Masculine Bodily Harm in CLAMP Part Two

(The following post contains major spoilers for CLAMP works including xxxHolic, and Tsubasa. Proceed with caution!)

(Link back to Part One)

xxxHolic

Doumeki and Watanuki:

 Though the scenes of bodily harm mentioned in Part One entered into disturbing and graphic territory at points, the exchanges in xxxHolic take place on a tamer, though equally consequential scale. Doumeki initially loses the use of his eye in a commonplace incident when he destroys a spider's web Watanuki is tangled in and earns the spider's grudge in the form of his eye being sealed with a web. Yuuko explains that the destruction of a spider's home is traumatic to it, and that to compensate for its pain, it deals “proportionate” retribution upon the offending party. Doumeki's condition is not permanent, but Yuuko is vague on the matter of how long it will take, and since spirits' lifespans are much longer than humans', there is the possibility that Doumeki will have to put up with the curse his entire life.

However, Doumeki is pragmatic when it comes to these matters. He destroyed the web, and thus is the deserved target of the curse. Since the world operates on balanced exchange, it is his obligation to suffer the consequences of his actions, no matter how innocently meant they were. He is also more cautious in how he sacrifices himself as opposed to Watanuki, who is more than willing to upset balanced exchange by sacrificing himself with little provocation. Based on Doumeki's attitude towards Watanuki, it is probably safe to assume he is satisfied that he was the target of the curse rather than Watanuki, who has sacrificed quite a bit at this point with needing to add yet another spiritual problem to his list.

Watanuki has a markedly different attitude towards Doumeki, treating him as an unwelcome intrusion and rival, but nonetheless cannot stand the sight of anyone suffering on his behalf, particularly when he is indirectly responsible (i.e. getting tangled in the spider web). With this in mind, he asks Yuuko how to transfer the spider's grudge to him, and gives Doumeki back his sight at the cost of the potentially permanent loss of his own eye.

Doumeki's expressions following Watanuki's reversal of the curse show just how shocked and hurt he is

The interesting trait to the interactions between Doumeki and Watanuki is that, unlike most CLAMP characters with such persistent homoerotic subtext, they never have a culminating moment which implies they have become a couple or even mutual lovers in the traditional sense. While the latter half of the manga shows them in a verging on married couple type role, both Watanuki's obligation to freeze his lifespan to remain in the shop and his desire to see Yuuko once again put limiters on whatever conflicting feelings he has towards Doumeki. In the case of Doumeki, most of the sexually-laden subtext remains on his side, with the text giving evidence to indicate that though he eventually goes on to marry Kohane, both of them are still deeply in love with Watanuki and want to fulfill their desire of keeping him from dying alone.

However, the primary eye exchange between Doumeki and Watanuki is devoid of the turbulent emotions which marked Subaru and Seishirou's. The loss for Doumeki resulted due to an instinctive action, and Watanuki's own reaction can also be viewed as instinctive and very much in line with his inherent, self-erasing nature.

It is when Doumeki learns of Watanuki's sacrifice that things at last become heated, and the exchange increases in significance. Doumeki places great importance in choosing for oneself and satisfying personal desires without the help of supernatural specialists such as Yuuko, so for Watanuki to reverse an action Doumeki himself chose to do is deeply insulting to him. The loss of Watanuki's eye is so upsetting, in fact, that he abruptly breaks his deliberate avoidance of asking Yuuko for favors, and demands for her to tell him a way to return the curse to its natural state. But since Doumeki and Watanuki's wishes are equal and opposite, she only agrees to accept the first wish brought to her to avoid endless back and forth between them.

It becomes increasingly clear that Doumeki's fixation on canceling out Watanuki's actions is much more emotionally rooted than Watanuki's initial reversal. He throws himself into investigating possible cures in his grandfather's extensive library, and experiences a moment evocative of his first meeting with Watanuki when he see him examining his missing eye in a mirror saying, “It's not coming back, is it?” These actions are motivated by his desire to keep Watanuki from needlessly sacrificing himself, and follow Yuuko's advice to him following the loss of Watanuki's eye: “It's okay to be angry with him. If a person sacrifices himself to save another, that person should know just what kind of scars that action leaves on the rescued person. If Watanuki has any importance to you at all, he should learn that! Get angry and teach him! That way, little by little, he'll change.”

Sadly, Watanuki is unable to immediately change his ways, and when a spirit with romantic feelings for him, the vestal Zashiki-Warashi, confronts the spider demon who possesses Watanuki's eye and is captured as a consequence, Watanuki expresses a willingness to hand over his other eye and any other part of him necessary to appease the demon threatening her. It's not until the spider demon chides him by saying, “You're throwing away your well being just like that? Do you think that something you can throw out easily can be exchanged for something important?” that Watanuki at last begins to consider the consequences of his constant self-erasing on his companions. When Doumeki requests to give part of the sight in his eye to fill the absence in Watanuki's, Watanuki has the dignity to for the first time quietly accept someone taking sacrificial actions on his behalf.

Through the rest of the series, Watanuki has dual colored eyes: the golden one is from Doumeki, the blue is his own.

The presence of Doumkei's sight within Watanuki is symbolic in the same way the shared eye of Seishirou and Subaru is. On several occasions, both characters are able to share a mutual vision through Watanuki's eyes, which generally occurs when spirits are nearby or Watanuki's emotions are excited. The flashes Doumeki receives from Watanuki allow him to witness the presence of spirits, which he had previously been unable to do, though he does possess powers of exorcism. Watanuki's personality also seems to undergo a subtle shift following his symbolic joining with Doumeki, and he eventually comes to the conclusion that he shouldn't erase himself from the world at the cost of hurting his friends. He even becomes much more willing to acknowledge the occasions when Doumeki extends himself on his behalf, particularly after the incident when Watanuki steps in between Kohane and her mother during a violent conflict.

The unfulfilled nature of Doumeki and Watanuki's relationship may have something to do with CLAMP's somewhat abrupt conclusion to the series which renders the egg Yuuko imparted to Doumeki before her death meaningless considering the sacrifice Sakura went through to retrieve it, and also leaves Watanuki oddly in the position of waiting for Yuuko, though deaths are irreversible in the CLAMP-verse, and even should she reincarnate, it is doubtful Yuuko would be pleased that Watanuki was never fully able to move forward independently in the way she wished him to. However, the physical exchange between Doumeki and Watanuki is still poignant in the sense that it influences the shift in Watanuki's perception and willingness to engage in self-erasure, and confirms Doumeki's central motivation in assuring Watanuki is happy and healthy in both heart and body. Though the two characters are left without an established emotional union, the back-and-forth they endure together with their eyes does its part to establish a bond that even Watanuki cannot satisfactorily deflect.

Tsubasa

Syaoran and Tsubasa Syaoran:

(For the sake of clarity, I will be referring to the Syaoran from the first half of the manga as 'Syaoran,' and the one who is with group following the events of Acid Tokyo as 'Tsubasa,' his true name)

Though bodily harm to the eye has thus far been used as a homoerotic exchange in previous CLAMP manga, Tsubasa presented a unique example with the exchange between Syaoran and Tsubasa, a boy who is both his son and the human being he was cloned from. In the past, Tsubasa gouged out his eye before submitting to his price of losing time in order to pay for his wish to rewind time and save 'his' Princess Sakura. Tsubasa takes the eye, which contains his “heart,” and implants it into Syaoran, hoping that possessing a heart will gave him access to enough emotions and memories to make him able to give birth to his own heart when Tsubasa takes his back. However, when the seal breaks on the implanted heart, Syaoran loses control of his memories and soul, and in essence transforms into a thoughtless, single-mindedly brutal puppet of Fei Wang Reed, possessing little understanding of who Tsubasa is other than the fact that he poses a threat.

For Syaoran, his blind eye is the first link he has to the soul and pure intentions of his original copy

Though Tsubasa is aware when he initially sacrifices his eye that Syaoran may still very well succumb to Fei Wang's influence, his actions show a willingness to validate Syaoran's existence in the universe, in a similar way to how he constantly tells Watanuki not to vanish simply because he's the copy of an original human life. By sharing his heart in the form of his eye, Tsubasa not only has a way to glimpse upon the actions of his clone and the traveling party, but also a method of preventing Syaoran from spending his life as a tool of manipulation when he is just as worthy of happiness, despite being a clone.

This action on Tsubasa's part has a major impact on the final chapters, when Syaoran is able to escape from Fei Wang Reed's control, build a life with 'his' Sakura, and eventually give life to Tsubasa, setting up the eventually destroyed time loop of Tsubasa in motion. But more importantly, this physical exchange represents Tsubasa's faith, not only in the potential for life formed by unnatural means to find individual happiness, but also in the very concept of the soul itself. The “heart,” he gives is not the blood pumping organ we are familiar with, after all, but rather the essence of Tsubasa. The soul is not the mirror reflection of his personality and life experiences, but rather the foundation he built upon to become who he is, which is inclined and disinclined to certain things, but still able to be influenced by outside factors.

The soul plays a large role in CLAMP manga, particularly in their sweeping multi-verse where the same soul exists in several locations. For example, we see the couple “Arashi” and “Sorata” in several different dimensions, and while they were raised in different conditions and have different life stories, each appearance of their souls has them falling in love and desiring to be together. Since Syaoran is filled with Tsubasa's soul, it's only natural that he would be drawn to Sakura, and display some of the traits inherent to Tsubasa as well as the Syaoran we met in Cardcaptor Sakura.

There are, however, marked differences between them, or else it would be odd for them to have a father-and-son relationship. As Tsubasa says to the Fei Wang Reed controlled Syaoran, “I've been watching all this time through your right eye. The things you've seen, the people you've met. The one for whom 'that' Sakura was most precious wasn't my soul! It was you, wasn't it?” Knowing what he knows about the nature of clones, Tsubasa is aware that the young girl he fell in love with is different from the Sakura whom Syaoran harbored feelings for. His exchange was not meant to give Syaoran the very same feeling and personality that he himself possesses, but for him to build individual relationships with Sakura, Fai, and Kurogane that belong solely to him, and would thus convince him to create a heart of his own with which to treasure these interactions.

Though Syaoran and Tsubasa come from the same being, they are formed by two different bodies of experience.

Though the subtext evoked by this trade-off is different from previously mentioned exchanges, it is still an incredibly loving gesture on Tsubasa's part, born not of his desire to protect himself from Syaoran when the seal on his heart broke, but to give Syaoran a happy future and unique life of his own.

Syaoran and Fai (and Kurogane):

Though the case of the eye Fai sacrifices for Syaoran is not homoerotic (but rather quite motherly), the influence it has over Kurogane is so laden with passionate emotion that this example still follows the trend set by the example of Seishirou and Subaru. In the horrifying moment when the seal on Syaoran's eye and “heart” collapses and he begins to awake as the puppet of Fei Wang Reed, Fai chooses to help him keep the heart belonging to Tsubasa since it is engraved with precious memories he sees as belonging to Syaoran. As a mage, Fai is probably well aware that this effort is futile, but chooses to make the attempt out of an almost parental love for Syaoran, as well as a persisting indifference to his own survival.

In a scene hidden from the eyes of the reader, the newly awakened Syaoran gouges out Fai's eye to steal the magical power encased within it, power he will need to collect Sakura's memory feathers for Fei Wang Reed. We do not see the two again until Kurogane arrives on the scene, and Syaoran drags out Fai's bleeding body for him to witness.

Though Fai sacrificed his eye in an attempt to save Syaoran, Kurogane, as mentioned earlier, is the one who has the strongest reaction to its loss. Of course, Syaoran is transformed into an emotionless tool at this point, but Kurogane is not sympathetic to this as an excuse for Syaoran's physical cruelty to someone who loved him in spite of his own internal pain. “This guy,” he yells in a rare moment of willingness to defend Fai's self-destructive actions, “changed who he was because of the princess and because of you. You even managed to make him smile for real a little! Don't you hear me, kid?!”

Although Syaoran does not hear in the way Kurogane means him to, the realization summed up in these lines are almost more important for Kurogane himself to understand than Syaoran. By understanding and to a degree respecting what Fai tried to do for Syaoran, Kurogane proves just how close of an eye he's been keeping on Fai through the mage's many veils and behavioral disguises. In comparison to Syaoran and Sakura, he is more aware of the “true” Fai, and how important it is that Fai would let down his iron defenses for the sake of the two he looks upon tenderly. He understands the value of Fai's sacrifice and is infuriated that Syaoran is so far gone that he cannot understand the magnitude of the loss Fai suffered for him.

Naturally, Kurogane's understanding only extends to the unconscious and vulnerable body of Fai. As soon as Fai awakes and insists he should be allowed to die from the shock of his wounds so that his magical power will also die within Syaoran, Kurogane puts a halt to any further physical exchanges from the suicidal Fai. Like with Watanuki, Fai's indifference to physical loss and bodily harm is evident of his desire to erase himself due to his guilt over the death of his brother. Though Kurogane is yet unaware of these motivations, he recognizes that, if given the chance, Fai would willingly gamble away his life for the sake of someone or something else. And just as Doumeki did with Watanuki, he decides to enter into his own physical exchange to keep Fai from taking it entirely upon himself.

Kurogane reacts violently to Fai's self-erasure and fights to keep him alive.

Kurogane's exchange of blood in order to transform Fai into a vampire dependent on him for sustenance is equally of note, since he enters into it with the knowledge that Fai does not consent to his decision and will most likely resent him for it as long as he assigns little value to his life. However, Fai's life holds enough value to him to make the sacrifice worthwhile, though he does spend his time in Infinity engaged in intense psychological warfare with Fai in regards to the latter's tendency to wallow in his misery without ever explaining it to the people who would try to understand him. While CLAMP utilizes exchange of sight and increased vulnerability through the loss of an eye, Kurogane's bodily sacrifices of blood and eventually his arm demonstrate a purging of that which he perceives makes him strong for the sake of “true strength,” or the knowledge that the are things physical strength alone cannot protect, such as Fai's collapsing mental state and the complex natures of Syaoran, Sakura, and Tsubasa.

Fai and Kurogane:

Even with one eye torn from him in a highly violent fashion, Fai is still willing to enter into physical sacrifice at any occasion when the opportunity arises. After his first curse activates and he attacks Princess Sakura, severing her soul and her body, Fai's suicidal desires reach a new high. Though he still claims that he “can't die yet,” since he has vowed to live long enough to resurrect his deceased brother, in order to retrieve Sakura's body he attempts to give his remaining eye, or at least everything it sees, as the price to return to his home world. Though this will not kill him, he will go blind, rendering him useless as a fighter and member of their traveling company, which makes it clear that he doesn't intend to survive with them much longer.

Kurogane, as astute as he is, picks up on this immediately, and after several cold-eyed glares, eventually smacks Fai in the head and tells him, “Up to now, I've pretty much let you and the Princess do as you've liked. So now I'm going to do as I like.” Later, when Fai once again tries to sacrifice himself in Celes, Kurogane is also the one to point out the discrepancies in Ashura's story and to drive Fai once again to fight for the survival of those he cares about, even if he is not ready to fully fight in his own defense.

Fai's attempted uses of physical exchange are shown as grossly disproportionate and offensive to balanced exchange. To rescue Sakura, he alone tries to pay the price through harming his body and devaluing it, even though Tsubasa, Kurogane, and Mokona equally desire to assure Sakura's safety. In Celes, his attempted sacrifice provides him a half-hearted method of trying to kill himself and Ashura at the same time, making it so he will escape the aftermath and consequences of having his history exposed to Tsubasa and Kurogane, as well as avoiding his awareness of the futility of returning life to a dead body. The other members of the party would gladly assist him with his burdens, but Fai tries to take the 'easy' way where only he suffers and risks himself at the price of using everyone's ignorance of his situation to keep himself distant from them.

When Kurogane kills Ashura and cuts off his arm so Fai can make it safely out of Celes, Fai at last realizes the pain he caused Kurogane and the others for playing so lightly with his life. The tears he sheds while watching over Kurogane's bleeding body in Nihon show a true understanding of despair at what the loss of life does to the heart of a loved one. With this epiphany, he is able to forgive Kurogane when he awakens again and interact with him using a more friendly and genuine attitude.

And when the chance for yet another physical exchange arises, Fai for the first time takes a self-preserving stance. To pay for Kurogane's prosthetic arm, he once again offers his eye, but not the entire organ or its sight. Rather, he simply gives the scant remains of the magic contained within, since he no longer needs it survive since he can feed upon Kurogane's blood as a vampire. As he proudly tells Kurogane, “I won't give anything that amounts to giving my life away. Not anymore.”

Considering Fai's earlier offer to lose his sight, the color of his eye is a much smaller price to pay

In a sense, the evolution of Fai and Kurogane's relationship from “measuring and delimiting one another” to a fully realized partnership is told within their physical exchanges. Fai's lost sight and damaged, vulnerable body motivates him to place barriers between himself and Kurogane, but Kurogane's more acceptable sacrifices of his physical strength and reforming his old wish with a new one to keep Fai safe work to provide Fai the realization that the pain he feels in injuring and losing Kurogane is the very pain Kurogane feels in seeing him lost and injured. Through their physical dialogue with one another, they are able to communicate their separate desires and reach a conclusion that luckily leads to happiness for them both.

To make a long story short...

Overall, CLAMP has a fascinating take on how bodily harm, physical exchange, and loss functions in homoerotic relationships as a stand-in for direct emotional communication. The “hardness” of masculine bodies, particularly those of Seishirou, Doumeki, and Kurogane, do not hold room for as many vulnerabilities as the soft feminine body, so it is through what they do and do not sacrifice and where they choose to be vulnerable that their feelings are shown in subtext without making the heartfelt confessions and sensitive interactions of shounen-ai and yaoi necessary. As for Subaru, Watanuki, and Fai, their predisposition to loss and self-erasing shows an unfortunate devaluing of their physical bodies, and it is only through a strengthening physical exchange from their lovers that they are able to appreciate their own continued existence.

And why the eye? Beside being a vulnerable point on the male body, it is an organ associated with seeing, perceiving, interpreting, and understanding. It is the gateway through which the world is witnessed, visual memories are formed, and input is sent into to the body to be considered. The eyes are also the means with which humans are able to view each other and begin to make judgments on who a person is, first on the surface, and then within their soul. When harm comes to the eye, each of these things can become damaged, but they can also undergo a transformation and lead to a new perception or worldview. It is only through their eyes being lost, injured, or exchanged that Seishirou, Subaru, Watanuki, Doumeki, and Fai are able to go through internal transformations in perception, and consequently better appreciate and confront the feelings they hold for their partners.