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Kaze to Ki no Uta
Stylized painting of the characters Gilbert and Serge
The cover of the first tankōbon volume, featuring Gilbert (left) and Serge (right)
風と木の詩
GenreShōnen-ai
Created byKeiko Takemiya
Manga
Written byKeiko Takemiya
Published byShogakukan
Magazine
DemographicShōjo
Original runFebruary 29, 1976 – June 1984
Volumes17
Original video animation
Kaze to Ki no Uta Sanctus: Sei Naru Kana
Directed byYoshikazu Yasuhiko
StudioTriangle Staff
ReleasedNovember 6, 1987
Runtime60 minutes

Kaze to Ki no Uta (Japanese: 風と木の詩, lit. "The Poem of Wind and Trees" or "The Song of Wind and Trees") is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Keiko Takemiya. It was serialized in the manga magazine Shūkan Shōjo Comic from 1976 to 1980, and in the manga magazine Petit Flower from 1981 to 1984. One of the earliest works in the shōnen-ai (male–male romance) genre, Kaze to Ki no Uta follows the tragic romance between Gilbert Cocteau and Serge Battour, two students at an all-boys boarding school in late 19th century France.

The series was developed and published amid a significant transitional period for shōjo manga (manga for girls), as the medium shifted from an audience composed primarily of children to an audience of adolescents and young adults. This shift was characterized by the emergence of more narratively complex stories focused on politics, psychology, and sexuality, and came to be embodied by a new generation of shōjo manga artists collectively referred to as the Year 24 Group, of which Takemiya was a member. The mature subject material of Kaze to Ki no Uta and its focus on themes of sadomasochism, incest, and rape were controversial for shōjo manga of the 1970s; it took seven years from Takemiya's initial conceptualization of the story for her editors at the publishing company Shogakukan to agree to publish it.

Upon its eventual release, Kaze to Ki no Uta achieved significant critical and commercial success, with Takemiya winning the 1979 Shogakukan Manga Award in both the shōjo and shōnen (manga for boys) categories for Kaze to Ki no Uta and Toward the Terra, respectively. It is regarded as a pioneering work of shōnen-ai, and is credited with widely popularizing the genre. An anime film adaptation of the series, Kaze to Ki no Uta Sanctus: Sei Naru Kana (風と木の詩 SANCTUS－聖なるかな－, lit."The Poem of Wind and Trees Sanctus: Is It Holy?"), was released as an original video animation (home video) in 1987.

Synopsis

2016 photo of Arles
The city of Arles in France, where the series is set

The series is set in late 19th century France, primarily at the fictional Lacombrade Academy, an all-boys boarding school located on the outskirts of the city of Arles in Provence.

Serge Battour, the teenaged son of a French viscount and a Roma woman, is sent to Lacombrade at the request of his late father. He is roomed with Gilbert Cocteau, a misanthropic student who is ostracized by the school's pupils and professors for his truancy and sexual relations with older male students. Serge's efforts to befriend his roommate, and Gilbert's efforts to simultaneously drive away and seduce Serge, form a complicated and disruptive relationship between the pair.

Gilbert's apparent cruelty and promiscuity are the result of a lifetime of neglect and abuse, as perpetrated chiefly by his uncle Auguste Beau. Auguste is a respected figure in French high society who has physically, emotionally, and sexually abused Gilbert since he was a child. His manipulation of Gilbert is so significant that Gilbert believes that the two are in love, and he remains beguiled by Auguste even after he later learns that Auguste is not his uncle, but his biological father.

Despite threats of ostracism and violence, Serge perseveres in his attempts to bond with Gilbert, and the two eventually become friends and lovers. Faced with rejection by the faculty and students of Lacombrade, Gilbert and Serge flee to Paris and live for a short while as paupers. Gilbert is unable to escape the trauma of his past, and descends into a life of drug use and prostitution. While hallucinating under the influence of opium, he runs in front of a moving carriage and dies under its wheels, convinced that he has seen Auguste. Some of the pair's friends, who have recently rediscovered the couple, find and console the traumatized Serge.

Characters

Voice actors in Kaze to Ki no Uta Sanctus: Sei Naru Kana are noted where applicable.[1]

Primary characters

Gilbert Cocteau (ジルベール・コクトー, Jirubēru Kokutō)
Voiced by: Yūko Sasaki [ja]
A fourteen-year-old student at Lacombrade from an aristocratic family in Marseille. He is the illegitimate child of his mother Anne Marie and her brother-in-law Auguste Beau, the latter of whom has abused Gilbert physically, emotionally, and sexually since he was a child. This abuse has left Gilbert as an antisocial cynic, unable to express love or affection except through sex. Gilbert is initially antagonistic and violent towards his new roommate Serge, and rejects Serge's early attempts to befriend him. Serge's persistent altruism slowly wins Gilbert over, and the two flee to Paris as lovers. Gilbert has difficulty adjusting to their new lives of genteel poverty and begins using drugs and engaging in prostitution, and dies after being struck by a carriage while under the influence of opium.
Serge Battour (セルジュ・バトゥール, Seruju Batūru)
Voiced by: Noriko Ohara
A fourteen-year-old student at Lacombrade, and heir to an aristocratic house. The orphaned son of a French viscount and a Roma woman who faces discrimination for his mixed ethnicity, Serge is a musical prodigy with a noble and humanistic sense of morality. Despite Gilbert's initial ill treatment of him, he remains devoted in his attempts to help and understand him. His attraction to Gilbert causes him confusion and distress, particularly when he finds that he can depend on neither the church nor his friends for guidance and support. He gradually grows closer to Gilbert as friends and later lovers, and the two flee Lacombrade together.

Secondary characters

Auguste Beau (オーギュスト・ボウ, Ōgyusuto Bō)
Voiced by: Kaneto Shiozawa
Gilbert's legal uncle, later revealed to be his biological father. Adopted into the house of Cocteau as a child, Auguste was raped by his elder step-brother in his own youth and came to abuse Gilbert from a young age. At first attempting to raise Gilbert to be an "obedient pet", he later works to transform him into a "pure" and "artistic" individual through neglect and manipulation of Gilbert's obsessive love for him. Upon learning of Serge's relationship with Gilbert, he works to separate the pair.
Pascal Biquet (パスカル・ビケ, Pasukaru Bike)
Voiced by: Hiroshi Takemura
An eccentric, iconoclastic classmate of Serge and Gilbert and a close friend of the former. A super senior who is dismissive of religion and classical education, he insists upon the importance of science and takes it upon himself to teach Serge about sexuality. While mildly attracted to Gilbert, he is the most frankly heterosexual of Serge's confidants, and helps to introduce Serge to women.
Karl Meiser (カール・マイセ, Kāru Maise)
Voiced by: Tsutomu Kashiwakura
Serge's first friend at Lacombrade. A gentle, pious boy who struggles with his attraction to Gilbert.
Arion Rosemarine (アリオーナ・ロスマリネ, Ariōn Rosumarine)
Voiced by: Yoshiko Sakakibara
The sadistic student superintendent at Lacombrade, nicknamed the "White Prince". A distant relative of the Cocteau family, he was raped by Auguste at the age of 15. Rosemarine cooperates with Auguste's manipulation of Gilbert, but forms a friendship with Serge and ultimately aids Gilbert and Serge in their escape to Paris.
Jules de Ferrier (ジュール・ド・フェリィ, Jūru do Feryi)
A student supervisor at Lacombrade, and Rosemarine's childhood friend. His aristocratic family's fortune was lost with the death of his father, and he is only able to attend Lacombrade through his intelligence and friendship with Rosemarine. He provides comfort and guidance to Gilbert and Rosemarine through their various troubles.

Development

Context

1970 photo of Björn Andrésen, a young man with long blond hair
The 1971 film Death in Venice (actor Björn Andrésen pictured) was an influence on Kaze to Ki no Uta.[2]
Main article: Year 24 Group

Keiko Takemiya made her debut as a manga artist in 1967, and while her early works attracted the attention of manga magazine editors, none achieved any particular critical or commercial success.[3] Her debut occurred in the context of a restrictive shōjo manga (girls' manga) publishing culture: stories were marketed to an audience of children, were focused on uncomplicated subject material such as familial drama or romantic comedy,[4] and favored Cinderella-like female protagonists defined by their passivity.[5][6] Beginning in the 1970s, a new generation of shōjo artists emerged who created manga stories that were more psychologically complex, dealt directly with topics of politics and sexuality, and which were aimed at an audience of teenage readers.[7] This grouping of artists, of which Takemiya was a member, came to be collectively referred to as the Year 24 Group.[a] The group contributed significantly to the development of shōjo manga by expanding the genre to incorporate elements of science fiction, historical fiction, adventure fiction, and same-sex romance: both male–male (shōnen-ai and yaoi) and female-female (yuri).[9]

In the December 1970 issue of Bessatsu Shōjo Comic, Takemiya published a one-shot (standalone single chapter) male–male romance manga titled Yuki to Hoshi to Tenshi to... (雪と星と天使と…, "Snow and Stars and Angels and...").[3][10] That story, later re-published under the title Sanrūmu Nite (サンルームにて, "In the Sunroom"), was the first work in the genre that would become known as shōnen-ai[11] and granted Takemiya greater critical recognition.[12]

From 1971 to 1973, Takemiya and fellow Year 24 Group member Moto Hagio shared a rented house in Ōizumigakuenchō, Nerima, Tokyo nicknamed the "Ōizumi Salon", which served as an important gathering point for Year 24 Group members and their affiliates.[2] Their next-door neighbor and friend Norie Masuyama [ja] came to be a significant influence on both artists; though Masuyama was not a manga artist, she was a shōjo manga enthusiast motivated by a desire to elevate the genre from its status as a frivolous distraction for children to a serious literary art form, and introduced Takemiya and Hagio to literature, magazines, and films that came to significantly inspire their works.[2][13]

Of the works Masuyama introduced to Takemiya, novels by writer Herman Hesse in the Bildungsroman genre were particularly relevant to the development of Kaze to Ki no Uta.[14] Masuyama introduced Takemiya and Hagio to Beneath the Wheel (1906), Demian (1919), and Narcissus and Goldmund (1932);[13] Demian was especially impactful on both artists, directly influencing the plot and setting of both Takemiya's Kaze to Ki no Uta and Hagio's own major contribution to the shōnen-ai genre, The Heart of Thomas (1974).[14] While none of Hesse's stories are explicitly homoerotic, they inspired the artists through their depictions of strong bonds between male characters, their boarding school settings, and their focus on the internal psychology of their male protagonists.[15] Other works that informed the development of Kaze to Ki no Uta were the European drama films if.... (1968), Satyricon (1969), and Death in Venice (1971), which screened in Japan in the 1970s and influenced both Takemiya and Hagio in their depiction of "preternaturally beautiful" male characters;[2] Taruho Inagaki's The Aesthetics of Boy Love (1970), which influenced Takemiya to select a school as the setting for her series;[16] and issues of Barazoku, the first commercially-circulated Japanese gay men's magazine.[17][b]

Production

Poster for the stage adaptation of La Dame aux Camélias
Takemiya drew inspiration for Serge's backstory from La Dame aux Camélias (1852).

While Takemiya began developing the story of Kaze to Ki no Uta in the years immediately preceding her professional debut, she faced two obstacles in publishing the story: her inability to illustrate the story because she did not possess sufficient knowledge of its European setting,[18] and a low level of editorial freedom and autonomy that was insufficient to publish a series as radical as Kaze to Ki no Uta.[19] To learn more about the subject of the series, Takemiya travelled to Europe with Hagio, Masuyama, and Year 24 Group member Ryoko Yamagishi.[20][c] She stated that the trip made her "more concerned with details. After I knew how to make a stone-paved street, I also watched repairs on it and stared at the blocks which were used."[20] Takemiya continued to visit Europe annually, staying in different countries for a period of one month.[21][22]

To address her lack of editorial freedom, Takemiya sought to build her profile as an artist by creating a manga series that would have mass appeal.[19] That series, Pharaoh no Haka [ja] (ファラオの墓, The Pharaoh's Tomb, 1974–1976), follows the kishu ryūritan ("noble wandering narrative") story formula of an exiled king who returns to lead his kingdom to greatness, which Takemiya chose specifically because it was popular in manga at the time.[19] The series succeeded at boosting Takemiya's popularity as an artist, especially among female readers, and granted her the necessary influence at her publisher Shogakukan to be able to publish Kaze to Ki no Uta.[22][23] In all, it took nearly seven years for Takemiya to, in her words, "earn the right"[24] to publish the series.[25]

In developing main characters of the series, Takemiya stated that Gilbert's complex background necessitated an equally compelling background for Serge, and thus decided to focus on Serge's parents. She drew inspiration for Serge's mixed ethnic background from La Dame aux Camélias (1852), saying "if you had to tell a story about a child of a viscount, I thought, you had no other choice but La Dame aux Camélias."[21] At the time, censorship codes specifically forbade depictions of male-female sex in manga, but ostensibly permitted depictions of male–male sex.[12][23] The focus on male protagonists over female protagonists – still a relatively new practice in shōjo manga at the time – allowed Takemiya to write a sexually explicit story that she believed would appeal to female readers,[26] stating that "if there is a sex scene between a boy and a girl, [readers] don’t like it because it seems too real. It leads to topics like getting pregnant or getting married, and that’s too real. But if it’s two boys, they can avoid that and concentrate on the love aspect."[26]

Release

Kaze to Ki no Uta began serialization in Shūkan Shōjo Comic on February 29, 1976.[27][28] The series attracted controversy for its sexual depictions: the first chapter opens with a male–male sex scene,[16] and frequently portrays violent sexual acts such as sadomachosicm, incest, and rape.[27][29] Takemiya has stated that she was concerned how parent-teacher associations would react to the series, as Shūkan Shōjo Comic publisher Shogakukan was a "stricter" company best known for publishing academic magazines for schoolchildren.[25] Reader letters in Shūkan Shōjo Comic were divided between those who were offended by the subject material of the series, and those who praised its narrative complexity and explicit representations of sex.[10][30]

In 1980, Shūkan Shōjo Comic editor Junya Yamamoto [ja] became the founding editor of Petit Flower, a new manga magazine aimed at an audience of adult women that published titles with mature subject material.[31] Kaze to Ki no Uta moved to the new magazine, and the last chapter of the series published in Shūkan Shōjo Comic was released on November 5, 1980. Serialization continued in Petit Flower beginning in the February 1981 issue, where it continued until the conclusion of the series in the June 1984 issue.[27][32] The series, which was significantly longer than Takemiya's previous works,[10] was collected as seventeen tankōbon volumes published under Shogakukan’s Flower Comics imprint.[22] The series was translated and published outside of Japan for the first time in 2018, by Spanish-language publisher Milky Way Ediciones.[33]

Themes and analysis

Gender

The primary characters of Kaze to Ki no Uta are bishōnen (lit. "beautiful boys"), a term for androgynous male characters that sociologist Chizuko Ueno describes as representing "the idealized self-image of girls".[34] Takemiya has stated that her use of protagonists that blur gender distinctions was done intentionally, in order "to mentally liberate girls from the sexual restrictions imposed on us [as women]."[35] By portraying male characters with physical traits typical of female characters in manga – such as slender bodies, long hair, and large eyes – the presumed female reader is invited to self-identify with the male protagonist.[34]

This self-identification among girls and women assumes many forms; art critic Midori Matsui considers how this representation appeals to adolescent female readers by harking back to a sexually undifferentiated state of childhood, while also allowing them to vicariously contemplate the sexual attractiveness of boys.[5] James Welker notes in his field work that members of Japan's lesbian community reported being influenced by manga featuring characters who blur gender distinctions, specifically citing Kaze to Ki no Uta and The Rose of Versailles by Year 24 Group member Riyoko Ikeda.[36] This self-identification is expressed in negative terms by psychologist Watanabe Tsueno [ja] who sees shōjo manga as a "narcissistic space" in which bishōnen operate simultaneously as "the perfect object of [the readers'] desire to love and their desire for identification", seeing Kaze to Ki no Uta as the "apex" of this tendency.[37]

Manga scholar Yukari Fujimoto argues that female interest in shōnen-ai is "rooted in hatred of women", which she argues "sounds as a base note" throughout the genre in the form of misogynistic thoughts and statements expressed by male characters in the genre.[38] She cites as evidence Gilbert’s overt disgust towards women, arguing that his misogynistic statements serve to draw the reader's attention to the subordinate position women occupy in society; as the female reader is ostensibly meant to self-identify with Gilbert, these statements expose "the mechanisms by which women cannot help falling into a state of self-hatred".[39] To Fujimoto, this willingness to "[turn] around" these misogynistic statements against the reader, thus forcing them to examine their own internalized sexism, represents "one of the keys" to understanding the influence and legacy of Kaze to Ki no Uta and works like it.[40]

Sex and sexual violence

I wanted to tell women what sex was without veiling it, including bad things as well as good things. Drawing sex as an important theme in relation to propriety seems naturally acceptable. But sex involves an issue of power. From the old days, during war, men used to rape women of an enemy country. In order to understand such circumstances surrounding women, in these peaceful days, women should think directly about sex without fear, not just about sex with fear. I thought that the most important issue for women was sex. So, I tried to imagine how I could convey the message directly to women.

— Keiko Takemiya[25]

Shōnen-ai allowed shōjo manga artists to depict sex, which had long been considered taboo in the medium.[41] There has been significant academic focus on the motivations of Japanese women who read and created shōnen-ai in the 1970s,[42] with manga scholar Deborah Shamoon considering how shōnen-ai permitted the exploration of sex and eroticism in a way that was "distanced from the girl readers' own bodies", as male–male sex is removed from female concerns of marriage and pregnancy.[11] Yukari Fujimoto notes how sex scenes in Kaze to Ki no Uta are rendered with "an unprecedented boldness," depicting "sexual desire as overwhelming power."[41] She examines how the abuse suffered by Gilbert has rendered him as "a creature who cannot exist without sexual love" who thus suffers "the pain of passivity". By applying passivity, a trait that is stereotypically associated with women, to male characters, she argues that Takemiya is able to depict sexual violence "in a purified form and in a way that protects the reader from its raw pain".[43] While these scenes of sexual violence "would be all too realistic if a woman were portrayed as the victim", by portraying the subject as a man, "women are freed from the position of always being the one 'done to,' and are able to take on the viewpoint of the 'doer,' and also the viewpoint of the 'looker.'"[44]

Midori Matsui similarly argues Gilbert exists as a "pure object of the male gaze", an "effeminate and beautiful boy whose presence alone provokes the sado-machochistic desire of older males to rape, humiliate, and treat him as a sexual commodity".[45] In this sense, she argues that Gilbert represents a parody of the femme fatale, while at the same time "his sexuality evokes the subversive element of abjection."[46] Like Fujimoto, she concurs that the sexual abuse of Gilbert "functions to arouse readers' fears concerning their own sexuality", but as these acts occur to a male character, "it distances girls from their own violation within patriarchy" and lets them "gain the 'gaze' with which they can reduce the male body to the object of their desire".[45] Thus, Gilbert is a contradiction between the "feminine power of seduction that usurps the rationality of the masculine subject" while also reinforcing "conventional metaphors of feminine sexuality as a dark seducer".[46]

Kazuko Suzuki considers that while society often shuns and looks down upon women who are raped in reality, shōnen-ai depicts male characters who are raped as still "imbued with innocence" and typically still loved by their rapists after the act.[47] She cites Kaze to Ki no Uta as the primary work that gave rise to this trope in shōnen-ai manga, noting how the narrative suggests that individuals who are "honest to themselves" and love only one other person monogamously are regarded as "innocent". That is, so long as the protagonists of shōnen-ai "continue to pursue their supreme love within an ideal human relationship, they can forever retain their virginity at the symbolic level, despite having repeated sex in the fictional world."[48]

Occidentalism

Cover page to "Demian" by Hermann Hesse
Works by the Year 24 Group often used western literary tropes, especially those associated with the Bildungsroman genre, such as Herman Hesse's Demian.

The French setting of Kaze to Ki no Uta is reflective of Takemiya's own interest in European culture,[18] as reflective of a generalized fascination with Europe in Japanese girls' culture of the 1970s.[49] Takemiya has stated that interest in Europe was a "characteristic of the times," noting that gravure fashion magazines for girls such as An An and Non-no often included European topics in their editorial coverage.[50] She sees the fascination as stemming in part from sensitivities around depicting non-Japanese settings in manga in the aftermath of the Second World War, stating that "you could draw anything about America and Europe, but not so, about 'Asia' as seen in Japan."[51]

Manga scholar Rebecca Suter notes how the recurrence of Christian themes and imagery throughout the series – crucifixes, Bibles, churches, Madonnas and angels appear both in the diegesis and as symbolic representations in non-narrative artwork – can be seen as a sort of Occidentalism.[52] Per Suter, Christianity's disapproval of homosexuality appears in Kaze to Ki no Uta as "one of many obstacles to the realization of the love between [Gilbert and Serge], a means to complicate the plot and prolong the titillation for the reader." At the same time, the series' appropriation of western religious symbols and attitudes for creative purposes "parallels and subverts a central aspect of Orientalism – namely, the romanticisation of Asia as inherently more spiritual than the West, and its simultaneous stigmatisation as superstitious and backward."[52]

Works by the Year 24 Group often used western literary tropes, especially those associated with the Bildungsroman genre, to stage what Midori Matsui describes as "a psychodrama of the adolescent ego".[5] Takemiya has expressed ambivalence about that genre label being applied to Kaze to Ki no Uta; when artist Shūji Terayama described the series as a Bildungsroman, Takemiya responded that she "did not pay attention to such classification" when writing the series, and that when she heard Terayama's comments she "wondered what Bildungsroman was", remarking that she "did not know literary categories."[18] In this regard, several commentators have contrasted Kaze to Ki no Uta to Moto Hagio's The Heart of Thomas through their shared inspirations from the Bildungsroman novels of Herman Hesse (see Context above). Both Kaze and Thomas follow similar narrative trajectories, focusing on a tragic romance between boys in a European setting, and where the death of one boy figures heavily into the plot.[10] Kaze to Ki no Uta is significantly more sexually explicit than both The Heart of Thomas and Hesse's novels,[16] with anime and manga scholar Minori Ishida noting that "Takemiya in particular draws on latent romance and eroticism between some male characters in Hesse's writing".[53] Midori Matsui considers Kaze to Ki no Uta as "ostensibly a Bildungsroman" that is "surreptitious pornography for girls [...] boldly represent[ing] boys driven by sexual desire and engaged in intercourse", as contrasting the largely non-sexual Heart of Thomas.[45]

Reception and legacy

In 1979, Takemiya won the Shogakukan Manga Award in both the shōjo and shōnen (manga for boys) categories for Kaze to Ki no Uta and Toward the Terra, respectively.[54] Roughly 4.9 million copies of collected volumes of Kaze to Ki no Uta are in print.[55]

Kaze to Ki no Uta has been described as a "masterpiece" of shōnen-ai, and is credited with widely popularizing the genre.[29][56] Yukari Fujimoto notes that Kaze to Ki no Uta (along with The Heart of Thomas and Hi Izuru Tokoro no Tenshi) made male homosexuality part of "the everyday landscape of shōjo manga" and "one of its essential elements",[38] while manga scholar Kazuko Suzuki notes Kaze to Ki no Uta as "one of the first attempts to depict true boding or ideal relationships through pure male homosexual love".[29] James Welker concurs that Kaze to Ki no Uta and The Heart of Thomas "almost certainly helped foster increasingly diverse male–male romance narratives within the broader shōjo manga genre from the mid-1970s onward".[57]

Although some Japanese critics dismissed Kaze to Ki no Uta as a "second rate imitation"[58] of The Heart of Thomas, it was ultimately Kaze to Ki no Uta that had the more significant long-term impact on male-male romance manga through its depictions of explicit sexual relations between characters.[58] Previously, sex in shōjo manga was confined almost exclusively to doujinshi (self-published manga);[56] the popularity of Kaze to Ki no Uta prompted a boom in the production of commercially published shōnen-ai beginning in the late 1970s, and the development of a more robust yaoi doujinshi subculture.[3][58] This trend towards sex-focused narratives in male–male romance manga accelerated with founding of the manga magazine June in 1978, of which Takemiya was an editor and major contributor. June was the first major manga magazine to publish shōnen-ai and yaoi exclusively, and is credited with launching the careers of dozens of yaoi manga artists.[29][34]

Kaze to Ki no Uta has been invoked in public debates on sexual expression in manga, particularly debates on the ethics and legality of manga depicting minors in sexual scenarios. In 2010, a revision to the Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance Regarding the Healthy Development of Youths was introduced that would have restricted sexual depictions of characters in published media who appeared to be minors, a proposal that was criticized by multiple anime and manga professionals for disproportionately targeting their industry.[59] Takemiya wrote an editorial critical of the proposal in the May 2010 issue of Tsukuru, arguing that it was "ironic" that Kaze to Ki no Uta, a series that "many of today’s mothers had grown up reading, was now in danger of being banned as 'harmful' to their children."[60] In an interview with the BBC, Takemiya responded to the charge that depictions of rape in Kaze to Ki no Uta condone the sexualization of minors by stating that "such things do happen in real life. Hiding it will not make it go away. And I tried to portray the resilience of these boys, how they managed to survive and regain their lives after experiencing violence."[24]

2015 photograph of Yoshikazu Yasuhiko
Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, director of the anime film adaptation of Kaze to Ki no Uta

An anime film adaptation, Kaze to Ki no Uta Sanctus: Sei Naru Kana, was released as an original video animation (OVA) on November 6, 1987. The film was produced by Triangle Staff, and directed by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko with Sachiko Kamimura as animation director.[32][61] The film's soundtrack was released by Pony Canyon in 1987.[32]

A radio drama adapting the first volume of Kaze to Ki no Uta aired on TBS Radio, with Mann Izawa as scriptwriter and Hiromi Go as the voice of Gilbert.[32] The series has been adapted for the stage several times: by the theater company April House in May 1979, with Efu Wakagi [ja] as Gilbert and Shu Nakagawa as Serge;[32] and in the early 1980s by an all-female troupe modelled off of the Takarazuka Revue.[62]

Two Kaze to Ki no Uta image albums have been released by Nippon Columbia: the self-titled Kaze to Ki no Uta in 1980, and Kaze to Ki no Uta: Gilbert no Requiem (ジルベールのレクイエム, "The Poem of Wind and Trees: Gilbert's Requiem") in 1984. Kaze to Ki no Uta: Shinsesaizā Fantajī (風と木の詩 シンセサイザー・ファンタジー, "The Poem of Wind and Trees: Synthesizer Fantasy"), a remix album of the 1980 self-titled image album, was released in 1985.[32] In 1983, Shogakukan published Le Poèm du Vent et des Arbres, an artist's book featuring original illustrations by Takemiya of characters from Kaze to Ki no Uta.[32]

Kami no Kohitsuji (神の子羊, "The Lamb of God"), a three-novel sequel to Kaze to Ki no Uta, was published by Kofusha Publishing from 1992 to 1994. The novels were written by Norie Masuyama, under the pen name Norisu Haze. Takemiya illustrated the cover of each novel[32] but otherwise had no creative involvement in Kami no Kohitsuji, instead granting permission to Masuyama to write a continuation of the manga series.[63]

Notes

  1. ^ The group was so named because its members were born in or around year 24 of the Shōwa era (or 1949 in the Gregorian calendar).[8]
  2. ^ Hagio has reported that she was uninterested in the sexually-explicit Barazoku, but that the magazine especially affected Takemiya and Masuyama.[17]
  3. ^ None could speak French, so the group communicated with locals using drawings; Takemiya reports that "at an information desk of a hotel, I explained that we needed a room with a bathtub and shower, drawing illustrations."[20]

References

  1. ^ Yasuhiko, Yoshikazu (director) (November 6, 1987). と木の詩 SANCTUS－聖なるかな－ [The Poem of Wind and Trees Sanctus: Is It Holy?] (Motion picture). Japan: Triangle Staff.
  2. ^ a b c d Azusa 2021, p. 80.
  3. ^ a b c Welker 2015, p. 47.
  4. ^ Thorn 2010, p. V.
  5. ^ a b c Matsui 1993, p. 178.
  6. ^ Suzuki 1999, p. 246.
  7. ^ Shamoon 2012, p. 102.
  8. ^ Hemmann 2020, p. 10.
  9. ^ Toku 2004.
  10. ^ a b c d Suter 2013, p. 548.
  11. ^ a b Shamoon 2012, p. 104.
  12. ^ a b Orbaugh 2003, p. 114.
  13. ^ a b Welker 2015, p. 48.
  14. ^ a b Shamoon 2012, p. 105.
  15. ^ Welker 2015, p. 49.
  16. ^ a b c Welker 2015, p. 50.
  17. ^ a b Welker 2015, p. 52.
  18. ^ a b c Ogi 2008, p. 152.
  19. ^ a b c Ogi 2008, p. 157.
  20. ^ a b c Ogi 2008, p. 153.
  21. ^ a b Ogi 2008, p. 154.
  22. ^ a b c Choi 2015.
  23. ^ a b Ogi 2008, p. 160.
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Bibliography

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