Prohibition of “don’t Look” and
secretiveness
Kitayama, who made many psychoanalytic
contributions (1985, 1987) to Japanese culture, looked at an old taboo often found
in Japanese folklore against seeing and then revealing, in the notion of the
“prohibition of ‘don’t look’.” He (1985) argues that this “preoedipal taboo” is repeatedly observed in
this folklore, and points out that in many Japanese stories, when the hero
(usually a man) violates this taboo, I.e., when he breaks a promise to his lover
or wife not to look at her in certain situations, he usually sees, instead of a
beautiful woman, an animal that is "an ugly mixture of split 'good' and
'bad' mothers" (p. 184). Even though this taboo is eventually to be
violated (as opposed to the oedipal incest taboo, which is never to be violated
throughout life), the abundance of this type of folklore in Japan
In relation to the oedipal issue, Kitayama states: “As Freud
used the Oedipus myth to illustrate an unconscious event in human
affairs, I think they also reflect certain aspects of the infant's development.
As the stories develop only between the hero and the heroine, they need
interpretations in terms of a two-body relationship.”(1985) “The prohibition of don't
look is another important element. As the hero
breaks this prohibition, he usually sees an animal instead of a beautiful
woman. This is such an ineffective form of taboo that the hero cannot help
breaking it and being confronted with an ugly mixture of split 'good' and 'bad'
mothers. The hero's 'animalization' is accompanied by his insufficient capacity
to accept the whole object. This maternal or pre-oedipal prohibition could be called 'the taboo to
be broken in time' in contrast to the paternal taboo of incest, which is absolute.”
