Haruka, sexism in Yakuza 6

 [7.24]

So, and I question my use of the word ‘feminist’ but am just too damn lazy to think of and take a stand over anything else, if you find a ‘feminist’ critic, ask them to list their twenty or so least favorite tropes for female characters on index cards, put these cards in a hat, and then select one at random, the chances are overwhelming that you will have drawn one that comes up at some point in the Yakuza series, probably specifically in reference to Haruka, and-- more likely than not-- in Yakuza 6. Previously-- because she was mostly per-purbesebnt-- they hadn’t been able to use any reductionist portrayals of female characters related to motherhood on her, and they check off a lot of those boxes in “Song of Life,” while also bringing back some classics, and having her in a comma for most of the game. It’s honestly a fuckn laundry list of lazy things writers do to minimize and trivialize women. 

I don’t feel like I need to go through that. Most of it is obvious and I think other writers should handle the rest. The question I have to answer is why I play the games inspight of that, and the answer is that my desire to hit digital people with digital bikes-- in a context that reminds me of movies I like and thus makes me feel smart-- is stronger than any stand that I choose to take about sex, or gender or anything. 

It would be nice to be like ‘the answer is in the last 28 pages, there’s all this cool shit about language, culture, film, art and life. -- and even if a ton of the attitudes are offensive, there are other parts that are fun, beautiful, and even uplifting.’ I don’t think that’s wrong, obviously, but I’m not very interested in letting myself off the hook for the shady parts. I’m willing to tolerate stuff that I probably should not be willing to tolerate; and derive profound pleasures from things that are, in ways, rotten to the core. The problem is inequality: as a heterosexual male I can enjoy the Yakuza games without feeling belittled in a way that is not true for other people, so, probably, the right thing to do is not play them; even, assuming that they do not-- even subconsciously- reinforce toxic behaviors or attitudes of my own, which is giving me a hell of a lot of credit. 

But I am just not that good of a person. I’d rather hit folks with bikes. 

Anyway, over the course of six games Haruka is at least a kind of mixed bag, since she comes up with a handful of charming moments and fulfills a useful roll in the series. And her backstory is a really nice case study in extreme silliness. 

And being her was pretty dope in Yakuza 5: it was actually sort of fun, and what they were trying to do was just damn interesting. Of course, it was also not very cool because the specific use of how you got to be Haruka reinforced a gender dichotomy where she did cute stuff and the guys got to hurt people. 

In that I have a belief about ethical portrayals of characters, I actually think the answer is always MORE VIOLENCE. So, the way to redeem the Haruka character was always, I thought, to make her violent. This would, also, make her not-Haruka, but still possessing Haruka-like characteristics, if handled adroitly.