Father role-models in Akimi Yoshida's "Banana Fish"

As I have mentioned several weeks ago (so long already?) I have written a short essay on father-figures in Banana Fish. Finally finished the translation. So please behold the improved (it got quotations!) essay behind the cut.

I am open for discussion and please forgive me if I should have made faults in the translation. I did my best.

Tali




During the course of the manga Ash gets in contact with several men, who fulfill certain aspects of a father's role towards him but fail horribly in others. In the following essay I want to show that Aslan never had a sufficient male role-model because all his "fathers" are imperfect and therefore assailable in their embodied roles.
Of the manga I use the german volumes one to seven by "Planet Manga" and from volume eight onwards the english issues by "Viz".

1. James (Jim) Callenreese - the biological father

The episode where Ash meets his natural father is rather short (see: vol3p156 - vol4p42).
After the first unlucky attempt to kill Golzine Ash, Eiji, Shorter Wong, Max Lobo and Ibé drive to Cape Cod, where Ash was born, to get some information about "Banana Fish" from Griffin's old stuff.
Even before we get to know the true situation between Ash and his father we hear some information about James Callenreese: In vol. 3 Ash tells Max Lobo in prison how it was his elder brother Griffin who took care of them in his childhood (vol3p70). So next to a father Ash had never a normal family since both children of James Callenreese (born by different mothers) live in the Callenreese's old house, while their father lives with his new wife, Jennifer, in another house nearby.
There is no fixed proof in the manga but from his behaviour towards the members of his family we can get a good guess at who cared about the youngster. First Griffin, which is certain, then Jennifer to whom Ash shows a certain amount of affection and well-wishing and last James whom Ash treats with feigned indifference and even slight arrogance.
But further into the manga the reader gets to know James Callenreese's true failure: after Ash was sexually abused by his baseball coach at the age of seven.
It is said that the boy refused to go along and had to be dragged to the police station after the rape and there refused to say a thing. It is to be thought of that James maybe didn't know what to do after the police voiced unbelief to the accusations against said coach (especially since the only witness wouldn't talk) but to tell a seven-year-old that he is to let further sexual assaults happen but have to see that he gets paid for it is the worst thing the father could have done and said (see vol4p6+7). After they got no aid from the police, Ash also got no aid from his father and had to deal with that traumatic experience alone. I will never understand how James could let him attend training after this and _not_ inflict self-justice on this man.
Some reasons may be the fact that the couch was an old war-veteran and had lot of influence in the neighbourhood (see vol4 p6) and I also guess that the man threatened Ash in case they should go to the police. So the boy was assaulted repeatedly until he shot the criminal at the age of eight. Ash was, once more, left alone to deal with the aftermath of this and without personal or professional aid the only thing he could do was to suppress the memories. His breakdown when he tells Eiji about this is proof to that.

Of all the adult males' behaviour I condemn James Callenreese's most, because his inactivity shattered the basic confidence every child has towards his parents, his insensibility drove Ash away from home and into Dino Golzine's reach and so it is basically his fault that his son had to lead such a miserable life.
If there is a certain tenderness at the end of the Cape Cod episode it is, in my opinion, due to the fact, that Ash is sensitive of his father's feelings and knows that the man didn't wish him any harm, but couldn't handle a mutilated child. Furthermore he is the only blood-relative Ash has left and was one of the few adults who didn't want anything from him - and I think that is a big plus in Ash's book.

2. "Papa" Dino Golzine - the intellectual father

It is not said specifically when Ash ran from home, but three years after he killed the baseball coach Ash lives in New York and is finally abducted by Golzine's thugs (see vol2p96). I assume, by various references throughout the manga, that Ash was firstly offered in Golzine's "Club Cod"-Restaurant. He knows about the habits of many of it's "costumers" and he knows exactly when Golzine usually "requests" it's services.
I can easily guess that Ash found the Corsican's benevolence during one of his visits and was brought to Golzine's home to be his personal pet. Soon afterwards his "Papa" must have found out about Ash's enormous intelligence and decided to give the boy a proper education. I derive these assumptions mainly from "Angel eyes" - Ash is supposed to be fifteen there, so he has been in Golzine's grasp for around four years. In the scene where he fights Frankie he flexes the pool cue just after Shorter's call, barely avoiding killing Arthur's spy, and afterwards thanks the chinese for giving him the clue he needed to avoid afflicting death to others. It is this sentence (vol19p82) which makes me think that Ash's education was already in full flow at that time. After all, Blanca was hired to teach him how to kill.
Given the fact that Ash was a runaway from home without even having finished elementary school and lived on the streets for several years we have to assume that the main part of his education is based on Golzine's interest to create his successor in the Corsican Mafia (vol12p175). Ash knows everything a Member of the Upper Class, a politician and a criminal needs to know. Proof to that are basically all scenes where he is involved with members of Golzine's organisation or business partners (e.g. vol14p102-123) or scenes in which he does research (e.g. Computer research after Banana Fish in Dawson's house, Library scenes and especially vol19p131-134). He is universally educated and, what is more important, universally interested. Because without interest and love for knowlegde alone all attempts at education are in vain.
I am fully convinced that the circumstances of Ash's life at Golzine's triggered his thrist for knowledge. He himself admits collecting information from his clients and foes to be used later to his advantage. Best example for this is the 50 Million-Dollar-Deal he does with Golzine's password (v7p86-90). So Golzine provides knowledge and in the same stroke also provides the need for it.
The Corsican finally succedes in adopting Ash but it is, like Ash is convinced, all a fake. The man has no real interest in Aslan's wellbeing and he definitely has no fatherly feelings for the youngster like his behaviour towards him in different situations shows (v11p64/65 and vol13p178-185). So he tries to force the youth into accepting his role as Golzine's successor, he also lets Banana Fish used on Ash in Mannerheim's faculty and he finally bullies him into submission with threatening the only thing the gang leader really loves and is dependant of.
I don't understand why Golzine is so extremely insisting on Ash acting as his second-in-command. Yoshida hasn't given any clear reason for that. One can assume that Golzine tries to install the leader position in the Corsican Mafia to be a hereditary one and since he doesn't seem to have a biological son Ash comes to his mind as the most logical choice. But why insisting on Ash in the first place, when "Papa" Dino was still a smaller fish in the Mafia? Why didn't he realize that an unwilling heir would most likely destroy the empire his precessor has built once the "old man" would be out of his way?

3. Max Lobo (Glenreed) - the emotional father

Max Lobo is, at first sight, someone who doesn't fit the idea of an ideal father. He is a freelance-journalist, ex-Cop and war-veteran, divorced, facing a trial wether he is or isn't allowed to see his son Michael and, as we first meet him, sits in prison. But he is honest. Something Ash hasn't known before.
Max has been to Vietnam with Griffin Callenreese and was known to Ash before from his elder brother's letters and from the columns the elder man wrote for the Greenwich Tribune (v2p78-79). They meet for the first time in Falkner Prison.
From the very beginning their relationship is an emotional one with intense ups and downs. Right after they meet Ash manages to hurt Lobo by telling that he thought the other man's columns a lot more interesting than the book Max wrote about the Vietnam war, which is in secret exactly the same thing Max knows and fears. In this scene Ash proves how easy it is for him to read other people's emotions and discover their innermost secrets and therefore be able to see their intentions. But different from other times he has now to deal with Max Lobo, who is in touch with his emotions and faults. This is the strong point (in my opinion) why Aslan begins to trust Max more and more over the manga. He sees that Lobo isn't hiding anything from him and that he's always honest in what he says and does.
With Lobo is is the same way, too. Being very empathetic he doesn't hold a grudge when he is wrong-footed with Ash again or when the youngster manages to insult him. He just reflects on their relationship to each other and changes tactics. See for this the following pages after they first meet in vol.2. Max firstly thinks he has to protect Ash because he is too young for adult-prison, learns very fast that Ash is very intelligent and superior to him in that matter and changes tacticts to being his bodyguard (vol2p79/80). After this also fails they are seperated for some time and start their relationship anew as accomplices in the "Banana Fish"-case.
There are some mirror-images between those two. Both have pseudonyms but the animals they represent are totally different in living and hunting habits. Whereas Ash is stunningly handsome and intelligent, Max is the average American and where Max shows his feelings and lives in the moment, Ash is forced to plot and plan and cannot do anything else than suppress the emotions which would hinder him in his war. Both men have their own "special department" in knowledge - it is tactics and fighting (on all planes) which is Aslans strong point whereas emotional intelligence is Max's.
Max Lobo doesn't have a continual presence during the manga but he often appears in distressing times. He acts as Aslan's confidant where the youth can't confide in Eiji and, starting up as a substitute-Shorter, gains so the role of a father.
Another mirror-image Yoshida uses is that between Dino Golzine and Max Lobo. Where the former is, in the end, the legal father of Ash Lynx the latter is the chosen one. Max and Ash act more than once as father and son, especially Ash's use of the word father before and after they bought the apartment is an odd mixture of joke and earnesty (vol7p73-100, esp. p 98+99). And this feeling is mutual. Especially volume 9 and 10 give a good account on how those two stand to each other, just see page 51 in vol 9, also page 124 and pages 132 - 137. But the most important line in that matter happens in vol 10, where a corpse is shown to Max Lobo and others in order to make them believe that Ash is dead: "That wasn't Ash", he says. "I could tell. I've been through a lot with that kid. He.. He's like a son to me. And I'd never mistake any other human being for... Ash Lynx." (vol10p42)