Work Text:
ὁ δὲ μὴ δυνάμενος κοινωνεῖν ἢ μηδὲν δεόμενος δι᾽
αὐτάρκειαν οὐθὲν μέρος πόλεως, ὥστε ἢ θηρίον ἢ θεός.
But the one who cannot live with others, or doesn’t need to
due to their self-sufficiency and is the inhabitant of no city,
must be either a beast or a god.
Aristotle, Politics 1.1253a
I think that everyone (or at least every human) has a vision of an ideal life they’d like to lead - a fantasy which keeps you moving forwards, but always slips out of reach the closer to it you get. Mine has remained roughly the same for centuries, which makes it even more unachievable than most. When one has an impossible existence, it is only fair to have impossible fantasies as well. But when I’m alone and especially when I’m trying to fall asleep, I still think about this old dream of mine. Since the beginning, the setting of my fantasy has been a city, but I have seen so many cities over so many years that they have been chopped up and pasted over one another into something which you could call a palimpsest or you could call a capriccio - but which, if you ask me, sounds a lot like an urban Gensokyo. This makes me uneasy, since it is tantamount that this city exist in the outside world. But how could I choose between Heian-Kyo of the 9th century and Edo of the 18th? Or between 20th century Tokyo and the cities I have visited in China, in India, in Europe across the millennia? An ideal city, I suppose, would be as historical as it is modern - but I have known the histories of most cities as their modernities, and these are the fleeting states I wish to inhabit once more, not their fossilised remains.
In this city - which has always had its roots in the cities of the second millennium - I have a flat, and I live there with a woman to whom I am married. Who this woman is has also fluctuated over the years. Sometimes she has been Yuyuko, more recently Reimu, and sometimes another person. Substantial details of this fantasy hinge on her identity. Ship of state, you might say. We are well off, our relationship is tender and peaceful, possibly we travel a lot together but we are very happy at home. We do not have any children, but Ran lives nearby and we babysit Chen sometimes. Both of us have safe and uneventful jobs, and Ran works for me. What precisely it is that I do is another thing I have never consistently decided on, partly due to the ever-changing nature of society. Often I have been a scholar - of philosophy, literature, psychology, perhaps mathematics. It is essential that I am not famous or important.
It seems completely natural to me to bring Ran and Chen into this world, since they are part of my household (family is not a word I use lightly) - but once I find places for them, other people start to intrude. I end up asking - who are mine and my wife’s friends? Does everyone from Gensokyo exist in this fantasy, or are we acquainted with a host of faceless chums whose potential for good company I can imagine and whose flaws I can ignore? At this point, certain figures begin to intrude. I cannot imagine a life in which Yuuka Kazami does not annoy me - doesn’t infringe on our hospitality and playfully bother us whenever she’s around. But I can’t put Yuuka into a city - I couldn’t even put her into a house. I have, naturally, tried to imagine her as a gardener - but she would never work nature to someone else’s design, direction, or pleasure. Usually, I picture her as a bohemian artist type - always moving from place to place because she can’t afford rent, turning her nose up at society to dedicate her life to art. In this case, I am an art dealer and probably her patron, and she never listens to me. But in reality, Yuuka never takes art seriously. If I wanted to place her in a city, I’d have to invert nature and illusion.
The more people I try to place, the more crowded and uncomfortable my world becomes. I would like Suika to be there, but her presence introduces even more problems. She is similarly averse to the idea of a regular abode, and once you make her a human, her drinking habits become far more worrying than they are for an oni. I could write them out of my world, but do I really have the right to make fictional versions of people I know for my own personal enjoyment, versions which erase their most prominent characteristics? Must Suika then be an unhappy alcoholic? I also can’t imagine her having a regular and especially not a respectable job - what troubles and worry might the presence of such a friend bring to me as I try to live my boring, peaceful life? The beast which lurks at the root of such issues is the fact that I have to invent a plausible way for all of my friends to have a secure and affluent income if I want us all to be happy and comfortable in a human city. The more my mind drags me down to dig into the details of this world, the more the cruel machine of society clashes against the morals and personalities of all the people I know. If, say, I wish to make politicians out of Miko or Kanako (a thought which amuses me), it is pretty unlikely that they would not be corrupt. Thus, I have to imagine them doing material harm to thousands of people - which I suppose they have done in the past, but one tends to forget it. Perhaps it’s futile in the essense to try and make a fantasy out of such a flawed reality. The system of the age - be it feudal, authoritarian, capitalist - would fail us all in some way, and so fail my fantasy.
Thus as my paradise begins to fall apart, I always circle back to the thought of my prospective wife - especially if she is to be Yuyuko. Must I construct an elaborate tragedy of a near-death accident resulting in memory loss, and accept this familiar pain into my ideal life too? That grief and others like it are woven into the fabric of this world - to deny them is to deny the reason that it was ever created. But could this city’s Yuyuko be the girl I knew before she died? Such a daring idea embodies the full bittersweetness of this dream, which is why I both can’t bear to think it and can’t help myself. It makes me sad, and it makes me sadder to find it happy. Better I marry Reimu. The other option is even worse.
But if Reimu is my wife, what does she do? The outside world still has shrine maidens, and the shrine is fundamental to Reimu’s identity - again, to remove her from this role feels like a breach of a personal boundary. And one she certainly wouldn’t like if she could read my thoughts. However, if Reimu remains a shrine maiden (albeit a richer and safer one), this world must still have gods, and I remain close to them. The gods must be distant if this is to be an outside world fantasy, in which all the gods I know have become businesspeople or politicians or socialites instead. Is this also then a world in which youkai are not visible, not believed in? This appears to be the very heart of the fantasy - a dreamland in which there are no gods, no monsters, no other worlds. Put a shrine in such a world and it is turned upside down - I am forced to confront the uncomfortable truths which lead to the creation of Gensokyo in the first place. If I, in my dream, escape Gensokyo with all these gods and monsters, there must be others who have had to take their place in the world of fantasy. The gods have different names here, different humans have become inhuman, and all of us are safe in a reality which we must never recognise as paradise - lest we fall again into illusion. Does my fantasy not necessitate that somewhere there be a woman sitting in Gensokyo, telling you about how everyone (or at least every human) has a vision of an ideal life they’d like to lead - a fantasy which keeps you moving forwards, but always slips out of reach the closer to it you get.
