Written by Jackson Adler as part of our theme week on Asian Womanhood in Pop Culture.
Trigger Warning for sexual harassment and assault.
The anime/manga/(and, yes, there’s even a live action adaptation) Ouran High School Host Club is a satire of shoujo (girls’) manga and anime, which often have strong romantic elements to them, and the stereotypes and clichés usually found within them. An example of this is how the story’s protagonist Haruhi, who was assigned female at birth and for whom I am using gender neutral pronouns in this post, is far from the romantic and bashful “heroine” often found in these stories, and rarely appreciates the romantic gestures of the boys who fawn over them.
At its heart, Ouran is about gender and, for better or worse, how it is perceived and performed. Though often praised and adored for its challenges to heteronormativity and gender roles through its range of characters, especially its protagonist, it ends up reinforcing heteronormativity and the gender binary to a large extent.
Real world host clubs have a bit of scandal and infamy attached to them. Traditionally, a host club is a place for rich men (and sometimes women) to talk with pretty young women who are hired to flirt with them, though there are a few host clubs with attractive young men who cater to rich women (and sometimes men). The idea of a high school host club turned many would-be readers off to the manga at first, as evidenced by the write-ins published in the manga, before the readers realized how tame the story is. Leading man Tamaki decided to create a host club of attractive young men (himself included) to cater to female students at his elitist high school because it seemed like a fun idea for a bored rich boy (and also because he has mommy issues).
The host and client interactions in the story are generally limited to hand holding, complimenting, and overall flirtatiousness. Haruhi attends Ouran High School on a merit scholarship, for which they applied due to the favorable academic environment, since they want to become a lawyer, like their late mother before them. By an accidental breaking of an expensive vase, Haruhi joins the host club, taking on the identity of a cisboy, in order to pay off the debt. This fate was largely decided for them, leading to financial abuse, and starting the beginning of a trend of the cismale characters to ignore Haruhi’s own autonomy. Haruhi is largely indifferent to how others perceive their gender, and, in Japanese, usually uses a gender neutral pronoun to refer to themselves. Haruhi does not seem to care much for labels, being largely apathetic to which pronouns are used by others for them, so whether the character, in English, could be interpreted to be genderqueer, agender, bigender, genderfluid, or even a transboy, what’s most important is that Haruhi identifies as Haruhi. However, most of the main characters see Haruhi as a girl, and treat them as such.
A number of the characters put Haruhi in situations in which they did not choose to be, and pressure them to wear feminine clothes when not working. Haruhi often shrugs off this ill treatment of them, and yet even when they call the their male schoolmates out on their sexual harassment of them, the boys ignore Haruhi’s protests. This is incredibly disturbing, since, while sexual harassment is still rampant in America, there are fewer laws against it in Japan, and there are no laws at all against sexual harassment in the workplace. Though the host club is in many ways a student club, it is clearly also a business, and those in the host club are coworkers. Haruhi is the newest host in the club, with most of the hosts being older than themselves, so it is mainly their superiors and bosses who harass them. This behavior includes forcefully holding Haruhi in unwanted and prolonged embraces, something often done by Tamaki while saying how “cute” Haruhi is. Ouran is popular in America, with the American dub and English subtitled version available on Netflix, and the show’s frequent displays of Haruhi being pressured into wearing dresses and the male characters stating how cute and adorable they are plays into the American stereotype of the Asian girl/woman as an object, a “China Doll,” to be looked at, admired, and eroticized. This is all the more emphasized by Tamaki being drawn in the anime to have blonde hair and blue eyes, highlighting the character’s whiteness (and his therefore racialized abuse of Haruhi) before it is even revealed that his mother was a blonde Frenchwoman and only his father Japanese.
Kyouya, Tamaki’s cofounder of the club and the main person running it, takes sexual harassment of Haruhi to a new level in the eighth episode, in English called “The Sun, The Sea, and the Host Club!” This episode is deeply flawed, and much can be and has been written about it. In the anime, while the host club and its female clients enjoy a day at a private beach, two drunken young men sneak onto it and start harassing and assaulting three of the girls. Haruhi confronts the young men, and one of the girl successfully runs away to get help. Haruhi is thrown off a cliff by one of the young men, and is rescued by Tamaki while the rest of the host club confronts the young men and sends all the girls in attendance home. Haruhi did everything right, and though they could have been seriously hurt or killed, the outcome could have been much worse for everyone. The host club and the anime itself does not see Haruhi as in the right, and the story takes a terrible turn.
This storyline is present in the manga, the anime, and the live action, and at some point one would have hoped it would have been altered, but sadly and infuriatingly, that is not the case. The host club reprimands Haruhi for not recognizing their weaknesses “as a girl,” stating that Haruhi should have called for help themselves before even attempting to confront the perpetrators and stop an assault from taking place. They imply that Haruhi could have been raped or killed, and when Haruhi becomes upset that Tamaki is so angry and possessive about it, the club asks Haruhi to apologize for upsetting him by attempting to stop the assault of the girls in the first place. After Haruhi apologizes in private to Kyouya about worrying everyone, Kyouya takes it upon himself to drive home the sexist message of the episode, and even goes further with it. In a scene full of rapeculture and victim-blaming, Kyouya pretends that he is going to rape Haruhi in order to point out how helpless they, “as a girl,” really are.
After Haruhi gives in to pressure and needlessly apologizes, though in private and only to Kyouya, Kyoua points out how much money had to be spent to send the girls home early and to give them flower bouquets in an attempt to make up for it. He says that the money will be added to the debt Haruhi owes the club, and when Haruhi wonders how they’ll achieve paying it off, Kyouya responds that they can pay him back “with [their] body,” then throws a surprised and fearful Haruhi onto a bed and climbs on top of them. In this way, he is abusive as a superior in the workplace, financially abusive, and physically and sexually abusive. In the manga and the live action, he even holds down her wrists, while in the anime he only positions himself over her. He then points out, via verbal abuse, how weak they are “as a girl,” how much stronger he is as a man, and, in an excellent example of victim blaming, saying how they should be more careful (because how dare a “woman” trust a friend and coworker with their safety?). Haruhi then states that “[he] won’t do it” because he has nothing to gain by raping them (what?), and he backs off, laughing, and says that they’re “an interesting young woman.” They then thank him (no, really) for the valuable lesson, and says what a nice guy he is.
The original story was written by a female author/mangaka, and the scene is meant to be sexy and a rape fantasy. However, the messages within this storyline are incredibly harmful, not to mention triggering. They are bad enough for an American audience, especially due to America’s fetishization and objectification of Asian women. However, as Japanese feminist Chizuoka Ueno points out, sexual harassment and the gender wage gap are important issues in Japan, with not only no laws against sexual harassment in the workplace, but very few laws against gender discrimination in regards to wages, with women making 70% of what their male counterparts make. Kyouya and Haruhi had just started becoming friends, despite the differences in privilege is position, age, and wealth between them. Kyouya took advantage of his privilege and abused his power by scaring Haruhi, and while having (sort of) good intentions, reinforced rapeculture, rape myths, and victim-blaming, and lead Haruhi to further internalize misogyny. Sadly, this is just one example of a host club member’s misguided attempt to help or protect Haruhi.
The host club, and other characters, are often incredibly possessive of Haruhi, claiming they are being “protective” of them while disregarding Haruhi’s own desires and autonomy. When Hikaru, a character in Haruhi’s own grade level, meets a former classmate of Haruhi’s from her previous school and who had once asked them out on a date, he is first cold and brooding, and then loud and angry, vehemently insisting that “We are [Haruhi’s] friends!” While the message is clear that Hikaru should not be so upset at Haruhi having friends outside of the club, possessiveness of Haruhi is supported by other scenes and storylines. The boys of the club feel it necessary to “protect” Haruhi from lesbian students, particularly ones from the all girls’ school Lobelia, to which the girls wouldn’t mind Haruhi transferring. The three and only lesbian characters we meet are all highly stereotyped. They spew man-hate and make overt sexual advancements on Haruhi.
While at first the girls from Lobelia encourage Haruhi to make their own choices, and condemn the host club for trying to control Haruhi, the girls also become possessive of Haruhi, even kidnapping them at one point. When the host club realizes that Haruhi might be happier at Lobelia than at Ouran, instead of respecting Haruhi’s wishes, the club dresses in drag in an attempt to make Haruhi feel more at home with them. This misguided attempt only brings laughter to Haruhi, who insists that they are remaining at co-ed Ouran, though not because of the club, but because they feel it is a better school academically. When the host club attempts to “rescue” Haruhi after they are kidnapped, they don’t so much as help Haruhi as defend their own egos and revel in the chance to put down the Lobelia students. Through storylines such as the ones involving the Lobelia girls, the story is assertive in its message that heteronormativity is the most desirable and correct way to live.
Through Haruhi and other characters, including Haruhi’s parents, the show does imply that sexuality and gender identity are not choices. However, it does encourage people who are bisexual to enter heterosexual relationships, and encourages those with a more fluid or non-conforming gender identity to choose to wear clothes and adopt habits that fit into the binary and are heteronormative. Haruhi often speaks and dresses as they want, but is most praised, even by their surviving parental figure, when they fit into the binary. The anime ends with Tamaki’s and Kyouya’s fathers debating which of their sons Haruhi will eventually marry, the manga ends with Tamaki and Haruhi engaged to be married, and the live action ends with an “accidental” kiss and implies romantic feelings between Haruhi and Tamaki. Haruhi is never stereotypically female, and is allowed some room to be themselves, but only within certain limitations largely set by the cismen in their lives.
