#lulubaii

We don’t have information of whether she comes or not from a clan or traditional family (of sorcerers or not). However, her outfit choice lets us know that she does understand herself as a part of a tradition; that somehow she decides to incarnate by wearing traditional clothes when she is working.

The remarkable difference between her outfit for work and her clothes during days off is a manifestation of an inner duality in Utahime. I believe she strained between how she accepted herself as part of a tradition and how she stepped aside from that tradition. There is something performative in how Utahime acts when she is in her duty, as sorcerer or teacher, different when she is off duty. I won’t put this in terms of “when she is being herself” because I believe it is a very simple take, Utahime is always Utahime. Nevertheless, there is a difference between the idea she has about being a teacher/sorcerer and the idea she has about being a woman. Even if both ideas aren’t disasociated, it seems like tradition has more weight in her idea of teacher/sorcerer than her idea as woman. In her private life, during her days off, she allows herself to be more destructured. This is different from other characters lika Nanami who doesn’t have a major difference between job life and private life. However, it is important to clarify that nobody acts exactly the same in all circumstances, not even Satoru.

My concern here is to understand why Gege chose to give such a traditional look to a female character who has features that aren’t frequent in traditional females. She has a ribbon in her hair but likes sports, she acts very soft but is loud and is a heavy drinker. My answer to this is what has been announced earlier, the tension between understanding herself as a part of a tradition and step aside from that tradition.

As we saw in the Zenin clan, traditional families make an effort to keep women like they lived in 1795, which is something that can only be made by insulating them from the outside world. Still, it is something difficult to do. The hierarchy of jujutsu society makes a big effort to keep traditions, not only in terms of roles but also in techniques, but the aspiration to keep traditions in the biggest context of the modern world is simply impossible. Thousands of leak channels are opened and they can’t contain everything, the closing schemes are cracking little by little and from there the conditions to transformation are born. Jujustu society can demand their female sorcerers to adjust to certain roles but they can fully shape them in those roles. The key to understanding this process is leakage. The new subjectivities are built around leakage that allow them to open to new horizons that did not exist to previous generations. What we have is potency and possibility.

I believe we must understand Utahime in these terms, as someone whose subjectivity is structured around traditions that are cracked, and as a result of that- even if she can not fully separate from tradition- she can think in herself more broadly. What may seem like contradictions in Utahime (the ribbon vs the sport, for example) are just manifestations of the possibility to understand herself as a woman in a more broadly way, outside of the corset of the traditional role of female (even if she doesn’t reject it completely)

In conclusion, Utahime is not someone who internalizes roles assigned to her in a passive way. There are a few hints in the manga to spot this and I believe her dinamic with Satoru is a key to understand her agency like sorcerer and teacher, but sadly is something that haven’t been taken in consideration because whatever this two character are close all the discussion are around ship or not to ship. We need to switch the axis of discussion to be centered in Utahime.

At the beginning I established that Utahime’s position in jujutsu society is disadvantageous for two reasons: she is a woman and she is not considered to be between the strongest (grade 1 and more).

Being a woman in a patriarchal society is inherently disadvantageous. Even for those women who aren’t encarning traditional roles like wife or mothers, there are expectations that keep them strained. Some of them have been introduced to the manga by Momo during her discussion with Nobara,

it is not a coincidence that Momo referred to scars on women while having a teacher who has a big scar on her face. In a patriarchal system there is an objectification of women as they are built as the object of desire of men, so they are always supposed to be beautiful (according to the beauty ideal). The social demand to be beautiful and remain beautiful is heavier in woman and we can see this in whole industry to make and keep woman “beautiful” and how everytime that a woman make headline for anything no related to her appearance there is always a comment about her look (she is smart and beautiful for scientist, she is talented and beautiful for deportist or artist). To women being smart, talented or anything else is not enough if they aren’t beautiful. Utahime is a beautiful woman in terms of beauty standards but she has a scar (what is a flaw for a woman) so she has to deal with other people looking down on her. We don’t know the circumstance around the incident that got her a scar, but probably the hardest to overcome in what surely was a terrible fight was to deal with the eyes and comment of other people looking down on her because “she lost value”.

How much Utahime cares about how other people perceive her is not something I can’t say for sure. Surely she doesn’t care too much or she will have self esteem problems, but she does care something as she takes care of her semblance as we saw in the manga extra.

Take care of your appearance is a synonym of caring about other people's opinion? That is a very complicated question because people are always subjected to the gaze of the other, how other people perceive us is part of the construction or our body image, is not as simple as saying “i don’t care”. I believe it is not about how much we care, but how much that is limiting us. Utahime surely dislikes the opinion that looks down on her but she doesn’t define her value upon those comments. However, even if she can overcome how others think of her, how others think of her is part of her circumstances in the sorcerer world.

About her semi grade 1, we don’t even know her technique so we can’t judge if their assigned grade is fair or not. What we know is she works in Kyoto tech, a school controlled for the leader of the conservatives and that is not a minor detail. At this point I would like to bring her dynamic with Satoru to establish the difference between someone who has many privileges vs someone who has many disadvantages and through it trying to understand her agency.

Satoru has the privilege to be the strongest (while the positions has its issues we won’t elaborate that here), he can be annoying because nobody can punch him, he can push his decision because nobody can fight him, he is rich and leader of a clan which gives him lot of resource and a privileged position in jujutsu society. He is a man, so his position as leader seems natural through the eyes of conservative people. He works in Tokyo tech, which is a safe environment for him, where he is supported by two of the closest people to him: Yaga and Shoko. While Utahime is an average sorcerer in a more hostile environment.

I’m not saying that Gakuganji has something against her, they seem to work well together, but it is the result of Utahime following Gakuganji’s rules. If Utahime were a rebel teacher like Satoru, she wouldn’t last in Kyoto school. She is aware of that, she knows she needs to behave in order to sustain her position. So, every move that she does to protect her students and to push a method of teaching different from the spartacus method of sorcerer, represents a bigger risk for her than it does to Satoru. The fact that Utahime helped Satoru to find the traitor is proof that she is not passive, neither blindly obedient. She is a person of values, who has an idea of her duty and is willing to take risks in order to make things like she believes they are supposed to be. We can say that Utahime is a determined and brave woman.

The same compromise with her job is what helps us to understand her relationship with Satoru, as this is the result of an alliance.

Utahime and Satoru have some important coincidence regarding how both think in their duty as teacher (even the methods are different) and the ethical compromise as sorcerer. They are aware of this and that is why they trust each other. This explains why Utahime is willing to help Satoru even if she dislikes him as a person, they share an alliance, not a friendship and surely not a romance. Explain their relationship in terms of romance is to fully erase Utahime’s agency and her political dimension, reducing her to a lame person who is too proud to admit that is in love with someone who dislike (Iol even the sentence cancels itself). Canonically there is no hint to understand her relationship with Satoru as a romance, it is straightforward political.

No political action can be done alone as an individual, because even particular actions require the complicity of other people in orden to make them succeed. Even Satoru understands this and he has collected some allies through the years. Utahime as a teacher and sorcerer with an agency, in order to not be just a cog to the system, needs people in whom to trust. She understands that regarding some matter she is on the same side as Satoru, so she is willing to use his help if it's needed. Of course, favors are paid with favors so both have been helping each other through years and it is highly possible that Utahime will ignore elders' sentences and help the students to free Satoru. Not because she misses him, surely she doesn’t, but because she understands that he is needed to solve the current crisis. And probably as the result of the mutual help she has some sympathy for him, doesn’t like him, but doesn’t wish him bad things either.

I have been asked about this topic so much so I will take a license to develop this more from Satoru position. He doesn’t have a romantic interest in her, actually he doesn’t have an interest in her at all. We can see this in the fact that he doesn’t realize that Utahime actually dislikes him (he thinks they are just playing with each other). He doesn’t stop to think if the joke about her being weak can touch a sensitive thread on her. That is the result of the little attention he gave her. Satoru is someone who has the skill to understand people (people he cares about), he has a good understanding of his students. So, if he doesn't understand something from someone it is because he is not trying, not because he can’t. That is basically because he saw her as an ally, very similar to how Utahime sees him. She is someone who shares some ideas with him regarding the students and some other matters, she is someone ethical in whom to trust.

I believe people need to get out of the trichotomy of lovers-friends-enemies, there are many more ways to relate to other people, many forms of bond that are possible to establish with someone else.

To look for a love bond for Utahime (romantic, platonic or whatever) we must look to Shoko. There are plenty of hints in the manga that show how fond she is of Shoko and how close they are to each other.

To finish, the biggest proof of Utahime’s agency as a teacher is how well Kyoto students get along even if everyone is so different. Utahime not only cares to help them to become strong sorcerers but she also cares about the environment they are in, as she pushes to make a healthy coexistence between everyone. Something that is very important to students' development as the kind of sorcerer they will become.