by storm, where he joins foreign friends in resisting the gods‘ control over mortals. It is just as Tennyson wrote: “Some work of noble note, may yet be done, / Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.” Like the epic of Odysseus, what the characters of Persona 5 seek is true freedom from the confinement of the flesh and the manipulation of fate.
Katsura Hashino, producer of the series since Persona 3, said in a Famitsu interview (see the September 2015 issue) that the inner otherworld called the “Palace” this time contains the power of the “picaresque hero,” a kind of hero people long for but cannot find in the real world. In the same vein, he stated again on Toco Toco TV: “I wanted to give the game the feeling of a picaresque novel.”
A little investigation into the word and the works associated with it turns up the usual account: picaresque is generally said to derive from the Spanish picarón, roughly meaning a rogue, hoodlum, or scoundrel, with a still earlier ancestry sometimes traced to the Vulgar Latin adjective piccare. In a broad sense, stories of wanderers that rebel against the conventions of chivalric romance, such as Don Quixote, can be placed near this tradition; Lazarillo de Tormes is usually treated as the genre’s beginning in the stricter sense. It was followed by works such as Guzmán de Alfarache, even less constrained by prevailing ethics, while the device in Guevara’s and Lesage’s versions of The Limping Devil—climbing to the top of a church spire and looking down upon the ugliness of the whole city—will feel at least somewhat familiar to anyone who has gone through this game’s adventure. Hashino has also described in interviews the importance he places on the act of “looking down over” a city: thinking in a restaurant on the top floor of a high-rise let him see both Tokyo and his own self hurrying through it. In the game, the end of one day and the arrival of another repeatedly appear against bird’s-eye views of Tokyo. As players move deeper into the incident, they see that “man is a wolf to man” and come to understand that “when people crowd together and become a mass, the beasts and demons that have always lain hidden and asleep within each person are released.”
The protagonist of picaresque literature enters the story in humble circumstances but can often climb toward the upper reaches of society, teaching himself deception, flattery, and similar techniques along the way until he becomes the one who rules, consumes, and exploits others. Once harmed by society, he now repays his age in kind. The picaresque novel mocks the piety, loyalty, and other supposedly chivalric virtues celebrated by romance. From the viewpoint of bankrupts and failures, in the most streetwise voice and with the most worldly strokes, it sketches a society ruled by ruthless opportunists, greedy and pedantic clerics, and nobles.
Seen in terms of Persona 5‘s inheritance from the picaresque tradition, the development team chose a common background for the members of the Phantom Thieves: all are “people who have had the place where they belong taken from them.” They cannot fully enter small circles of social life, nor can they fully accept certain established social values and ethics. They possess talent and admirable qualities, yet are branded as outsiders and isolated beyond the social circles of the environments they inhabit. But the strange expression “picaresque hero” tells us exactly where the difference lies: the members of the Phantom Thieves drift and suffer setbacks, yet hold fast to their convictions; they hate evil fiercely without losing compassion for the weak. Unlike traditional picaresque protagonists, who use tricks to obtain wealth and position, the Phantom Thieves use powers beyond ordinary society to punish evildoers above them, and then return once more to their former everyday lives as ordinary people.
When I Took Persona Out of Jung’s Domain, I Heard a Song
“Everything is different from us; that is why everything exists.” In Fernando Pessoa’s name, meanwhile, pessoa means “person” in Portuguese and shares a Latin ancestry with persona. This poet—this maker of heteronyms who met self-doubt, schizophrenia, and hysteria with silence and poetry—inevitably calls to mind Kierkegaard, himself a writer of countless names. And one cannot help wondering: might thinking itself, as a form of communication and scrutiny within the self that refuses confinement to a single viewpoint, be the origin of the special ability held by protagonists of the Persona series? Is this attitude and demand—to acknowledge difference and embrace distinction—one of the ideas the series has carried since Persona 3 and has tried to convey?
In an interview at the end of 2013, Hashino revealed this about the game: its characters live difficult lives in modern society and are bound in one way or another, troubled and suffering; but once they overcome their trials and break their chains, the powerful catharsis and encouragement that follow—the laughter and tears—are what the game wants to communicate. On September 1, 2014, after SCEJA’s event, Hashino again described the work on the official site as “a story of young people living in today’s society, struggling in the metropolis.”
In our age, many people carry troubles large and small without knowing how to move forward. Simply inheriting existing rules or values may not bring happiness, yet deciding to break through the status quo is difficult.
As a work once characterized by what Hashino called a “picaresque romance,” with a focus on stories told from the side of “criminals,” the form it ultimately took is deeply connected to one of his questions: “If Arsène Lupin appeared in the modern day, how would he affect society?” Unlike the protagonists of the previous games, who were swept into events, the protagonist here acts on an “impulse to break the status quo,” works to “keep things from heading toward ruin,” tries to draw society’s attention, and searches for a sense of recognition that he himself does not fully understand.
“Why should I have one fixed and unchanging appearance?” he says. “Why shouldn’t I change a single identity and thereby avoid danger? My actions are enough to establish who I am.” Then, proudly: “It would be wonderful if no one could ever say with certainty: this is Arsène Lupin. What matters is that people dare to conclude: this was done by Arsène Lupin.”
—L’arrestation d’Arsène Lupin
After entering Tokyo, we hear a pedestrian complain: “The police are useless too. They’re nothing but tax thieves.”
“This country of ours is already distorted. Can’t we get a single halfway decent politician? Living in a country like this, there’s no damn hope at all.”
“Do you hear me? Society has orders and powers that you simply cannot resist” (the shopkeeper).
“We refuse, within ourselves or among friends, to admit fully that aggressive, self-protective, repulsive, lascivious frenzy belongs to the nature of the organism. Instead, we tend to idealize, whitewash, and reinterpret reality, while blaming the fly in the ointment and the hair in the soup on some hateful person.”
“What I think you should consider is this: what problem would arise if all humanity became corpses whose souls had been covered over? Humanity would lose its sense of beauty and its sublime spirit, but at the same time it would also lose the ability to understand the sublime. If that is so, then what exactly would be wrong with it?”
After finishing Persona 5, are you capable of answering the question that Project Itoh, speaking through The One, puts to modern humanity? Perhaps one source of the game’s appeal is that the rebellion it advocates is not a matter of overthrowing some fictional tyranny or defeating formulaic stock characters whose destinies have already been scripted. Its temperament is closer to Socrates, willing to lose the favor of the crowd and incur the anger of the state. What it truly despises is the decay and corruption of the age, and the petty multitude that refuses to think about crushing pressure and emptiness. The unfortunate part is that this demand can only be realized through supernatural power.
A gifted teacher humiliates his students; a celebrated painter steals other people’s inspiration… We busy ourselves punishing one brazen evildoer after another. But when the player finally enters the “false god’s” sanctuary, it becomes clear that neither the king in the castle nor the captain of the ark—vicious though they are—is the demon king responsible for the world’s decay and distortion. They have merely moved from a cage without desire or hope into imprisonment within their own distorted desires. The public fears evildoers but does not long for heroes. People hate the restraints and rules that already exist yet continue to live by them; they lack the courage for change and do not want to bear its consequences. Rather than chase an elusive dream or freedom, they would sooner submit to the manipulations of “god” or “fate.” Who, then, still longs to meet in a place where there is no darkness?
“A god is born / the others die / the thing itself has never arrived and never departed / only one mistaken conversion. Now we have another eternity / but the one that left was better.”
“The first stage of the mythological journey, which we call the call to adventure, signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred the center of gravity of his spirit from within the bounds of society to an unknown region… It is often a place of strange, shifting figures, unimaginable ordeals, superhuman deeds, and limitless delight.”
Whether it constructs its world with ideas from analytical psychology or uses an art style close to urban life in order to distinguish itself as far as possible from the traditional JRPG, the story of Persona 5 still follows an epic heroic structure that deliberately poses as heterodox: what we might call a coming-of-age rite or rite of passage, the process of separation—initiation—return. Tearing off the “persona,” subduing and mastering the Shadow, entering a Palace to change another person’s mental state… all these elements are saturated with symbolic imagery and borrow from ancient narrative structures and ways of thinking.
“The wind blows south, then turns north; round and round it goes, returning again to its course. Rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is never full, and the rivers return to their source.” Perhaps this is the greatest difference between Persona 5 and the traditional hero story. Whether the traditional hero finally chooses to return home or depart, struggle and sacrifice always secure an appropriate reward: peace and harmony, or rebirth. Yet the final scene of the car driving farther and farther away instead makes me think of Ishmael peeking in on the sailors at dinner: men who have survived raging storms by a hair’s breadth, who hunt whales without fear, sit around the table and nevertheless show a hint of shy unease. I did not feel, in this subdued ending, that the world had undergone any “renewal.” Pedestrians still stream past one another; society keeps running as usual. The false god is gone, and the Phantom Thieves too are destined to become a tale. Behind the lively laughter lies ordinariness. Society can worsen without collapsing; the world can move toward goodness without ever becoming a Pure Land.
“Human beings who indulge their own temperament and individuality will ultimately go off the rails and become the dregs of society.”
Yet none of the story’s many characters—whether you end by hating them or identifying with them—can be ignored as they insist upon their own distinctive traits, carry their own ambitions and desires, and head toward different endings. Even the wicked among them are rarely mediocre. Inflated desire brings destruction; a smooth life turns to hardship; the strong bind themselves through arrogance… The conduct and experience of these varied figures repeatedly calls Marlowe’s Faustus to mind:
Till swoln with cunning, of a self-conceit,
His waxen wings did mount above his reach,
And, melting, heavens conspir’d his overthrow.
Perhaps the Phantom Thieves are the sort of tragic figures Aristotle describes as falling “through some error, not through depravity.” Yet once they gain power, they are driven by their own idea of “justice” and run themselves ragged—at least in part—in search of recognition. It is difficult to feel toward them the tragic dramatist’s lament that ingenuity cannot prevail over fate. The “guilt” carried by a tragic hero comes from erroneous action produced by ignorance or fate; in its earliest sense, the word means an arrow missing its mark. The cathartic purification born from pity and fear does not seem particularly suited to explaining the appeal of this game.
“Every morning when I wake, I am so anxious I can hardly get through the day, almost in tears. I watch the day slip away and accomplish nothing. My longing for happiness is worn down by fault-finding, while the surging creative spirit in my breast is delayed by the foolishness of life. Whenever night falls, I lie down in unease; my mind still finds no peace, and wild nightmares make me tremble. The god within my breast deeply stirs my heart and commands all my powers, yet cannot influence the slightest thing in the outer world.”
“Whatever clothes I wear, I feel the pain of a constricted life. I am too old merely to play, yet too young to renounce desire. What can this world still give me?”
If one really must draw some “lesson” from this game, I think it should be to spit without hesitation upon the attitude toward life shown by Faust when Goethe first brings him onstage. The game is like an attendant of Mephistopheles: those marvelous phantoms and spirits stir the vitality of youth and give people the courage to open new paths and shoulder consequences without fear. As Chihaya tells Akira: “I am only a fortune-teller. My work is to offer guidance to people whose hearts are weak, so that they will not be manipulated by fate, but will hold fast to their convictions and open up a new future.” We who are weak and confused may be thoroughly tired of endless exhortation, but do we not still need to search for that kind of vigor? “I once met a young man. In a way different from mine, he is trying to set this world right. But that is an unimaginably huge mountain. I cannot travel with him, yet I will not say goodbye. We will surely meet again at the summit. He is fighting desperately to do what he wants to do. Everyone, go and find what it is that you want to do.” So says Yoshida.
(our souls) always moving as the restless spheres,
Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest,
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all——
Marlowe, TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT, SCENE VII
- Walton’s sister Margaret Saville
- Frankenstein’s mother Caroline Beaufort
- Frankenstein’s neighbor Justine Moritz
- Frankenstein’s cousin Elizabeth Lavenza
Thanks to Gcores user LS_Crusader, whose overview of the Persona series pointed out the relationships between personnel in the Velvet Room and characters in Frankenstein. I did some simple follow-up searching on that basis and list the correspondences above.
I am also indebted to Zhihu user 土拨鼠桑‘s answer to “What Are the Characteristics of Kazuma Kaneko’s Art?” and to Persona Tieba user 南条圭’s post “A Few Words on Kazuma Kaneko’s Design Ideas Across Different Works + DDS Settings.” Although Kaneko was not directly responsible for the art of this game, their introductions gave me a better understanding of the tone of the early series and Atlus’s broader artistic preferences.
The staff list uploaded by Bilibili user Clarke-超高校级的霉运 reduced my workload.
P9 user psv_pengchao’s substantial series “Persona 5 Worldview and Character Settings: Compilation and Research” greatly deepened my understanding of many aspects of the game, and I drew a great deal of inspiration from it.
Important starting points for this article also included: Hashino’s message translated by TGBus in September 2014; TGBus translations of Dengeki and Famitsu interviews with Hashino in February 2015 and a video interview in May 2016; Famitsu interviews with Hashino posted on February 5 and February 10, 2015 on Weibo user 茶茶Ange’s blog; a Famitsu interview translated in September 2015 on Sina Blog by user “Malas_期待NS火纹新作”; the Toco Toco interview with Hashino translated and uploaded in the first half of 2017 by Bilibili users 薛定谔的树懒 and 卡姐Cara from a YouTube user’s translation; A9VG’s interview with Hashino; and VGTime’s June 2017 translation of an IGN interview. I used these interviews to search for the game creators‘ sources of inspiration. This essay could only be written on top of the translation work done by people who love games.
The limits of my own position and ability may prevent me from becoming that kind of contributor, but we are willing to do everything we can to deliver strong original work and communicate our thoughts and feelings. Personally, I look forward to being made obsolete by purer and more profound essays, and refuted by judgments wiser and sharper than my own. May I travel with you and witness the growth of our peers.
