disaster-bay-leaf - Tumblr blog

disaster-bay-leaf · 3 months

Text

Design Analysis: Kouyou Ozaki

Have you ever wondered why everyone has assumed Kouyou to be a courtesan or brothel owner when there has been no specification in the main series?

First, there is the fact she refers to herself using “wacchi” (わっち), a pronoun that had been used by Geisha and Oiran alike in the Edo Period. Second is that, while she doesn’t have as many layers or hair ornaments, her large Obi is still tied at the front, and wears a Uchikake over her kimono. An Uchikake by itself is not an indicator, but I would think she has it to accentuate what she’s meant to resemble.

An Oiran is a general term for a high-ranking courtesan who has taken up some traditional arts and refined in their entertainment skills, putting them above the common prostitute. The term “Oiran” (花魁) means “flower leader”. It was said to be used by Kamuro and Shinzo to refer to the older courtesans and eventually became their title. It is theorized to come from the phrase "oira no tokoro no nēsan" (おいらの所の姉さん), but there is no exact and official origin of why they’re referred to as such.

They are exclusive because of their price ranges and the highest ranking had a degree of choice in who they had in their company. They get confused with Geisha often because of their similar skill sets and when you don’t know what you’re looking for visually, but in addition, this is mostly the fault of the Occupation of Japan with many coupling both of them into what they’d call “Geesha Girls” and mistaking Geishas for prostitutes. Many even called themselves a Geisha to bring in business, but Geisha’s legally couldn’t promote sex (that didn’t stop them though sometimes if they needed the cash). They are not distinctive only because one of them can practice sex work and the other cannot. Besides my previous comments on accessories, layering, and their distinctive Obi, Oirans have more extravagant coloring and designs on their clothing.

Not to be confused with the Tayū, whom Oiran had taken after in their clothing. Tayū are not as relevant in pop culture, so do not worry about trying to tell the difference in fictional media because they’re 100% going to be an Oiran unless specified. If you would like to learn more about Tayū and not look at confusing wiki pages, I recommend reading these: Karyukai Workers and Roles, The Look of Oiran Versus Tayuu, and this nice video about a modern day Tayū.

While Shinzo are the new debuting girls late into their training, a stage before that is the Kamuro. Kamuro are young girls sold by their parents to either pay off debts or have fewer mouths to feed, and some were even born into it. On the surface, the deal of their daughter becoming someone so luxurious was desirable and made it easier for them to give her away, but not all of them got that life and had to fight for that position. Kamuro were put under the care of senior courtesans who would teach them the skills they’d need while Kamuro did their chores for them. Kamuro were also considered a social marker of how rich the courtesan was to be able to provide for these girls, but they were limited to only caring for two. It was an exploitative and abusive industry that groomed them into this life. These girls can’t leave because they’re stuck to a never-ending contract that they need to pay off in their work because of the costs of their living, so competition for the top spot wasn’t only for the idealized life promised, but to get a higher paying customer to pay off their contract to escape.

Kouyou’s backstory is heart-wrenching in this context. We don’t have details of how she ended up there or the rest of what happened, but you can’t deny the resemblance between the life of a young girl in the red light district trying to escape her conditions with a man who has promised her freedom and Kouyou wanting to live in the light outside of the Port Mafia’s unlivable darkness with someone who wanted to show her that. Along the same lines, Kyouka can be seen as a Kamuro that Kouyou has taken under her wing and wanted to leave herself. Granted, using sexual favors is manipulation 101 and she could’ve learned this anywhere, but it would make sense if she had learned this from Kouyou as a courtesan. Kamuro weren’t ignorant of what their “Older Sisters” did.

There are many differences between the life of these girls and the bloody one Kouyou had lived in the Port Mafia, and it’s not as if I’m implying she had lived the life they did as we don’t know much, but the similarities can’t be just coincidence. As for “brothel owner”, the Yakuza unsurprisingly stick their nose into the sex work business, so it wouldn’t be too hard to assume Kouyou was looking over these things.

Side comment: “Ane-san” is old-fashioned, so the only time you’ll see it be used instead of just “Ane” or “Onee-san” is in a historical context, or with the Yakuza to refer to the upper echelon female members.

(I refuse to use something not from mayoi, bones art… is ugly)

Kouyou’s crimson hair comes from her name “紅葉”, which can be translated to “Red (Autumn) Leaf”, or roughly “Crimson Blade”. It’s referred to as crimson in the light novels, but we all want to call it deep pink. Either way, both colors are deep-seated in love and she wears it all over. Her uchikake starts light at the top and deepens the lush cherry blossom pink into a bloody red where it drags at the floor with trailing bellflowers (or some type of thin petaled bellflower). Her inner kimono is pure black, except at her shoulder where only a piece of pink is left, and at the bottom are prominent red spider lilies. Their color is emphasized with a transitioning dark shade of purple.

Red spider lilies are infamous because of their connotation with death, but there’s more to it. They’re considered “hell flowers” and could lead the dead to reincarnation. Used in funerals, legends say that seeing someone you will never meet again will have these flowers bloom in your path. They’re flowers that bloom in autumn and the meanings they have are: painful memories, abandonment, passion, independence, giving up, longing, and “never to meet again”.

Kouyou is a mournful soul whose past has never left her, especially in the face of confronting Kyouka’s choice. For these flowers to appear in the inner darkness of her design is significant to how deeply his death had affected her, but also the abandonment of what she regards as her “born nature”. That man had wanted to show her light but had only contributed to the growing darkness that she wasn’t allowed to escape. She had died that day with him, and could only keep walking in the flower field of death she had created. It’s only the piece of light on her shoulder that is left of her past self.

Now, the bellflowers on her uchikake can mean: Loyalty, gratitude, faithful, unchanging, honesty, and discipline.

If the Port Mafia had once been a place of terror and misery, then Mori had changed that for her and made the Port Mafia her home. She is forever grateful for what he has done to make this life livable again and dawns this flower gracefully with light colors. She chooses to wear these light colors over her kimono because even if she resents the hypocrisy of the people who can live in the light without criticism, she still wants some semblance of that dream after her soul has been blackened to that gain. Harukawa, when designing these characters, keeps in mind what organization and type of person they are when color coding them. It’s also with the understanding of what shades will appear darker and lighter in the manga style. Harukawa says that she made sure to give Kouyou light colors and kept her eye from being dark to signify that she’s a good person.

In the manga, her outfit is slightly different from the anime’s design. Her uchikake is paler and does not have any flowers on it, and the flowers on her kimono are much more... vague, so if there are better candidates than my guesses, then be my guest and throw me a bone. From the silhouettes, I will assume that the largest visible flower is a water lily and/or lotus and the flowers growing on the branches are sakura blossoms and/or plum blossoms. It’s fitting considering she is introduced with sakura blossoms falling around her, but they could be plum blossoms too as “花魁” can refer to them in some cases.

Water lilies and Lotus flowers are very recognizable, and I’m sure most of you have seen them around. Their meaning of “purity of heart” comes from how wild water lilies will usually be white. Similarly, lotus flowers are seen as pure because they can bloom in mud without staining themselves. Other meanings water lilies are given are: Rebirth, trust, faith, and kindness. With lotus flowers, they are: Rebirth (again), “to change someone’s mind”, “eases suffering (of the heart)”, and resilience.

Ignoring the meaning of faith and trust since we had already gone over it with the bellflowers, both possible flowers emphasize her good nature and the renewal of life that Mori had blessed her with. Mori had eased the mindless suffering caused by the old boss and changed her mind about what the Port Mafia was to her. She pushed through the muddy waters of the old boss’s darkness and stood her place well in her strength.

Sakura blossoms and plum blossoms introduce two different meanings in their symbolic usage. Plum blossoms bloom in the winter cold in the signal of spring coming, showing the prosperity of life in the hardest of conditions, while sakura blossoms remind us of life’s impermanence and that its beauty can only last for so long. Plum blossoms also can mean: elegance, nobleness, patience, loyalty, hope, and renewal. If these are Sakura blossoms, then they can mean: renewal (again), violence, and hope (again).

In the context of these flowers appearing on her kimono, they mean something different than the renewal of a new era Mori had brought. The remark at the beginning of chapter 17 gives us a personal meaning for Kouyou to what sakura flowers are to her. They are the blooming hope of a girl’s wishes, but they eventually have to drop not long after growing up and facing their reality. Remaining a bud is impossible, so Kouyou, in defiance of this eventual fate of this girl, sees slashing the girl’s heart to be more merciful than the long, doomed drop they all have to face. Kouyou is a bloomed Sakura flower who has already dropped, and her change had started there, not when she bloomed. Even if a part of her had died, she still clings with no real hope.

This is the only image we have of her kimono without anything covering it. This is right at the end of the Guild Arc where they are celebrating their accomplishment. Kouyou sheds her outer bright colors because there is no room for that in this setting and trusts Chuuya and Mori enough to shed any pretenses. They’ve all dressed casually, so she would too. The leaves are meant to be red maple leaves that also show up in the flashback of Kouyou of you look carefully. As I’ve said before, these have to do with her name. The vague firework-like design that shows up are either enlarged spider lilies or chrysanthemum flowers. Assuming these are the white kind, they mean: truth, loyal love, admiration, and sincere heart. However, the yellow kind can mean “slighted love”.

She is sincere inside and out, even if some of that sincerity isn't as pretty as what it looks like from a distance. “A flower that blooms in the dark can only survive within the dark” is a sentiment she lives by after all. If it is a yellow chrysanthemum, then its meaning is what you’d expect from her lonely heart.

Bonus round

Welcome if you have read this far, this is where I stray from her main outfit and talk about outfits that only appear once. This first kimono is what she wore when staying put in the Armed Detective Agency’s capture so that Kyouka would be able to live out a dream she can’t bring herself to live out. The white kimono is covered with columbine flowers. They can mean: risk-taking, good fortune, faith, folly, hope, and specifically for white columbines, “I’m concerned for this person”. Negative/inverse meanings include: The emblem of deceived lovers, ingratitude, and faithlessness.

What this means in Kouyou’s overall situation shouldn’t be too mind-boggling. She is in this room for Kyouka’s sake and is fairly concerned about how this plan of many risks will play out, but has faith in Dazai’s abilities. She is her most stripped version of herself and works with good intentions with Dazai under this idea, so she only wears light. Kouyou though is only left to her thoughts, her own past in that room. She is glad for Kyouka, but it only leaves fear that Atsushi won't be able to live up to something he promised so she ensures that he is committed to helping her into the light and strong in a way that man wasn't able to be.

The second one is from the chapter art with Kouyou and Mori leading Soukoku away from each other. It’s an outfit that reflects her mindset during her time with the old boss, an inverted palette from what she’s currently wearing. She hasn’t fully embraced her environment yet. Unfortunately, almost all of the flowers and plants are a bit too vague for me to point out. There is only one flower I think I recognize on her right sleeve that looks like a bird, and it is called an Egret Orchid. The only meaning of significance here is: “I think of you even in my dreams.” Some sources will say, “My thoughts will follow you into your dreams”, but I think this made more sense in this context.

This sentiment is regarding that man who had told her such an innocent lie. She not only hid her sorrowful, pure yet broken heart inside the guise of flowering darkness but weaponized this sorrow in her violence and climbed the ranks of the Port Mafia. He is a source of regret, hate, and sadness. He is her only semblance of what hope and love could resemble, and it has become a corrupted and negative thing to her in his death. Pure darkness is the only thing can trust for people like her… but she still ponders what that life will be. His influence had never left her, whether it was for better or worse.

—

Alright um

I don’t typically do analysis like this as I don’t find clothing all that interesting to look into, but there is merit to thinking about what a character is wearing even on a surface level. It can be a show of their social rank, their job, their interests, their personalties, their culture, etc. but there isn’t always a deeper meaning to their clothing on a theming sense and I can’t find it in me to usually be interested in doing it myself. In most media, the clothing only indicates the era the characters are from and how marketable they can be.

Luckily, BSD is one of those stories that do put heavy consideration on what the characters are wearing and how their clothing changes overtime for some. Obvious examples include Harukawa’s color pallet consideration to indicate what type of person they are and what organization they are from, Dazai’s clothing swap when he leaves the Port Mafia, Chuuya’s many outfits as show of his growth in belonging to the Port Mafia, the coat passed down from Mori to Dazai to Akutagawa, and the Yin-Yang coloring of Atsushi and Akutagawa that stays consistent even in Beast where they swap.

When doing clothing analysis you’re almost expected to overanalyze and stray into your own interpretations of what certain things mean, when sometimes there isn’t any intended meaning. None of that is a bad thing though! You don’t have to rely on an author or artistic word to analyze a thing, but I tend to have a hard time with just making claims like that. So I picked this concept for Kouyou because I have my own ideas for the thought process behind her design that felt right and find it intriguing enough to share. I had actually asked a friend if I could take her from their hands since they had been planning to do their own clothing analysis, but got stuck. So thank you for letting me steal it!

I’m not a historian or whatever, but I do like sharing what I do know about certain topics! Unexpectedly, this took more out of me than I thought. I’ve written more in a shorter time, but I got stuck with having to write about one certain topic than the character entirely. I will probably never do something like this again, at least not with flower meanings. Who knew how much work it was to actually explain what they mean in context in such a big bunch?

The day I finish that Odasaku analysis is when I’ll read The Golden Demon.

#this is amazing and i love analyses like thos #perfect op #bungou stray dogs #bsd #kyouka izumi #ozaki kouyou #bsd analysis #bsd meta #bsd kouyou #bsd kyouka

230 notes · View notes