Intentional Ambiguity - coded references to same-sex attraction in Hikaru no Go
Warnings: Spoilers for the entire series, up to and including the final manga chapters.
Hikaru No Go is notable for two reasons:
- It has been single-handedly responsible for a resurgence in the popularity of Go, which until the show existed was seen as the exclusive territory of diabeetus and people with funny teeth who looked like they might enjoy the taste of human flesh.
-It has subjected the worlds to levels of homosexuality previously thought by scientists to be merely theoretical.
Encyclopedia Dramatica
A note on sources: Most quotes derive from the fansubbed anime. I have checked the quotes against scanlations, to see that both translations agree on the gist of what is being said. When referring to something other than the fansubbed anime, I'll make a note of what source I'm using. The essay is long, and link-heavy. Some links go to images, whereas the others are mostly intended for those who want a source, or more detailed information than I provide in the essay. It is not necessary to click all the links, it's mostly for the convenience of other obsessives.
In this essay, I will assume that the story is known, that my readers are familiar with the intensity and the passion between Akira and Hikaru, and with how the story develops. For those who need a recap of the canon interaction, this ship manifesto does a good job of summing it up.
Introduction
Normally, I don't give a damn about authorial intent. After all, as anyone who knows anything about literary theory will be aware, the author is dead. Years in fandom have also helped this attitude and inundated me with the idea that if two attractive men/boys are in the same story and once exchanged a remark about the weather, fandom is entirely entitled to write hardcore porn set outdoors in the rain, regardless of what plans the author might have had for said characters.
It was therefore somewhat galling to find myself watching Hikaru no Go and being really, really curious as to whether or not my reaction - that this was a gay love story - was an interpretation based on fandom goggles or based on information put there deliberately by the author.
In so far as I have a position or thesis that I want to test, it would be that Hikaru no Go contains information that is put there intentionally by the author (and to a lesser extent by the artist and the animators) in order to provide us with clues that the relationship between Hikaru and Akira has - or will have, after the end of the series - a romantic component. I am arguing that the story can be decoded and shown to contain an intentional layer in which Hikaru no Go is, simply, a story of same-sex attraction and love. I believe this layer goes above and beyond mere run-of-the-mill fanservice, I think it's an integral and driving force in the plot.
The first and immediate objection to this theory is "well, why didn't the author make it overt, then?" - to which the answer is simply that the idea of an action hero who falls in love with his male rival is not a trope that the public at large might be comfortable with, in particular not in a series whose primary demographic is young boys. This applies even when said "action hero" spends his time playing a board game rather than, say, swinging big swords around: the genre expectations are such that introducing a gay love story openly would probably affect sales, or at least garner negative attention. Any writer who wanted to include gay love in a shonen battle series would not be able to do so openly, not without serious repercussions. Coded narratives, in which homosexuality is present but not stated to be so, are unfortunately still common: for further background on this see The Celluloid Closet. As members of fandom, it's often easy to forget that overt descriptions of same-sex love - particularly in a children's series - are just not acceptable to the world at large.
Part of me is reluctant to write this essay, since it highlights an unpleasant difference between how we perceive heterosexuality and homosexuality in stories: simply put, if Akira had been a girl, nobody would question that Akira and Hikaru would eventually get together. The way the narrative is constructed would be seen as leaving no doubt at all, as being perhaps a bit heavy-handed. However, since they are both male, and since the romance aspect is never stated explicitly, there is, annoyingly, the niggling sense of doubt that maybe, just maybe, we aren't meant to take the narrative that way...
Yet the narrative is written according to classic romance fiction rules: The two destined lovers meet, are attracted, but due to mutual misunderstanding and confusion - even including a "romantic" rival in the form of Sai, who draws far too much of Akira's attention for Hikaru's liking - the two are separated almost at once. They keep encountering each other, are unable to forget about each other, and their mutual conflict/attraction keeps escalating until it is dramatically resolved towards the end of the story, and harmony that is not without mutual passion is established between them. Hikaru no Go has almost every romance fiction cliché out there, including a painful and upsetting sequence of mutual rejection. Hikaru first rejects Akira - he tells his rival doesn't want to play with him, and in classic romance novel fashion, he doesn't explain why, thus hurting and shocking Akira - and then, when Akira pursues him despite this rejection, Akira goes on to reject Hikaru upon discovering Hikaru's pathetic Go skills. The reason for rejection might be unusual, but the emotional impact on the characters is intense: they are both in tears. Akira's firm pretense that that he doesn't care about Hikaru anymore fits the clichés of a romance narrative well, since of course his real feelings are entirely different, as Ogata works out easily enough. We're even given the classic fairytale romantic ending, and are assured that yes, the two of them will live happily ever after, a.k.a be eternal rivals.
Most crucially of all, however: as readers/viewers, our emotional investment is primarily in seeing the two characters "get together". The story is about these two characters' mutual pursuit, it's about their relationship, and about how they finally, eventually work things out. The entire narrative is constructed around them and their relationship, everyone and everything else is just there as either helpers or obstacles on that path. This is particularly clear in the anime, where the story ends as soon as the two are united. In this, more than anything else, does Hikaru no Go resemble a classic romance novel. (For further comments on the clichés of romance novels, this and this are good places to start.)
Names and their implications
In this section, I will attempt to show that the characters' names have been chosen with very great deliberation, and that said choices tell us a lot about the different characters' relationships. Names are heavily loaded with meaning in Hikaru no Go: The kanji for Akira's surname mean respectively "tower" and "arrow". The word touya, (とうや, which is how it is written in furinaga in the manga) means "training/education/cultivation." In the case of both Akira and his father, this all seems rather fitting: they are high above everyone else, they are faster and more on the mark than anyone else, and training, education, and cultivation practically define what the family is about. The meaning of the word shindou is also clearly intentional: しんどう means, depending on which kanji you choose to write it with, "prodigy, wonder child," "oscillation, vibration," "shock, tremor, impact," or perhaps most fittingly of all, "new road."
Sai, Hikaru and Akari are all connected, name-wise: their surnames contain the same kanji, 藤. Since there are 2,232 name kanji to choose from, I flatly refuse to consider that this is a coincidence. In Sai's and Akari's surnames, it's pronounced as "fuji" and means "wisteria", in Hikaru's surname it is pronounced "do" and, as we'll see, its presence in his name has major implications for the relationship between Sai and Hikaru.
As most Hikaru no Go fans will know, the Fujiwara clan was an extremely influential noble family during the Heian period; Sai was an aristocrat. In Hikaru, however, this kanji is an indication that his family was connected to the Fujiwara clan. Wikipedia can explain this better than I can: "One large category of family names can be categorized as "-tō" names. The kanji 藤, meaning wisteria, has the on'yomi tō (or, with rendaku, dō). Many Japanese people have surnames that include this kanji as the second character. This is because the Fujiwara clan gave their samurai surnames ending with the first character of their name, to denote their status in an era when commoners were not allowed surnames. Examples include [...] Shindō." In other words, at some point in the past, Hikaru's forefathers were samurai connected to the Fujiwara clan. It is conceivable that Sai and Hikaru are in fact related by blood, as well, since marriage between the clan and its samurai families was not unheard-of. At any rate, the 藤 in Hikaru's name ties him, and his family's history, firmly to that of the Fujiwara.
What then of Akari, why is the "wisteria" kanji used for her? In her case, she's clearly not connected to the Fujiwara clan, since it's not a "to/do" name. Yet the choice of the kanji is undoubtedly deliberate. What is her connection with both Sai and Hikaru? Well, for one thing, both Sai and Hikaru use her to calm down before the most important match either of them will have in the series. Sai plays her before his match with Touya Meijin, and Hikaru plays her before his match with Akira. In both their cases, they are in a sense exploiting her; it is because she is a bad player that they want to play her, because they do not need to take her seriously as an opponent. This connection between the three of them doesn't seem enough to warrant the use of the 藤 kanji, however, and a google search on the cultural and symbolic associations of wisteria in Japan immediately reveals that there is a very well-known story called The Wisteria Maiden. It's about unrequited love: a young girl falls in love with a man who does not return her feelings. The story, in brief, is about a girl who tries, in vain, to draw the attention of the man she's fallen for, yet despite her persistent efforts to please him, he shows no interest. Given how much thought has evidently gone into the names in this series, it's probably safe to assume that this parallel to Akari's own unrequited love, and her failed efforts at getting Hikaru to like her, is intentional.
Hikaru, Akira, and Akari are all connected via their personal names: the meaning of all of their personal names is some variety of light/bright/radiance/shining etc. This suggests that it would be useful to look at how the three of them function in the story. Akari is not a terribly important person for plot purposes, but as a foil for Hikaru as well as Akira she provides significant information. Akari is made an explicit foil at least once in the story - when Sai remarks in episode 54 that "Hikaru was like her once" - and this makes it particularly interesting to see her failed attempt at securing Hikaru's feelings as a possible parallel to what's going on in the main plotline. Akari is in love with Hikaru, and one of her ways of pursuing him is by taking up Go. She thereby reminds us that:
- Yes, it's possible for a 12-year-old to fall in love with another 12-year-old, and for these feelings to remain unchanged well into early adulthood, and
- Why yes, taking up Go for the sole purpose of pursuing someone you're in love with will strike a 12-year-old as a viable strategy.
In her case, the motivations for her interest in Go are made explicitly romantic. When Hikaru becomes an insei, she says she will keep playing Go since Hikaru isn't giving the game up - in other words, it's his interest in the game that keeps her motivated. This is as close as she gets to admitting that she's playing Go for Hikaru's sake. Other characters, however, openly state that her reasons for playing must be romantic in nature, such as the elderly lady in the Go salon who assumes that Akari "likes" Hikaru. Akari blushes and looks uncomfortable at this; we're left in little doubt that the elderly lady is spot-on. From the point of view of a gay interpretation of the relationship between Hikaru and Akira, this is a noteworthy parallel. Hikaru, unlike Akari, goes so far as to explicitly state that the reason why he is playing is because of a specific boy. Nobody ever implies that he's in love with said boy, but since we as readers have been told of Akari's romantic interest in Hikaru, and of how this interest fuels her desire to play Go, it's easy to draw a parallel between their motivations.
Akari also functions as a foil for Akira, and for much the same reasons. As has already been established, name choices matter in this series, very much so. "Akira" and "Akari" are so similar, name-wise, and in that they are the two people who are strongly emotionally invested in Hikaru, that it's hard not to presume this parallel is there intentionally. Akari has something in common with Akira in that she is the only other relationship that remains a constant in Hikaru's life throughout the series. The contrast in the level of passion between Hikaru and Akira and the absolute lack of it between Hikaru and Akari is obvious and effective, but more than this, I believe we may be meant to read Akira and Akari as Hikaru's two romantic/emotional options. This picture, in fact, nicely sums up what I see as the canonical take on these two: they are aligned in the same space, both have their eyes on Hikaru, and Akira is much closer to Hikaru than Akari is.
We know that one story reaches an emotionally satisfying conclusion for both parties, the other does not: in the manga (chapter 154) we're told that Hikaru isn't going to go to high school, and a sad-looking Akari remarks "so we'll all be separated". This contrasts sharply with Akira's fate, which is to see ever more of his rival. One of the last things we see of Akari is her standing outside Hikaru's house, in the cold, late at night, staring up at his window. This is quite a powerful image of separation, especially because it's clear Akari is still in love with him. The sense of separation is reinforced when she encounters his mother, who tells her that he's busy working on Go. He has essentially entered a world to which she has no entry. Her last appearance in the story is at school, when she takes photos of the grounds, and her friends, since she's graduating and they are all going their separate ways. The photos, clearly, are taken to preserve memories, to record a time that is gone. Unbeknownst to her, one of her friends takes a picture of her as she talks to Hikaru; a rather poignant interpretation of this would be that Hikaru, too, will soon just be a memory for her, since they no longer share the same world.
The radically different fates of Akira and Akari are emphasised by a neat bit of symbolism, both of which involving trees dropping things on the characters' heads. When Akira first seeks out Hikaru at school, he can hardly move for cherry blossoms. As he speaks to Hikaru through the window, the emotionally charged conversation is accompanied by the petals:
"Shindou. Why is someone like you in the school Go club? Are you not coming to the Go salon anymore? I am usually there. No matter who I play with, I'm constantly thinking about you... How you would respond to each of my moves. [Cherry blossoms start.] I've become stronger since then so that I won't be embarrassed by you again. I'm waiting for you. I came to say that."
Cherry blossoms are a heavily layered symbol, in Japan, symbolising everything from the fleeting nature of life to fresh starts and love. Since this episode marks the start of Hikaru's determination to pursue Akira, to catch up to him and impress him with his own Go skills rather than Sai's, it's safe to say that the blossoms are at least meant to be interpreted as a sign of fresh starts. However, this is a very good example of what I believe is intentional ambiguity on the part of the author: cherry blossoms also have very strong romantic connotations, and to have one character declare that he is "constantly thinking about you" under a shower of cherry blossoms seems too blatantly romantic to be anything other than deliberate.
By contrast, the flora Akari is exposed to is an unequivocal death and hopelessness symbol. The day before Hikaru has his match with Akira, she approaches him, and they talk under trees that, earlier in the series, were seen to scatter blossoms. For Akari, however, they scatter dead leaves: as she talks to Hikaru they flutter around her, and we're even treated to a shot of the ground, just to drive the message home. In case anyone thinks I'm reading too much into this, here is a shot that shows just how important this contrast is in the series. It's a symbol and a contrast that occurs repeatedly, and which is clearly intended to carry emotional meaning.
Contrasts and similarities
As the above makes clear, Hikaru no Go thrives on foils, contrasts, and parallels, and they are used extensively to throw light on the characters' relationships and personalities. There are very many of these, and they add poignancy to the story. They also tend to consistently inform us that the relationship between Akira and Hikaru is the most important thing in the world for both of them: for instance, while the experience Akira goes through in order to meet Hikaru in the school tournament - that of being ostracised, friendless, and met with hostility and bullying - is a very sharp contrast with Hikaru's experience of friendship and fun, there are also similarities in their experiences: Akira is being selfish when he joins the club; it is clear to viewers and other characters alike that he does it only out of self-interest, that he insists on being a member of a club where nobody wants him for the sole reason of being able to meet Hikaru again. Not very much later, Hikaru does the exact same thing: he gives priority to pursuing Akira and taking the insei examination over continuing to play with his school club. In other words, like Akira, he gives priority to his own interest. In fact, bluntly put, he chooses Akira over his friends, just as Akira chooses Hikaru. It is made clear that he knows what he's doing, and that while he regrets the loss of his friends, the friendships offered by the club stand no chance against his pursuit of Akira.
A more important and lengthy example is the relationship between Sai and Touya Meijin, which functions as a contrast to the Akira/Hikaru relationship. First and foremost, theirs is a tragic parallel to the main story: unlike Akira and Hikaru, they are never truly allowed to be rivals, never allowed to help each other search for the Hand of God. They do get to play, eventually, but only once. It is implied that Touya Meijin will be searching for Sai for the rest of his life, and since Sai is gone, this search will be in vain. They remain unfulfilled rivals, and they are unable to unlock their full strength by fighting against a worthy opponent repeatedly, through a long life.
But there is another way in which their relationship contrasts with Akira and Hikaru's. Unlike the main characters, Sai and Touya Meijin do no obsess about each other. They have little or no curiosity about each other as people, though admittedly Touya Meijin does want to to know Sai's identity. However, rather than quiz Hikaru on this, he dismisses it as unimportant, and tells Hikaru that what matters is getting the chance to play Sai again. In fact, while the two of them are playing, the spectators around the world are considerably more curious about Sai's identity than Touya Meijin is. Touya Meijin is primarily concerned with judging Sai's strength, with gauging him as an opponent, and once he realises how strong Sai is, he wants to play him again.
In short, Touya Meijin's attitude to Sai is that of a rival, nothing else. This is a rather sharp contrast with the Hikaru/Akira relationship; they are intensely emotionally engaged with each other. There are times when both of them seem to forget about the whole issue of Go in their desperately urgent pursuit of each other as people. This is particularly obvious in the episodes leading towards the insei examination. They contain such lines as Hikaru's "I haven't thought about it [becoming pro] much... I thought that I'd get closer to Touya if I just kept playing Go..." and Sai's comment that "Everything is a step towards Touya,", not to mention the lead-up to Hikaru's decision to try for pro status: Kaiou's first board berates him for his insufficient seriousness in chasing his "goal" - whereupon there's a short montage of Akira getting further and further away from Hikaru. His decision is then made, and when Sai cheerfully remarks "Your path is being paved, Hikaru!" Hikaru's response is "Touya... it's a path that leads to you." This theme is kept up during the insei examination: as Hikaru realises he's about to lose his game, he has yet another vision of a vanishing Akira, and responds by rather desperately calling "Touya, Touya!" in his mind. At no point in all this is there a reference to wanting to develop as a Go player.
One important difference between Akira and Hikaru is that of social class. Hikaru belongs to a modern middle-class family: he lives in a suburban, ordinary house, dresses casually, uses casual grammar, is frequently quite rude, and is generally not at ease when he has to be anyone other than himself. Finances are a concern for the family (the mother accepts having to pay for the insei examination since Hikaru is so serious about it, but she does comment on the expense; also, Hikaru's grandfather is initially worried about the expense of a go board) and Hikaru's main family authority figure seems to be his mother. Akira, on the other hand, is from a very traditional and rich Japanese family: they have the polite grammar, the old-style house, the garden with bamboo water features, and they have the authoritative kimono-wearing multi-millionaire father, and the mother who addresses her son with honorifics. And, most importantly in this context, they are aware of what sort of behaviour is fitting and becoming to their station and their abilities, such as when Akira's father objects to his going to the school tournament. With all this comes a set of rather ascetic behaviour expectations that Akira, with the exception of when he's dealing directly or indirectly with Hikaru, fulfils perfectly: he's invariably polite, he's in control of his emotions, he's calm and smiling and friendly, but never particularly forthcoming.
These social markers are used very effectively to indicate the level of emotional connection between the two: Hikaru consistently upsets Akira's balance. Whenever Akira thinks of, hears of, or speaks to Hikaru, he loses his composure. Akira's tendency to be emotionally affected by Hikaru is one that occurs time and again, so I will only mention two examples. There are lots of examples of his inner turmoil, but I have selected two that are noteworthy in that when they happen, Akira's reaction is so strong that he's breaking social norms and shocking bystanders. He is going contrary to his education and the social expectations he usually fulfils, but he is too upset to care or, seemingly, even notice. The first example is when his teacher announces that Akira is first board for the school tournament. He reacts by standing up, in class, interrupting the teacher, and loudly protesting the teacher's decision. To stunned gasps from the other students. While this may not be entirely equivalent to, say, usurping the imperial throne, it's still an astonishing display of direct opposition to a legitimate authority, and as such an example of a very strong break with accepted social norms. The second example is at the Wakajishisen after Sai's disappearance. On learning that Hikaru isn't there, and hasn't been going to his study group, Akira slams his fist against the wall, violently enough that Waya is startled, then we get a close-up that shows just how worried he is before he decides to go to his school and try to get him back, where he proceeds to raise a ruckus in the library. Which, incidentally, he does before any of Hikaru's friends even give him a phone call. Same scene from the manga is here; as will be seen, it plays out in pretty much the exact same way, though the anime adds the "worried" shot.
Akira is himself aware that his feelings for Hikaru are different than his feelings towards other good Go-players. In conversation with his father before the school tournament, he tries to explain his feelings:
I don't care about the people around me right now. If Shindou Hikaru is going to a club tournament, then I'm going to follow him there. Father, it may sound arrogant, but my goal is you. I've progressed towards that goal steadily until now. I thought I just had to walk straight towards you. I thought that walking straight would place me closer to the hand of god. But I was wrong... I couldn't do anything against Shindou Hikaru. He's different from Father, or Ogata-san. His presence is a weight upon me. Right now, he's the only thing on my mind.
Now, at this point, Akira is well aware that both his father and Ogata are stronger players than he is, yet the player that gets all his attention is Hikaru. In this context, Akira's relationship with his father, both as a player and as a father, is worth remembering. It's made clear throughout the story that Akira loves his father very much, and that his father loves him. This is made particularly clear in the flashback episode towards the end of the series that leads up to his first meeting with Hikaru: In it, we see a Akira who's barely able to contain his joy and pride in getting a paternal compliment for his play. We're told, repeatedly, that Akira and his father play together every morning, and it's also made clear that Touya Meijin is proud of his son's abilities; he even extracts revenge over slights to his son via Go. The vast majority of their interaction seems to involve the presence of a Go board; it's over Go that they talk and connect. What all this means is that for Akira, Go and affection have become inextricably linked. He seeks his father's approval and love through Go, and it is through Go that that love is expressed.
This, then, makes it possible to interpret his obsession with Hikaru as a rival as an expression of personal feelings of attraction. A possible reading of his statement might be: Akira interprets his feelings for Hikaru as Go-related, since he's used to expressing emotional connections through Go. However, he's aware enough that he recognises the situation as somehow "different" from his feelings towards his father as a rival, because the emotions are no longer simple family love and respect, but romantic attraction.
This interpretation is borne up, indirectly, in a manga scene that is unfortunately missing from the special. In chapter 162, not very long after Hikaru and Akira have played their match and begun their eternal-rival race together, we see a scene in which Akira is in the Go salon. There are signs he's growing up: for one thing, he's seen drinking coffee. Most crucially, however, he's talking about moving out from his parents' home, and explains this simply by saying "I just kinda want to get away from my father." This is given immediate verification and justification by one of the players in the salon, who says his son said and did something similar at age 18 - it's explained as something that is acceptable for sons to do as they grow up and establish their independence. However, in the context of this essay, it's worthwhile to note that this first strike for independence, this first sign of wanting to be separate from his father and establish himself in his own right, comes after Akira has worked things out with Hikaru. In other words, Akira is developing emotionally: his emotional focus is no longer his father, it's Hikaru.
Ochi, too, has the dubious pleasure of functioning as a contrast to emphasise the special nature of the feelings between Akira and Hikaru. Akira, arrogantly and tactlessly, displays an utter lack of interest in him as a rival when they meet, even though it's clear Ochi's strong, and is able to learn and improve. Ochi therefore tries to insist on being accepted as Akira's rival; he tries, in fact, to usurp Hikaru's position as Akira's special someone. Ochi's clearly jealous of Hikaru's special status, as is made clear in their conversation before their match in the pro finals. In this scene, too, Hikaru acts jealously and possessively when he hears that Ochi and Akira have been playing together:
Hikaru (grabs Ochi in evident anger): Why would Touya play against you?
Ochi: Let go of me! It's because I hire pros to come and tutor me at home.
Hikaru: You said that you trained with Touya just to beat me!
Ochi: What about it?
Hikaru: Why Touya? Why him?
Ochi: There's no particular reason for it. I had a lot to learn from Touya. [Begins to leave.]
Hikaru: Ochi! He... Did Touya... Did he say anything... [Swallows nervously] ...say anything about me? Did he?
Ochi [has flashback of Toya speaking of nothing but Hikaru]: He didn't say anything about you. Get off your high horse! [Hikaru blushes and looks devastated]. We talked about the pro exam too, but he doesn't care about you at all. He doesn't think anything of you.
Sai [looking sadly sympathetic]: Hikaru...
Hikaru displays the same exclusive focus on Akira: he never thinks of other, stronger players as potential rivals. When Hikaru meets Waya, for instance, Waya is much stronger than he is, yet he never sees him as a rival or as anything other than a friend. And towards the end of the series, it seems Isumi is as strong as, or stronger than Hikaru, yet he barely registers as a blip on Hikaru's rival radar. Touya Meijin throws light on the inherent absurdity of Akira's and Hikaru's use of language with which to describe each other. The following conversation takes place between Waya and Hikaru shortly after the latter has been accepted as an insei:
Waya: What's your relationship with Touya? [...] You're not strong at all. Are you really rivals?
Hikaru: Really! I'm his, and he's my rival!
Akira, of course, says similar things, perhaps most notably his "You are my eternal rival," during their first pro match. But Touya Meijin points out for us that this is illogical: when asked who would be a suitable rival for him, he rightly states that everybody is, that all professional players are his rivals. Logically, this is of course the case, since any competition happens between rivals. Not so for Akira and Hikaru. Their insistence that they are each other's rivals, to the exclusion of everyone else, seems like another way of wanting to be emotionally connected.
Serious eyes and the desire to be seen
Both Hikaru and Akira are obsessed with getting the other to see them. The theme of sight, of looking, and of discerning the other, remains important throughout, to the extent that it's even referenced in the intro songs: There's the ambiguous "It feels as if you've seen straight through my heart. If I had not met you, I would still only have a false smile, my words and disagreements would only have been superficial. With the power of your gaze, I am starting to change!" which features Akira and Hikaru during the "if I had not met you" and "starting to change" lines, and Hikaru and Akari during the "false smile/superficial disagreements" line. The theme also occurs on the somewhat clumsily translated intro: "On this eye, this eye of yours, everything will appear. I will tell apart the truth, even if the truth is so harsh it's suffocating" - again, the theme of perception, recognition, understanding is emphasised.
The examples of this particular pattern are many and varied: when Akira plays Sai on the computer, we see him straining to see through an impenetrable darkness, to see who his player is. He tries, in vain, to decide if Sai is Hikaru or not, and in the end, he succeeds: during his father's match with Sai, the following sequence occurs. Watching the screen intently, he wonders why he sees Hikaru in the player. Then he gasps, and close-up of his staring eye followed by what he sees. This, then, is when he realises that Hikaru is two people. And while Akira has visions of Hikaru, Hikaru has visions of Akira. The most extreme one is when Ochi lets slip that he has to beat Hikaru in order to be considered Akira's rival. A rather ghostly Akira promptly appears, and as the camera zooms in on his eyes, he increases in solidity until Ochi is literally out of the picture and Hikaru addresses Akira directly. Hikaru also knows himself to be under scrutiny: "Touya is looking at me through Ochi. I have a feeling that he is. Almost there... I'm almost there, Touya! I've almost caught up to you!"
Naturally, this theme has to do with the mystery that is Sai-Hikaru, and Akira's desire to understand it, but as a theme it runs through Hikaru no Go to a much greater extent than that particular plot point seems to warrant - especially when we consider that Hikaru is the one obsessed with getting Akira to see him, rather than the other way round. It's understandable that Akira would want the recognition of someone whom he believes is a much stronger player, but what possible motivation could pre-Go-interest Hikaru have for wanting recognition and appreciation from Akira? This is never explained, yet Hikaru's desperation to have it drives the entire story. He wants Akira's "serious gaze" to be aimed at him, not at Sai:
"They're the eyes from before. The eyes he had when he challenged Sai. I came all this way pulled by your eyes... you're my far away objective." (School tournament episode).
After the humiliation of wanting to be seen and accepted by someone who turned out to be inferior to him, Akira gets obsessed with showing Hikaru how much better he is than him, to the extent that when he plays the Ouza, he is blinded to the presence of the man. In the manga, before the match starts, Akira thinks "It doesn't matter who is coming up from behind me. The only ones I see are the 500 pros. And only forward... I will only look forward. I do not see you at all". The last sentence is imposed on a picture of Hikaru. Akira then proceeds to make a serious error of judgement and lose the match - the very match he wanted Hikaru to see, so Hikaru would realise how good he is. His blindness, his focus on someone other than the Ouza, is so extreme that the man even comments on it ("who do you think is sitting before you right now?"). Logically, Akira should be indifferent to Hikaru at this point if he truly didn't care about him, since he now believes Hikaru is a bad player. But he cares, deeply, so much so that the desire to have Hikaru see him, and be overwhelmed by his abilities, loses him the match.
One of the very rare instances where Hikaru actually discusses his motivation makes it clear that it's Akira's eyes, and Akira's feelings, that are motivating. Not the desire to beat him, nor the desire to become good at Go. In the anime, the scene plays out like this:
Hikaru's mother: It feels like Hikaru's changing... I feel uncertain.
Hikaru's grandfather: Why does Hikaru want to become a pro all of a sudden?
Hikaru's mother: He lost to a boy his age by a lot at Go, and he was given up on.
[Flashback to kitchen scene]
Hikaru: He looked disappointed, and became a pro. So I wanted to make him look back on me.
Hikaru's mother: Hm?
[Cut to pro prelims]
Hikaru: Yeah! The eyes he had when he first came to me. I'll make him turn those eyes to me!
The focus on Akira's gaze is prevalent through the series, and is often used as an indication of emotion. Contrast, for instance, his gaze shortly after the school tournament, when he's disappointed with Hikaru's abilities, with his gaze immediately after learning that Hikaru is an insei, and thus still potentially his rival. In the first picture, his eyes are dull, lowered, and his face expressionless; in the second, he's aggressive and focused. Both emotional states, of course, are due to Hikaru. When Hikaru has passed his pro exam and is waiting at the award ceremony, there is yet another instance of dramatic ambiguity. This scene plays out much the same in the manga and anime: Akira arrives, stops and looks stunned at seeing Hikaru there, then continues walking towards him. Hikaru blushes, smiles, and looks delighted, and starts to speak to Akira just as he walks past him without any greeting or recognition. Hikaru, not unnaturally, is angered, and remains angry until he realises that the date for his first match with Akira has already been set. Then his reaction is to wonder if Akira knows, to which Sai responds by making references to his gaze: "His eyes when he passed by us... Didn't they seem to you like he already knew he'd be playing you?" Then, yet again, the camera focuses on Akira's gaze. Hikaru's entire motivation is the desire to turn that gaze onto himself, and during his emotional crisis after Sai disappears, this is one of the reasons he decides not to play any more: "Touya, I wanted you to look towards me instead of Sai. Even though that's impossible. I can't surpass Sai." His crisis of confidence is such that he no longer believes he can get Akira to see him, and this in itself is enough for him to give up Go.
This theme of being seen, being appreciated, makes its appearance repeatedly during Akira and Hikaru's first match as pros. As the scene begins, both the manga and the anime treat us to close-up eye contact followed by a discussion between Ochi and Waya, during which Waya remarks of Akira that "I doubt he has anyone other than the top pros in his sight right now." (And the original Japanese uses the word "me", i.e. "eyes".) We, of course, know that Akira has eyes for nobody but Hikaru. As Hikaru speaks to Akira before the match begins, he makes reference to the fact that he has, in a manner of speaking, been keeping an eye on Akira through studying the kifu of his games, and then goes on to bring up his desire to be seen and appreciated by Akira: "I saw how good you are from your matches against Master Zama and Mr Hagiwara. Today, it's my turn to show you how good I am." This is followed by silent eye contact between the two of them, which seems to be highly unusual - I can't think of any other example of two players who maintain eye contact before the match begins; the norm seems to be to look at the board. As the match begins, the room fades around them, leaving the two of them to focus exclusively on each other and on their game. When Hikaru responds correctly to a difficult move, Akira's gaze lifts from the board to Hikaru's face; this happens again when Hikaru makes the move that makes Akira think of Sai. And finally, of course, Akira speaks up and tells Hikaru that he has understood that Sai and Hikaru are connected, somehow: he has found the Sai inside Hikaru, whereupon Hikaru decides he will one day explain it all. What all this means is that their match is the moment when they are finally allowed to see and understand each other, it marks the beginning of a new phase of their relationship. After the match, they begin to socialise, and, rather seamlessly, they become part of each other's daily lives.
Femininity as a marker of male homosexual attraction
One of the things I find moderately annoying about fandom is the way in which male homosexuality is treated and expressed in fanfic. It's a common thing to see characters have a flash of inspiration and realise that they "are gay". However, unlike in the West, sexuality is not seen as an identity in Japan: liking your own sex, or being attracted to someone of your own sex, doesn't fundamentally alter your self-perception. It might mean that you find yourself in a more difficult situation socially, and you might be exposed to repercussions or embarrassment, but you're highly unlikely to suffer an identity crisis. This is not because Japan is particularly liberated, either: it's because the attitudes to sexuality in the West are a complete break with what has traditionally and historically been the norm. It's only since the mid-19th century, when Western doctors classified people into pathological groups, and included same-sex sexual attraction as one of these groups, that we've come to see homosexuality as a unique and separate identity.
Traditionally, in the West as everywhere else in the world, the distinction has been between active/passive rather than male/female. There has normally been no loss of status for a man whose role is active. This view persists in Japan, in the familiar seme/uke distinction, and also in the view of what passive homosexuality does to a man: as with everywhere else that has operated with this distinction, choosing the passive role is seen as feminising for the man who does so. According to Mark McLelland, author of Male Homosexuality in Modern Japan: Cultural Myths and Social Realities, "Today, homosexuality in Japan is largely conflated with cross-dressing and transgenderism due to the prominence of cross-dressed individuals featured in the media and the entertainment world. Thus, homosexual men are understood to be okama (literally a 'pot' but meaning something similar to the English word 'queen') and are usually represented as cross-dressed and effeminate." Source.
Feminity becomes a marker of homosexuality, to the extent that a feminine man is culturally coded as inclined towards same-sex attraction, and vice versa: men who are attracted to their sex, are generally expected to be effeminate. This may come as a surprise to those whose only source of Japanese attitudes to homosexuality is yaoi, where the men, while usually very beautiful, and delicately built and drawn, are generally not cross-dressers or otherwise overtly feminine in mannerisms. However, when side characters in manga or anime are openly gay, they will in the vast majority of cases be wig-and-dress-wearing, giggly men. (Examples off the top of my head: Haruhi's father and his friends in Ouran School Host Club, and most of the clientele of the gay bars in Yellow. This trope does sometimes make an appearance among the main characters in regular yaoi, too, such as in Lily Hoshino's work, where the uke are generally indistinguishable, both visually and behaviour-wise, from women.)
It's never made an issue of, but Akira is almost as feminine as Sai, with his almond-shaped eyes and pageboy haircut. His behaviour is consistent with feminine ideals, too: he's polite, quiet, modest, self-effacing. By the end of the manga, it emerges he's even capable of cleaning and, possibly, cooking. I would probably never have made this an argument in favour of a gay interpretation of Hikaru no Go had it not been for this image. It's from the Hikaru no Go art book, and while that might not make the image strictly canonical, it is at least official art, drawn by the manga artist. The image is set after the end of the manga (it's conveniently dated to 2008!) and the characters seem to be a year or two older than in canon. In it, Akira's femininity is played up significantly. His hair is longer, his face thinner and more delicate than in the manga and anime, and his lips are slightly more pronounced. This, in combination with the way he stands quietly beside Hikaru, who has an arm around his shoulder, means that this particular image, for me, comes as close to an actual official confirmation as we are ever going to get that yes, these two are a couple.
Since we have established that names were chosen with some degree of care in this series, let me make one more point: both Hikaru and Akira have names that are gender-ambiguous/uni-sex; both names are female as well as male. Their names, their identity markers, are of an uncertain sex; you can't tell from their names whether they are male or female. This duality or doubt concerning their gender seems to fit well with the Japanese cultural stereotypes where same-sex attraction gets confused with transgenderism.
Other clues: dialogue and visuals
There are a number of lines in the series that seem as though they are carefully crafted to read ambiguously, as though they are written to give the readers two possible options as to how we choose to perceive them. Some I have already quoted, such as the dialogue between Ochi and Hikaru, and Hikaru's mother's remark that she's worried because she feels like her son is "changing" - a line that is repeated later, by Akari. But there are many, many others: there's Kaiou's third board's comment after testing Hikaru's strength: "But you're not strong enough for Touya to see you as a rival. Or is there something else to you? [...] You still have that certain quality that pulled Touya to you, don't you?" There's the Go salon employee's reaction on being asked if Akira and Hikaru are friends/get along - she responds, with evident embarrassment, "Oh, eh... kinda." There's Hikaru's comment to Sai: "Touya... he's playing in that same room I play in, right? We play on Sundays and every other Saturday, but... He plays on Wednesdays or Thursdays since he's a pro... We won't ever meet, but when I think that I'm playing in the same room as him, I feel something." There's Akira's thoughts after his father's match with Sai: "I've been thinking ever since the matter with Sai. Shindou - why did you appear before me? Why do I chase after you? And why do you chase after me? Why?"
We are never given an answer to this question, of course, any more than we learn why Hikaru seems to blush an awful lot around Akira, or why the normally polite and formal Akira always uses casual, familiar grammar around Hikaru. All these lines can be read "innocently," or they can be read as implying same-sex attraction between the two of them. The series portrays the emotions between Akira and Hikaru very cleverly, never quite stepping over the line and removing ambiguity and doubt, yet never actually suggesting that these feelings are due to innocent friendship or Go-related rivalry - on the contrary, we're in fact repeatedly assured that Hikaru's sense of rivalry, at least, is due to these undefined and unexplained feelings between them, as in this manga image.
The final outro deserves a paragraph to itself in that it combines visuals and language in such a way as to emphasise the intensity of the emotional connection between Akira and Hikaru. In particular, the following section: There are days when I feel lonely and days when I feel miserable but I know I am never alone. You're here. If I had to pick one example of narrative ambiguity that can't possibly be anything other than intentional, this would be it: the language is that of a love song, and the imagery cuts back and forth between two characters, rendering no doubt that the lyrics are intended to represent the relationship between them. The anime has altered the visuals slightly to increase the connection between the two characters. Compared to the manga image, there are several important differences: Hikaru and Akira are wearing clothes that follow the same lines (a central vertical panel), the distracting pillows and boards on the floor have been removed, and both characters' hands are relaxed rather than balled into fists. Last but not least, the angle between them has been tilted slightly, so their hands appear visually much closer to each other.
Speaking of clothes: much has been made of Akira's poor fashion sense in fandom, but I have yet to see it pointed out that his colour preferences (pink/purple/lavender and to some extent blue) are those currently most strongly associated with homosexuality. Whether this gay colour code applies as strongly and ubiquitously in Japan as it does in the West I daren't say, but I doubt that the associations are unknown. In the context of a coded narrative, Akira's fondness for pink shirts under lavender suits seems conspicuous to say the least.
And finally, this is one of my favourite official-art images, and it's very much not a picture of two rivals who are concerned only with beating each other. On the contrary, it's a beautiful and calm picture, the mood is serene (emphasised by Akira's closed eyes), Akira's and Hikaru's heads are angled towards each other, they are physically close, and Hikaru's gaze is directed towards Akira. Also, this is another example of "it's there, but we won't show it": look at the angle of Akira's arm. It's awkward, pushed back further than it would be if his arm was simply hanging loosely at his side, the elbow bent at a strange angle. Follow the line of his and Hikaru's arms down to the bottom of the DVD cover: they are angled in such a way that, especially in combination with the slightly unnatural position of Akira's arm, it seems unlikely that the two of them are doing anything other than holding hands.
Conclusion
In this too-lengthy essay, I have attempted to identify several narrative patterns that suggest that we as consumers of the story have the author's blessing and encouragement to see the relationship between Akira and Hikaru in terms of same-sex attraction. I would like to emphasise that I do not believe that such authorial approval is needed in order to perceive the story that way: any reader is entitled to see the story in however way they wish. My motivation for doing this analysis had to do with the annoying, persistent sense that the way I read the story was influenced by deliberate authorial hints rather than fandom goggles, and I wanted to see if a literary analysis could bring me any closer to the answer to that question.
And what is my conclusion? Well, it's one of elimination, really. Is it possible that all of the above can be there by coincidence, or accident? Is it possible that the author cannot see how the dialogue, the symbolism, even the name choices, can all be seen to have a double meaning? I have a hard time believing it, especially of an author who keeps telling us that her main character is so very good at "reading deeply" - she is a skilled writer, and far too good at her craft for any ambiguity of this magnitude to have slipped past her.
Rather, I believe she wrote the story knowing perfectly well what she was doing. Throughout the story, she has persistently and cleverly given us two options, either or both of which can be true: either Hikaru and Akira are destined the God of Go's Chosen Board Game Players, and everything that has happened between them is simply due to said god's clever manipulation of their lives, or else they are two young boys who happen to fall in love with each other. The author never gives us the final, decisive answer in the form of, say, a canon kiss, but she does give us everything but.
Hikaru No Go is notable for two reasons:
- It has been single-handedly responsible for a resurgence in the popularity of Go, which until the show existed was seen as the exclusive territory of diabeetus and people with funny teeth who looked like they might enjoy the taste of human flesh.
-It has subjected the worlds to levels of homosexuality previously thought by scientists to be merely theoretical.
Encyclopedia Dramatica
A note on sources: Most quotes derive from the fansubbed anime. I have checked the quotes against scanlations, to see that both translations agree on the gist of what is being said. When referring to something other than the fansubbed anime, I'll make a note of what source I'm using. The essay is long, and link-heavy. Some links go to images, whereas the others are mostly intended for those who want a source, or more detailed information than I provide in the essay. It is not necessary to click all the links, it's mostly for the convenience of other obsessives.
In this essay, I will assume that the story is known, that my readers are familiar with the intensity and the passion between Akira and Hikaru, and with how the story develops. For those who need a recap of the canon interaction, this ship manifesto does a good job of summing it up.
Introduction
Normally, I don't give a damn about authorial intent. After all, as anyone who knows anything about literary theory will be aware, the author is dead. Years in fandom have also helped this attitude and inundated me with the idea that if two attractive men/boys are in the same story and once exchanged a remark about the weather, fandom is entirely entitled to write hardcore porn set outdoors in the rain, regardless of what plans the author might have had for said characters.
It was therefore somewhat galling to find myself watching Hikaru no Go and being really, really curious as to whether or not my reaction - that this was a gay love story - was an interpretation based on fandom goggles or based on information put there deliberately by the author.
In so far as I have a position or thesis that I want to test, it would be that Hikaru no Go contains information that is put there intentionally by the author (and to a lesser extent by the artist and the animators) in order to provide us with clues that the relationship between Hikaru and Akira has - or will have, after the end of the series - a romantic component. I am arguing that the story can be decoded and shown to contain an intentional layer in which Hikaru no Go is, simply, a story of same-sex attraction and love. I believe this layer goes above and beyond mere run-of-the-mill fanservice, I think it's an integral and driving force in the plot.
The first and immediate objection to this theory is "well, why didn't the author make it overt, then?" - to which the answer is simply that the idea of an action hero who falls in love with his male rival is not a trope that the public at large might be comfortable with, in particular not in a series whose primary demographic is young boys. This applies even when said "action hero" spends his time playing a board game rather than, say, swinging big swords around: the genre expectations are such that introducing a gay love story openly would probably affect sales, or at least garner negative attention. Any writer who wanted to include gay love in a shonen battle series would not be able to do so openly, not without serious repercussions. Coded narratives, in which homosexuality is present but not stated to be so, are unfortunately still common: for further background on this see The Celluloid Closet. As members of fandom, it's often easy to forget that overt descriptions of same-sex love - particularly in a children's series - are just not acceptable to the world at large.
Part of me is reluctant to write this essay, since it highlights an unpleasant difference between how we perceive heterosexuality and homosexuality in stories: simply put, if Akira had been a girl, nobody would question that Akira and Hikaru would eventually get together. The way the narrative is constructed would be seen as leaving no doubt at all, as being perhaps a bit heavy-handed. However, since they are both male, and since the romance aspect is never stated explicitly, there is, annoyingly, the niggling sense of doubt that maybe, just maybe, we aren't meant to take the narrative that way...
Yet the narrative is written according to classic romance fiction rules: The two destined lovers meet, are attracted, but due to mutual misunderstanding and confusion - even including a "romantic" rival in the form of Sai, who draws far too much of Akira's attention for Hikaru's liking - the two are separated almost at once. They keep encountering each other, are unable to forget about each other, and their mutual conflict/attraction keeps escalating until it is dramatically resolved towards the end of the story, and harmony that is not without mutual passion is established between them. Hikaru no Go has almost every romance fiction cliché out there, including a painful and upsetting sequence of mutual rejection. Hikaru first rejects Akira - he tells his rival doesn't want to play with him, and in classic romance novel fashion, he doesn't explain why, thus hurting and shocking Akira - and then, when Akira pursues him despite this rejection, Akira goes on to reject Hikaru upon discovering Hikaru's pathetic Go skills. The reason for rejection might be unusual, but the emotional impact on the characters is intense: they are both in tears. Akira's firm pretense that that he doesn't care about Hikaru anymore fits the clichés of a romance narrative well, since of course his real feelings are entirely different, as Ogata works out easily enough. We're even given the classic fairytale romantic ending, and are assured that yes, the two of them will live happily ever after, a.k.a be eternal rivals.
Most crucially of all, however: as readers/viewers, our emotional investment is primarily in seeing the two characters "get together". The story is about these two characters' mutual pursuit, it's about their relationship, and about how they finally, eventually work things out. The entire narrative is constructed around them and their relationship, everyone and everything else is just there as either helpers or obstacles on that path. This is particularly clear in the anime, where the story ends as soon as the two are united. In this, more than anything else, does Hikaru no Go resemble a classic romance novel. (For further comments on the clichés of romance novels, this and this are good places to start.)
Names and their implications
In this section, I will attempt to show that the characters' names have been chosen with very great deliberation, and that said choices tell us a lot about the different characters' relationships. Names are heavily loaded with meaning in Hikaru no Go: The kanji for Akira's surname mean respectively "tower" and "arrow". The word touya, (とうや, which is how it is written in furinaga in the manga) means "training/education/cultivation." In the case of both Akira and his father, this all seems rather fitting: they are high above everyone else, they are faster and more on the mark than anyone else, and training, education, and cultivation practically define what the family is about. The meaning of the word shindou is also clearly intentional: しんどう means, depending on which kanji you choose to write it with, "prodigy, wonder child," "oscillation, vibration," "shock, tremor, impact," or perhaps most fittingly of all, "new road."
Sai, Hikaru and Akari are all connected, name-wise: their surnames contain the same kanji, 藤. Since there are 2,232 name kanji to choose from, I flatly refuse to consider that this is a coincidence. In Sai's and Akari's surnames, it's pronounced as "fuji" and means "wisteria", in Hikaru's surname it is pronounced "do" and, as we'll see, its presence in his name has major implications for the relationship between Sai and Hikaru.
As most Hikaru no Go fans will know, the Fujiwara clan was an extremely influential noble family during the Heian period; Sai was an aristocrat. In Hikaru, however, this kanji is an indication that his family was connected to the Fujiwara clan. Wikipedia can explain this better than I can: "One large category of family names can be categorized as "-tō" names. The kanji 藤, meaning wisteria, has the on'yomi tō (or, with rendaku, dō). Many Japanese people have surnames that include this kanji as the second character. This is because the Fujiwara clan gave their samurai surnames ending with the first character of their name, to denote their status in an era when commoners were not allowed surnames. Examples include [...] Shindō." In other words, at some point in the past, Hikaru's forefathers were samurai connected to the Fujiwara clan. It is conceivable that Sai and Hikaru are in fact related by blood, as well, since marriage between the clan and its samurai families was not unheard-of. At any rate, the 藤 in Hikaru's name ties him, and his family's history, firmly to that of the Fujiwara.
What then of Akari, why is the "wisteria" kanji used for her? In her case, she's clearly not connected to the Fujiwara clan, since it's not a "to/do" name. Yet the choice of the kanji is undoubtedly deliberate. What is her connection with both Sai and Hikaru? Well, for one thing, both Sai and Hikaru use her to calm down before the most important match either of them will have in the series. Sai plays her before his match with Touya Meijin, and Hikaru plays her before his match with Akira. In both their cases, they are in a sense exploiting her; it is because she is a bad player that they want to play her, because they do not need to take her seriously as an opponent. This connection between the three of them doesn't seem enough to warrant the use of the 藤 kanji, however, and a google search on the cultural and symbolic associations of wisteria in Japan immediately reveals that there is a very well-known story called The Wisteria Maiden. It's about unrequited love: a young girl falls in love with a man who does not return her feelings. The story, in brief, is about a girl who tries, in vain, to draw the attention of the man she's fallen for, yet despite her persistent efforts to please him, he shows no interest. Given how much thought has evidently gone into the names in this series, it's probably safe to assume that this parallel to Akari's own unrequited love, and her failed efforts at getting Hikaru to like her, is intentional.
Hikaru, Akira, and Akari are all connected via their personal names: the meaning of all of their personal names is some variety of light/bright/radiance/shining etc. This suggests that it would be useful to look at how the three of them function in the story. Akari is not a terribly important person for plot purposes, but as a foil for Hikaru as well as Akira she provides significant information. Akari is made an explicit foil at least once in the story - when Sai remarks in episode 54 that "Hikaru was like her once" - and this makes it particularly interesting to see her failed attempt at securing Hikaru's feelings as a possible parallel to what's going on in the main plotline. Akari is in love with Hikaru, and one of her ways of pursuing him is by taking up Go. She thereby reminds us that:
- Yes, it's possible for a 12-year-old to fall in love with another 12-year-old, and for these feelings to remain unchanged well into early adulthood, and
- Why yes, taking up Go for the sole purpose of pursuing someone you're in love with will strike a 12-year-old as a viable strategy.
In her case, the motivations for her interest in Go are made explicitly romantic. When Hikaru becomes an insei, she says she will keep playing Go since Hikaru isn't giving the game up - in other words, it's his interest in the game that keeps her motivated. This is as close as she gets to admitting that she's playing Go for Hikaru's sake. Other characters, however, openly state that her reasons for playing must be romantic in nature, such as the elderly lady in the Go salon who assumes that Akari "likes" Hikaru. Akari blushes and looks uncomfortable at this; we're left in little doubt that the elderly lady is spot-on. From the point of view of a gay interpretation of the relationship between Hikaru and Akira, this is a noteworthy parallel. Hikaru, unlike Akari, goes so far as to explicitly state that the reason why he is playing is because of a specific boy. Nobody ever implies that he's in love with said boy, but since we as readers have been told of Akari's romantic interest in Hikaru, and of how this interest fuels her desire to play Go, it's easy to draw a parallel between their motivations.
Akari also functions as a foil for Akira, and for much the same reasons. As has already been established, name choices matter in this series, very much so. "Akira" and "Akari" are so similar, name-wise, and in that they are the two people who are strongly emotionally invested in Hikaru, that it's hard not to presume this parallel is there intentionally. Akari has something in common with Akira in that she is the only other relationship that remains a constant in Hikaru's life throughout the series. The contrast in the level of passion between Hikaru and Akira and the absolute lack of it between Hikaru and Akari is obvious and effective, but more than this, I believe we may be meant to read Akira and Akari as Hikaru's two romantic/emotional options. This picture, in fact, nicely sums up what I see as the canonical take on these two: they are aligned in the same space, both have their eyes on Hikaru, and Akira is much closer to Hikaru than Akari is.
We know that one story reaches an emotionally satisfying conclusion for both parties, the other does not: in the manga (chapter 154) we're told that Hikaru isn't going to go to high school, and a sad-looking Akari remarks "so we'll all be separated". This contrasts sharply with Akira's fate, which is to see ever more of his rival. One of the last things we see of Akari is her standing outside Hikaru's house, in the cold, late at night, staring up at his window. This is quite a powerful image of separation, especially because it's clear Akari is still in love with him. The sense of separation is reinforced when she encounters his mother, who tells her that he's busy working on Go. He has essentially entered a world to which she has no entry. Her last appearance in the story is at school, when she takes photos of the grounds, and her friends, since she's graduating and they are all going their separate ways. The photos, clearly, are taken to preserve memories, to record a time that is gone. Unbeknownst to her, one of her friends takes a picture of her as she talks to Hikaru; a rather poignant interpretation of this would be that Hikaru, too, will soon just be a memory for her, since they no longer share the same world.
The radically different fates of Akira and Akari are emphasised by a neat bit of symbolism, both of which involving trees dropping things on the characters' heads. When Akira first seeks out Hikaru at school, he can hardly move for cherry blossoms. As he speaks to Hikaru through the window, the emotionally charged conversation is accompanied by the petals:
"Shindou. Why is someone like you in the school Go club? Are you not coming to the Go salon anymore? I am usually there. No matter who I play with, I'm constantly thinking about you... How you would respond to each of my moves. [Cherry blossoms start.] I've become stronger since then so that I won't be embarrassed by you again. I'm waiting for you. I came to say that."
Cherry blossoms are a heavily layered symbol, in Japan, symbolising everything from the fleeting nature of life to fresh starts and love. Since this episode marks the start of Hikaru's determination to pursue Akira, to catch up to him and impress him with his own Go skills rather than Sai's, it's safe to say that the blossoms are at least meant to be interpreted as a sign of fresh starts. However, this is a very good example of what I believe is intentional ambiguity on the part of the author: cherry blossoms also have very strong romantic connotations, and to have one character declare that he is "constantly thinking about you" under a shower of cherry blossoms seems too blatantly romantic to be anything other than deliberate.
By contrast, the flora Akari is exposed to is an unequivocal death and hopelessness symbol. The day before Hikaru has his match with Akira, she approaches him, and they talk under trees that, earlier in the series, were seen to scatter blossoms. For Akari, however, they scatter dead leaves: as she talks to Hikaru they flutter around her, and we're even treated to a shot of the ground, just to drive the message home. In case anyone thinks I'm reading too much into this, here is a shot that shows just how important this contrast is in the series. It's a symbol and a contrast that occurs repeatedly, and which is clearly intended to carry emotional meaning.
Contrasts and similarities
As the above makes clear, Hikaru no Go thrives on foils, contrasts, and parallels, and they are used extensively to throw light on the characters' relationships and personalities. There are very many of these, and they add poignancy to the story. They also tend to consistently inform us that the relationship between Akira and Hikaru is the most important thing in the world for both of them: for instance, while the experience Akira goes through in order to meet Hikaru in the school tournament - that of being ostracised, friendless, and met with hostility and bullying - is a very sharp contrast with Hikaru's experience of friendship and fun, there are also similarities in their experiences: Akira is being selfish when he joins the club; it is clear to viewers and other characters alike that he does it only out of self-interest, that he insists on being a member of a club where nobody wants him for the sole reason of being able to meet Hikaru again. Not very much later, Hikaru does the exact same thing: he gives priority to pursuing Akira and taking the insei examination over continuing to play with his school club. In other words, like Akira, he gives priority to his own interest. In fact, bluntly put, he chooses Akira over his friends, just as Akira chooses Hikaru. It is made clear that he knows what he's doing, and that while he regrets the loss of his friends, the friendships offered by the club stand no chance against his pursuit of Akira.
A more important and lengthy example is the relationship between Sai and Touya Meijin, which functions as a contrast to the Akira/Hikaru relationship. First and foremost, theirs is a tragic parallel to the main story: unlike Akira and Hikaru, they are never truly allowed to be rivals, never allowed to help each other search for the Hand of God. They do get to play, eventually, but only once. It is implied that Touya Meijin will be searching for Sai for the rest of his life, and since Sai is gone, this search will be in vain. They remain unfulfilled rivals, and they are unable to unlock their full strength by fighting against a worthy opponent repeatedly, through a long life.
But there is another way in which their relationship contrasts with Akira and Hikaru's. Unlike the main characters, Sai and Touya Meijin do no obsess about each other. They have little or no curiosity about each other as people, though admittedly Touya Meijin does want to to know Sai's identity. However, rather than quiz Hikaru on this, he dismisses it as unimportant, and tells Hikaru that what matters is getting the chance to play Sai again. In fact, while the two of them are playing, the spectators around the world are considerably more curious about Sai's identity than Touya Meijin is. Touya Meijin is primarily concerned with judging Sai's strength, with gauging him as an opponent, and once he realises how strong Sai is, he wants to play him again.
In short, Touya Meijin's attitude to Sai is that of a rival, nothing else. This is a rather sharp contrast with the Hikaru/Akira relationship; they are intensely emotionally engaged with each other. There are times when both of them seem to forget about the whole issue of Go in their desperately urgent pursuit of each other as people. This is particularly obvious in the episodes leading towards the insei examination. They contain such lines as Hikaru's "I haven't thought about it [becoming pro] much... I thought that I'd get closer to Touya if I just kept playing Go..." and Sai's comment that "Everything is a step towards Touya,", not to mention the lead-up to Hikaru's decision to try for pro status: Kaiou's first board berates him for his insufficient seriousness in chasing his "goal" - whereupon there's a short montage of Akira getting further and further away from Hikaru. His decision is then made, and when Sai cheerfully remarks "Your path is being paved, Hikaru!" Hikaru's response is "Touya... it's a path that leads to you." This theme is kept up during the insei examination: as Hikaru realises he's about to lose his game, he has yet another vision of a vanishing Akira, and responds by rather desperately calling "Touya, Touya!" in his mind. At no point in all this is there a reference to wanting to develop as a Go player.
One important difference between Akira and Hikaru is that of social class. Hikaru belongs to a modern middle-class family: he lives in a suburban, ordinary house, dresses casually, uses casual grammar, is frequently quite rude, and is generally not at ease when he has to be anyone other than himself. Finances are a concern for the family (the mother accepts having to pay for the insei examination since Hikaru is so serious about it, but she does comment on the expense; also, Hikaru's grandfather is initially worried about the expense of a go board) and Hikaru's main family authority figure seems to be his mother. Akira, on the other hand, is from a very traditional and rich Japanese family: they have the polite grammar, the old-style house, the garden with bamboo water features, and they have the authoritative kimono-wearing multi-millionaire father, and the mother who addresses her son with honorifics. And, most importantly in this context, they are aware of what sort of behaviour is fitting and becoming to their station and their abilities, such as when Akira's father objects to his going to the school tournament. With all this comes a set of rather ascetic behaviour expectations that Akira, with the exception of when he's dealing directly or indirectly with Hikaru, fulfils perfectly: he's invariably polite, he's in control of his emotions, he's calm and smiling and friendly, but never particularly forthcoming.
These social markers are used very effectively to indicate the level of emotional connection between the two: Hikaru consistently upsets Akira's balance. Whenever Akira thinks of, hears of, or speaks to Hikaru, he loses his composure. Akira's tendency to be emotionally affected by Hikaru is one that occurs time and again, so I will only mention two examples. There are lots of examples of his inner turmoil, but I have selected two that are noteworthy in that when they happen, Akira's reaction is so strong that he's breaking social norms and shocking bystanders. He is going contrary to his education and the social expectations he usually fulfils, but he is too upset to care or, seemingly, even notice. The first example is when his teacher announces that Akira is first board for the school tournament. He reacts by standing up, in class, interrupting the teacher, and loudly protesting the teacher's decision. To stunned gasps from the other students. While this may not be entirely equivalent to, say, usurping the imperial throne, it's still an astonishing display of direct opposition to a legitimate authority, and as such an example of a very strong break with accepted social norms. The second example is at the Wakajishisen after Sai's disappearance. On learning that Hikaru isn't there, and hasn't been going to his study group, Akira slams his fist against the wall, violently enough that Waya is startled, then we get a close-up that shows just how worried he is before he decides to go to his school and try to get him back, where he proceeds to raise a ruckus in the library. Which, incidentally, he does before any of Hikaru's friends even give him a phone call. Same scene from the manga is here; as will be seen, it plays out in pretty much the exact same way, though the anime adds the "worried" shot.
Akira is himself aware that his feelings for Hikaru are different than his feelings towards other good Go-players. In conversation with his father before the school tournament, he tries to explain his feelings:
I don't care about the people around me right now. If Shindou Hikaru is going to a club tournament, then I'm going to follow him there. Father, it may sound arrogant, but my goal is you. I've progressed towards that goal steadily until now. I thought I just had to walk straight towards you. I thought that walking straight would place me closer to the hand of god. But I was wrong... I couldn't do anything against Shindou Hikaru. He's different from Father, or Ogata-san. His presence is a weight upon me. Right now, he's the only thing on my mind.
Now, at this point, Akira is well aware that both his father and Ogata are stronger players than he is, yet the player that gets all his attention is Hikaru. In this context, Akira's relationship with his father, both as a player and as a father, is worth remembering. It's made clear throughout the story that Akira loves his father very much, and that his father loves him. This is made particularly clear in the flashback episode towards the end of the series that leads up to his first meeting with Hikaru: In it, we see a Akira who's barely able to contain his joy and pride in getting a paternal compliment for his play. We're told, repeatedly, that Akira and his father play together every morning, and it's also made clear that Touya Meijin is proud of his son's abilities; he even extracts revenge over slights to his son via Go. The vast majority of their interaction seems to involve the presence of a Go board; it's over Go that they talk and connect. What all this means is that for Akira, Go and affection have become inextricably linked. He seeks his father's approval and love through Go, and it is through Go that that love is expressed.
This, then, makes it possible to interpret his obsession with Hikaru as a rival as an expression of personal feelings of attraction. A possible reading of his statement might be: Akira interprets his feelings for Hikaru as Go-related, since he's used to expressing emotional connections through Go. However, he's aware enough that he recognises the situation as somehow "different" from his feelings towards his father as a rival, because the emotions are no longer simple family love and respect, but romantic attraction.
This interpretation is borne up, indirectly, in a manga scene that is unfortunately missing from the special. In chapter 162, not very long after Hikaru and Akira have played their match and begun their eternal-rival race together, we see a scene in which Akira is in the Go salon. There are signs he's growing up: for one thing, he's seen drinking coffee. Most crucially, however, he's talking about moving out from his parents' home, and explains this simply by saying "I just kinda want to get away from my father." This is given immediate verification and justification by one of the players in the salon, who says his son said and did something similar at age 18 - it's explained as something that is acceptable for sons to do as they grow up and establish their independence. However, in the context of this essay, it's worthwhile to note that this first strike for independence, this first sign of wanting to be separate from his father and establish himself in his own right, comes after Akira has worked things out with Hikaru. In other words, Akira is developing emotionally: his emotional focus is no longer his father, it's Hikaru.
Ochi, too, has the dubious pleasure of functioning as a contrast to emphasise the special nature of the feelings between Akira and Hikaru. Akira, arrogantly and tactlessly, displays an utter lack of interest in him as a rival when they meet, even though it's clear Ochi's strong, and is able to learn and improve. Ochi therefore tries to insist on being accepted as Akira's rival; he tries, in fact, to usurp Hikaru's position as Akira's special someone. Ochi's clearly jealous of Hikaru's special status, as is made clear in their conversation before their match in the pro finals. In this scene, too, Hikaru acts jealously and possessively when he hears that Ochi and Akira have been playing together:
Hikaru (grabs Ochi in evident anger): Why would Touya play against you?
Ochi: Let go of me! It's because I hire pros to come and tutor me at home.
Hikaru: You said that you trained with Touya just to beat me!
Ochi: What about it?
Hikaru: Why Touya? Why him?
Ochi: There's no particular reason for it. I had a lot to learn from Touya. [Begins to leave.]
Hikaru: Ochi! He... Did Touya... Did he say anything... [Swallows nervously] ...say anything about me? Did he?
Ochi [has flashback of Toya speaking of nothing but Hikaru]: He didn't say anything about you. Get off your high horse! [Hikaru blushes and looks devastated]. We talked about the pro exam too, but he doesn't care about you at all. He doesn't think anything of you.
Sai [looking sadly sympathetic]: Hikaru...
Hikaru displays the same exclusive focus on Akira: he never thinks of other, stronger players as potential rivals. When Hikaru meets Waya, for instance, Waya is much stronger than he is, yet he never sees him as a rival or as anything other than a friend. And towards the end of the series, it seems Isumi is as strong as, or stronger than Hikaru, yet he barely registers as a blip on Hikaru's rival radar. Touya Meijin throws light on the inherent absurdity of Akira's and Hikaru's use of language with which to describe each other. The following conversation takes place between Waya and Hikaru shortly after the latter has been accepted as an insei:
Waya: What's your relationship with Touya? [...] You're not strong at all. Are you really rivals?
Hikaru: Really! I'm his, and he's my rival!
Akira, of course, says similar things, perhaps most notably his "You are my eternal rival," during their first pro match. But Touya Meijin points out for us that this is illogical: when asked who would be a suitable rival for him, he rightly states that everybody is, that all professional players are his rivals. Logically, this is of course the case, since any competition happens between rivals. Not so for Akira and Hikaru. Their insistence that they are each other's rivals, to the exclusion of everyone else, seems like another way of wanting to be emotionally connected.
Serious eyes and the desire to be seen
Both Hikaru and Akira are obsessed with getting the other to see them. The theme of sight, of looking, and of discerning the other, remains important throughout, to the extent that it's even referenced in the intro songs: There's the ambiguous "It feels as if you've seen straight through my heart. If I had not met you, I would still only have a false smile, my words and disagreements would only have been superficial. With the power of your gaze, I am starting to change!" which features Akira and Hikaru during the "if I had not met you" and "starting to change" lines, and Hikaru and Akari during the "false smile/superficial disagreements" line. The theme also occurs on the somewhat clumsily translated intro: "On this eye, this eye of yours, everything will appear. I will tell apart the truth, even if the truth is so harsh it's suffocating" - again, the theme of perception, recognition, understanding is emphasised.
The examples of this particular pattern are many and varied: when Akira plays Sai on the computer, we see him straining to see through an impenetrable darkness, to see who his player is. He tries, in vain, to decide if Sai is Hikaru or not, and in the end, he succeeds: during his father's match with Sai, the following sequence occurs. Watching the screen intently, he wonders why he sees Hikaru in the player. Then he gasps, and close-up of his staring eye followed by what he sees. This, then, is when he realises that Hikaru is two people. And while Akira has visions of Hikaru, Hikaru has visions of Akira. The most extreme one is when Ochi lets slip that he has to beat Hikaru in order to be considered Akira's rival. A rather ghostly Akira promptly appears, and as the camera zooms in on his eyes, he increases in solidity until Ochi is literally out of the picture and Hikaru addresses Akira directly. Hikaru also knows himself to be under scrutiny: "Touya is looking at me through Ochi. I have a feeling that he is. Almost there... I'm almost there, Touya! I've almost caught up to you!"
Naturally, this theme has to do with the mystery that is Sai-Hikaru, and Akira's desire to understand it, but as a theme it runs through Hikaru no Go to a much greater extent than that particular plot point seems to warrant - especially when we consider that Hikaru is the one obsessed with getting Akira to see him, rather than the other way round. It's understandable that Akira would want the recognition of someone whom he believes is a much stronger player, but what possible motivation could pre-Go-interest Hikaru have for wanting recognition and appreciation from Akira? This is never explained, yet Hikaru's desperation to have it drives the entire story. He wants Akira's "serious gaze" to be aimed at him, not at Sai:
"They're the eyes from before. The eyes he had when he challenged Sai. I came all this way pulled by your eyes... you're my far away objective." (School tournament episode).
After the humiliation of wanting to be seen and accepted by someone who turned out to be inferior to him, Akira gets obsessed with showing Hikaru how much better he is than him, to the extent that when he plays the Ouza, he is blinded to the presence of the man. In the manga, before the match starts, Akira thinks "It doesn't matter who is coming up from behind me. The only ones I see are the 500 pros. And only forward... I will only look forward. I do not see you at all". The last sentence is imposed on a picture of Hikaru. Akira then proceeds to make a serious error of judgement and lose the match - the very match he wanted Hikaru to see, so Hikaru would realise how good he is. His blindness, his focus on someone other than the Ouza, is so extreme that the man even comments on it ("who do you think is sitting before you right now?"). Logically, Akira should be indifferent to Hikaru at this point if he truly didn't care about him, since he now believes Hikaru is a bad player. But he cares, deeply, so much so that the desire to have Hikaru see him, and be overwhelmed by his abilities, loses him the match.
One of the very rare instances where Hikaru actually discusses his motivation makes it clear that it's Akira's eyes, and Akira's feelings, that are motivating. Not the desire to beat him, nor the desire to become good at Go. In the anime, the scene plays out like this:
Hikaru's mother: It feels like Hikaru's changing... I feel uncertain.
Hikaru's grandfather: Why does Hikaru want to become a pro all of a sudden?
Hikaru's mother: He lost to a boy his age by a lot at Go, and he was given up on.
[Flashback to kitchen scene]
Hikaru: He looked disappointed, and became a pro. So I wanted to make him look back on me.
Hikaru's mother: Hm?
[Cut to pro prelims]
Hikaru: Yeah! The eyes he had when he first came to me. I'll make him turn those eyes to me!
The focus on Akira's gaze is prevalent through the series, and is often used as an indication of emotion. Contrast, for instance, his gaze shortly after the school tournament, when he's disappointed with Hikaru's abilities, with his gaze immediately after learning that Hikaru is an insei, and thus still potentially his rival. In the first picture, his eyes are dull, lowered, and his face expressionless; in the second, he's aggressive and focused. Both emotional states, of course, are due to Hikaru. When Hikaru has passed his pro exam and is waiting at the award ceremony, there is yet another instance of dramatic ambiguity. This scene plays out much the same in the manga and anime: Akira arrives, stops and looks stunned at seeing Hikaru there, then continues walking towards him. Hikaru blushes, smiles, and looks delighted, and starts to speak to Akira just as he walks past him without any greeting or recognition. Hikaru, not unnaturally, is angered, and remains angry until he realises that the date for his first match with Akira has already been set. Then his reaction is to wonder if Akira knows, to which Sai responds by making references to his gaze: "His eyes when he passed by us... Didn't they seem to you like he already knew he'd be playing you?" Then, yet again, the camera focuses on Akira's gaze. Hikaru's entire motivation is the desire to turn that gaze onto himself, and during his emotional crisis after Sai disappears, this is one of the reasons he decides not to play any more: "Touya, I wanted you to look towards me instead of Sai. Even though that's impossible. I can't surpass Sai." His crisis of confidence is such that he no longer believes he can get Akira to see him, and this in itself is enough for him to give up Go.
This theme of being seen, being appreciated, makes its appearance repeatedly during Akira and Hikaru's first match as pros. As the scene begins, both the manga and the anime treat us to close-up eye contact followed by a discussion between Ochi and Waya, during which Waya remarks of Akira that "I doubt he has anyone other than the top pros in his sight right now." (And the original Japanese uses the word "me", i.e. "eyes".) We, of course, know that Akira has eyes for nobody but Hikaru. As Hikaru speaks to Akira before the match begins, he makes reference to the fact that he has, in a manner of speaking, been keeping an eye on Akira through studying the kifu of his games, and then goes on to bring up his desire to be seen and appreciated by Akira: "I saw how good you are from your matches against Master Zama and Mr Hagiwara. Today, it's my turn to show you how good I am." This is followed by silent eye contact between the two of them, which seems to be highly unusual - I can't think of any other example of two players who maintain eye contact before the match begins; the norm seems to be to look at the board. As the match begins, the room fades around them, leaving the two of them to focus exclusively on each other and on their game. When Hikaru responds correctly to a difficult move, Akira's gaze lifts from the board to Hikaru's face; this happens again when Hikaru makes the move that makes Akira think of Sai. And finally, of course, Akira speaks up and tells Hikaru that he has understood that Sai and Hikaru are connected, somehow: he has found the Sai inside Hikaru, whereupon Hikaru decides he will one day explain it all. What all this means is that their match is the moment when they are finally allowed to see and understand each other, it marks the beginning of a new phase of their relationship. After the match, they begin to socialise, and, rather seamlessly, they become part of each other's daily lives.
Femininity as a marker of male homosexual attraction
One of the things I find moderately annoying about fandom is the way in which male homosexuality is treated and expressed in fanfic. It's a common thing to see characters have a flash of inspiration and realise that they "are gay". However, unlike in the West, sexuality is not seen as an identity in Japan: liking your own sex, or being attracted to someone of your own sex, doesn't fundamentally alter your self-perception. It might mean that you find yourself in a more difficult situation socially, and you might be exposed to repercussions or embarrassment, but you're highly unlikely to suffer an identity crisis. This is not because Japan is particularly liberated, either: it's because the attitudes to sexuality in the West are a complete break with what has traditionally and historically been the norm. It's only since the mid-19th century, when Western doctors classified people into pathological groups, and included same-sex sexual attraction as one of these groups, that we've come to see homosexuality as a unique and separate identity.
Traditionally, in the West as everywhere else in the world, the distinction has been between active/passive rather than male/female. There has normally been no loss of status for a man whose role is active. This view persists in Japan, in the familiar seme/uke distinction, and also in the view of what passive homosexuality does to a man: as with everywhere else that has operated with this distinction, choosing the passive role is seen as feminising for the man who does so. According to Mark McLelland, author of Male Homosexuality in Modern Japan: Cultural Myths and Social Realities, "Today, homosexuality in Japan is largely conflated with cross-dressing and transgenderism due to the prominence of cross-dressed individuals featured in the media and the entertainment world. Thus, homosexual men are understood to be okama (literally a 'pot' but meaning something similar to the English word 'queen') and are usually represented as cross-dressed and effeminate." Source.
Feminity becomes a marker of homosexuality, to the extent that a feminine man is culturally coded as inclined towards same-sex attraction, and vice versa: men who are attracted to their sex, are generally expected to be effeminate. This may come as a surprise to those whose only source of Japanese attitudes to homosexuality is yaoi, where the men, while usually very beautiful, and delicately built and drawn, are generally not cross-dressers or otherwise overtly feminine in mannerisms. However, when side characters in manga or anime are openly gay, they will in the vast majority of cases be wig-and-dress-wearing, giggly men. (Examples off the top of my head: Haruhi's father and his friends in Ouran School Host Club, and most of the clientele of the gay bars in Yellow. This trope does sometimes make an appearance among the main characters in regular yaoi, too, such as in Lily Hoshino's work, where the uke are generally indistinguishable, both visually and behaviour-wise, from women.)
It's never made an issue of, but Akira is almost as feminine as Sai, with his almond-shaped eyes and pageboy haircut. His behaviour is consistent with feminine ideals, too: he's polite, quiet, modest, self-effacing. By the end of the manga, it emerges he's even capable of cleaning and, possibly, cooking. I would probably never have made this an argument in favour of a gay interpretation of Hikaru no Go had it not been for this image. It's from the Hikaru no Go art book, and while that might not make the image strictly canonical, it is at least official art, drawn by the manga artist. The image is set after the end of the manga (it's conveniently dated to 2008!) and the characters seem to be a year or two older than in canon. In it, Akira's femininity is played up significantly. His hair is longer, his face thinner and more delicate than in the manga and anime, and his lips are slightly more pronounced. This, in combination with the way he stands quietly beside Hikaru, who has an arm around his shoulder, means that this particular image, for me, comes as close to an actual official confirmation as we are ever going to get that yes, these two are a couple.
Since we have established that names were chosen with some degree of care in this series, let me make one more point: both Hikaru and Akira have names that are gender-ambiguous/uni-sex; both names are female as well as male. Their names, their identity markers, are of an uncertain sex; you can't tell from their names whether they are male or female. This duality or doubt concerning their gender seems to fit well with the Japanese cultural stereotypes where same-sex attraction gets confused with transgenderism.
Other clues: dialogue and visuals
There are a number of lines in the series that seem as though they are carefully crafted to read ambiguously, as though they are written to give the readers two possible options as to how we choose to perceive them. Some I have already quoted, such as the dialogue between Ochi and Hikaru, and Hikaru's mother's remark that she's worried because she feels like her son is "changing" - a line that is repeated later, by Akari. But there are many, many others: there's Kaiou's third board's comment after testing Hikaru's strength: "But you're not strong enough for Touya to see you as a rival. Or is there something else to you? [...] You still have that certain quality that pulled Touya to you, don't you?" There's the Go salon employee's reaction on being asked if Akira and Hikaru are friends/get along - she responds, with evident embarrassment, "Oh, eh... kinda." There's Hikaru's comment to Sai: "Touya... he's playing in that same room I play in, right? We play on Sundays and every other Saturday, but... He plays on Wednesdays or Thursdays since he's a pro... We won't ever meet, but when I think that I'm playing in the same room as him, I feel something." There's Akira's thoughts after his father's match with Sai: "I've been thinking ever since the matter with Sai. Shindou - why did you appear before me? Why do I chase after you? And why do you chase after me? Why?"
We are never given an answer to this question, of course, any more than we learn why Hikaru seems to blush an awful lot around Akira, or why the normally polite and formal Akira always uses casual, familiar grammar around Hikaru. All these lines can be read "innocently," or they can be read as implying same-sex attraction between the two of them. The series portrays the emotions between Akira and Hikaru very cleverly, never quite stepping over the line and removing ambiguity and doubt, yet never actually suggesting that these feelings are due to innocent friendship or Go-related rivalry - on the contrary, we're in fact repeatedly assured that Hikaru's sense of rivalry, at least, is due to these undefined and unexplained feelings between them, as in this manga image.
The final outro deserves a paragraph to itself in that it combines visuals and language in such a way as to emphasise the intensity of the emotional connection between Akira and Hikaru. In particular, the following section: There are days when I feel lonely and days when I feel miserable but I know I am never alone. You're here. If I had to pick one example of narrative ambiguity that can't possibly be anything other than intentional, this would be it: the language is that of a love song, and the imagery cuts back and forth between two characters, rendering no doubt that the lyrics are intended to represent the relationship between them. The anime has altered the visuals slightly to increase the connection between the two characters. Compared to the manga image, there are several important differences: Hikaru and Akira are wearing clothes that follow the same lines (a central vertical panel), the distracting pillows and boards on the floor have been removed, and both characters' hands are relaxed rather than balled into fists. Last but not least, the angle between them has been tilted slightly, so their hands appear visually much closer to each other.
Speaking of clothes: much has been made of Akira's poor fashion sense in fandom, but I have yet to see it pointed out that his colour preferences (pink/purple/lavender and to some extent blue) are those currently most strongly associated with homosexuality. Whether this gay colour code applies as strongly and ubiquitously in Japan as it does in the West I daren't say, but I doubt that the associations are unknown. In the context of a coded narrative, Akira's fondness for pink shirts under lavender suits seems conspicuous to say the least.
And finally, this is one of my favourite official-art images, and it's very much not a picture of two rivals who are concerned only with beating each other. On the contrary, it's a beautiful and calm picture, the mood is serene (emphasised by Akira's closed eyes), Akira's and Hikaru's heads are angled towards each other, they are physically close, and Hikaru's gaze is directed towards Akira. Also, this is another example of "it's there, but we won't show it": look at the angle of Akira's arm. It's awkward, pushed back further than it would be if his arm was simply hanging loosely at his side, the elbow bent at a strange angle. Follow the line of his and Hikaru's arms down to the bottom of the DVD cover: they are angled in such a way that, especially in combination with the slightly unnatural position of Akira's arm, it seems unlikely that the two of them are doing anything other than holding hands.
Conclusion
In this too-lengthy essay, I have attempted to identify several narrative patterns that suggest that we as consumers of the story have the author's blessing and encouragement to see the relationship between Akira and Hikaru in terms of same-sex attraction. I would like to emphasise that I do not believe that such authorial approval is needed in order to perceive the story that way: any reader is entitled to see the story in however way they wish. My motivation for doing this analysis had to do with the annoying, persistent sense that the way I read the story was influenced by deliberate authorial hints rather than fandom goggles, and I wanted to see if a literary analysis could bring me any closer to the answer to that question.
And what is my conclusion? Well, it's one of elimination, really. Is it possible that all of the above can be there by coincidence, or accident? Is it possible that the author cannot see how the dialogue, the symbolism, even the name choices, can all be seen to have a double meaning? I have a hard time believing it, especially of an author who keeps telling us that her main character is so very good at "reading deeply" - she is a skilled writer, and far too good at her craft for any ambiguity of this magnitude to have slipped past her.
Rather, I believe she wrote the story knowing perfectly well what she was doing. Throughout the story, she has persistently and cleverly given us two options, either or both of which can be true: either Hikaru and Akira are destined the God of Go's Chosen Board Game Players, and everything that has happened between them is simply due to said god's clever manipulation of their lives, or else they are two young boys who happen to fall in love with each other. The author never gives us the final, decisive answer in the form of, say, a canon kiss, but she does give us everything but.