Hana is a homeless trans woman and one of the three protagonists in Satoshi Kon’s comedy film Tokyo Godfathers (2003). Along with two other homeless companions, Gin and Miyuki, Hana comes across a baby abandoned in a rubbish dump, whom she names Kiyoko. The film follows the three characters’ antics as they try to reunite the baby with her parents.
The late Satoshi Kon was known to use very striking storytelling techniques in his films. He utilises the inherent plasticity of animation, and his films are brimming with intertwining narratives, trompe l’oeils, characters with multiple personas, postmodern existentialism and loss of reality, all directed with delightfully creative cinematography (here is a fantastic short analysis of these techniques). Kon constantly tricks his viewers into making wrong assumptions about characters and their actions, simultaneously developing the plot in unexpected ways whilst causing the viewer to question their own prejudices.
In the context of Kon’s films, a trans person, and a homeless one at that, seems like a suitable identity to wrap with layers of complexity. Rather than Kon using this as an excuse to push the old transphobic trope of portraying someone who is only performing as their desired gender and is confused about their ‘real gender,’ Kon opts to use Hana’s transness and her traumatic past as a way to discuss motherhood, a theme integral to the story’s plot.
Hana talks about wishing to have the opportunity to mother a child; it is this maternal desire that first gives Hana the idea to ‘adopt’ Kiyoko instead of the three protagonists to hand her to the police. Halfway through the story, Hana returns to a night club where she used to perform as a drag queen, meeting the owner (and her foster parent) whom she calls Mother. This reflects the tradition of queer people belonging to ‘houses’ or ‘families’ headed by a ‘house mother/father’ rooted in the ballroom culture of U.S. black and latin@ queers. Hana is the first to question why Kiyoko was abandoned by her mother, and is arguably the most motivated out of the three protagonists to return Kiyoko to her family, even when this puts herself and her friends in dangerous situations.
Hana is constantly preoccupied with maternity, and in a story full of dysfunctional families, she is clearly capable of being one of the most mature mothers in the film. She develops her own understanding of the responsibilities of being a mother, despite having a mother who abandoned her, despite transphobic mistreatment from other characters, and despite the constant life-threatening issues of being homeless.
Although Hana is never explicitly stated as being transgender in the film, there are at least three instances that irrefutably show her status as trans. At the beginning of the film, Hana says “In my heart, I am a woman.” On two occassions, when Hana is called a smelly old man, Hana becomes angry specifically at being called an old man (she doesn’t mind being called smelly). At the end of the film, she also complains about being assigned to the male ward in the hospital. Sadly, like a lot of trans characters from Japanese origin, Hana’s gender is often lost in translation when discussed in English. Translations of certain terms used to describe Hana are partly to blame. A fansubbed copy of Tokyo Godfathers consistently refers to Hana with male pronouns, despite these never being used in the original Japanese [1].
The aforementioned smelly old man (kuso jiji) comment is translated as ‘old fart,’ missing the gendered nuance of jiji. Perhaps the most noteworthy mistranslation is the usage of the term okama, a pejorative that is usually mistranslated into English in the film, as in other media, as ‘faggot,’ or when Hana is talking about herself, as ‘queer’. Okama, literally meaning ‘pot’, referring to a man’s buttocks, is used interchangeably to describe homosexual and/or effeminate men. Okama conflates homosexuality with being transgender, but cannot exclusively apply to one concept without implying the other. When translated into ‘faggot,’ okama loses its transphobic connotations. [2]
At certain parts of the film, I feel that Hana’s desperate flamboyancy is a little overcooked and becomes a convenient crutch that Kon relies upon too heavily. The way in which she is animated is significantly more caricatural than the other characters, which feels a bit contrived. Depictions of trans women in anime are often portrayed as being absurd and hysterical drama queens – the joke being that it’s funny to watch trans women act out exaggerated stereotypes of women [3]. Whilst Kon is never glaringly misogynistic or transphobic in any particular instance of Hana behaving in this manner, when Hana is more or less restricted to this type of humour throughout the film it conveys the message that she is nothing more than a parody of the female gender. Having said this, in the instances where this does happen, the jokes are at least there to advance the plot, as when Hana flirts with the visibly uncomfortable taxi driver when she cannot afford to pay her fare. Compare with Leeron, a non-binary character from Gainax’s Gurren Lagann (2007). Leeron is similarly flamboyant and causes discomfort with male characters they interacts with, but jokes about their sexuality and gender are clearly only there to posturise queer identities as nothing but jokes.
Redeemably, Hana’s sexuality and gender are explored beyond crass humour. There are points in the film where Hana is asked whether she is in love with Gin, and she is given the agency to express her platonic feelings towards him. A past relationship with a character named Ken is disclosed without any transphobic or homophobic jokes. It is implied that Hana’s desires to live as a woman comes from her longing desire to be a better mother to someone than her own biological mother was to herself. All this information about Hana helps to build a developed and convincing character that goes far beyond conventional representations of trans women in anime and manga.
The representation of Hana is not without her flaws, but all in all, Kon has clearly made an ambitious effort to portray a multi-faceted trans character. Her history is plausible, sensitive and well-researched. Her character ties neatly into the recurring themes of abandoning, rebirth, family, self-acceptance. It is also really refreshing to see a pre-op trans women in anime whose identity is more than a punchline. I would have loved to have seen characters that positively accepted and supported Hana’s choice to live as a trans woman, and I think Kon missed an opportunity to develop Gin and Miyuki’s relation with Hana here [4]. If there was a scene where they stuck up for Hana and defended her against transphobic hecklers, this would have been a really fantastic thing to see and I’m sure it would have meant the world to Hana. But she carries on with hopes held high, the blue ogre still searching for the acceptance she’s came close to in the past. She is certainly one of Kon’s most memorable characters, and a large part of the reason why Tokyo Godfathers is an exceptionally endearing film.
[1] The original Japanese phrase the worker says doesn’t mention a gender – the use of a male pronoun was the choice of the translator. The actual phrase she says is “It’s a miracle!” (奇跡だよ！kiseki da yo!). It seems that the translator changed the line to drive home the reference to the previous scene. On this note, if anyone has an official copy of Tokyo Godfathers, I would greatly appreciate if you could let me know what pronouns the English translated subtitles use.
[2] For more information about LGBT terms in Japan, I highly recommend the book Male Homosexuality in Modern Japan: Cultural Myths and Social Realities by Mark J. McClelland.
[4] Tumblr user lb-lee has righftully pointed out to me that Miyuki does actually begin to change the way she addresses Hana, using the more respectful hana-san rather than ojisan.
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