Sexual Perversion and Violence Theme Analysis

In A Tale for the Time Being, Nao is a young teenager who is curious about sex. At the beginning of the novel, she has had no sexual experiences, but she is keenly aware of the men who stare at her body and of her body itself changing. When she is at the public baths, one of the bar hostesses who is bathing next to her teases Nao about “her breasts, which [have] started to grow,” and Nao is flattered. However, Nao’s eventual sexual experiences are neither pleasant nor voluntary. She ends up being abused and exploited as the novel progresses, and it seems that her innocence itself is a magnet for hentais, or sexual perverts. She experiences terrible abuse when she is in her school uniform (which is a symbol of youth and innocence), and the sexual abuse she experiences only worsens when she tries to discard her femininity by shaving her head. Trying to rid herself of the characteristics that make her a target of abuse only makes Nao more of a target. In this sense, the novel acknowledges and condemns the unfortunate reality that women can’t win when it comes to sexual violence.

Nao’s school uniform—a mark of her youth and innocence—ends up making her a sexual target. At the beginning of the novel, Nao is sitting at a café, writing in her diary, when she notices a salaryman at the table next to hers staring at her, which “creeps [her] out.” She says she can tell that he has “a major schoolgirl fetish” by the way he is “looking at [her] body.” In order to discourage his attentions, Nao “modestly” lets her hair fall across her face to cover it. The man is a “salaryman,” which is a term for a Japanese office worker, so he is clearly much older than Nao. Yet he is unabashed about his desire for her, and Nao is the one who must deal with her discomfort and attempt to hide from him. Even more shockingly, Nao’s classmates want to make a video of her being raped in her school uniform—they know that there is a huge market for violence and perversion. The draw of the video is that a young girl in a school uniform, which symbolizes her innocence, is being forced into a sexual situation against her will. The fact that these teenagers want to make a rape video indicates that they know that their buyers on the internet would be more interested in witnessing the young woman’s abuse and humiliation. Luckily for Nao, the boy who is supposed to rape her is too nervous to see the plan through—but the video of the attempted rape is still posted on the internet, while her panties are sold to the highest online bidder. These unsettling events in the novel acknowledge that young schoolgirls are sexualized in popular culture, which has horrific effects on real schoolgirls like Nao.

Unfortunately, even Nao’s attempt to be more “nun-like” by shaving her head ends up being fetishized and leads her into deeply dangerous situations. In an attempt to escape the trauma Nao experiences as a result of being nearly raped, she shaves her head and decides to become a nun like Jiko, her great-grandmother. Jiko, with her bald head and flowing robes, appears completely desexualized, and Nao seems to think that this might keep her safe. Characteristics like long hair or a visibly feminine body shape can mark women as targets for violence, so in a sense, becoming a nun is Nao’s attempt at separating herself from her sexuality altogether. However, Nao catches her neighbor Babette’s eye with her shaved head, and she tells Nao that she looks cute and unusual. In her naïveté and loneliness, Nao thinks that Babette is her friend. However, Babette turns out to be a pimp who sells Nao’s virginity to the highest bidder, a man named Ryu. While Ryu and Nao regularly meet up for sex for about a month, he disappears after Nao’s hair starts growing back. This shows that Ryu had a fetish for Nao’s bald head and that Babette, too, saw her baldness as an incentive to sexually exploit her. The very thing that Nao hoped would protect her against abuse ends up putting Nao in a dangerous, vulnerable position. In this way, the novel demonstrates that due to the normalization of sexual perversion in popular culture, young women like Nao are perceived as sexual objects even when they don’t wish to be seen in this way. Even drastic measures, like shaving one’s head, aren’t effective in staving off sexual violence. Altogether, Nao’s experiences tragically suggest that young women are targets for sexual exploitation, regardless of how they look on the outside or the measures they take to protect themselves.