Yuuzai - I'm in Guilty (Guilt)

Author: UCHIDA Kazuna
Imprint: Super BBC
Publisher: Biblos
ISBN: 4-88271-850-2

Reviewed by Jeanne Johnson

This is one of the many yaoi series with a yakuza (Japanese gangster) background. One quite sees why an all-male organization like the yakuza, which traditionally and in real life runs on suffocatingly close ties between its members, should prove a happy hunting ground for yaoi mangaka. The yakuza is a family closer than a family for those who belong to it, and its homoerotic ethos is celebrated in any traditional yakuza film you care to watch. Male bonding is us, big time. Naturally the mangaka can't resist the temptation to push that homoeroticism over the line into outright homosexuality. What woman could?

Uchida does this well enough, though fans of realism may have trouble with the jealous underling out to avenge his aniki (older brother) who does so by impaling his ass on the cock of his aniki's betrayer. Still, in its own hyper-romantic context, the act makes sense. What Uchida does even better is to play off the real-life family against the constantly present yakuza family. Both, in the hero's mind, are a form of hell- the recurring image of the goldfish bowl, narrow and confining- that he can escape only through the sacrifice of someone willing to act like a real father/ older brother to him.

We begin at the funeral of the heir apparent to a major yakuza mob, gunned down in his sleep by members of a rival gang. He leaves a fifteen year old illegitimate son, Keigo, already fingered to succeed to his father's position. But Keigo is ambivalent about the yakuza organization, and about his father's death, and about living itself. This young man is one step away from suicide, and in the course of the opening chapters we find out why. A series of events explain to us the convoluted and twisted relationships between Keigo's father, his mistress, his son, and his right-hand man, Akira, who saves Keigo from his own death-wish. The plot seems all set up for a hot affair between Akira and Keigo, which doesn't happen; and the reason for that doesn't appear until after the middle of the book. Nevertheless, the relationship between Akira and Keigo, subtle but deep, is one of the most satisfying parts of this story. For me things go downhill when Akira disappears off to prison halfway through and we start following the (sometimes highly unlikely) adventures of Keigo in the following two years. The second half of the book runs on a theme of obsession and the things it can lead to, as evidenced in one of Akira's subordinates and one of Keigo's teachers. (It's also the theme of the final stand-alone story 'Topaz no Tsuki, Mitsu no Yoru (Topaz moon, honey night).) However, the Keigo section of the book ends in mid-plot, with many threads unresolved, so we possibly can hope for a sequel where everything is tied together again.

Uchida comes from Osaka, traditional stronghold of the major yakuza organizations. Even in the heights (or depths) of her romantic sexuality she resists the temptation to accept the yakuza myth about itself wholesale. The classic topoi are all there- the demented devotion of the men to their leaders and their leaders' families, familiar from Kizuna, which like Kizuna segues easily into romantic love and sexual attraction- but so are the power politicking and the betrayals. Uchida doesn't blink the fact that yakuza are basically predators. One of the threads in the story is just to what extent Keigo will prove himself a yakuza in his soul, like his father- cold and ruthless- and to what extent he'll be Akira's 'son', a human being. This theme is still unresolved at the book's end, which is why I hope for a sequel.