YuYuKo will EaT YoU

Let’s talk about Josee, the Tiger and the Fish.

In trying to cross off a few entries of popular media I had yet to watch, and reminded of it via a tweet commemorating its international release, I sat down to watch Bone’s 2020 animated film Josee, the Tiger and the Fish, a romantic drama featuring a wheelchair-bound heroine.

Before I had even finished watching the film, I bought an e-book of the source material, a 1984 short story written by Tanabe Seiko.

I will admit I did not do this because I was necessarily blown away by the story—the first point that piqued my interest in the source was that the dialect of the characters was not completely sanitized, as is the norm (see Sound! Euphonium)—but more importantly, I was intrigued by Josee. I wanted to learn more about her and how she was originally depicted, as written by a woman in her 50s, in the context of the 80s, in the context of her disability, and simply as a character who feels she could be real.

The story is a very short read, but I can easily see why it was adapted multiple times. You cannot stop thinking about her.

(Spoilers for the Original Short Story Below)

As you might expect, the animated film takes many liberties with the story (particularly the overall plot) to stretch the runtime to meet the needs of a feature length film, but you can trace many points to specific lines or scenes or comments. For instance, even though Josee is not an artist in the original story, there is a scene (or rather, a single line) where Tsuneo notices how Josee has decorated her space with (stolen) magazine clippings and other sources of color, despite having had to sell nearly everything she has left.

The story opens with Josee, leaning out of the open window of a car to exclaim, like an excited child, that she can see the sea, and the great bridge up ahead that will lead them to their destination, even as she struggles to breathe (her paralysis extends to her diaphragm), before being told off by a somewhat exasperated Tsuneo. (“Stop playing with the automatic window just because you can—with the wind in your face like that, you’re only going to faint!”). They are on their way to their honeymoon.

The story is non-linear, in the sense that it takes place as a series of flashbacks. Tsuneo is not a pretty boy with a dream, but an average Joe who, after saving Josee from rolling out into the street after being pushed by either a drunk “prankster” or murderous eugenicist, returns mostly to be fed by Josee’s grandmother whenever he has trouble finding work. “Kumiko” does not assume the name of Josee until rather late on the chronological timeline, but it is retroactively applied (except for in contemporary dialogue), as Josee abandons her birth name as if it were a dead name. Josee’s insistence in establishing and maintaining the self-defined dignity of a chosen name really is a strong indicator of her character, so it is one of the first flashbacks mentioned, and the story’s own retroactive application of the name respects this demand for dignity. “Caretaker”, by the way, is a pet name Josee uses to berate Tsuneo only after they are married in spirit, and Tsuneo notes that she only uses it when she is in a particularly good mood.

After the story’s basic introductions of Josee, Tsuneo, Josee’s grandmother, and their meeting, we continue to learn about Josee’s idiosyncrasies and how they have developed in sync with how society has and continues to treat her. While the animated film takes Josee’s parents out of the picture with the standard method of simply killing them off off screen, in the story, Josee’s parents are alive—they are just really shitty parents. Josee’s mother abandons the family early on, and her father’s second wife convinces him to abandon Josee to a “public institution” after she notices Josee, then a young teenager, mimicking her baby’s pronouns (“atai”) in a subconscious bid for the love and attention she is denied. After her parents’ abandonment, Josee’s grandmother is the only one who will take her in. While the grandmother in the film is sweet and humorous, in the short story, one of her primary motivating factors for keeping Josee locked inside and only taking her out late at night (prior to the incident), is clearly stated to be that she is embarrassed by Josee’s disability.

This social embarrassment is a common theme, and Tsuneo notes that Josee has taken to rewriting her memories with content from books she has read and films she has seen on television in response. Tsuneo steps on a landmine when he confronts her on this after Josee recounts a heartwarming episode with her father that never happened, exclaiming, “How can you say your father was kind? He threw you out of the house!” After Josee nearly makes herself sick with fury, Tsuneo reevaluates Josee’s habit of “lies” thusly: even if Josee resides in a space somewhat displaced from objective reality, those manufactured memories are not lies but her hopes and dreams, and in that sense, they are a real part of her that should not be summarily dismissed.

Tsuneo’s “journey”, in a sense, progresses through a series of revelations as he slowly understands Josee’s idiosyncrasies (at least in his own way) more and more until he cannot help but love her. The point in the story where I most strongly felt a positive shift in my opinion of him was when he approaches a friend who works in the welfare system to see if he has any explanation for Josee’s strange behavior. The friend’s response: “Disabled people constantly view themselves as being discriminated against, and that defensiveness erodes their personalities and their humanity.” Tsuneo ponders this point, but concludes that this does not apply to Josee at all. Sure, Josee reacts in ways that seem surprising and unusual at times, but he asserts that her actions are only reflective of how she has adapted to her environment, not due to any kind of “erosion” of her humanity.

While Tsuneo originally just stops by like a stray cat for food, he eventually becomes more interested in her, at least indirectly, and uses his dubious handyman abilities to build accessibility equipment and assist in renovations to Josee and her grandmother’s home. But Josee was never Tsuneo’s number one priority, so he finds himself not stopping by for a while when he gets busy with university and part time work. When he eventually returns, an unfamiliar family greets him at the door.

After hearing the news of Josee’s grandmother’s death, and in a state of semi-panic, Tsuneo tries to locate Josee, and does, but she seems somewhat emotionless. She calmly explains her new arrangements and how she has been sexually harassed by one her neighbors. Taken aback by her lack of anger and unsure of how to react, Tsuneo asks if Josee is eating properly because she does not look well.

Josee blows up. Taking both the pity and comments on her physical appearance as direct attacks on her pride and dignity, she yells at him, throws things he made for her at him, tells him both that she never wants to see him again and that he dare not leave after making her this angry, but eventually breaks down on the floor. If only her radio had not broke, she would have been able to withstand the loneliness, but now she has nothing. After some, “So, I’m just a radio to you, huh?” banter, Tsuneo kisses her. In response, Josee first invites and then half-demands Tsuneo to follow through, and they have sex — followed by the end-of-film dialogue. It’s cute.

Then they go see the tiger.

Let’s actually go back to the sex for a minute. It’s important.

There’s a bit of humor in the fact that Tsuneo starts out being all wishy-washy about it because he still views Josee as “fragile” and is afraid of breaking her. Afterwards, he throws around imagery of being caught in a trap, proclaiming he will never be able to escape her again (because the sex is just that good apparently). On the other side of things, Josee starts off acting — mimicking heroines from television dramas she has seen, in part to assert that she is “experienced”, but also just to “act the part”. However, after a while, she gives up and sort of spaces out. Hence the “…not what I expected…” exchange. Josee then continues to show love and affection after the act, which Tsuneo was not used to. At any rate, the last few barriers come down.

The tiger scene is essentially the same. There is actually less of an explicitly direct link in the story to the idea that, “there are tigers everywhere,” (although Tsuneo refers to college women as tigers), but this dangerous external force is still implied from the scene itself. The first thing Josee does after sleeping with Tsuneo is to go and see the tiger (although if Tsuneo didn’t suggest they go somewhere they may have stayed in bed for days). This is important because Josee is sort of confirming what she hopes Tsuneo will be for her. If anything, this is their marriage ceremony in unspoken vows. She does not need Tsuneo to save her from anything, and she certainly does not want his pity. She just needs him to be there so that she can continue to face life without being overwhelmed.

Returning from this final flashback and arriving at the resort, we see Josee and Tsuneo still have to deal with a lack of accessibility accommodations, and offensive levels of the public acting embarrassed by her existence, but they are happy. After Josee experiences awestruck wonder watching fish swimming all around her in the undersea tunnel at the resort, she lies in bed that night, imagining she and Tsuneo have become fish, swimming in the sea, and thinks:

“We are dead, like corpses.”

For in her mind, the way she conceptualizes complete and utter happiness is in the image of death. So it is with this thought, as happy as she ever could be, that she nestles closer to her husband and goes to sleep.

This is where I would like to clap my hands together and exclaim: “Discuss!” I continue to have many thoughts, but I cannot go on forever.

Isn’t she fascinating? Obviously I’m only dancing around her speech and actions—go read the short story yourself¹!

I hope I’ve piqued your interest, otherwise I am not sure this serves any purpose—I just wanted to continue to think about the character—a handful of tweets just wasn’t enough for me.