What are your thoughts on Vita Sexualis(the novel)? I just recently read it, and I really enjoyed it, and I wanted to hear other people's thoughts about it.
Well, I can tell you what I have been thinking about lately regarding Vita Sexualis. I believe it (along Maihime) is misunderstood in the West. Whenever the book is mentioned, usually in the bsd fandom, people describe Kanai as „an asexual person in an oversexualized world“. I personally find that interpretation superficial as it ignores the purpose of the book.
Mori Ogai wrote Vita Sexualis as a parody of the naturalistic writers of his time, such as Katai Tayama (Futon, 1907) and Homei Iwano (Tandeki, 1909). Those authors depicted sexual desire as an all-consuming, animalistic force that led their characters. Ogai rejected this. He argued against reducing human existence solely to biological impulses. Instead, he viewed sexuality as a link between the body and the spirit.
As you know, Ogai writes about Kanai’s sexual experiences throughout his life after reading a report on whether sexual education is important or not. In the narrative, we see Kanai’s experiences shaped by societal pressure, spite and curiosity as well as dealing with insecurities. He mentions several times he thinks he is frigid, however in the last chapter he reaches a very interesting conclusion:
"Somehow it seemed to him he was an uncommonly frigid person. Having come this far in his analysis, he at once thought it over again. Of course it had not been necessary for him to get 'dubbed.' However, he found any analysis superficial which implied that his knowledge about himself had blasted his passion. Even in the bowels of the earth covered with eternal ice, raging flames are furiously thrusting upward from a volcano. Mr. Kanai knew he wasn't incapacitated. He wasn't impotent. People in general let loose the tiger of sexual desire they have kept under leash and occasionally ride on its back until they tumble into the Valley of Ruin. He had tamed his tiger of sexual desire and controlled it. Bhadra was one of Buddha's disciples. He slept beside the tiger he had tamed. His young disciple was afraid of it. The meaning of 'Bhadra' is 'wise man.' His tiger was probably the symbol for sexual desire. It was certainly tamed, but its power to terrify and awe was not at all enfeebled."
In other words, Kanai does feel sexual desire, so intensely that he describes it as a volcano beneath ice, and as a force with the "power to terrify and awe." He is not impotent. The difference lies in his self-control and restraint. Unlike others who act upon their desires, he has mastered control over his "tiger." This mastery ("external ice") is what he theorized at first was him being cold or frigid. If Kanai were truly asexual, the metaphor of "taming" the tiger would be meaningless as you cannot tame something that doesn't exist. Calling him asexual makes the parody fall flat and discards Ogai's purpose to show that humans are more than just their biological urges.
