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Before going into the actual meta, I want to point out that (Source: interview in 2024 JJK exhibition) Gege didn’t decide on Kenjaku’s true identity until the Shibuya arc, even though it was always going to be fake Geto. I take this to mean that Kenjaku and Geto as characters are more intertwined than we previously or usually thought, with Kenjaku for at least the first arcs existing as “Geto that is a bit strange”— someone that resembles Geto in appearance and mannerism but is not quite him, whose true identity is blank (for now). This is why I’ve decided it’s best to analyze them together, especially in terms of monstrous-feminine symbolism (as to me in this regard they are even more so extensions of one another). 

This analysis will be based on Barbara Creed’s “The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis”. In this book, Creed defined the concept of the monstrous-feminine and discussed how its representations speak to deep patriarchal fears about (what has historically been regarded as) female bodies and reproductive processes. The book draws heavily from Julia Kristeva’s theory on the abject, which is defined as what does not “respect borders, positions, rules”, what “disturbs identity, system, order” and thus elicit within us the feeling of disgust and horror. The abject is what used to belong to or were us, that we must continually throw away and draw borders against in order to form and keep stable our identity. Excrements, bodily fluids, and corpses are all examples of inherently abject things. 

The archaic mother:

According to Kristeva, a huge example of the abject is the maternal figure as all individuals experience abjection when they attempt to break away from their mothers in order to form their own identities. As such, many horror films feature mothers as the female monster (Psycho, Carrie). Kenjaku through possessing Itadori Kaori and giving birth to Itadori Yuuji is quite literally a mother.

Geto can also be viewed as a maternal figure within JJK. His curse technique - Cursed Spirit Manipulation - functions like a womb. It takes in cursed spirits who remain separate entities from Geto with their own curse energy, and because CTs all cost CE it’s as if through CSM Geto is feeding these spirits CE and nurturing them in exchange for their obedience, making Geto into somewhat of a mother figure to his curses. Geto is also written with an emphasis on his protective, nurturing side— he is often seen caring for other people (checking up on Gojo, telling him to go easy on Riko, taking MimiNana to the crepe shop), his entire ideology is based on protecting the weak (even after he becomes a villain he still holds this idea, it’s just that who he considers weak and in need of protection changes), he’s family-oriented and in his cult family he is the heart, the emotional center that binds everyone together so that after he died they all splintered off.

This is not to say that these traits are inherently feminine, but rather in culture they are usually given to female, maternal characters, yet we are seeing them in Geto. There may be a reason why Toji’s worm called him “Mommy” (lol). 

The maternal figure within horror can be represented in a number of ways, one of which is through the archaic mother, who is “the parthenogenetic mother, the mother as primordial abyss, the point of origin and of end”. She can be seen within mythologies of several cultures around the world as the Mother-Goddess who alone created Heaven and Earth (Nu Kwa in China, Gaia in Greece, Nammu in Sumer). As the monstrous-feminine, however, she is reconstructed in a negative light as “the abyss, the all-incorporating black hole that threatens to reabsorb what is once birthed”, “the blackness of extinction - death”. She is a force that threatens to reincorporate what is once distinct into the original oneness, to the mother’s womb. She represents the fear of (and desire for) dissolution, non-differentiation, and death. 

Cursed Spirit Manipulation absorbs once-autonomous beings and submits them to the user’s authority. Its Maximum Technique is the dissolution of these beings into a single, non-identifying black mass (Uzumaki). Kenjaku's master plan is to merge the Japanese population into one entity. Both Kenjaku and Geto can be seen as maternal figures within JJK whose powers are destructive in their ability to absorb and dissolute. 

The monstrous womb: 

From fear of the mother’s generative power comes fear of the womb. In horror films, the connection between the womb and the monstrous is often invoked through womb-like spaces and objects or female characters capable of giving birth to monsters. Creed gave an example with the film “The Brood”, in which the central figure is a woman who through her rage manifests strange and dangerous creatures that resemble disfigured infants— the climax of the film is her revealing under her dress bulbous sacs hanging from her side from which she took out a fetus. Here, the womb is taken outside of the body, the birthing process made apparent. It is horrifying because we are confronted with the nature of reproduction and the maternal body— the alterations and even disfigurements caused by housing a life form.  

Geto and Kenjaku have the ability to store and “give birth” to monsters (given that CSM functions like pregnancy). Geto’s domain expansion is called “All-enveloping Garbhadhatu”, officially translated into English as “Womb Profusion” (because Yuuta in Gojo’s body has Unlimited Void as his domain, we can conclude that Womb Profusion is Geto’s even if we’ve only seen Kenjaku use it). In Esoteric Buddhism, Garbhadhatu (Womb Realm) is where compassion leading to salvation is born and sustained like a fetus being nurtured by the womb. The domain itself features headless pregnant women. 

In the Vol. 0 movie we can see images of pregnant bodies and babies in Geto’s Uzumaki while he’s summoning it. 

The manner in which Curses are summoned by CSM is also reminiscent of birth, through either a portal or an incision into space, accompanied by dark liquid pouring out (at least in the manga). 

When Kenjaku died and the cursed spirits were about to burst out of Geto’s body, we can see that his belly became swollen or convulsed. Afterwards, it was seemingly transformed into a womb-like structure carrying the Tengen fetus, which Kenjaku had absorbed and incubated prior to their death. In a way, Geto’s entire body after death has become a monstrous womb.

Fear of the womb is also tied to fear of a loss of boundaries, between the clean, proper body and the natural world, the abject. “…the act of birth is grotesque because the body’s surface is no longer closed,…rather the body looks as if it may tear apart, open out, reveal its innermost depth.” In the birthing process, new life forms travel from inside the womb to the outside, carrying with it blood, afterbirth, feces,…what is meant to be banished from the human domain in order to establish and preserve its identity, system, order. 

Within JJK, Geto or Cursed Spirit Manipulation exists with a similar ambivalence. In order for Geto to add a cursed spirit into his ranks, he must first ingest them. Cursed spirits are hyper-condensed negative emotions/curse energy that spilled out of humans— they’re basically human waste (and so naturally they taste like “rags used to wipe up vomit and excrement”). Yet, they reside within Geto, their curse energy adding to his own. With Geto, the border between the clean, proper body and the abject - cursed spirits in this case - was blurred. This makes Geto’s body uniquely abject within the narrative. He knows “the taste that no one knows”.

So what does this all mean?

The monstrous-feminine threatens the integrity of patriarchal order. In JJK, both Geto and Kenjaku aim to disrupt the patriarchal Jujutsu world: Geto, scorned by how the system treats him and people like him, tried to violently dismantle it (however flawed his plan and ideology was) while Kenjaku’s plan plunged the Jujutsu world into complete chaos. In a way, Kenjaku is an escalation of Geto’s monstrous-feminine, from Geto’s vengeful, misguided acts of violence in an attempt to disrupt the system, to Kenjaku’s meaningless, blanket chaos. In Kenjaku and their possession of Geto’s body, Geto’s righteous motives (his will, his autonomy) are gone - there remains only the monstrosity, destruction for its own sake. 

Still, Geto’s actions, misguided as they were, did eventually create real change. Gojo’s goal of raising strong allies and creating a better Jujutsu world was inspired by Geto. Although at first he opposed violent actions as he believed they wouldn’t be able to change anything, eventually, he came to the conclusion that violence was necessary, and in the moment where he massacred the higher-ups, he thought of Geto.