Gender, Sexuality, and The Search for The Self in Ouran School Host Club.
Another essay... I have an excuse this time, though. I'm roleplaying Tamaki, one of the characters in Ouran School Host Club, and was thinking about his characterisation, and about whether or not it was legitimate to have him flirt as happily with boys as he does with girls. It didn't take very much thinking about canon to realise that yes, this was more than legitimate, but alas the "thinking about gender in canon" thing was a dangerous thing to do, because interesting things kept popping up. So yeah. Have an essay.
First of all, this is a look at the anime. I don't poke at the manga at all. The reason for this is because I'm not really trying to prove anything, or conclude anything. What this essay is, in essence, is "a look at how gender and desire is presented in the Ouran School Host Club anime." Also, this thing is full to the brim with links: they all go to snapshots from the anime, and all of them illustrate what I'm saying; none of them are needed to understand what I'm on about, I think. Spoilers - in so far as Ouran can be said to have a plot that can actually be spoiled - abound.
Introduction
One of the problems with trying to say anything at all about Ouran is that the series is so playful and not-serious: the playing of roles is a central part of the series. All the hosts assume personas as they work, and it is more than implied that considerable thought and work has gone into casting themselves as certain specific "types". An entire episode is devoted to "recasting" the hosts' roles: Renge decides they are not angsty enough, and thus begins her series-long career as a consultant - the hosts call her in whenever they need to run any aspect of their roles past her; she becomes a kind of arbiter of taste, and helps the host club members style their self-presentation to perfection. In fact, the hosts' roles are so sharply-defined that even Nekozawa's baby sister identifies each of them with great ease ("Incest!").
But - and herein lies the problem - it's made quite clear that while the hosts do indeed cast themselves in roles, the roles are not very far removed from reality. The problem of where acting ends and reality begins is referred to in the anime itself, in a multitude of different examples. The hosts do act a lot of the time: most obviously, there's the fact that the club members spend a lot of time cos-playing. They don costumes, discuss their roles, talk in role-appropriate accents, create role-appropriate settings - even to the point of changing the seasons - and then discard the roles, abandoning their creation with as much ease as it is created.
But the roles are not always obviously or certainly roles, such as the occasion when Hunny is shown to (probably) deliberately and consciously make himself appear as cute as possible, in response to a perceived threat to his role. The other host club members react with shock when they realise his cuteness may be feigned: "So what is he? Is he really deep?" and Hunny himself is plastered with a plaque that says "Unreadable". Then there's Tamaki's lengthy explanation to Kasanoda that he needs a "lovely item" to soften his impact; it is explained that Hunny has this function for Mori, and that most of Mori's charm comes from his affection for Hunny: "However, Mitskuni-kun is being rented on a long-term basis, so we can't let you borrow him." Both Mori and Hunny are utterly shocked by this particular revelation; it's clear that this take on their relationship is news to both of them, but it seems to surprise nobody else in the club. The relationship between these two is a case of reality being turned into an act: it's obvious throughout the series that Mori cares very deeply indeed for Hunny, but it is this honest care that is turned into a selling point, and therefore part of an act.
Hikaru and Kaoru's ongoing "brotherly love" act is another example of this blurring of reality and role. They explain their role easily, and are quite capable of looking at the way they have cast themselves from a detached perspective: "While our act that swings between friendship and homo is favourable enough, in our case, we use the highest taboo of us being twins as our biggest weapon. On top of that, this setup of also being loved simultaneously by these two tightly bonded twins is a maiden's ultimate romance, right?" But while it's clear their interaction while under their customers' gaze is very much an act, it's made obvious that (as with Hunny and Mori) their host club act is an exaggeration of their actual relationship. There are plenty of hints that suggest an incestuous relationship, and in this sense, the anime provides as much fanservice for its viewers as the twins do for their customers. Their behaviour while in public is full of unambiguously sexual lines ("you always played with my body to the fullest...") and erotic poses. Their behaviour while in private (or while only observed by other host club members) is toned down, but still potentially sexual: they sleep in the same bed, hold hands, and embrace in ways that are pretty much indistinguishable from their club act.
This same pattern - of reality and role being confused or blurred - occurs again and again. One episode opens with a romantic shot of Tamaki and a customer sitting on a large stone in the sea: she says "I can't believe I am all alone with Tamaki-kun on the beach!" and a suitably romantic dialogue follows. As viewers, we suspect nothing other than a genuinely romantic scene. Shortly afterwards, we see a wider shot, containing a queue of girls who all want their alone-time with Tamaki; Kyoya is organising it and is pragmatic about breaking the illusion, saying simply "Your 'alone with Tamaki' time is up."
Similarly, at one point, the twins "want to dress Haruhi as a woman" - I am unfamiliar with the expression they use, but based on Haruhi's reaction, it seems they talk about her as though she is in fact male, and they want her to cross-dress. Several customers like the idea of Haruhi dressing as a girl, since "he" would look cute that way. Haruhi is female, but her perceived role, her assumed maleness, has been accepted to such a degree by both the in-the-know twins and the oblivious customers that having her dress as a girl is considered cross-dressing. Haruhi does in fact dress up as a woman on several occasions, some of which are notable for the ongoing gender-bending theme in the anime. When she agrees to help the Zuka club with their performance, we see her on stage wearing lots of heavy make-up; while she is made up in almost exactly the same way as Tamaki was when he dressed as a woman in an earlier episode, she makes for a much less convincing girl than he does.
The hosts, then, in many respects "act" like themselves, even to the point of breaking the fourth wall. ("Haruhi and I are the main characters in this love comedy!") The intro ship-teases the viewers, providing as it does a handy "pairing-off" of the hosts - all of them wearing rather knowing smiles - in poses that are ambiguous to say the least. It's very hard to tell where the playfulness ends and reality begins, and it is my belief that the anime exploits this, and is able to go further, and say more extreme things, than it could have done without this smokescreen of playfulness. I believe the anime can be shown to be a remarkably radical one when it comes to its views on gender, and that it's also quite strongly subversive in suggesting that gender identity as well as sexual attraction is largely up for negotiation: Ouran presents a bisexual world, one in which male and female are not categories worth paying attention to. With this introduction as a caveat, then, here is an attempt at describing what the anime actually says about gender, sexuality, and identity.
Transgenderism and same-sex attraction
Transgenderism crops up a lot in the anime and is referenced in the intro song. The subs translate the line as "lady or host, it doesn't matter," the official dub translation is "lady, maybe, or host, I find I really don't mind." This refers first and foremost to Haruhi's self-perception, perhaps, but a wider interpretation that includes sexual attraction is more than possible. Central to a proper understanding of what goes on in Ouran is the fact that in Japan, same-sex desire and transgenderism seem to be generally considered to be much the same thing. In the words of one sociologist, in Japan "sexuality (unlike gender) is not a major source of identity, and those whose sexual orientation is towards the same sex are identified as differently gendered." (James Valentine, 1997). The popular image of same-sex attraction in the media is connected with transgenderism to an extreme extent - to quote McLelland's Male Homosexuality in Modern Japan, "Some [young men whose first information about same-sex desire was through the media] were left with the impression that same-sex desire necessarily required cross-dressing or that the only way they could 'be themselves' in Japanese society was to work in a transvestite bar." (p. 49) Further, "there is a basic agreement about the nature of same-sex desire: it somehow "feminizes" a man" (p. 120). The association of transgenderism with same-sex desire, then, is very strong in Japan. It's not one that's alien to the western mind, either; the concepts of butch lesbians and demonstratively feminine gay men are not unfamiliar, though here they are not generally perceived to be the only way in which to be same-sex oriented. In the following I may seem to imply altogether too much of a connection between transgenderism and homosexuality; while this is not factually correct in the real world, it does appear to be taken pretty much for granted in Ouran.
Haruhi is of course the most obviously transgendered person in the anime. The first time we see her, she is understood to be male, by both the viewers and other characters. Haruhi claims to have a lower than normal awareness of gender, and it's fairly obvious that her cross-dressing is pragmatic, and a matter of indifference, rather than a desire to be male, or to perform the male gender. However, her lack of awareness of gender appears to be not only self-directed, but also applies in her relations with others. There are several suggestions that Haruhi is not averse to the idea of same-sex relations. She finds the Zuka club's world view "interesting", she says in the first episode that it's not a bad job having to listen to girl's chatter, she's unfazed at having to kiss a girl, and she gives what seems to be very sincere compliments to other girls, including compliments that focus on their looks. She seems not particularly worried when it becomes clear Renge has a crush on her, and at the end of the anime, it becomes clear that she wants to continue working as a host even though her debt has been paid off. As will be seen later, Ouran is big on comparing characters to each other, and Haruhi is repeatedly compared to her mother. In a flashback scene, we see her father's horror as he discovers her mother's secret stash of Zuka Club paraphernalia; another indication of same-sex interest.
The transgendered/same-sex theme is made playfully explicit when Haruhi asks Tamaki what he'd like to eat at the end of the episode in which the host club visits her at home: Tamaki tells her he wants to eat onabe. "Onabe" is a slang term that is the female equivalent of "okama"; that is, a transgendered individual that is assumed to be same-sex oriented. Tamaki's desire to eat onabe is presumably a not-so-subtle indication of his attraction to her, but in his very declaration of attraction, there is a suggestion that this attraction might not be unproblematic, since the implication of the term is that of same-sex orientation. Furthermore, Tamaki's inner mind theatre always shows Haruhi as more stereotypically feminine than she is. He fantasises about a girly Haruhi, but the show is always quick to interrupt his fantasies, usually with a segue onto real-life Haruhi, who is always shown behaving in ways that contrast starkly with Tamaki's fantasies.
The most obvious example of the transgender/same-sex pattern is the host club's "competitors". Amakusa Benio of the Zuka Club is as-good-as stated outright to be lesbian: she soliloquises about how love between women is superior to love between a man and woman. It's not stated explicity that this love is erotic rather than platonic, but given that the statement is made in a highly romantic setting and on a bed, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch. Benio also has the transgender element: she is noticeably deep-voiced, has short hair, and is repeatedly shown wearing male attire, even to the point of sporting a false mustache. She refers to herself as "boku" which is a mostly, though not exclusively, male pronoun. And everywhere, there are lilies - in their hands, in the background, and on the stage curtain. It is presumably well known that the lily is a common symbol for lesbianism in Japan - after all, "yuri" means lily.
Less known, perhaps, is the fact that roses are a symbol associated with male homosexuality: the origin of both expressions is the longest-running gay magazine in Japan. It's called Barazoku, which literally means "the rose tribe", and the magazine used roses to signify same-sex oriented men and lilies to signify same-sex oriented women as far back as the 1970s. The host club members live in a world covered in roses: petals float through the door as you walk into the club, flowers pop up as a frame whenever anyone is at his most seductive, Tamaki's more self-centred soliloquies are always given against a sudden background of roses, and during emotional moments, petals scatter through the air, in great quantities and with no apparent source. Of course, to the average viewer, roses are primarily a romantic, heterosexual symbol, and since Ouran is very much a spoof of shoujo manga cliches, flying rose petals could be argued to have no same-sex implications. However, I would argue that this implication is nevertheless very much there - because of the lily-covered lesbianism of the Zuka club. This club is clearly intended as a female counterpart of the host club; the lilies are similarly a counterpart to the host club's roses. It is not unreasonable, I think, to see the host club's roses as both a conventionally-gendered symbol of heterosexual romance, and a subversive implication of homosexuality.
When the host club cross-dress in order to ward off the predatory lesbians of the Zuka club, the intention is to provide "sisters" as well as "brothers" for Haruhi. In doing so, all host club members except Mori are seen to adopt a female persona, and are evidently perfectly happy to self-present as female as well as male. The idea behind this sudden gender switch is that since Haruhi cross-dresses, she must be lesbian, and would be happier in an all-female environment: "While Haruhi is basically indifferent about it, if we had to say, she actually has a preference for male clothing. ... Why did we not notice all this time? Maybe she might be more fitted to be in the Zuka Club than the Host Club."
The host club itself is shown to be entirely blasé about the idea of same-sex attraction in general. In the first episode, all host club members are seen to be perfectly at ease with the idea of entertaining a male guest, and Tamaki hits on the as-he-believes-it male Haruhi with the same zeal with which he flirts with his female guests - leaning over her and touching her face, he suggests she should "try him." In a much later episode, Kasanoda enters and requests Haruhi as his host; the twins object to his presence, but it's clear they do so out of jealousy rather than because he's male, and Kyoya points out he is a customer like any other.
Subversion of gender expectations in Ouran happens on many levels, not all of them related to same-sex attraction. The customers' behaviour is traditionally feminine, even to the point of near-parody: they faint or cry at slight provocations, and blush and flutter their way through their encounters with the male hosts. However, their very act of paying for the hosts' attention is a sharp break with gender traditions: host clubs are based on the significantly more common hostess clubs, where women cater to men. Real-life host/hostess clubs are also very strongly associated with prostitution, and even in the more innocent host club, the boys are a commodity. The girls who are the customers of the club are buying affection and attention from the boys, they do not receive it merely because they are female. The girls are also very well aware of their status as customers: they talk calmly of shifts and designations, of "scenes" being played out, and they purchase merchandise related to their consumption of male beauty. And the hosts are well aware that it is their job to please their female customers. It is clear throughout that all of them work very hard at being pleasing to the female gaze, at being found attractive and appealing.
The final scene in the anime deserves a closer look, and not just for its sheer awesomeness: in it, gender roles, gender identities and gender expectations are played with to an incredible extent even for Ouran. It begins as Tamaki gets "abducted" by his bride-to-be; in itself an example of gender inversion. Though the entire host club pursues him, Haruhi is soon left to manage on her own. We see her dressed in a pretty pink dress, as she is pretending to be a boy cross-dressing as a girl. The wind catches her hair, drawing our attention to it, before she reaches up and pulls the wig off. She removes her pink dress, then takes the reins of the wagon and sets of at a gallop in pursuit of Tamaki. Interestingly, she's still wearing a dress: a simple, white one. She draws parallel with the car containing Tamaki; extending a hand as though to yank him into her wagon. In all this, her behaviour has been masculine, but suddenly the gender roles are flipped: she is thrown from the vehicle, and is abruptly very much a damsel in distress. Tamaki, who has hitherto remained passive, immediately assumes the role of her white knight, and leaps after her, pulling her into a thoroughly conventional hero-and-heroine embrace, even going so far as to carry her in his arms after they land. When he gently berates her for her recklessness, gender is again flipped - she quotes one of his lines from the first episode back at him: "Handsome men can't be hurt by water". This is in fact her last spoken line in the anime proper, and it balances the conventionally gendered dance scene that follows, in which Haruhi and Tamaki waltz under a night sky filled with fireworks. And, the very last time we see her, in the epilogue, she is back in her boy's uniform, surrounded by masses of roses, welcoming the viewers as guests.
Tamaki - the queenly king
As mentioned above, Ouran is big on comparing characters. This is particularly the case with Tamaki, and the two characters to whom his is compared are both marked very strongly as same-sex oriented as well as transgendered. They are Benio of the Zuka Club, and Haruhi's father.
Tamaki is compared to Benio in many ways; first and foremost by Haruhi and the other club members, who recognise Benio's behaviour pattern as being similar to Tamaki's. She also, of course, has much the same position in her school as he does in his. The similarities are very deliberately played up: for instance, there are two almost identical scenes that happen many episodes apart. In an early episode, Hikaru and Kaoru grab Haruhi, a car draws up, the window opens and Tamaki looks out, says "Good, take her away," and we get a shot of Haruhi reflected in the window as she says "Huh?". The exact same event, with the same dialogue, same angles, and same sequence of images, happens in an episode towards the end of the anime, in which Benio plays Tamaki's role, and her minions play those of Hikaru and Kaoru. There is certainly no coincidence involved; the comparison between Benio and Tamaki is deliberate, even to the point that Tamaki is wearing flowers around his neck, to create a greater visual similarity with the contrasting collar of Benio's school uniform.
The person to whom Tamaki gets compared the most, however, is Haruhi's father. Of course, Tamaki himself sets himself up to be Haruhi's "father"; this is a running gag in the story, since his so-called paternal affection for her is merely a way for him to deal with his feelings of attraction. Rather than admit that he's in love with her, he chooses to style himself as her protector and father figure. Furthermore, he casts Kyoya in the role of "mother" - and there, of course, we enter the now-familiar territory of transgenderism and homosexuality. According to the not always reliable Wikipedia, Kyoya was born on Good Wife Day, which rather suggests that his role as "mother" to Tamaki's "father" is a central one in the story. There's also the strange and amusing scene in which Tamaki thinks Kyoya is engaged to be married, and his relief when he learns that this is not the case: a blinking arrow makes sure we don't miss his "relief" reaction.
And the comparison with Haruhi's actual father serves to emphasise this same-sex undercurrent: Haruhi's father is transgendered: he's got long hair, works as a hostess in a bar, and is openly referred to by others (and refers to himself) as an okama. The meaning of the word "okama" is "pot", as in the cooking implement, but at some point in the Meiji period it became slang for the anus, and thus by further implication to the passive partner in a gay male relationship. In true keeping with Japan's association of homosexuality with transgenderism, "okama" in practical day to day use means both "homosexual" and "transvestite"; this is because it's assumed that a passive homosexual man will want to look like a woman. Haruhi's father is the only person whose sexuality is stated openly: he declares that he used to be bisexual, but that after his wife's death, he decided he could never love another woman, and became exclusively male-oriented. His redefinition of himself as male-oriented coincides with his assumption of a female role.
As with Benio, the comparison of Tamaki with Haruhi's father occurs on several levels: most of the host club members, at one point or another, will remark that the two behave in very similar ways, and as viewers, we are given visual confirmation of this, most notably in a scene in a supermarket. We see a flashback to a clearly transgendered younger version of Haruhi's father - he's made up, has longish hair, and appears to be wearing a blouse under his coat - before we, immediately afterwards, are treated to the sight of Tamaki who unknowingly reenacts the scene with Haruhi, using the same words, and the same effeminate gestures. There's also the rather lovely episode in which Haruhi dreams a version of Alice in Wonderland, with herself as Alice. She encounters a dream-version of Tamaki, who very fittingly is cast as the mad hatter. As in the original novel, he asks her a riddle, one to which we get no answer: in his case, it is "why do I resemble your father?"
Where I am going with all this, of course, is that since Tamaki is compared so very emphatically to two transgendered and same-sex oriented people, the anime codes him, heavily, as being the same. There's no doubt at all that he's attracted to and in love with Haruhi, but I would suggest that a strong part of her attraction for him is her gender ambiguity, and the fact that he keeps fantasising about her as being more girly than she actually is does not contradict this. If Tamaki is bisexual, Haruhi's ability to perform both male and female genders with equal facility and conviction is a central reason why Tamaki might find her attractive. His attraction to her very obviously begins before he knows of her sex: when she has been adopted into the club but is still perceived to be a man, Tamaki simpers "you look so cute!" when Haruhi has had her make-over, and assumes the role of her "father", which later is shown to be how he deals with his attraction to her. Furthermore, he happily asks her "have you fallen for me?", winks at her, and seems to be a bit overly inclined to hug and cuddle her. His behaviour is so marked that a female customer gets jealous to the point of trying to rid herself of bothersome competition.
For all his silliness, Tamaki is held up as capable of unconditional and universal love. We see it several times in canon; he helps people for no other reason than a genuine desire to make them happy. This love is very clearly not gender- or age dependent: he helps total strangers (the middle-aged, male doctor), customers (Kanako), children (Shiro and Nekozawa's little sister). Never in any of this is there any selfish motivation, and his character background suggests that this ability is near-divine: his birthday is the 8th of April, which is as close as you can get to a Western-calender version of Buddha's birthday, traditionally celebrated on the eight day of the fourth lunar month. His name further hints at this Buddha-connection: the kanji 王, which goes into his surname, means "king," but seems to be used in a lot of Buddhist contexts. With the caveat that I am very far from an expert on either kanji or Buddhism: depending on which other kanji are used, it can refer to a deity of love, or to a sutra in which, apparently, the main character learns to change sexual lust into wisdom and love for humanity.
It might be too much to suggest that Tamaki, as he appears in the anime, is a Bodhisattva figure. Rather, perhaps, he might be moving in that direction, and if his selfless side is allowed to continue to develop, he might become an extraordinary force for the good. As it is, he helps several host club members (Kyoya, the twins, Hunny) to become what they truly are, to develop in the right direction. In this, he is Bodhisattva-like; he assists others in reaching enlightenment. In the context of this essay, however, what I want to emphasise is that his ability to love is emphatically unrestricted by gender - or any other categories. And, going out on a limb here (this is not my area at all!) his playful approach to gender might in fact be another indication of his potentially-Bodhisattva-nature: in at least some Buddhist traditions, it appears that distinguishing between male and female is not considered worthy of a Bodhisattva. In Women, Religion and Social Change by Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, it is stated that several sutras play with the idea of male and female. "The goddess in Vimalakirti, for example, uses her supernormal powers to change freely back and forth from female to male, in order to demonstrate to Sariputra, her monk antagonist, that maleness and femaleness are not ultimately real at all but are empty like a show of magic. The conclusion reached in these texts, then, is that [...] a distinction between male and female is made only by the unenlightened wordling, and not by a truly wise Bodhisattva."
Conclusion: Finding and accepting the self
Being true to yourself is a theme that crops up repeatedly in the anime, and while this is played out in many ways, the underlying theme is the same: the story advocates breaking out of a narrow framework - and it's usually one you've imposed on yourself, as is the case with Kyoya, the twins, and Hunny - and becoming who you truly are. The most beautiful version of this is Kyoya's painting metaphor; highly effective and touching in its simple symbolism. In this, of course, lies a concern with identity and self-understanding, and this is also played out another way: in terms of gender and sexuality.
The conflict between Hunny and his brother, and the story of Hunny's entrance into the club, is an example of the "true to yourself" theme, and it can be seen as a spoof coming-out story. While it is true that this little subplot plays out without any specific references to sexuality, the ideology of it is cast in terms of gender and acceptable gender roles. In a flashback - held in a grey tint, compared to Ouran's usual pinkness - we see Hunny carrying his briefcase in a 'manly way' and eating a 'manly diet' while he tries to suppress his real desires in order to live up to the expectations of his family. He does this with considerable success, since his pupils fanboy over him for being 'manly and strict'. Then Tamaki appears, in a shower of rose petals, and offers him 'cute little objects and sweet cakes'. As a brief but relevant aside: in 1998, the media cited a Japanese politician's liking for 'cute things' as proof of his homosexuality when a scandal broke concerning his private life (McLelland, p 51).
Hunny responds to this opening by wriggling his hips in excitement, but resists, whereup Tamaki asks him what true strength is - "to know what you are really like, and acknowledge it [...] isn't that what true strength is?" Hunny then approaches his father and asks the same question: the setting is a hyper-masculine, traditional, ascetic Japanese household, and his father responds by challenging his son to a martial arts match, suggesting that true strength is physical, in keeping with an understanding of manliness and strength where the ability to hurt your opponent is what matters. Whereupon Hunny beats up his father, and joins the Host Club. His brother, however, still objects, prompting Tamaki to ask "what is wrong with cakes and bunny dolls?" Hunny, responding to his brother's objections, says "I am not going to change what I am right now, so let's settle this the Haninozuka way, like men." - i.e. through a physical fight. The host club is seen as the opposite of manliness, its culture at odds with proper masculine behaviour, and Hunny's deliberate and "shameless" acceptance of the lifestyle it offers is seen by his brother as a blow to the family honour. In all this, then, it seems reasonable to read this story as yet another of this series' many references to same-sex attraction, though in this case it's more heavily coded than usual.
However, it is first and foremost a story about self-understanding and self-acceptance. As mentioned above, Tamaki really does function as a catalyst for several characters' path to deeper self-understanding, and there is a wonderfully non-judgemental tone to this process. When Tamaki helps Kyoya to come into himself, there's a delightful moment where he blinks in surprise, says "Oh, that's a bad guy's face. So that's your true form." - and smiles. This easy acceptance of deviance most emphatically extends to gender and sexuality within the anime's world. In fact, the emphasis on the self is subtly indicated by Haruhi's choice of pronoun in refering to herself: she mostly uses "jibun," and this is a gender-neutral pronoun; in fact, it means "self" rather than "I". In this, I believe, there is an implication that she has somehow reached a little further than the other host club members: she is a self not a man or a woman. Of course, this also ties in with the transgender element of the anime, but I think it is meant to imply that Haruhi is an example to be followed: she does not base her sense of self on unimportant externals like gender.
If I were to write any sort of conclusion to this sprawling nightmare of an essay, it would be that Ouran advocates a world view in which gender and sexual preference are considered of almost no importance, and in which being true to yourself - no matter who that self is - is the important thing. In fact, Haruhi sums up the anime's message in the very first episode: "Men, women or looks.... It's what's inside that matters for a person." Given the frothy, superficial, even decadent mood of the host club, it may be a somewhat surprising message, but its presence may perhaps be the reason why the anime inspires such affection in its viewers.
First of all, this is a look at the anime. I don't poke at the manga at all. The reason for this is because I'm not really trying to prove anything, or conclude anything. What this essay is, in essence, is "a look at how gender and desire is presented in the Ouran School Host Club anime." Also, this thing is full to the brim with links: they all go to snapshots from the anime, and all of them illustrate what I'm saying; none of them are needed to understand what I'm on about, I think. Spoilers - in so far as Ouran can be said to have a plot that can actually be spoiled - abound.
Introduction
One of the problems with trying to say anything at all about Ouran is that the series is so playful and not-serious: the playing of roles is a central part of the series. All the hosts assume personas as they work, and it is more than implied that considerable thought and work has gone into casting themselves as certain specific "types". An entire episode is devoted to "recasting" the hosts' roles: Renge decides they are not angsty enough, and thus begins her series-long career as a consultant - the hosts call her in whenever they need to run any aspect of their roles past her; she becomes a kind of arbiter of taste, and helps the host club members style their self-presentation to perfection. In fact, the hosts' roles are so sharply-defined that even Nekozawa's baby sister identifies each of them with great ease ("Incest!").
But - and herein lies the problem - it's made quite clear that while the hosts do indeed cast themselves in roles, the roles are not very far removed from reality. The problem of where acting ends and reality begins is referred to in the anime itself, in a multitude of different examples. The hosts do act a lot of the time: most obviously, there's the fact that the club members spend a lot of time cos-playing. They don costumes, discuss their roles, talk in role-appropriate accents, create role-appropriate settings - even to the point of changing the seasons - and then discard the roles, abandoning their creation with as much ease as it is created.
But the roles are not always obviously or certainly roles, such as the occasion when Hunny is shown to (probably) deliberately and consciously make himself appear as cute as possible, in response to a perceived threat to his role. The other host club members react with shock when they realise his cuteness may be feigned: "So what is he? Is he really deep?" and Hunny himself is plastered with a plaque that says "Unreadable". Then there's Tamaki's lengthy explanation to Kasanoda that he needs a "lovely item" to soften his impact; it is explained that Hunny has this function for Mori, and that most of Mori's charm comes from his affection for Hunny: "However, Mitskuni-kun is being rented on a long-term basis, so we can't let you borrow him." Both Mori and Hunny are utterly shocked by this particular revelation; it's clear that this take on their relationship is news to both of them, but it seems to surprise nobody else in the club. The relationship between these two is a case of reality being turned into an act: it's obvious throughout the series that Mori cares very deeply indeed for Hunny, but it is this honest care that is turned into a selling point, and therefore part of an act.
Hikaru and Kaoru's ongoing "brotherly love" act is another example of this blurring of reality and role. They explain their role easily, and are quite capable of looking at the way they have cast themselves from a detached perspective: "While our act that swings between friendship and homo is favourable enough, in our case, we use the highest taboo of us being twins as our biggest weapon. On top of that, this setup of also being loved simultaneously by these two tightly bonded twins is a maiden's ultimate romance, right?" But while it's clear their interaction while under their customers' gaze is very much an act, it's made obvious that (as with Hunny and Mori) their host club act is an exaggeration of their actual relationship. There are plenty of hints that suggest an incestuous relationship, and in this sense, the anime provides as much fanservice for its viewers as the twins do for their customers. Their behaviour while in public is full of unambiguously sexual lines ("you always played with my body to the fullest...") and erotic poses. Their behaviour while in private (or while only observed by other host club members) is toned down, but still potentially sexual: they sleep in the same bed, hold hands, and embrace in ways that are pretty much indistinguishable from their club act.
This same pattern - of reality and role being confused or blurred - occurs again and again. One episode opens with a romantic shot of Tamaki and a customer sitting on a large stone in the sea: she says "I can't believe I am all alone with Tamaki-kun on the beach!" and a suitably romantic dialogue follows. As viewers, we suspect nothing other than a genuinely romantic scene. Shortly afterwards, we see a wider shot, containing a queue of girls who all want their alone-time with Tamaki; Kyoya is organising it and is pragmatic about breaking the illusion, saying simply "Your 'alone with Tamaki' time is up."
Similarly, at one point, the twins "want to dress Haruhi as a woman" - I am unfamiliar with the expression they use, but based on Haruhi's reaction, it seems they talk about her as though she is in fact male, and they want her to cross-dress. Several customers like the idea of Haruhi dressing as a girl, since "he" would look cute that way. Haruhi is female, but her perceived role, her assumed maleness, has been accepted to such a degree by both the in-the-know twins and the oblivious customers that having her dress as a girl is considered cross-dressing. Haruhi does in fact dress up as a woman on several occasions, some of which are notable for the ongoing gender-bending theme in the anime. When she agrees to help the Zuka club with their performance, we see her on stage wearing lots of heavy make-up; while she is made up in almost exactly the same way as Tamaki was when he dressed as a woman in an earlier episode, she makes for a much less convincing girl than he does.
The hosts, then, in many respects "act" like themselves, even to the point of breaking the fourth wall. ("Haruhi and I are the main characters in this love comedy!") The intro ship-teases the viewers, providing as it does a handy "pairing-off" of the hosts - all of them wearing rather knowing smiles - in poses that are ambiguous to say the least. It's very hard to tell where the playfulness ends and reality begins, and it is my belief that the anime exploits this, and is able to go further, and say more extreme things, than it could have done without this smokescreen of playfulness. I believe the anime can be shown to be a remarkably radical one when it comes to its views on gender, and that it's also quite strongly subversive in suggesting that gender identity as well as sexual attraction is largely up for negotiation: Ouran presents a bisexual world, one in which male and female are not categories worth paying attention to. With this introduction as a caveat, then, here is an attempt at describing what the anime actually says about gender, sexuality, and identity.
Transgenderism and same-sex attraction
Transgenderism crops up a lot in the anime and is referenced in the intro song. The subs translate the line as "lady or host, it doesn't matter," the official dub translation is "lady, maybe, or host, I find I really don't mind." This refers first and foremost to Haruhi's self-perception, perhaps, but a wider interpretation that includes sexual attraction is more than possible. Central to a proper understanding of what goes on in Ouran is the fact that in Japan, same-sex desire and transgenderism seem to be generally considered to be much the same thing. In the words of one sociologist, in Japan "sexuality (unlike gender) is not a major source of identity, and those whose sexual orientation is towards the same sex are identified as differently gendered." (James Valentine, 1997). The popular image of same-sex attraction in the media is connected with transgenderism to an extreme extent - to quote McLelland's Male Homosexuality in Modern Japan, "Some [young men whose first information about same-sex desire was through the media] were left with the impression that same-sex desire necessarily required cross-dressing or that the only way they could 'be themselves' in Japanese society was to work in a transvestite bar." (p. 49) Further, "there is a basic agreement about the nature of same-sex desire: it somehow "feminizes" a man" (p. 120). The association of transgenderism with same-sex desire, then, is very strong in Japan. It's not one that's alien to the western mind, either; the concepts of butch lesbians and demonstratively feminine gay men are not unfamiliar, though here they are not generally perceived to be the only way in which to be same-sex oriented. In the following I may seem to imply altogether too much of a connection between transgenderism and homosexuality; while this is not factually correct in the real world, it does appear to be taken pretty much for granted in Ouran.
Haruhi is of course the most obviously transgendered person in the anime. The first time we see her, she is understood to be male, by both the viewers and other characters. Haruhi claims to have a lower than normal awareness of gender, and it's fairly obvious that her cross-dressing is pragmatic, and a matter of indifference, rather than a desire to be male, or to perform the male gender. However, her lack of awareness of gender appears to be not only self-directed, but also applies in her relations with others. There are several suggestions that Haruhi is not averse to the idea of same-sex relations. She finds the Zuka club's world view "interesting", she says in the first episode that it's not a bad job having to listen to girl's chatter, she's unfazed at having to kiss a girl, and she gives what seems to be very sincere compliments to other girls, including compliments that focus on their looks. She seems not particularly worried when it becomes clear Renge has a crush on her, and at the end of the anime, it becomes clear that she wants to continue working as a host even though her debt has been paid off. As will be seen later, Ouran is big on comparing characters to each other, and Haruhi is repeatedly compared to her mother. In a flashback scene, we see her father's horror as he discovers her mother's secret stash of Zuka Club paraphernalia; another indication of same-sex interest.
The transgendered/same-sex theme is made playfully explicit when Haruhi asks Tamaki what he'd like to eat at the end of the episode in which the host club visits her at home: Tamaki tells her he wants to eat onabe. "Onabe" is a slang term that is the female equivalent of "okama"; that is, a transgendered individual that is assumed to be same-sex oriented. Tamaki's desire to eat onabe is presumably a not-so-subtle indication of his attraction to her, but in his very declaration of attraction, there is a suggestion that this attraction might not be unproblematic, since the implication of the term is that of same-sex orientation. Furthermore, Tamaki's inner mind theatre always shows Haruhi as more stereotypically feminine than she is. He fantasises about a girly Haruhi, but the show is always quick to interrupt his fantasies, usually with a segue onto real-life Haruhi, who is always shown behaving in ways that contrast starkly with Tamaki's fantasies.
The most obvious example of the transgender/same-sex pattern is the host club's "competitors". Amakusa Benio of the Zuka Club is as-good-as stated outright to be lesbian: she soliloquises about how love between women is superior to love between a man and woman. It's not stated explicity that this love is erotic rather than platonic, but given that the statement is made in a highly romantic setting and on a bed, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch. Benio also has the transgender element: she is noticeably deep-voiced, has short hair, and is repeatedly shown wearing male attire, even to the point of sporting a false mustache. She refers to herself as "boku" which is a mostly, though not exclusively, male pronoun. And everywhere, there are lilies - in their hands, in the background, and on the stage curtain. It is presumably well known that the lily is a common symbol for lesbianism in Japan - after all, "yuri" means lily.
Less known, perhaps, is the fact that roses are a symbol associated with male homosexuality: the origin of both expressions is the longest-running gay magazine in Japan. It's called Barazoku, which literally means "the rose tribe", and the magazine used roses to signify same-sex oriented men and lilies to signify same-sex oriented women as far back as the 1970s. The host club members live in a world covered in roses: petals float through the door as you walk into the club, flowers pop up as a frame whenever anyone is at his most seductive, Tamaki's more self-centred soliloquies are always given against a sudden background of roses, and during emotional moments, petals scatter through the air, in great quantities and with no apparent source. Of course, to the average viewer, roses are primarily a romantic, heterosexual symbol, and since Ouran is very much a spoof of shoujo manga cliches, flying rose petals could be argued to have no same-sex implications. However, I would argue that this implication is nevertheless very much there - because of the lily-covered lesbianism of the Zuka club. This club is clearly intended as a female counterpart of the host club; the lilies are similarly a counterpart to the host club's roses. It is not unreasonable, I think, to see the host club's roses as both a conventionally-gendered symbol of heterosexual romance, and a subversive implication of homosexuality.
When the host club cross-dress in order to ward off the predatory lesbians of the Zuka club, the intention is to provide "sisters" as well as "brothers" for Haruhi. In doing so, all host club members except Mori are seen to adopt a female persona, and are evidently perfectly happy to self-present as female as well as male. The idea behind this sudden gender switch is that since Haruhi cross-dresses, she must be lesbian, and would be happier in an all-female environment: "While Haruhi is basically indifferent about it, if we had to say, she actually has a preference for male clothing. ... Why did we not notice all this time? Maybe she might be more fitted to be in the Zuka Club than the Host Club."
The host club itself is shown to be entirely blasé about the idea of same-sex attraction in general. In the first episode, all host club members are seen to be perfectly at ease with the idea of entertaining a male guest, and Tamaki hits on the as-he-believes-it male Haruhi with the same zeal with which he flirts with his female guests - leaning over her and touching her face, he suggests she should "try him." In a much later episode, Kasanoda enters and requests Haruhi as his host; the twins object to his presence, but it's clear they do so out of jealousy rather than because he's male, and Kyoya points out he is a customer like any other.
Subversion of gender expectations in Ouran happens on many levels, not all of them related to same-sex attraction. The customers' behaviour is traditionally feminine, even to the point of near-parody: they faint or cry at slight provocations, and blush and flutter their way through their encounters with the male hosts. However, their very act of paying for the hosts' attention is a sharp break with gender traditions: host clubs are based on the significantly more common hostess clubs, where women cater to men. Real-life host/hostess clubs are also very strongly associated with prostitution, and even in the more innocent host club, the boys are a commodity. The girls who are the customers of the club are buying affection and attention from the boys, they do not receive it merely because they are female. The girls are also very well aware of their status as customers: they talk calmly of shifts and designations, of "scenes" being played out, and they purchase merchandise related to their consumption of male beauty. And the hosts are well aware that it is their job to please their female customers. It is clear throughout that all of them work very hard at being pleasing to the female gaze, at being found attractive and appealing.
The final scene in the anime deserves a closer look, and not just for its sheer awesomeness: in it, gender roles, gender identities and gender expectations are played with to an incredible extent even for Ouran. It begins as Tamaki gets "abducted" by his bride-to-be; in itself an example of gender inversion. Though the entire host club pursues him, Haruhi is soon left to manage on her own. We see her dressed in a pretty pink dress, as she is pretending to be a boy cross-dressing as a girl. The wind catches her hair, drawing our attention to it, before she reaches up and pulls the wig off. She removes her pink dress, then takes the reins of the wagon and sets of at a gallop in pursuit of Tamaki. Interestingly, she's still wearing a dress: a simple, white one. She draws parallel with the car containing Tamaki; extending a hand as though to yank him into her wagon. In all this, her behaviour has been masculine, but suddenly the gender roles are flipped: she is thrown from the vehicle, and is abruptly very much a damsel in distress. Tamaki, who has hitherto remained passive, immediately assumes the role of her white knight, and leaps after her, pulling her into a thoroughly conventional hero-and-heroine embrace, even going so far as to carry her in his arms after they land. When he gently berates her for her recklessness, gender is again flipped - she quotes one of his lines from the first episode back at him: "Handsome men can't be hurt by water". This is in fact her last spoken line in the anime proper, and it balances the conventionally gendered dance scene that follows, in which Haruhi and Tamaki waltz under a night sky filled with fireworks. And, the very last time we see her, in the epilogue, she is back in her boy's uniform, surrounded by masses of roses, welcoming the viewers as guests.
Tamaki - the queenly king
As mentioned above, Ouran is big on comparing characters. This is particularly the case with Tamaki, and the two characters to whom his is compared are both marked very strongly as same-sex oriented as well as transgendered. They are Benio of the Zuka Club, and Haruhi's father.
Tamaki is compared to Benio in many ways; first and foremost by Haruhi and the other club members, who recognise Benio's behaviour pattern as being similar to Tamaki's. She also, of course, has much the same position in her school as he does in his. The similarities are very deliberately played up: for instance, there are two almost identical scenes that happen many episodes apart. In an early episode, Hikaru and Kaoru grab Haruhi, a car draws up, the window opens and Tamaki looks out, says "Good, take her away," and we get a shot of Haruhi reflected in the window as she says "Huh?". The exact same event, with the same dialogue, same angles, and same sequence of images, happens in an episode towards the end of the anime, in which Benio plays Tamaki's role, and her minions play those of Hikaru and Kaoru. There is certainly no coincidence involved; the comparison between Benio and Tamaki is deliberate, even to the point that Tamaki is wearing flowers around his neck, to create a greater visual similarity with the contrasting collar of Benio's school uniform.
The person to whom Tamaki gets compared the most, however, is Haruhi's father. Of course, Tamaki himself sets himself up to be Haruhi's "father"; this is a running gag in the story, since his so-called paternal affection for her is merely a way for him to deal with his feelings of attraction. Rather than admit that he's in love with her, he chooses to style himself as her protector and father figure. Furthermore, he casts Kyoya in the role of "mother" - and there, of course, we enter the now-familiar territory of transgenderism and homosexuality. According to the not always reliable Wikipedia, Kyoya was born on Good Wife Day, which rather suggests that his role as "mother" to Tamaki's "father" is a central one in the story. There's also the strange and amusing scene in which Tamaki thinks Kyoya is engaged to be married, and his relief when he learns that this is not the case: a blinking arrow makes sure we don't miss his "relief" reaction.
And the comparison with Haruhi's actual father serves to emphasise this same-sex undercurrent: Haruhi's father is transgendered: he's got long hair, works as a hostess in a bar, and is openly referred to by others (and refers to himself) as an okama. The meaning of the word "okama" is "pot", as in the cooking implement, but at some point in the Meiji period it became slang for the anus, and thus by further implication to the passive partner in a gay male relationship. In true keeping with Japan's association of homosexuality with transgenderism, "okama" in practical day to day use means both "homosexual" and "transvestite"; this is because it's assumed that a passive homosexual man will want to look like a woman. Haruhi's father is the only person whose sexuality is stated openly: he declares that he used to be bisexual, but that after his wife's death, he decided he could never love another woman, and became exclusively male-oriented. His redefinition of himself as male-oriented coincides with his assumption of a female role.
As with Benio, the comparison of Tamaki with Haruhi's father occurs on several levels: most of the host club members, at one point or another, will remark that the two behave in very similar ways, and as viewers, we are given visual confirmation of this, most notably in a scene in a supermarket. We see a flashback to a clearly transgendered younger version of Haruhi's father - he's made up, has longish hair, and appears to be wearing a blouse under his coat - before we, immediately afterwards, are treated to the sight of Tamaki who unknowingly reenacts the scene with Haruhi, using the same words, and the same effeminate gestures. There's also the rather lovely episode in which Haruhi dreams a version of Alice in Wonderland, with herself as Alice. She encounters a dream-version of Tamaki, who very fittingly is cast as the mad hatter. As in the original novel, he asks her a riddle, one to which we get no answer: in his case, it is "why do I resemble your father?"
Where I am going with all this, of course, is that since Tamaki is compared so very emphatically to two transgendered and same-sex oriented people, the anime codes him, heavily, as being the same. There's no doubt at all that he's attracted to and in love with Haruhi, but I would suggest that a strong part of her attraction for him is her gender ambiguity, and the fact that he keeps fantasising about her as being more girly than she actually is does not contradict this. If Tamaki is bisexual, Haruhi's ability to perform both male and female genders with equal facility and conviction is a central reason why Tamaki might find her attractive. His attraction to her very obviously begins before he knows of her sex: when she has been adopted into the club but is still perceived to be a man, Tamaki simpers "you look so cute!" when Haruhi has had her make-over, and assumes the role of her "father", which later is shown to be how he deals with his attraction to her. Furthermore, he happily asks her "have you fallen for me?", winks at her, and seems to be a bit overly inclined to hug and cuddle her. His behaviour is so marked that a female customer gets jealous to the point of trying to rid herself of bothersome competition.
For all his silliness, Tamaki is held up as capable of unconditional and universal love. We see it several times in canon; he helps people for no other reason than a genuine desire to make them happy. This love is very clearly not gender- or age dependent: he helps total strangers (the middle-aged, male doctor), customers (Kanako), children (Shiro and Nekozawa's little sister). Never in any of this is there any selfish motivation, and his character background suggests that this ability is near-divine: his birthday is the 8th of April, which is as close as you can get to a Western-calender version of Buddha's birthday, traditionally celebrated on the eight day of the fourth lunar month. His name further hints at this Buddha-connection: the kanji 王, which goes into his surname, means "king," but seems to be used in a lot of Buddhist contexts. With the caveat that I am very far from an expert on either kanji or Buddhism: depending on which other kanji are used, it can refer to a deity of love, or to a sutra in which, apparently, the main character learns to change sexual lust into wisdom and love for humanity.
It might be too much to suggest that Tamaki, as he appears in the anime, is a Bodhisattva figure. Rather, perhaps, he might be moving in that direction, and if his selfless side is allowed to continue to develop, he might become an extraordinary force for the good. As it is, he helps several host club members (Kyoya, the twins, Hunny) to become what they truly are, to develop in the right direction. In this, he is Bodhisattva-like; he assists others in reaching enlightenment. In the context of this essay, however, what I want to emphasise is that his ability to love is emphatically unrestricted by gender - or any other categories. And, going out on a limb here (this is not my area at all!) his playful approach to gender might in fact be another indication of his potentially-Bodhisattva-nature: in at least some Buddhist traditions, it appears that distinguishing between male and female is not considered worthy of a Bodhisattva. In Women, Religion and Social Change by Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, it is stated that several sutras play with the idea of male and female. "The goddess in Vimalakirti, for example, uses her supernormal powers to change freely back and forth from female to male, in order to demonstrate to Sariputra, her monk antagonist, that maleness and femaleness are not ultimately real at all but are empty like a show of magic. The conclusion reached in these texts, then, is that [...] a distinction between male and female is made only by the unenlightened wordling, and not by a truly wise Bodhisattva."
Conclusion: Finding and accepting the self
Being true to yourself is a theme that crops up repeatedly in the anime, and while this is played out in many ways, the underlying theme is the same: the story advocates breaking out of a narrow framework - and it's usually one you've imposed on yourself, as is the case with Kyoya, the twins, and Hunny - and becoming who you truly are. The most beautiful version of this is Kyoya's painting metaphor; highly effective and touching in its simple symbolism. In this, of course, lies a concern with identity and self-understanding, and this is also played out another way: in terms of gender and sexuality.
The conflict between Hunny and his brother, and the story of Hunny's entrance into the club, is an example of the "true to yourself" theme, and it can be seen as a spoof coming-out story. While it is true that this little subplot plays out without any specific references to sexuality, the ideology of it is cast in terms of gender and acceptable gender roles. In a flashback - held in a grey tint, compared to Ouran's usual pinkness - we see Hunny carrying his briefcase in a 'manly way' and eating a 'manly diet' while he tries to suppress his real desires in order to live up to the expectations of his family. He does this with considerable success, since his pupils fanboy over him for being 'manly and strict'. Then Tamaki appears, in a shower of rose petals, and offers him 'cute little objects and sweet cakes'. As a brief but relevant aside: in 1998, the media cited a Japanese politician's liking for 'cute things' as proof of his homosexuality when a scandal broke concerning his private life (McLelland, p 51).
Hunny responds to this opening by wriggling his hips in excitement, but resists, whereup Tamaki asks him what true strength is - "to know what you are really like, and acknowledge it [...] isn't that what true strength is?" Hunny then approaches his father and asks the same question: the setting is a hyper-masculine, traditional, ascetic Japanese household, and his father responds by challenging his son to a martial arts match, suggesting that true strength is physical, in keeping with an understanding of manliness and strength where the ability to hurt your opponent is what matters. Whereupon Hunny beats up his father, and joins the Host Club. His brother, however, still objects, prompting Tamaki to ask "what is wrong with cakes and bunny dolls?" Hunny, responding to his brother's objections, says "I am not going to change what I am right now, so let's settle this the Haninozuka way, like men." - i.e. through a physical fight. The host club is seen as the opposite of manliness, its culture at odds with proper masculine behaviour, and Hunny's deliberate and "shameless" acceptance of the lifestyle it offers is seen by his brother as a blow to the family honour. In all this, then, it seems reasonable to read this story as yet another of this series' many references to same-sex attraction, though in this case it's more heavily coded than usual.
However, it is first and foremost a story about self-understanding and self-acceptance. As mentioned above, Tamaki really does function as a catalyst for several characters' path to deeper self-understanding, and there is a wonderfully non-judgemental tone to this process. When Tamaki helps Kyoya to come into himself, there's a delightful moment where he blinks in surprise, says "Oh, that's a bad guy's face. So that's your true form." - and smiles. This easy acceptance of deviance most emphatically extends to gender and sexuality within the anime's world. In fact, the emphasis on the self is subtly indicated by Haruhi's choice of pronoun in refering to herself: she mostly uses "jibun," and this is a gender-neutral pronoun; in fact, it means "self" rather than "I". In this, I believe, there is an implication that she has somehow reached a little further than the other host club members: she is a self not a man or a woman. Of course, this also ties in with the transgender element of the anime, but I think it is meant to imply that Haruhi is an example to be followed: she does not base her sense of self on unimportant externals like gender.
If I were to write any sort of conclusion to this sprawling nightmare of an essay, it would be that Ouran advocates a world view in which gender and sexual preference are considered of almost no importance, and in which being true to yourself - no matter who that self is - is the important thing. In fact, Haruhi sums up the anime's message in the very first episode: "Men, women or looks.... It's what's inside that matters for a person." Given the frothy, superficial, even decadent mood of the host club, it may be a somewhat surprising message, but its presence may perhaps be the reason why the anime inspires such affection in its viewers.