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On adulthood, social conformity, and travelling in Kino's Journey
Adults were always telling the children: "You can do whatever you like as children. But afterwards, it's forbidden! You see, adults have to work. Work is necessary and the most important thing in life! When you work, you'll certainly have to do things that you don't like, or that you think it's wrong. That's very hard!"
I lived two years in abroad and while I haven't been unhappy away from there, I've always longed to be back, and I am rapidly approaching the point where I'm having to make some Decisions if that is something I actively want to pursue. So on a lovely Saturday afternoon, I sat down in a café an did some ruminating, and sure enough: What I discovered was that what I wanted wasn't so much being in Germany, as that being not-home meant that I would of course come home someday and wouldn't settle-settle in Germany either. Do I love life in Germany? Indisputably, but maybe not as much as I fear staying in the same place for thirty years and being tied down by work and mortgages and a social network I cannot replace. In the end, I suspect my wanderlust is really fear of settling down and settling with the life as a proper adult.
Then I went home and watched the second half of the 2017 anime adaptation of Kino's Journey, which includes its own take on the episode wherein this conversation happens.
It bears mentioning, here, that the 2003 english dub says "perfect adult", while the 2017 sub talks about "proper adult", as the does (German) Tokyopop translation of the short story from which they're adapted. Through the eyes of an outsider the story sure looks like a commentary about Japanese attitudes to social confirmity and work ethics.
To recap: We're watching a country where coming of age is a clearly defined ritual. On a child's twelth birthday, they have surgery that "removes the child" in some kind of lobotomy, rendering them capable of "wearing a big smile even as they do things they hate". At least in the eyes of the child narrating, the main purpose of being an adult is labour. "Jobs aren't supposed to be fun, because we have to do them to live".
Labour, indeed, isn't only a societal necessity, but is given a moral value: labour is suffering, jobs aren't supposed to be fun. When Kino-the-child meets Kino-the-traveller, she dismisses his adulthood in spite of his maturity, because he enjoys his vocation, and a job is per definition something you dislike doing. Thus, Kino-the-traveller doesn't have a job, and isn't an adult.
This moral value of labour becomes all the clearer when Kino-the-child changes her mind and tells her parents that she doesn't want to become an adult. They react with hysterics that call the attention of the other adults around, and the judgment given Kino-the-child from the society around her is... striking. Quoting the German translation of the novels, she's a "hellion", she's "mocking adults", she's "left the righteous path", she's "bringing shame onto her parents". And as someone who is "denigrating" the operation, she has to be "punished". Rejecting adulthood is heresy worthy of capital punishment. With the blessing of society, Kino's parents decide to kill her.
Put succintly: The only alternative to adulthood is death. The only acceptable life in Kino-the-child's hometown, is the life where misery is celebrated as a virtue.
Through both Kino-the-traveller and Kino-the-child, the life of the traveller is presented as an alternative to adulthood. An adulthood defined as intrusive and violent submission to society and celebration of suffering; an adulthood that kills Kino-the-traveller and has all intentions of executing Kino-the-child. Kino-the-child survives by becoming a traveller and escaping that society. She takes over Kino-the-traveller's name and his philosophy for travelling, and becomes fiercely survivalist.
A review of the 2017 anime brought up the libertarian ethics of the story, specifically the fantasy of the badass survivalist in an environment where you do not answer to any laws if you resort to violence in order to protect yourself. Another shade of the rightwing fantasy of the mind independent of social dogma can be found in how Kino, the individualist outsider, is frequently shown to see straight into the core of various problems in countries she visits, her opinions unfiltered by the society and culture "blinding" the collectivist citizens. This tension between the individualist and the collectivist comes to a gruesome climax in an episode that ties directly back into "Land of Adults": "A Kind Land", where Kino visits a kind and welcoming country. She specifically befriends Sakura, a young girl to which numerous parallells are drawn from the child Kino herself once was: They were both named after flowers, they were both daughters of innkeepers, they were both preoccupied with growing up and taking on the vocation of their parents - and they are both two days away from being "adults" as catastrophe strikes. The kind country is destroyed in a natural disaster that has been long predicted, yet its citizens chose to perish along with it rather than survival by escaping and becoming travellers. Sakura was not given the choice of surviving, as she was two days away from being an adult and children were not told of the impending destruction; her parents suggested that she leave with Kino and become a traveller, but did not push the issue when she refused. But Sakura, we later learn, knew about the apocalypse, but still chose to die along with her country rather than becoming a homelss traveller. In the country that is everything Kino's hometown wasn't, conformity isn't enforced with the threat of capital punishment: it literally equals death, and yet the people succumb.
If we are to read "adulthood" as a metaphor for conforming to the "proper" life as is acceptable by society*, then travelling is the survival of the self faced against the violence both physical (Land of Adults) and emotional (Kind Land) to relinquish the wishes of individual for the safety and acceptance of the group.
(*See also: Photo, who desperately tries to conform to the group that brutally abuses her, and grotesquely survives as the others die because of their abuse and their unwillingness to acknowledge her as one of them. I have no idea how to read Shizu and his band into this, though)
I don't remember us ever seeing any travellers work, though presumably they must at least take on odd jobs to fund their travels. This coming from a country where workplace loyalty is traditionally life-long (or so they tell me), the moral is plain: accept those who choose otherwise; for some of them, it might be a matter of survival.
Even if the Japanese working culture is extreme compared to a lot of western countries, the moral still stands elsewhere. The respect with which the travellers in Kino's Journey are treated stands in a grim contrast to how the Roma people and various other migratory cultures have been treated across Europe throughout the centuries; a hundred years ago, our national branch were considered to be mentally sub-par to the "settled" population. The Perfect Adult is one that contributes to society with their off-spring and their labour. The Traveller at best leaves behind money, but does not otherwise contribute to society. In "Kino's Journey", this is accepted and embraced. In the real world, those refusing society are often met with skepticism: the childfree woman, the man who never holds a permanent job - hell, in my corner of the world, people who could afford to buy their own home but choose to rent instead are looked at weird.
Of course, parts of the mainstream that chooses something else than Society are no longer met with ostracism or violence (mostly), but this Christmas, my mother mentioned a bit wistfully that she'd wish I'd "settled down". This, to someone permanently employed and with a mortgage and all - because in the twenty-first centurey, in liberal Scandinavia, the adulthood isn't real until you've got it all. It's the first time she's mentioned this, but by now I'm closer to fourty than to thirty, any youth I could've claimed inescapably gone. I'm not longer a child, and safety, in my mother's eyes, lies not in pursuing my individual joys, but in settling into the same lot as everyone else.
I lived two years in abroad and while I haven't been unhappy away from there, I've always longed to be back, and I am rapidly approaching the point where I'm having to make some Decisions if that is something I actively want to pursue. So on a lovely Saturday afternoon, I sat down in a café an did some ruminating, and sure enough: What I discovered was that what I wanted wasn't so much being in Germany, as that being not-home meant that I would of course come home someday and wouldn't settle-settle in Germany either. Do I love life in Germany? Indisputably, but maybe not as much as I fear staying in the same place for thirty years and being tied down by work and mortgages and a social network I cannot replace. In the end, I suspect my wanderlust is really fear of settling down and settling with the life as a proper adult.
Then I went home and watched the second half of the 2017 anime adaptation of Kino's Journey, which includes its own take on the episode wherein this conversation happens.
It bears mentioning, here, that the 2003 english dub says "perfect adult", while the 2017 sub talks about "proper adult", as the does (German) Tokyopop translation of the short story from which they're adapted. Through the eyes of an outsider the story sure looks like a commentary about Japanese attitudes to social confirmity and work ethics.
To recap: We're watching a country where coming of age is a clearly defined ritual. On a child's twelth birthday, they have surgery that "removes the child" in some kind of lobotomy, rendering them capable of "wearing a big smile even as they do things they hate". At least in the eyes of the child narrating, the main purpose of being an adult is labour. "Jobs aren't supposed to be fun, because we have to do them to live".
Labour, indeed, isn't only a societal necessity, but is given a moral value: labour is suffering, jobs aren't supposed to be fun. When Kino-the-child meets Kino-the-traveller, she dismisses his adulthood in spite of his maturity, because he enjoys his vocation, and a job is per definition something you dislike doing. Thus, Kino-the-traveller doesn't have a job, and isn't an adult.
This moral value of labour becomes all the clearer when Kino-the-child changes her mind and tells her parents that she doesn't want to become an adult. They react with hysterics that call the attention of the other adults around, and the judgment given Kino-the-child from the society around her is... striking. Quoting the German translation of the novels, she's a "hellion", she's "mocking adults", she's "left the righteous path", she's "bringing shame onto her parents". And as someone who is "denigrating" the operation, she has to be "punished". Rejecting adulthood is heresy worthy of capital punishment. With the blessing of society, Kino's parents decide to kill her.
Put succintly: The only alternative to adulthood is death. The only acceptable life in Kino-the-child's hometown, is the life where misery is celebrated as a virtue.
Through both Kino-the-traveller and Kino-the-child, the life of the traveller is presented as an alternative to adulthood. An adulthood defined as intrusive and violent submission to society and celebration of suffering; an adulthood that kills Kino-the-traveller and has all intentions of executing Kino-the-child. Kino-the-child survives by becoming a traveller and escaping that society. She takes over Kino-the-traveller's name and his philosophy for travelling, and becomes fiercely survivalist.
A review of the 2017 anime brought up the libertarian ethics of the story, specifically the fantasy of the badass survivalist in an environment where you do not answer to any laws if you resort to violence in order to protect yourself. Another shade of the rightwing fantasy of the mind independent of social dogma can be found in how Kino, the individualist outsider, is frequently shown to see straight into the core of various problems in countries she visits, her opinions unfiltered by the society and culture "blinding" the collectivist citizens. This tension between the individualist and the collectivist comes to a gruesome climax in an episode that ties directly back into "Land of Adults": "A Kind Land", where Kino visits a kind and welcoming country. She specifically befriends Sakura, a young girl to which numerous parallells are drawn from the child Kino herself once was: They were both named after flowers, they were both daughters of innkeepers, they were both preoccupied with growing up and taking on the vocation of their parents - and they are both two days away from being "adults" as catastrophe strikes. The kind country is destroyed in a natural disaster that has been long predicted, yet its citizens chose to perish along with it rather than survival by escaping and becoming travellers. Sakura was not given the choice of surviving, as she was two days away from being an adult and children were not told of the impending destruction; her parents suggested that she leave with Kino and become a traveller, but did not push the issue when she refused. But Sakura, we later learn, knew about the apocalypse, but still chose to die along with her country rather than becoming a homelss traveller. In the country that is everything Kino's hometown wasn't, conformity isn't enforced with the threat of capital punishment: it literally equals death, and yet the people succumb.
If we are to read "adulthood" as a metaphor for conforming to the "proper" life as is acceptable by society*, then travelling is the survival of the self faced against the violence both physical (Land of Adults) and emotional (Kind Land) to relinquish the wishes of individual for the safety and acceptance of the group.
(*See also: Photo, who desperately tries to conform to the group that brutally abuses her, and grotesquely survives as the others die because of their abuse and their unwillingness to acknowledge her as one of them. I have no idea how to read Shizu and his band into this, though)
I don't remember us ever seeing any travellers work, though presumably they must at least take on odd jobs to fund their travels. This coming from a country where workplace loyalty is traditionally life-long (or so they tell me), the moral is plain: accept those who choose otherwise; for some of them, it might be a matter of survival.
Even if the Japanese working culture is extreme compared to a lot of western countries, the moral still stands elsewhere. The respect with which the travellers in Kino's Journey are treated stands in a grim contrast to how the Roma people and various other migratory cultures have been treated across Europe throughout the centuries; a hundred years ago, our national branch were considered to be mentally sub-par to the "settled" population. The Perfect Adult is one that contributes to society with their off-spring and their labour. The Traveller at best leaves behind money, but does not otherwise contribute to society. In "Kino's Journey", this is accepted and embraced. In the real world, those refusing society are often met with skepticism: the childfree woman, the man who never holds a permanent job - hell, in my corner of the world, people who could afford to buy their own home but choose to rent instead are looked at weird.
Of course, parts of the mainstream that chooses something else than Society are no longer met with ostracism or violence (mostly), but this Christmas, my mother mentioned a bit wistfully that she'd wish I'd "settled down". This, to someone permanently employed and with a mortgage and all - because in the twenty-first centurey, in liberal Scandinavia, the adulthood isn't real until you've got it all. It's the first time she's mentioned this, but by now I'm closer to fourty than to thirty, any youth I could've claimed inescapably gone. I'm not longer a child, and safety, in my mother's eyes, lies not in pursuing my individual joys, but in settling into the same lot as everyone else.