Irezumi and the sea in the silence of the sea : gendered bodies and masculinities constructed in relational context

「海の沈黙」における刺青と海 : 関係性としての身体とマスキュリティの構築

Irezumi and the sea in the silence of the sea : gendered bodies and masculinities constructed in relational context

Creators Ishida Yoriko

The Silence of the Sea, written by Sō Kuramoto over the span of sixty years, is a cinematic meditation on the nature of beauty, art, and human emotion. This paper explores two central motifs in the film—irezumi (traditional Japanese tattooing) and the sea—as interconnected expressions of the protagonist Tsuyama Ryūji's inner world and creative drive. Irezumi is examined not as a simple act of male control over the female body, but as a complex site where power, intimacy, gender, and agency intersect. At the same time, Tsuyama's lifelong obsession with painting the sea reflects a desire to inscribe memory, loss, and the search for permanence amid impermanence through artistic gesture. Focusing on the parallel between irezumi and seascape painting as shared practices of “inscription,” this study analyzes how Tsuyama's creative acts function as bodily and symbolic acts of marking. In doing so, it reveals how his art becomes a site for constructing masculinities—not through dominance or institutional success, but through vulnerability, liminality, and resistance to hegemonic norms. Drawing on R.W. Connell's theory of masculinities and Judith Butler's concept of gender performativity, the paper demonstrates how Tsuyama's relationships with women, his father's memory, and his artistic collaborator Suiken generate different modes of masculine subjectivity. Ultimately, the film offers a vision of alternative masculinity rooted in embodied creation, loss, and a refusal of institutional validation, challenging conventional associations between masculinity, power, and authorship.

[ISSN]0387-9232

[NCID]AN00031668