Open Collections

Fujii, Yuto

University of British Columbia

Richard III wrestles with ambition and identity in medieval England, where his body is regarded as an aberration. In Aya Kanno's Requiem of the Rose King, Richard III's inner conflicts transcend time and space, which reflects Japan's anxiety about queerness and belonging. In this manga and its anime adaptation, Kanno queers Shakespeare's Henry VI Part 3 and Richard III into a tale that confronts contemporary Japanese society on its stigma regarding gender and sexuality. With Judith Butler’s theoretical concept of gender performativity, the study elucidates how Kanno recreates Richard III as an androgynous, nonbinary figure whose queerness questions the heteronormative norms that can frequently be seen in both Shakespearean canon and Japanese society. Looking into visual and narrative strategies, the study describes how Kanno destabilizes deep-rooted binaries of sex and gender and Richard III’s body as a site of cultural anxiety and resistance. The research continues to locate this adaptation in Japan's aesthetic and historical tradition of gender fluidity, seen in kabuki and Takarazuka, while exploring how these traditions paradoxically undermine and reinforce patriarchal norms. Kanno’s use of light and darkness, religious symbolism, and intertextual cues, including references to Plato’s androgynous beings, are used as queer marginalization and desire metaphors. In addition, Richard III's romantic and political ties to Henry VI and the Duke of Buckingham are also analyzed as queer affective relations that disrupt heteronormative power structures and move toward intimacy. Adopting queer theory, adaptation studies, and Japanese cultural history, the thesis argues that Requiem of the Rose King queers not only the Shakespearean sources but also the overall culture and national discourses regarding gender identity. It situates the manga and anime as transnational critical works that redeploy global literary capital to unveil and subvert Japan's institutionalized gender normativity. As such, it affirms the political and affective potential of adaptation as a tool of queer critique. Eventually, the thesis contributes to ongoing scholarly discussions on how adaptations to popular media offer spaces for negotiating queer identity, national culture, and social normativity in the globalized world.

Text; Still Image

2025-04-22

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/90708

English

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/