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Castration Anxiety
in Japanese Group-Fantiasies

Kenneth Alan Adams, Ph.D.
Lester Hill, Jr., Ph.D.
Volume 26, Number 4, Spring 1999

.In Japan, comic books are a national pastime-as widespread as baseball, ramen noodles, a sushi bar, and Toyota. Everyone reads manga, from school-age children eager for fantasy escape from the competitive rat race of educational upward mobility, to salarimen rushing to work in the adult version of the rat race game, to mahjong players intent on a tale or two of "The Lewd Mah Jongg Devil," to female romantics swooning for another flowery episode of indeterminate gender longing and sexual attraction, to devotees of the samurai tradition of sword and strife and suffering, to every imaginable variety of sports enthusiast-from boxing and soccer, to golf and volleyball, to racing and wrestling.1 In Japan everyone reads manga.

Comics are not only ubiquitous in the Land of the Rising Sun, they are also significant. As one authority noted, "It is no exaggeration to say that one cannot understand modern Japan today without having some understanding of the role that manga play in society."2 Recent studies rely extensively on manga in their efforts to delineate the psychosocial and psychosexual dynamics of Japanese society.3 For the psychohistorian, manga are particularly appealing for studying Japan because they provide access to the fantasy life of virtually the entire nation, and the type of access is crucial. Manga constitute "an extremely unfiltered view of the inner workings" of group-fantasies. Relatively free of editing and committee-style production techniques, manga offer virtually uncensored, stream-of-consciousness entry into Japanese psychic reality.4 There is about them an obvious and unmistakable "dreamlike quality."

They speak to people's hopes, and fears. They are where stressed-out modern urbanites daily work out their neuroses and their frustrations. Viewed in their totality, the phenomenal number of stories produced is like the constant chatter of the collective unconscious-an articulation of the dream world. Reading manga is like peering into the unvarnished, unretouched reality of the Japanese mind.5

That realm, especially the fears and anxieties found therein, is precisely the terrain that we wish to explore, and what better way to indicate the nature of that unvarnished dream world than to begin with a dream.

Absent Fathers, Frustrated Mothers

In previous publications we have discussed the interpersonal and intrapersonal dynamics of growing up Japanese-style.6 A review of that material is necessary to provide the appropriate context for understanding the fantasy material that is to follow.

Discriminated against in the job market, defined as unclean in a culture obsessed with purity, Japanese women achieve their only legitimate status in the roles of wife and mother. Subordinated and derogated, they find themselves isolated with their children at home, and are required to rear them alone, as Japanese men forsake the role of father in pursuit of the treasures at the end of the salariman's rainbow. Japanese men are away from home until well into the night, drink excessively as they carouse with co-workers after work, routinely are unfaithful to their wives, and customarily treat their spouses almost as if they were mentally retarded, referring to them not by name but with a disdainful, "Hey, you!"

Mothers therefore take care of the children, including the eldest child-Father, and have grievances. They do all the chores associated with maintaining a household and are demeaned in the process. They bear the responsibility of childrearing while their nocturnal boarders fornicate with someone from a bar and come home drunk, expecting their wives to continue to "mother" them faithfully all the while. True, wives frequently control family finances, but to be humiliated daily by the high status guest in the household seems a poor bargain. This may seem especially difficult to tolerate given that, in contrast to an outward appearance of the powerful samurai, the Japanese male at home is a bumbling incompetent hardly able to function. He is unwilling to help with the children or around the house, and arrogantly dismisses such activity as beneath him. Women's frustration has doubtless increased further with Japan's recent pursuit of romance and love as the basis of marriage. Whereas women may have hopes of love, tenderness, companionship, and affection, the reality they face in marriage is perpetual spousal absence, persistent contempt, macho posturing, drunkenness, and occasional abuse. In short, marriage is a disappointment, a gendered Asian version of master-servant relations premised on infrequent sexual episodes and unending domestic service.

Japanese women are expected to endure the humiliation and pain of their devalued status with a smile and deference, yet it is not hard to discern the outlines of frustration, fury, and sexual longing beneath the public facade of serenity. In the roles open to them, Japanese women generally experience little satisfaction as wives. Marriage is merely a necessary precondition for the pursuit of what life is really about-motherhood. It is eminently understandable and possibly inevitable, given the way Japanese society functions, that Japanese women emphasize the maternal role as paramount and turn to their children for whatever satisfactions life may bring. Yet it is also inevitable that their frustrations and resentments, not to mention the rage and longing that they experience in their relationships with their husbands, will find expression in their relatedness to their children. They will live vicariously through their offspring, perhaps especially their sons, seeking whatever pleasures Japanese mores and values allow. Japanese mothers commonly view their children as an extension of themselves-as their life's goal, but maternal ambivalence may subvert the best of intentions. On occasion, these mothers may respond to their children as oppressors and victimizers, imprisoning lifelong dreams within the confines of infantile need. Yet, since marriage offers so little in the way of satisfaction, they may also bind their children to them in a desperate effort to find some measure of pleasure, solace, and comfort.

The vicarious life of Japanese mothers is nowhere so evident as in the peculiarly Japanese customs of breast-feeding, co-sleeping, and co-bathing. In what would seem to be a reversal of generations, the child in the oral stage of development is the mother's pacifier. To the superficial observer, Japanese mothers' indulgence of infantile oral needs up to the age of three seems child-centered, but behind the mask of altruism lurks the reality of maternal appetite for intimacy. Lacking physical and emotional relatedness in marriage, Japanese mothers discover substitute satisfactions with their offspring. Marital lovelessness leads directly to a pseudo-paedocentrism that results in amae, an extreme form of dependency. As long as the child behaves in ways that are consistent with maternal need, all is well. Independent existence is unacceptable, however. Japanese mothers discourage locomotive activities and autonomy. They bind their children to them through oral indulgence and insist that they alone are trustworthy guardians of the next generation. Yet, they think nothing of leaving their little ones sleeping at home alone when they want to go out, despite the potential for disaster.

Unconscious hostility is apparent not only in this cavalier form of child abandonment, but also in the transition from the oral stage to the anal stage. Toilet training begins as early as three to six months, too early for the developing ego of the child to be able to be self-regulating, but on schedule for the creation of obsessive-compulsive personalities. Maternal demands for discipline in cleanliness are perceived by the child as an intrusion into a garden of sensual oral delight, the upshot of which is the generation of archaic rage that is vented in protest anality. The oscillation between oral indulgence and anal manipulation is accomplished with great dexterity, but the result is nonetheless a persistent residue in Japanese culture of images of bowels "with an attitude." This anal rage is extruded at any and all who interfere with the imperious demands of the infantile self. First and foremost are Japan's kyoiku mamas ("education mamas," a.k.a. mamagons, dreaded, dragon-like Mama-sauruses) who exert extraordinary pressure on their sons to succeed in their studies, and thereby vindicate their mothers' efforts and suffering and provide meaning and purpose in their lives. This is the origin of the intense ambivalence in Japanese culture vis-a-vis maternal surrogates who embody both the early trustworthiness of the pure mother and the intrusiveness of the poison lady, who requires extraordinary effort instead of allowing serendipity.

Similarly, hostility is obvious in some of the methods that Japanese mothers utilize to discipline their children, from the use of moxa cautery (burning incense on the skin) and the modern equivalent-lighted cigarettes, to scarification of children via stories of o-bake (ghosts) and demons, to locking children out of the house or inside an enclosure or tying them to a tree, to threats of kidnapping and declarations that children are no longer wanted and should be taken away to be replaced by other, better children. Maternal ambivalence, if not outright malevolence, is at least as obvious here as is concern for the well-being of children and their proper behavior.

Overlapping these concerns are the Japanese customs of co-sleeping and co-bathing. From infancy onwards, children co-sleep with adults until the age of ten, and many continue the practice until the age of fifteen. In soine, a mother co-sleeps with her infant until the age of three, usually with the father sleeping elsewhere. When another child comes, the older child usually begins to co-sleep with its father. "Skinship," the pressing of skin to skin, flesh to flesh, is traditionally a part of the co-sleeping experience. The intense bodily pleasure experienced during co-sleeping affects Japanese children so profoundly that they develop a fixation on their parents and often continue to sleep beside them even as adults.

Co-bathing is equally significant, continuing until the age of six and beyond. Mothers sometimes wash their children even after they have reached adolescence. Although sexual motivations are vigorously disavowed during these activities, research reveals a pattern that links co-sleeping and co-bathing to incest. For boys, this incestuous activity with mother is so traumatic that the notion of sexuality with other females is repugnant, marriage is often impossible, and fears of impotence are common. Even granted that incest does not occur in many instances, the libidinal excitation experienced by Japanese children during these experiences is extreme.

The object of these erotic and sometimes incestuous encounters is obviously the satisfaction of the intense sexual and dependency needs of Japanese mothers, rather than the welfare of their children. Molded from marital frustration and unrequited longing, the bond that links Japanese mothers to their children is highly sexualized; but the custom of marital relations while the children sleep in bed with the parents intensifies the erotic nature of sleep even further. Sons respond to this libidinized tie to mother by feeling overwhelmed. Formation of ego boundaries to distinguish self from other is impaired. Distinctions between self and mother, male and female, inner and outer, are indistinct; and emotions fluctuate between anger and lust, dread and trust. Guilt over collusion and inadequacy is pervasive.

Japanese families thus resemble seething cauldrons of psychosexual and psychosocial allure, ambivalence, anxiety, animosity, and angst. Mothers represent the epitome of security and terror. They embody desire and satisfaction, frustration and rage; and sons find themselves in an impossible situation, a double bind. They must try to be better men as children than their adult fathers who behave as children. They must meet the adult needs of their sensuous, ambitious, resentful, loving, hostile mothers, but to do so, they would have to be men; yet Japanese mothers do not allow autonomy since it endangers their one legitimate societal role-motherhood.

Further intensifying the mother-son relationship and setting the stage for castration anxiety is the maternal fascination with the male genitalia and maternal behavior that incites Oedipal rivalry. Mothers flick their sons' penises while bathing them and joke about how prolific their sons will be as adults. They masturbate their children in public to keep them quiet. They masturbate them at night to put them to sleep. They sleep with them for years and years. They bathe with them for years and years. They are alone with them for years and years. They themselves are neglected, belittled, demeaned, and routinely cheated on for years and years. It takes little imagination to recognize the sorts of titillation and terror that angry and aroused mothers might vent on their sons under these circumstances. Frustration, need, rage, and desire combine with ample opportunity and a societally-sanctioned norm that mothers know best to produce an Oedipal masterpiece-amae. Mothers tease their sons about liking their fathers more than them. When the sons howl with pain, jealousy, and anger, they invidiously point out that father does not shout and make such a fuss. Naturally, the sons then promise goodness if only mother will bestow her treasured love. Such teasing heightens the competition between father and son, incites Oedipal rage and jealousy, and surely must mobilize intense ambivalence in Japanese males, ambivalence aimed squarely at Mother and females. Japanese mothers are delectable and demonic, and it is widely expected in Japan that sons will vent intense rage on their mothers. Boys who are otherwise exemplary are routinely transformed into brutes, suddenly attacking their families, particularly their mothers. Maternal responses to such fury include the use of moxa cautery, threats of suicide, and threats of committing shinjyu (infanticide plus suicide). The latter possibility is so believable that significant percentages of the population are unwilling to blame a mother for killing her child. In such a volatile setting, with feminine rage aimed at unfaithful, drunken, and absent spouses as well as at sons who viciously attack their mamas, it is likely that maternal hostility related to gender may come to center around that part of the male anatomy that differentiates male from female-the penis. It will be the ambivalent focus for both the reflected glory that a Japanese mother acquires from rearing a successful son, and for the hostility that she feels at males for mistreatment by husbands and society. Terror of the female-aroused and hostile, needy and demanding, gentle and ferocious-is thus mobilized around the fear of castration, and women are often seen as odious because it is imagined they have devouring vaginas that no son, no man, could enter in safety.

Oedipal Rivalry and a Conundrum

In contradistinction to the preceding analysis, however, it should be noted that there is persuasive evidence suggesting the existence in Japan of intense Oedipal rivalry between males. Ezra Vogel has pointed out that even if Japanese fathers do not spend much time with their children, there is still ample reason to believe that they are seen by their sons as formidable rivals for maternal favors. Vogel argues that although Japanese fathers are typically "incredibly mild" in their treatment of their children in their infrequent dealings with them, nevertheless, Japanese children "most often" describe their father as "kowai (frightening or scary)." Japanese fathers are representatives of the world outside the home and are seen by their children as "aloof and frightening." Vogel maintains that the extent of father absence in Japan requires that gender roles and the attitudes that surround Oedipal relationships are "learned primarily from the mother," as in the sort of incitement to rivalry with the father and the fear and ridicule described above, which, Vogel maintains, is widespread. He stresses that "the constellation of family roles and in particular the mother's relationship to her sons is sufficient to produce the father's rivalry with his sons, particularly the oldest son, even if the father spends relatively little time at home."7 Furthermore, this familial rivalry between father and son may be layered over with other meanings, sibling rivalry meanings, when the boy goes to school. There he faces the intense competition of the educational system with its resolute insistence on excellence, and Mother's incitement to excel and her insistence that her little boy outshine all the others-and the fear of her ridicule as the consequence of failure.

We hypothesize then that Japanese familial circumstances may lead to two general patterns of castration anxieties. In the most common pattern, threats to genital functioning originate from female sources. Mothers, lovers, little girls-in general, females of whatever role or circumstance-are associated in fantasy with perils that jeopardize the phallus or endanger the genitals. Less commonly, but not infrequently, the threat may involve competition with another male. The threatening male may be older or a contemporary, with or without any overt reference to rivalry over a beloved female. The danger also may vary, but as we will see, its designation as symbolizing "castration anxiety" or, more generally, "genital endangerment," is undeniable.

Both patterns stem from the intense relatedness of sons to mothers whose legitimate psychological, emotional, and existential needs have been thwarted and who have subsequently sought meaning, pleasure, and relief wherever it might be found. It should be obvious that this maternal quest makes demands on the next generation that are unfair and inappropriate, even as the Japanese woman's treatment at the hands of older and contemporary males is equally responsible for the vicious cycle of intergenerational and cross-gender suffering. The older generation of males defend themselves against the pains of existence by forcing women to do much of the dirty work, while they play the role of the eternal child and adolescent, requiring dependence at home while servicing libido after work. Women, in turn, survive as best they can without their adult partners, turning to their children, their sons especially, for meaningfulness. In the process, women take out their frustration, resentment, and rage against mates on their offspring; turn to these children to meet their physical and emotional needs; and imbue the next generation with the same fears, anxieties, ambivalence and avoidance motivations as their fathers. Women cannot be full adults because men are complete little boys. This is the conundrum at the core of familial functioning in Japan.

A Glimpse of Godzilla

Compared to fantasy materials in America that deal with the theme of castration, the material from Japan is much more explicit. Often, in reading about castration anxiety in literary or fictional works in this country, the castration theme is implied and the analysis relies heavily on the interpretation of symbolism to make its case. For example, a boy is shamed, humiliated by an older male, perhaps even his father. His masculinity is in tatters because of the devastation that he suffers from this cruel tyrant who exposes his incontinence before a group of people. The son dreams that his finger is cut off by a giant. It would not be uncommon in this country to analyze this situation in terms of the younger male feeling "castrated." No such subtlety and allusion is necessary in Japanese manga. Insight or interpretation are not a prerequisite to discerning the actuality of the castration theme. Genital endangerment is explicit, right there "in your face."

Manga typically fashion a world of phallic imperatives. Power and sexual potency are essentially synonymous, while impotence and powerlessness are the private side of public bravura. Male values, interests, and definitions of reality are assumed. Stories, jokes, ads-the zeitgeist of the genre-often seem to be fixated at the phallic stage of development. The characters reside on "the phallic planet," a place where penis power, having erections, and having sex-all sorts of sex-and anxieties about any of the foregoing are omnipresent.8 With such an emphasis on phallicism, castration anxiety is magnified and its depiction graphic.

The penis is the star of the show in manga, and there are people, forces, and situations out there that threaten its well-being. Perusing a Japanese comic book is like entering the twilight zone of a medieval cartographer where the signpost up ahead reads: "There be dangers here for those with the penis." On every side, at every turn, in every way, from every source, the phallus is under assault. Examples abound. An oriental cyborg with a single hair atop his head seems to descend from above and wanders nude, except for cowboys boots, through a series of adventures. His erect penis is completely bandaged from some unknown injury.9 A little boy, the hero of the series "Baboo Baby Wee-wee," goes to the beach and manages to get his penis trapped in the hatch of a submarine.10 On another occasion an alligator snaps at his organ and for a minute appears to have bitten it completely off.11 A mechanical bird that simulates drinking water from a glass gets a doctor all lathered up when its beak is set a-peck-peck-pecking on his penis.12 A nude doctor, parodying a Frankenstein scenario, stands with his penis attached to the inner workings of a windmill and awaits the wind and the lightning that will doubtless turn him every which way but loose.13 The same doctor stands naked before a toy monkey that smashes his genitals with cymbals and gleefully leers a toothy smile.14 A guy is sleeping on the beach, buried in sand. A huge mound stands above him covering his erection. Another bather comes along and whacks his sand pile and then whacks it again.15 Fish nibble at a scuba diver's penis.16 A guy goes for a walk in the woods, and a snake bites his penis.17 A dog bites a man's penis.18 A line drive hits the pitcher in the groin in a baseball game.19 A penis expels a marble.20 A crab bites Tarzan's penis.21 And finally, so endangered is the phallus that a doctor listens to its "heartbeat" when a patient undergoes an exam.22 But these are the minor examples, the sound and the fury, signifying-well, not nothing-but providing only a glimpse of Godzilla. Like any good teaser for a movie, the best is yet to come.

The Nature of the Beast

If size does matter with regard to cinema creatures, in castration anxieties the formula is a combination of size and explicitness. Allusions and discretion are taboo; the depiction of the taboo is mandatory. "Let it all hang out" is the rule.

As is true in American comics, guys in manga are constantly fighting with each other. Often that fighting involves genital assault, and sometimes it all hangs out by accident. In one story, a cop wears slacks that hang low on his hips. His penis flops out in a fight, and the criminal tries to cut it off.23 Sometimes it does not hang out, but someone wants to tear it out or knock it off or injure it as severely as possible. A samurai grabs the penis of another samurai as they engage in hand-to-hand-to-genitals combat.24 A male kicks another male in the crotch.25 Male testosterone flows as one male punches another in the groin, and then the roles are reversed-the recipient repeatedly stomping his adversary in the groin, holding him spread-eagled to inflict maximum pain.26 A teenager kicks an adult in the crotch,27 and boys trade crotch kicks.28 At other times the scenario may indicate a more deliberate attempt to terrorize that which is-or is not-out.

In one story the Devil, appropriately depicted as a boy in short pants, is playing doctor and decides to "out" the illusive organ. He intimidates three salarimen by grabbing a needle and tongs. They flee from his onslaught, but he catches one of the men and seizes his penis with the tongs.29 (Illustration 1) Stretching it to a length of several feet, he pulls it to his mouth and prepares as if to eat it. Another story revolves around two young toughs who are terrified and run away when a doctor, wielding a razor while standing before a diagram of a shivering male crotch, explains how a shave will be necessary.30 On another occasion, the setting is a prison where an African-American cop has gone undercover. A tip from an informant warns him that a fellow inmate will attempt to castrate him. The cop places a dining bowl beneath his trousers for protection, and goes to the mess hall. As he sits at a long table with other prisoners, the assailant crawls the length of the table and tries to slice up his penis. Fortunately for the hero, the bowl stays in place, and he escapes with his manhood intact, leaving only a gash on the bottom of the bowl as evidence of the disaster that might have been.31

Babu Akachin-Baboo Baby Wee-wee-is a character designed for the interests of younger manga readers. The target audience is "third to sixth graders, with a smattering of junior high school boys," and Baboo tries to be outrageous enough to capture their imagination. He "hangs out" farther and longer than almost anyone. In one episode, Baboo goes for an outing and winds up in a meat market with a butcher.32 The butcher is slicing meat, so, in the logic of the unconscious, Baboo jumps out of his slacks and defecates a huge BM that looks like one long sausage. The butcher cuts through the fecal tube and only then figures out what has happened. He gets angry. Grabbing Baboo by his penis, he stretches it several feet, and places it across his chopping block. Much as a golfer addresses the ball, the butcher addresses Baboo's penis, measuring it against the blade of his knife for a slice. He raises the knife and then strikes, but Baboo swishes his penis away like a slippery eel. (Illustration 2) Again and again the butcher tries to chop the wildly gyrating genital, but each time the blade descends, the elusive organ evades it. But in manga, this is not always the case; sometimes the assault on the penis is more successful.

The king of phallic expressionism is snot-nosed, impulsive Hosaku, who wrote the book on the doctrine of letting it all hang out. Hosaku has been humiliated in a schoolyard fight with another student. He cries, jumps out of his pants in a temper tantrum, and is determined to get even. He works on his karate, and when he practices his moves on a collie and the dog chases him, he invokes the spirit of Rocky Balboa to bolster his courage and help him escape. Undaunted by this near miss, Hosaku dons his macho, black-leather slacks and braided, shoulder-enhancing shirt, and calls out his opponent. Other students gather around on the playground.

The fighting commences. Fists fly, and Hosaku is down. He is furious, blowing his stack and spouting rage like an exploding geyser. As the onlookers jeer, he weeps at the humiliation, but then gathers himself and, almost ritualistically, places a small, wooden platform, perhaps an altar, on the ground. His opponent just stands there, looking puzzled. Quick as a flash, Hosaku flexes his muscles, ripping the fabric of his shirt like The Incredible Hulk, and nails his adversary's scrotum to the altar. As the sacrificial victim on the rack goes berserk with fear, Hosaku kneels and delivers a massive karate chop to the gonads.33 (Illustration 3)

Oedipal competition as the basis for assault on the genitals is the theme of a story involving an older man who makes sexual overtures toward a schoolgirl. His disgusting carnality arouses the envy and rage of a classmate of the girl who himself is attracted to her. Determined that righteousness prevail, the youth waits in hiding as the father figure makes his move. As soon as the older man is naked, the youth grabs a garden hose, rushes at the unsuspecting patriarch, and wraps the hose around his penis. The faucet is quickly turned on, and the phallus is squeezed to near-bursting by the pressure from the water. The young male then has an open field to force himself upon the schoolgirl.34 Chivalry has not been invented in manga stories. They are too elemental, too primitive, too ego-phallo-centric.

Of all fictional characters, Tarzan, King of the Beasts, unexpectedly provides a good barometer for gauging the intensity of castration anxiety in Japanese manga. A series of penis gags runs through a comic strip that deals with a Japanese version of Tarzan. Issue after issue finds a character doing something outrageous to radically distort the shape and size of the penis or scrotum. In one issue it is the monkey Cheetah that measures the size of a man's urethra and then pulls it two feet apart.35 In another issue Tarzan grabs his gonads and stretches them up to the height of his shoulders.36 On other occasions the Lord of the Jungle stretches his scrotum and becomes "Tarzan the Flying Squirrel," gliding through the air,37 or he stretches his penis to resemble an anteater38 or an animal's horns.39 While these gags are intended to be funny, the extreme distention of the genitals is unsettling. If only a hint of the pain that such goings-on would cause pierces the awareness of the reader, all the fun looks scary and sadomasochistic. It approaches "laughing to keep from crying." Even worse is an episode involving a doctor who treats Tarzan for an odoriferous penis. All in fun, the bespectacled physician, who bears some resemblance to Theodore Roosevelt, pulls out a pair of scissors and begins to cut off a part of Tarzan's urethra. Having completed this, he pulls the phallic opening a couple of feet apart, stretches Tarzan's scrotum out at least thirty feet, and chases away the natives who have been watching this spectacle with the phallic stench.40 It is a gag, but in the context of the issues we are considering, it is hardly merely funny.

By far the most vivid illustration of castration anxiety involves a samurai theme. A courageous woman has come to destroy an evil country and its evil ruler, but she has been captured by the wicked emperor. This despot is a totally bald, older man who strips the beautiful young female, exposes his penis (which is said to be the equivalent of a hundred men), and forces her to her knees. Grabbing her by her hair, he begins to pull her head toward his erection to perform oral sex. Just as she reluctantly reaches out to touch the tumescent penis, however, a young hero sails a boomerang toward the couple which deftly severs the scoundrel's massive phallus, leaving him grasping his head in shock as his penis ends up in the jaws of a bulldog.41 (Illustration 4)
At last the nature of the beast that has been hinted at and dodged, suggested and denied, implied and, ironically, split off is revealed. All those bandaged penises and splayed urethras and elongated scrotums and kicks to the groin and dog bites and crab bites and alligator bites and knife attacks are not for nothing. The terror of castration stalks through the male psyche in Japan, and at least some of the time its origin is suggested to reside in the Oedipal dynamics of two males in fierce combat over sexual access to the female.

Dread of Woman: The Anxiety with a Thousand Faces

Despite the intensity of the castration anxiety illustrated in the foregoing data, by far the bulk of the threats that endanger the penis in manga come from females rather than males. Sometimes the threats are so slight as to be no threat at all, merely a mild discomfort or tame rejection. For example, a boy has caught his penis in the fly of his slacks and crouches in pain, his bicycle abandoned. A schoolgirl happens by on her bike and considerately stops to see what is the matter. She assists the boy in freeing his penis from the zipper and then uses the kerchief of her school uniform to bandage the injured organ. When her kindness is repaid with an erection, however, she gets ticked off at the guy's tumescence, thumping the injured member as a rebuke before going on her way. She adds insult to injury.42

Sometimes the pain associated with female assault on the phallus is, in a certain sense, nothing at all. Instead of the real target, the attack has been displaced onto a substitute object, as in the following story. After a schoolgirl has twice been humiliated by males, she finds herself in a park. A pair of boxing gloves lies on the ledge of a fountain featuring a statue of a nude boy who is urinating into a pool. Seeing the gloves, the girl pulls them on and throws some punches, working out her anger. The final right cross, however, is directed at the genitals of the statue, and, surprisingly, the inanimate eyes of the stone boy bulge at the impact of the blow. Of course the real objects of her rage get off scot-free. The statue is a scapegoat.43

Occasionally, females may give a small yank to a male's penis or gonads,44 or stretch the organ a little-perhaps even a female robot might do such a thing.45 Or females might grind high-heel shoes into a male groin,46 or kick the male in the groin,47 or even attack Santa's crotch;48 but often these incidents are seemingly incidental, trivial, and insignificant. Sometimes accidents happen around females and male genitals take a beating. When a student goes with a female classmate to a love hotel for sex, he becomes aroused quickly and tries repeatedly to initiate intercourse, but is unable to enter his companion. Six different times the illustrations portray his penis being painfully bent in a vain effort at ecstasy.49 When at last he succeeds, he is so exhausted by the experience that he lies upside down off the bed, while the female is refreshed, whistling a merry tune, and clearly superior in the battle of the sexes. Another story takes the same theme-phallic pain for the male seeking intercourse-and turns it 180 degrees in the opposite direction. This time it is the woman on top and she, rather than falling, jumps spread-eagled from a window sill onto her partner below. We will never know if coitus was achieved. The story ends with the man in critical condition, lying in a hospital bed-with an IV attached to his arm and his body and penis heavily bandaged.50

Even a woman's sniffles can bring phallic distress, as for example in the case of the female who sneezed during foreplay and smashed her lover's penis with her head.51 And beware the female shopper. Baboo Baby Wee-wee is working at the concession stand at the beach one day, and an attractive female in a swimsuit comes up to buy a hot dog. A mix-up occurs, and suddenly she is about to chomp down on his big "weenie."52 (Illustration 5) Even Tarzan gets into the act when an Amazonian Jane throws a dagger at his genitals. Ever the King of the Jungle, he avoids disaster and confirms his superhero status by casually lifting his penis and allowing the knife to stick harmlessly into a tree.53

It is obvious that in Japanese group-fantasies a woman can be dangerous to phallic prerogatives, but much more so than the preceding would suggest. There is both an effort to conceal and reveal the underlying anxiety. This dual quality in the fantasies, this ambivalence, functions to acknowledge that females may be a problem for men. They may be annoying, they may even be potentially frightening, but this matter is ordinarily not a focal concern of the stories. It is a peripheral issue, not central. The effect of this distancing is denial, and in a given story the rationalization may be believable; but if a thousand stories are examined, the argument crumbles by virtue of the sheer number of instances in which group-fantasies portray females as threats to the penis. Similarly, efforts at humor, funny stories about misadventures with females that damage or threaten the male's member, work only in the short term. What is humorous in the singularity looks obsessive in the multiplicity.

The constant repetition and omnipresence of castration imagery is remarkable and unsettling. Over and over, stories utilize plots and characters that are premised on fears revolving around genital endangerment. The frequency of the fantasy must itself indicate something about the intensity of the anxiety and its fantasized source. For example, a female scientist submerges a man's penis in acid, then later attaches weights to the organ.54 Visually, as the weights pull on the phallus, stretching it in an effort to achieve ecstasy, the procedure resembles torture more than ultimate joy. The effect is that of a penis being hung on a gallows. A sadistic motif is also the name of the game when a dominatrix lashes her whip around the penis of the hero and later attaches her disembodied head to his scrotum in an effort to destroy him.55 Another dominatrix trusses up the hero and also binds his penis with a rope.56 An ostensibly more normal female merely attacks the phallus with a vacuum cleaner,57 while Jane is seen preparing to stuff Tarzan's savage organ in her mouth-apparently the odor problem was cured.58 When a guy's pants are down, either a knife-wielding female stalks him,59 or a little woman comes after him with a hand saw.60 A female physician pounds a penis with a hammer and then zaps it with electricity.61 To the reader of manga, the omnipresent theme is titillating but discernible: the dangers embodied in the female who stalks the man-phallus are virtually infinite.

One of the most graphic of these stories involves a macho film director who terrorizes an innocent starlet. In "Virgin Burning," he intends to educate her to the realities of the casting couch, using a penis that is as powerful as the artillery of a battleship. After ripping off her clothing, he gropes her repeatedly, mounts her from the rear and sodomizes her, and then sneers and jeers at her humiliation; but she has her revenge. She waits until he is off guard, and then, like an airplane launching a missile down the barrel of a ship's guns, she gives him the shaft by driving an whip handle into the mouth of his penis. (Illustration 6) The director's eyes bulge, his hair stands on end, and he is petrified with pain, while the starlet stands by admiring her handiwork.62 So much for trivializing females and their capacity to inflict injury on the phallus. Also note that the talion principle has been in force in the story-the female has horrifically done to the male what the terrified and therefore hostile male imagination performs on the female.

Men often behave as swine in manga, as in the previous example, so it is poetic justice that two of the more explicit instances of females striking back at their male victimizers should involve a series that stars pigs. Unlike the innocent child's game where mother and offspring play "This Little Piggie," these hog stories are raunchy and mean, and the protagonists are Nazis, creeps, and jerks, who routinely abuse their females. Often the fantasies demonstrate that the hogs may have "flutes" (penises) that are exceedingly thin, but they nevertheless are not length-challenged. In one involving a familiar scenario, an aroused hog knocks his sow around and then sodomizes her. Unwilling to just take it, she retaliates by smashing his tumescent penis with an urn.63 In another incident, a drunken hog-husband urinates on his sow-wife. She takes her revenge by trussing him up like a pig and stabbing him in the abdomen and penis with a three-pronged fork.64

A frequent endangerment scenario is modeled after the pigs and the swine. The female is wronged by a male, and then through various devices the tables are turned, and the male is injured and the female revenged. Often these morality tales are founded on dissociation and, in essence, resemble the function served by the Furies in Greek mythology: retribution. A poorly-realized version of the genre revolves around a guy who watches the American love story, An Officer and A Gentleman, with Richard Gere and Deborah Winger. The young male is powerfully affected by the film and starts acting out Lou Gossett's role as the tough drill sergeant who almost wrecks the Gere-Winger relationship. When the male becomes the role, as sociologists would say, a dog bites him in the crotch as payback for over-stepping his bounds.65 Another hero might suggest that a man has to know his limitations.

A military setting similarly serves as the locale in another story that demonstrates dissociation much more effectively. A soldier rips the uniform off a female comrade, throws her to the ground, and prepares to rape her. Towering over her, he lowers himself onto his prey. Before the act of defilement can be completed, however, the soldier becomes aware of pain in his groin instead of the anticipated pleasure of masterful domination. Upon inspection, what the GI sees is a pussy cat that has attached itself to his penis.66 The metaphor of a monster with teeth has been domesticated, scaled down to manageable size, and embodied in the dissociated feline. In fact, however, the story's usage of trivialization-cum-denial suggests no problemo. It is just a pesky cat.

The dissociated feline retribution theme metamorposes into a canine avenger that also invokes the Jaws saga in the next story. Japanese youths leave their snow-covered mountain home and head for a sulfur springs resort. In a restricted area where women bathe nude, a dog, "Potchi," magically pretends to be Jaws and bites one of the girls on her breast. One of the guys hears screams and rushes in to help, but the girls attack him for invading their territory and knock him into the water. He reappears as Jaws, his penis protruding from beneath the shark costume that he wears. The dog that started the commotion in the first place comes to the rescue and bites the boy's penis.67 The story links the dog attack on the phallus to male intrusion into the space of the naked females. Metaphorically, the dissociated dog assault on the penis is punishment for oral impulse directed at the female. Perhaps the pangs of a not-so-guilty conscience have come back to bite the offending member.

"The City Hunter" carries the same message into an urban environment. A tumescent womanizer is in sexual heat over an attractive female and makes unwanted advances, chasing her into a subway station. She enters one of the cars, but as he rushes after her, his timing is off. Only his bulging scrotum gets inside the car before the doors close. He is thus pinned to the outside of the train, penis and gonads caught inside, as the train roars down the track.68 Little Hosaku has a similar adventure on the subway. He jumps out of his pants with joy when a beautiful young woman, seated across from him, sits with her legs apart, exposing her panties. He cannot take his eyes off her and rushes over to bury his face in her crotch. Later, he observes two older men groping her and tries to distract them by creating a disturbance. An argument ensues, and Hosaku becomes so angry, as he backs out of the subway car, that he urinates on the male competition. Unfortunately, the car doors close on his penis, and he finds himself caught outside the car, while his penis remains inside, spewing urine all over the passengers.69 As in the previous story, sexual attraction to a female results in a dissociated attack on the phallus. The message is unambiguous. In the area of sexuality, openings are dangerous, whether they be mouths or doors.

These psychosexual metaphors blur and reconfigure and mutate in manga into contemporary versions of the myth of Medusa and the vagina dentata legend. Sometimes the essence of Medusa is discernible but muted as, for example, when a snake-less female's power is restorative rather than petrifying. An adolescent housekeeper is dusting in the library amidst shelves of books, a desk, and a Greek statue of a nude male. As she whisks her duster over the statue, she accidentally tips it over and it falls to the floor. Only one area of the art work is damaged. The stone penis is severed from the scrotum. The girl glues the phallus back on-in an erect posture.70 A fantasy analysis would read: female severs penis and female erects penis. While there is no Medusa per se in this story, its metaphors aspire toward a Medusal definition of male-female relations. A product of phallic functioning, the story regards woman ambivalently as the cause of castration anxiety (the broken statue) as well as sexual attraction (the erected penis).

Medusa makes no appearance in the previous story because she is elsewhere. The scene is the city, and something strange is happening. People are turning to stone. One statue-once a grocery store owner-displays the likeness of a man whose phallus is exposed. He had been urinating in the street. A man comes along and touches the genitals of the statue, and the penis falls off. Ultimately, the explanation for the petrification phenomenon is revealed. Medusa is back in town (Illustration 7), and only intervention by the Devil himself, a kid in short pants with a ray gun that zaps people to somewhere else, can transport her back to where she belongs-a particular region in hell where everyone is so self-obsessed they never look her in the eye.71 Translation: Medusa is a hellish metaphor related to self-obsession (narcissism). Anxieties regarding bodily integrity, i.e. castration anxiety, hearken back to the process of self-development when males wore short pants, were devils, and engaged in magical thinking (phallic phase)-zapping unwanted and threatening females with ray guns (that may in fact have been hair dryers) to the deepest realms of elsewhere (the unconscious) via a ray gun (defense mechanisms). The only question remaining is the identity of the threatening female.

The Medusa metaphor is associated with the magical realm of the unconscious and Mother in a story with a fairy-tale quality entitled "Tsuri's Melancholy." A beautiful damsel, Mother, falls ill with sleeping sickness, and only the hero can save her. To do so, he must make a journey to a faraway land to acquire a special cure made from snake's tail. The boy-savior must be very brave, for the snake has five heads, and each is large enough to swallow him whole. Off he goes on his camel. His odyssey takes him immediately to the realm of a sleeping figure that is drawn to resemble his mother. At first the head is hidden; however when the figure sits up and the head is revealed, she turns out to be the Medusa, who seductively arches her back and raises her hands to her serpentine locks to display her mammary endowment. (Illustration 8) The camel looks her in the eye and is petrified. Tsuri draws his dagger to defend himself, and the reflection of herself turns Medusa to stone.

Magically, a little girl appears and the camel returns to life. The girl tells Tsuri she wants to reward him for defeating the Medusa, and, after taking him to an oasis and learning of his odyssey, she gives him a flying elephant and directs him to the Valley of the Snakes, where another girl appears. She is the Spirit of the Valley. She warns him of the danger of his quest, but he continues and is immediately confronted by the enormous Hydra-esque monster. He escapes the massive fangs on his flying elephant, but from out of nowhere the Spirit of the Valley reappears. When he saves her, she tells him that the secret to slaying the five-headed snake involves a dandelion. "It's the monster's tail," she tells him. To kill the monster and acquire the cure for his mother's illness, the hero must cut the wild flower into ten pieces. As soon as he does so, the snake dies, his mother is saved, and the girl asks him: "So when do we get married? I've been waiting for a brave man like you."72 What matter if in another story the brave hero himself has fantasies of sprouting Medusal tresses if he uses his mother's hair cap to dry his hair!73 In this fairy tale the maternal monster that haunts the Valley of the Snakes has been slain, and the male is now eligible for marital engagement, since the fantasy of the female (the Spirit of the Valley-the vagina) has been deloused of the fearsome snake-monsters.

The Medusa image is essentially identical to that of the Slit-Woman. Both metaphors convey male terror of the female's sexual capacity, her ability to arouse and destroy. In the stories that we have examined, Medusa's power to petrify leads to the loss of the penis. The fantasy of the Slit-Woman functions in a similar manner, but the elaboration of her castrative capacity is expanded. The Slit-Woman first enters the reader's awareness as a cloaked figure of death who is haunting a girl (Keiko) who lies in a coma. Through the intervention of a psychologist, a male (Ran) enters her unconscious mind to try to help her and discovers that she is having a nightmare about an event, a double murder, that happened fifteen years ago. The murderer, wearing a cloak, attacks Keiko, but Ran intervenes to protect her. The murderer throws off the cloak, and her true nature is manifest. The murderer-twice-over is the Slit-Woman-a four-breasted, dreadlock-coifed vagina monster, carrying huge cleavers in both hands and bursting with rage. A gigantic gash runs from her crotch up to her breast bone, and her size enables her to overwhelm anyone she wants to destroy.74 (Illustration 9) Ran and the Slit-Woman slash each other, and Ran suddenly realizes that this monster is responsible for Keiko's coma. Her scariness indicates the depth of Keiko's fright. She alone can banish the monster, but it is clear that she does not want her to disappear. The monster begins to talk to the girl, alluding to something evil inside herself, and inviting Keiko inside her grotesque body to be "reborn clean." As Keiko declines the invitation ("I'm sorry, Mother") a lovely female appears inside, the Good Mother. But almost simultaneously, the scene shifts back to the lab, where this psychological experiment is being conducted, to reveal the Bad Mother, Keiko's real mother, who is hoisting above her head a cleaver identical to those carried by the Slit-Woman. Inside out or outside in, the Slit-Woman comprises cutting-edge terror for her male adversaries.

The Slit-Woman represents the male fantasy of the vagina that has been objectified as the vagina dentata. Her most obvious features-breasts, vagina, and rapiers ("If the right one don't get you, then the left one will")-emphasize her identity as a female and her deadliness. In a deft instance of denial, the story is set in a woman's unconscious. Thus, the horrific Slit-Woman monster is presented as a female fantasy, rather than the male fantasy which it so clearly is. Additionally, the identity of the fantasy monster is unmistakably revealed as the hostile and aggressive mother who, according the dialectic of the unconscious, is also the good mother, the beauty whose radiance masks the beast. Japanese males who have had an intense relationship with their mothers are generally socially inept and often painfully shy in sexual matters, perhaps because similar ambivalent images of mother form the foundation of their capacity for relatedness to others, especially women. Viewed through the lens of castration anxiety, getting close to a woman must reactivate the horrible dividedness at the core of existence, and imbue even the anticipated pleasure of union with the uncertainty of whether trust is possible and whether self can survive merger.

A follow-up instance of castration anxiety via the vagina dentata metaphor occurs on "Hame (Screw) Night." On Valentine's Day, two fairies from outer space get to visit earth to have fun playing with men. They arrive in time to overhear Taisuke, a man who believes he is perfection itself, expressing shock and dismay that no females sent him a box of chocolates. When the male tells his troubles to a doll, one of the fairies enters the doll and makes it come to life. Totally inexperienced in matters of the heart, Taisuke is amazed and attracted to this "living doll," who has determined to seduce him. The fairy flaunts her luscious self in front of the perplexed but aroused male, displaying her bare bottom, removing her bra, and asking Taisuke to undress her.

Shocked, Taisuke wonders if this marvelous creature is a gift from the Goddess of Love, and when she asks him to explore her breasts and vagina in a trumped-up effort to find a non-existent insect, he is only too happy to comply; but as he puts his hand inside her warm body, he has doubts. He wonders if she has a disease. He imagines his funeral. He finally overcomes his reservations and is ready to perform the act, but then realizes he has no condom. The fairy-girl tells him this is no problem, but, as she sits nude and primed on the floor in front of him, Taisuke again has doubts. His imagination runs wild. He walks over to her and, as he is opening her legs and intently inspecting her exposed vagina, he wonders to himself: "Is she promised in marriage? Is she trying to trap a man? Maybe she's an alien-I've heard that aliens visit earth and steal cows' genitals….and they might start after human genitals." As these thoughts about the female-as-alien run through his head, Taisuke imagines this beauty as a scorpion-beast, a fanged and salivating vagina dentata with ensnaring tentacles and eye-breasts beneath the facade of a pretty face, and he flees in absolute terror.75 (Illustration 10) Eventually, Taisuke musters his courage and penetrates his fairy queen-for-a-day, but the contention that Japanese males dread Woman, and imagine her to be an alien with a monstrous vagina full of incisors, could hardly be illustrated more forcefully. It should be emphasized that this male group-fantasy, which has a thousand faces, is no myth handed down from antiquity that is now divorced from everyday life and of interest only to social antiquarians. Its continuing existence is instead one of the barriers to greater mutuality and equality in relations between men and women.

Behind the thousand faces of men's dread of Woman stands, as we have seen, Mother. In manga she is the "Goddess of Love" who beckons Kazutomo to experience "extreme ecstasy" as she masturbates him. As she extends her lovely, loving hand, Kazutomo climbs the stairway to Heaven. Erect and expectant, the puny male is dwarfed by the majesty of the radiant, demure, enchanting Mama from the sky. All is changed, however, when allure becomes physical contact. As soon as the enormous she-god touches Kazutomo's penis, expected bliss is transformed into nightmare. Maternal caress has become terror in the clutches of a maternal monster whose eight breasts will poison rather than nurture, whose curves are serpentine instead of serene, whose skin repels instead of comforts, whose face and eyes and tongue are strange and hostile instead of the essence of trust and love. In the clutches of the mama-san monster, the fear is that Kazutomo has embarked on a journey to the nether regions. Heaven has become Hell.76

A different metaphor conveys the same fantasy in the case of Hosaku. Hosaku's surrogate mother, Auntie, who has been keeping him-it seems forever-while his parents are away, has finally had enough of the repulsive little monster. His temper tantrums, his misbehavior, his deceit, his sayings ("Every time an erection!") and his cruelty have finally pushed the woman to the brink. After Hosaku describes her as having the legs of a hippo, a belly like an elephant, a mouth like a fish, and the nose of a pig, she has had more than she can stand, and she comes after Hosaku with a hatchet. Her face, which Hosaku has compared to that of a monster and a "devil-woman," is contorted with rage. This Auntie-Mom is out of whack and out to whack, cut, chop, and dismember a member, and Hosaku is holding the winning ticket even as he wets the floor. When he tries to phone for help, Auntie slashes the telephone cord with a mighty blow from her ax, and only Hosaku's retreat saves him.77 (Illustration 11) Such an image of maternal hostility and its dramatization must resonate with the reverberations of familial experience for the intended audience of grade-school males, who have been cooped up with Mother when she was angry at Dad or her children or the world and looking for a target.

Perhaps this metaphor could also have been phrased in terms of appetite instead of rage, for in one story, when fishermen are out on the water for a day of pleasure, it is the maternal imago that arises from the sea to attack them, and her aim is the slaking of savage lust. Tongue flopping out, teeth exposed, saliva dripping, eyes drawn back in slits of rage, hands upraised to strike, and a cute little bow atop her head, the bikinied behemoth is poised to devour the horrified seamen. Just before she lunges, the she-monster screams out the object of her desire, "BALLS!!!"78 (Illustration 12) Such material may be only a comic book, but it does have a meaning that transcends the temporary and the trivial and eerily corresponds to descriptions of the psychosexual dynamics of Japanese mother-son relationships. And the fact that it deliberately portrays a cynical caricature of women and is consequently an example of prejudice towards women, perhaps even couched within a conscious ideological framework of misogyny, in no way vitiates its importance. It is an exemplar of the unconscious issues with which Japanese males must struggle if they are to become partners with their wives and lovers instead of remaining Mama's boys, forever bound in fear and dependence to her.

The Tricycle Man

Perhaps the continuing saga of a character we will call "The Tricycle Man" offers a remedy and will bring to conclusion all the angst, anxiety, hoopla, and hysteria surrounding genital endangerment that we have been reviewing.

As unlikely a hero as imaginable, the Tricycle Man is a morose figure, apparently a hobo or homeless person, who wanders through the vast urban underside of contemporary Japan. With just a few strands of hair except for some scraggly whiskers, he lives out his impoverished life in the desolate areas of the city among forgotten urban villagers-the bums, street people, winos, and prostitutes. He is a loner in a group-oriented world, a disheveled soul in ragged clothing with no ties to anyone, who drifts from group to group and adventure to adventure. Despite the depressive scenario, however, this is no anti-hero, no postmodern nihilistic nobody in a nothingsville world that has no meaning. That is only the surface, the patina-the hip, negativistic veneer required for believability in a cynical time. In fact, the Tricycle Man is an ego ideal, albeit a rather unique one.

In a bizarre and ingenious story line, the Tricycle Man is so named because he wears a tricycle attached to his body. Under his omnipresent coat and trousers, the tricycle wheels are pulled around his hips and hold the toy in place, while the handlebars have been raised to belt level. The seat of the tricycle covers the Tricycle Man's genital area, and, in episode after episode, functions as an outrageously appropriate chastity belt for a world at war, deflecting female rage, however, rather than sexual amorousness. In one adventure, a woman becomes exasperated with the Tricycle Man and smashes her foot into his groin, but to no effect.79 (Illustration 13) His jewels are preserved. In another adventure, a gypsy woman, Olive, tries to tear off his periapt, but is unsuccessful.80 In a later encounter, Olive is determined to destroy the Tricycle Man. She attacks him with a dagger. Holding the weapon high above her head, she drives the blade downward with both hands and all of her might into the crotch of our hero, but, sure enough, the fetish has done its work.81 The toy from childhood has once again protected the hero's maleness from the female onslaught.

The Tricycle Man, despite his age, poverty, and lack of worldly success, is a hero. Like the Japanese idol at the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum-Frank Sinatra, whose songs he may have heard in a bar somewhere-he has had his share of losing. He has faced and seen it all, but, when all is said and done, he comes out "King of the Heap." Not, of course in terms of wealth or social position, but in a more significant way. In the spirit of the song, "he took the blows, and did it his way." In other words, he is a survivor, a male not unlike the babe savior of the apocalyptic robot wars in The Terminator; he, however, has weathered the castration wars and triumphed. His victory: not virgo intacto, but genitalia intacta. He is intact, a modern hero-with-penis (or merely penis-hero) with a moral regarding Japanese males with attitude: the defensive postures of adult life are forged from the remnants of childhood. And there is a moral here for those of us who are offended by the implications of a male "victory" predicated on the maintenance of psychic defenses that derogate women. To eradicate the misogynous defensive posture that imagines the thousand metaphors, the conditions that spawned them must be transformed through changes in childrearing so that fathers are involved, and mothers do not crave a child-pacifier, and compensatory physical intimacy in bed and tub with children is unnecessary, and children are allowed to be unique, rather than pounded down for sticking out.

Kenneth Alan Adams, Ph.D., is a Contributing Editor to The Journal of Psychohistory and teaches sociology at Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Alabama.
Lester Hill, Jr., Ph.D., teaches sociology at Jacksonville State University, has lived and traveled widely in Japan, and taught a course on Japan.
Our thanks to Michiko Hill and Audrey Crosby for their assistance with this project.
This research has been funded in part by a grant from Jackson

ville State University.

1. See Frederik L. Schodt, Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International, 1986, pp. 68-78, 79-87, 88-105, 111-3, 114-9.
2. Frederik L. Schodt, Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga. Berkeley, California: Stone Bridge Press, 1996, p. 21.
3. Ian Buruma, Behind the Mask: On Sexual Demons, Sacred Mothers, Transvestites, Gangsters, and Other Japanese Cultural Heroes. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984; Anne Allison, Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1996. The centrality of manga to Japanese society is also evident in the use of the comic book format to teach subjects as diverse as economics and the Japanese language, not to mention the explosion of manga and animae in American publishing, the film industry, and on the internet. For the latter, see Schodt, Dreamland Japan, pp. 341-7; for the former, see Shotaro Ishinomori, Japan, Inc.: An Introduction to Japanese Economics (The Comic Book). Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1988; Mangajin, an Atlanta-based magazine devoted to teaching Japanese through manga; Jack Seward, ed., Japanese Eroticism: A Language Guide to Current Comics. Houston, Texas: Yugen Press, 1993; and Philip J. Cunningham, Zakennayo! The Real Japanese You Were Never Taught in School. New York: Plume (Penguin) Publications, 1995. Finally, it is appropriate to mention that many Japanese women's magazines feature a manga segment, as does the Japanese edition of Playboy.
4. Ibid., p. 31.
5. Ibid.
6. The material that is summarized in this section is available in more detailed form in Kenneth Alan Adams and Lester Hill, Jr., "The Phallic Female in Japanese Group-Fantasy," Journal of Psychohistory 25(1997): 33-66. Those seeking further corroboration of the argument advanced here with regard to the Japanese family, especially the intensity of the mother-son relationship, might wish to consult Adams and Hill, "Protest Anality and Japanese Group-Fantasies," Journal of Psychohistory 15(1987): 113-45; Adams and Hill, "The Graveyard of the Gods," Journal of Psychohistory 17(1989): 103-53; Adams and Hill, "Protest and Rebellion: Fantasy Themes in Japanese Comics," Journal of Popular Culture 25(1991): 99-127; Adams, "Who Needs Love!" Journal of Psychohistory 25(1997): 67-80; Adams, "'To Copy Is to Live,'" Journal of Psychohistory 18(1990): 227-35. And see Richard McGregor, Japan Swings: Politics, Culture and Sex in the New Japan. Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin Pty. Ltd., pp. 246-50, for a discussion of the maza-con, "mother complex;" Keigo Okonogei, "The Ajase Complex of the Japanese (1)," Japan Echo 5(4): 88-105; Melford E. Spiro, citing Masako Tanaka's "Maternal Authority in the Japanese Family," Oedipus in the Trobriands. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1993, p. 166, where the relationship between mother and son is described in terms of the 'continuous presence of unresolved libidinality;' and Allison, Permitted and Prohibited Desires, pp. 3-5 for a discussion of the Ajase complex, and pp. 123-145, for a discussion of the mother-son incest theme. Lloyd deMause has discussed how Japanese mothers masturbate their children in "The Universality of Incest," Journal of 19(1991): 123-164, esp. p. 154, and notes that incest was described as "praiseworthy conduct" in many traditional communities.
7. Ezra Vogel, Japan's New Middle Class, 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 241-3, 249.
8. See Allison, Permitted and Prohibited Desires, for a sense of the significance of phallicism in manga. We hope to address this issue in a future work.
9. Action, July 11, 1989, pp. 75-90.
10. Baboo Baby Wee-wee, pp. 19-20.
11. Baboo Baby Wee-wee, p. 130.
12. Young Magazine, January 29, 1990, p. 166.
13. Young Magazine, February 4, 1991, p. 158.
14. Young Magazine, December 17, 1990, p. 120.
15. Big Comic, August 24, 1984, p. 9.
16. Action, July 4, 1989, p. 150.
17. Young Sunday, September 14, 1990, p. 238.
18. Action, October 31, 1984, p. 114; Young Magazine, May 7-14, 1990, p. 287.
19. Action, August 1, 1984, p. 124.
20. Action, July 17, 1990, p. 158.
21. Shonen Jump, September 12, 1988, p. 162.
22. Young Jump, January 29, 1990, p. 126.
23. Young Jump, January 11-15, 1990, pp. 43, 48.
24. Shonen Jump, May 14, 1990, pp. 58-9.
25. Young Magazine, October 3, 1988, p. 282; Young Sunday, April 13, 1990, p. 162; Young Sunday, December 8, 1989, p. 286; Shonen Champion, January 1, 1990, p. 360.
26. Shonen Champion, January 1, 1990, p. 358.
27. Young Jump, January 1&2, 1989, p. 182.
28. Big Comic Original, September 20, 1988, pp. 196, 198.
29. Young Jump, March 15, 1990, p. 129.
30. Young Jump, March 29, 1990, p. 256.
31. Young Jump, January 7, 1991, pp. 104-8. See also Young Jump, October 19, 1989, p. 65.
32. On the target audience, see Schodt, Dreamland Japan, p. 84; Baboo Baby Wee-wee, pp. 62-3.
33. Shonen Champion, November 30, 1984, pp. 103-121.
34. Young Sunday, March 24, 1989, pp. 124-5.
35. Shonen Jump, August 8, 1988, p. 71.
36. Shonen Jump, August 29, 1988, p. 208.
37. Shonen Jump, November 28, 1988, p. 161.
38. Shonen Jump, January 29, 1989, p. 106.
39. Shonen Jump, October 24, 1988, p. 84.
40. Shonen Jump, January 22, 1989, pp. 234-5.
41. Young Sunday, August 11, 1989, p. 158.
42. Big Comic, December 11, 1989, pp. 142-4.
43. Shonen Magazine, January 2-8, 1985, p. 116. See Shonen Jump, October, 15, 1984, p. 277; Shonen Jump, September 10, 1984, p. 258; Young Sunday, March 10, 1989, p. 179.
44. Shonen Jump, July 9, 1984, p. 181; Big Comic, August 24, 1984, p. 207; Shonen Jump, July 16, 1984, pp. 142-3.
45. Young Magazine, July 31, 1989, p. 208.
46. Young Sunday, January 27, 1989, p. 284.
47. Action, November 22, 1988, p. 266; Young Magazine, March 19, 1990, p. 327; Morning, December 8, 1988, p. 115.
48. Shonen King, January 11, 1985, pp. 13-14.
49. Action, January 9-16, 1990, pp. 26-7.
50. Young Magazine, July 2, 1990, p. 254.
51. Action, February 27, 1990, p. 18.
52. Baboo Baby Wee-wee, p. 156.
53. Shonen Jump, December 12, 1988, p. 231.
54. Young Magazine, July 10, 1989, p. 253.
55. Robocock, January 16, 1990, pp. 129-131.
56. Young Sunday, March 10, 1989, pp. 263-5.
57. Young Magazine, January 2, 1989, p. 228; Young Sunday, March 23, 1990, p. 254.
58. Shonen Jump, November 21, 1988, p. 334.
59. Action, November 28, 1984, pp. 135-7; Big Comic, July 25, 1984, p. 145.
60. Big Comic Original, November 20, 1988, p. 191. In a nice Oedipal drama, a businessman dreams of sawing off the legs of a rival, then feels guilty and phones to apologize, waking the man in the middle of the night. The next day at work, after little sleep and much sex, the rival is exhausted and gets in trouble with the boss, and vows that his wife will get even. That night, the businessman dreams of his rival's wife coming to castrate him with a hand saw.
61. Young Magazine, July 3, 1989, pp. 93-7.
62. Young Sunday, November 11, 1988, p. 151.
63. Young Magazine, October 23, 1989, pp. 70-1.
64. Young Magazine, December 17, 1990, p. 312.
65. Young Sunday, December 23, 1988, p. 211.
66. Young Magazine, November 13, 1989, pp. 74-5.
67. Young Sunday, January 13, 1989, p. 170.
68. Shonen Jump, November 28, 1988, pp. 172-6.
69. Shonen Champion, January 25, 1985, p. 202. The penis-caught-in the-door illustration is found in Adams and Hill, "Protest Anality and Japanese Group-Fantasies," p. 36, Illustration 22.
70. Young Jump, July 13, 1989, pp. 58-9.
71. Young Jump, July 19, 1990, pp. 222-3.
72. Young Jump, May 3, 1990, pp. 17-24. See also Shonen Jump, November 5, 1984, pp. 135-157, where the Medusal metaphor is dressed within the vestments of the Catholic Church. In short Medusa is a nun, a "Mother;" Hanayume March 5, 1990, pp. 136-40; Hanayume, April 20, 1990, pp. 197-216; Hanayume, June 5, 1990, pp. 316-20; Shonen Jump, June 4, 1990, pp. 381-4.
73. Young Jump, August 10, 1989, p. 233. The material here hints at an identification with the feared other or of permeable ego boundaries where self-other distinctions have blurred. So threatening is the possibility of merger with the female that in one story the male, a praying mantis, cuts off his offending organ himself rather than allow nature to take its course and meet death in the throes of bliss with the female of the species. Young Magazine, October 1, 1990, p. 73.
74. Young Jump, April 12, 1990, p. 252.
75. Young Magazine, February 26, 1990, p. 261.
76. Young Magazine, September 11, 1989, pp. 276-9.
77. Shonen Champion, January 1, 1985, pp. 145-59.
78. Schodt, Manga! Manga!, p. 128.
79. Action, November 22, 1988, pp. 265-6.
80. Action, November 15, 1988, pp. 258-60.
81. Action, December 6, 1988, pp. 247-8. See also Action, December 13, 1988, pp. 263-82.

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