Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Is Incest Such A Common Topic In Anime?
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Dragonsandphoenix
 Posts: 82 Location: Malaysia |
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In my culture, relations between cousins is less stigmatised than siblings or parent/child. My cousins were married (though one was adopted so they weren't biologically related). It makes things confusing sometimes because there are boundaries between how marriageable men and women should act. I can touch my father, brothers and uncles since I can't marry them, but obviously not men who are unrelated to me and not my male cousins because we can get married. I don't know if incest is illegal but there is a taboo, just that what is considered incestuous is different from in the West. Just another perspective.
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13564 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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In Greek myth, Oidipous, the Theban King who unknowingly murdered his father and married his mom, was the great-great-grandson of Kadmos, the Phoenician founder of Thebes, Greece.
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Blanchimont
 Posts: 3453 Location: Finland |
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Ok. Fine. If you yourself really believe in such religious myths, well, that's your prerogative. Whatever. But in the real world, there's damn good reasons evolution in the animal kingdom instilled various mechanisms to avoid inbreeding through all the prehistoric eras multicelled life has existed and that of course applies to humans as well. There's never been any 'perfect' genetic fitness. But fiction is a different beast as the imaginative human mind is a pretty unique and recent occurence in the history of life. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 5951 |
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This acts as if it wouldn't be done for generations. We humans aren't known for our restraint.
Homosexuality was (and still is) discouraged because some religions saw it as being a bad thing, incest wasn't really treated the same way by some religions. |
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Chiibi
 Posts: 4829 |
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Wow.....that.
Explains a lot. 
I really don't think it's a thing I'll ever get used to; though I've excused the whole cousin-love thing, now that I know cousin marriage is permitted over there.....and lots of other places, actually. Oreimo's extreme popularity really got the ball rolling on incest anime in this past decade, I believe. It didn't seem that common in 90s anime, to my memory at least. Now it's everywhere. Last edited by Chiibi on Thu Mar 02, 2017 11:25 am; edited 1 time in total |
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ignitingblue
 Posts: 14 Location: Canton |
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I have read a journal article in Japanese about this, but I have no idea about how widespread sexual relationship between mother and son is. Perhaps more data is needed to quantify the situation. Some Japanese porn novels, like books published by France Shoin (http://www.france.jp/) aimed at people who are not anime fans feature mother-and-son relationship a great deal. This reminds me of statistics from pornhub which show viewers from United States prefer shows with step-mom tag, though step-moms are usually not blood-related. |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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It can be--Thought the objectification of Tsundere was more of the "Prisoner mentality" of girl-terrified Japanese teen boys, a sort of foregone conclusion that any girl you think attractive is GOING to be bitchily self-centerered and use you as her personal punching bag to work out her narcissistic/misandric teen-girl issues, non-negotiable, so you might as well go along with the game and hope for the best, it's not like you've got any other alternative anyway. When it starts becoming pseudo-BDSM fetishized with Japanese boys, like Hatsune Miku's "The World Is Mine" becoming her most runaway fan hit, that's not just prisoner-mentality, that's locking yourself in your cell and comfortably throwing away the key. (Trying to get the discussion off of "What's so bad about DNA, if it feels good?", and back onto the more accurate explanation of "Your adoring little sister is less scary than the Terra Incognita of the girl who sits next to you at class.  ")
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zrnzle500
 Posts: 3767 |
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While I wouldn't contend access or voyeurism or that what you have postulated isn't correct for at least some, the power dynamic is not always one of older dominating the younger. The nagging and/or dependable younger sister contrasted with the hopeless older brother is common enough, and if that isn't sufficient, I can think of at least one anime where the younger sister is undoubtedly the one who wears the pants in the relationship so to speak (Big Order) and I do mean relationship in any sense of the word. |
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svines85
 Posts: 42 |
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A great article, thanks
Though I do have to say, "how much or how little this taboo affects modern day Japan is simply not something that can easily be measured".......well, maybe not truly "measured", but "judged"? Oh yeah, sure you can..... if you want to try to understand another culture or society, a darned good place to start is really studying and trying to understand whatever information there is in the stories and tales (of whatever medium) that are coming out of that culture. Themes of incest keep popping up in Japanese stories because incest is a theme in Japanese culture, it's really just that simple. Oh well, no big deal really. Frankly, nobody should be making the mistake that it doesn't exist / happen every single day in each and every other culture in the world too, right? 
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Animechic420
 Posts: 1728 Location: A Cave Filled With Riches |
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Hmm. Another way for humans to f*ck themselves over: by giving their children messed up DNA.
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guestatc
Posts: 5 |
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I'm sorry, but are you guys actually taking this at face value? Sure, Japan may have historically had relatives marrying, as most societies did. Marriage among first cousins was still relatively common until recently, again, as it was in large numbers of countries, due to property/inheritance rights, and due to the almost negligible health risks. But the rest? Complete conjecture and/or pseudo-scientific "research". One source referenced, which is "psycho-history", so basically non-sense, and his "sources" are just a few random "observations" by others, such as an American couple, dating back to the 30's. Are we really going to sit here and act like it's a common occurrence for mothers to be having sex with their sons, like the article claims occurs? To be clear, I have no problems whatsoever with incest, of any kind. I don't care what other people do, it's not my business. If they want to bang, fine, have kids, whatever(in any case, risks for first-generation are extremely low). And for sure it occurs in Japan, just like it does all over the world.
But the implications/claims are just straight up inaccurate. Not really surprising, this site and many of its users certainly like to sensationalize certain things, criticize various aspects of Japan for not being more like the west, as if they're obligated to change themselves and ape them. You can theorize what you want as to the prevalence of incest in certain forms of media. Of course many people as usual jump to the tried and true "it's all to do with otaku!!!!!!!!" tangent, something or another about how they can't deal with girl's, whatever. More arm-chair psychology, but that's fine. I personally say that they've managed to figure out that fiction is just that, fiction, and it doesn't matter what you do in it(something many people in the west could do to learn as well). It's a fetish, hot to many people, no problem. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Whoa there, that's a pretty confrontational tone addressed to someone who was explaining the reasonings behind incest law in Christianity. I mean, I agree with you regarding what happens among animals and such, but surely, tolerance of incest should also come with tolerance of religious beliefs.
On paper, at least. I have no doubt any children of incestuous parents would be shunned in many cultures, however, or at least their parents would be outcast (again, not counting nobility, but that comes with its own problems). With this standpoint, ideally, no one would care, but we don't live in an ideal world, and no one is an island. That's the problem that I have if they conceive children: How will such a family's neighbors treat them? Would they be disadvantaged in finding work, maintaining social contacts, making friends, and otherwise receiving help if they need it? Would the kids get teased and bullied in school? Such a family, as it currently stands, would either need to keep the incestuous relationship a complete secret, or they have to live in isolation from society at large. I mean, without children, they could theoretically keep it to themselves and no one will be the wiser, but if the lady gives birth, everything changes. |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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There is only ONE major religion that bans first cousins or any other degree of cousins marrying: Christianity. Actually, according to the Wikipedia entry on cousin marriage, there are only two branches of Christianity that forbid cousin marriage: Catholicism, and the East Orthodox Church. Most branches of Protestants and the Anglican Church never outlawed (or, rather, rescinded the Catholic Church's prohibition of) cousin marriage. Hinduism technically bans cousin marriage as well, but makes exceptions where it is considered local custom in India, which basically led to it being only banned in Northern India (again, according to the article). The idea that most cultures and religions consider first cousin relationships as incestuous as sibling relationships is simply untrue. However, in the modern Western world and parts of Asia, it is definitely discouraged or even illegal: China and both Koreas outlawed cousins marrying, and it is against the law in some American states. I wanted to make that clear because I was surprised that people described the practices of European royals to marry cousins as "incestuous"--most of the royals at the time wouldn't have thought so, let alone the commoners. Now Hamlet's uncle marrying his dead brother's wife even though she and his brother had a son? That was incestuous, straight up! |
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Vibrant Wolf
 Posts: 109 Location: Canada |
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Ok. Fine. If you yourself really believe in such religious myths, well, that's your prerogative. Whatever.
But in the real world, there's damn good reasons evolution in the animal kingdom instilled various mechanisms to avoid inbreeding through all the prehistoric eras multicelled life has existed and that of course applies to humans as well. There's never been any 'perfect' genetic fitness. first of all, curb the barbed God-is-Dead tone. not cool. second of all, when people try t reintroduce animals into an area where they went extinct, if I remember correctly, they would bring one of each gender. the resulting offspring would then breed with either each other or their parents. if they did bring in than one pairing there would still be a point in which incest would be crossed. |
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Blanchimont
Posts: 3453 Location: Finland |
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In translocations of animals within conservation programs, usually and probably likely always, the number of the population moved is as large as practically possible, precisely because of inbreeding worries. So no, in real life the method you're describing wouldn't be used and wouldn't likely result in viable animal lineages. However with large enough pool, you have enough selection to counter inbreeding depression. |
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