Rogers 1

Justin Rogers

ENGL 502

Dr. Woodford

13 May 2016

Torture and Hegelian Dialectics in Tokyo Ghoul (2014)

Hegelian Dialects are a complicated and highly abstract way of viewing how people

construct their identities. Within their identity of themselves is their sense of right and wrong,

their morals, and the principals by which they choose to interact with their environment and

those around them. Something interesting happens when those dialects are applied to a person

who had a sense of self but that self is physically changed--thus making their former identity one

that does not effectively reflect their new state of being. This, among other subjects, are explored

through the anime Tokyo Ghoul (2014). Some might believe that there is not a good way to use

literary theory on something like an anime but conceptually there is little difference between an

anime and a novel so much of the theories used on literature can also be used on anime. By

viewing the dialogue that goes on in Tokyo Ghoul between the main character and other

characters in these episodes, as well as the situation that the characters put the main character

into, Hegel's explanation of the master-slave dialectic as well as his concept of the thesis-

antithesis dynamic can help to illuminate the mechanics behind the change in identity that the

main character goes through.

Of particular interest to this study of Hegelian Dialectics are the final two episodes of the

first season. Episode eleven, because it gives a short history on a character who has a terrifying

effect on the main character, and episode twelve, because this is the episode where the dialectic

can be best analyzed and showcases the changes happening to the main character throughout the
 Rogers 2

episode before ending in his change of identity, because both of these episodes lend themselves

more to the methods by which two important characters for the season effect a change in the

main character--a change that has been built up throughout the season of the anime but is finally

realized in the last episode due to their "helping" the character reach that point in his process of

becoming self-conscious of his new body and thus his new self.

The world that Tokyo Ghoul is set in reflects that of modern Japan with only one major

change to that reflection. The public is aware of these creatures, or what they think of more as

monsters, known as Ghouls. What makes ghouls different from humans is that ghouls have to eat

humans to get sustenance. If ghouls do not eat human flesh then they end up like any human who

has had nothing to eat and die. Appearance wise, ghouls can look exactly like humans until they

choose to show the other characteristics of their physiology. They have appendages they use for

hunting called "kagune" which vary according to the nature and temperament of the ghoul and

their eyes change from normal white sclera and a colored iris to a black sclera and a red iris. For

the most part though, ghouls look a lot like humans--especially when the ghouls wish not to

stand out amongst the humans. Their ghoul-traits only show themselves when the ghouls wish to

show themselves and this allows them to blend in to human society. The reason they need to do

this is because humanity, naturally, rebukes ghouls as monsters due to the fact that ghouls have

to eat humans in order to survive. Because of this animosity, two social spheres exist in this

world: the ghouls and the humans. While ghouls can enter into human society they only do so at

the surface level and do not generally forge relationships with humans but instead keep to their

own kind socially. Ghouls have effectively created their own world in the shadow of the human

world, so to speak.
 Rogers 3

The protagonist of this anime is a college student named Kaneki and due to a series of

unfortunate events he ends up getting tricked into a secluded area by a ghoul named Rize

(pretending to be a girl who is romantically interested in him) and is attacked. In the process of

this engagement an accumulation of metal beams falls onto the pair of them. A doctor attempts

to save Kaneki's life by transplanting some of Rize's organs into Kaneki. This changes Kaneki

from a normal human to a ghoul-human hybrid and makes up the crux of the tension within the

anime and within Kaneki himself. He becomes a person caught between the two spheres of the

world he is in. Up until this point Kaneki has lived his life as a human, attuned to a human way

of living, but this change to a ghoul causes him to be at odds with what he sees as his identity.

For instance, by the end of the first episode Kaneki is starving and everything he tries to eat is

rejected by his stomach and thrown up. He ends up wandering around alleyways and his

nose/stomach leads him to a dead body which, of course, he tries desperately not to eat because

that would be admitting that he is a ghoul--or rather, a monster, because it is important to note

that Kaneki does not refer to himself as a ghoul until the very last episode of the season.

Kaneki is, when he first becomes a hybrid, what Hegel would define as, "a conception of

being,"(Pinkard 23) which is explained by Terry Pinkard to mean, "indeterminate, free of any

stated logic, a ground from which the logic can develop, and which fulfills the requirement of

treating everything as an explanatory posit,"(23) which Kaneki embodies as this being that has

never existed before and does not know where he fits in the world. He spends much of the season

clinging to the thoughts and ideals he had when he was human because that is the way he has

constructed his identity and he does not know how to incorporate the ghoul within him because

much of being a ghoul conflicts with what his principals are. A perfect foil to him is a character
 Rogers 4

who entirely identifies himself with being a ghoul and sees a weakness in Kaneki because he

does not accept the ghoul-side of himself.

Yamori operates as the main antagonist of the season and is also known as Jason and

prefers to don a hockey mask when he tortures Kaneki. The scenes of torture are the start of the

dialectic that ultimately changes Kaneki's sense of his identity. In episode eleven it is revealed

that Yamori was not always a proficient torturer but when he was captured and interrogated by

humans he underwent torture so cruel that it changed his personality and made him into the

sadistic man who tortures people as a hobby--and unfortunately Kaneki is the person of interest

for Jason. The last episode of the series, episode twelve, is entirely concerned with the torture

Kaneki gets put through along with his inner dialogue with Riza who he shares a consciousness

with since their bodies became intertwined. Michel Foucault, in his book Discipline & Punish on

the birth of the prison, has a section on torture. He states that there are rules in order for

something to be called torture, "To be torture, punishment must obey three principal criteria:

first, it must produce a certain degree of pain...There is a legal code of pain; when it involves

torture, punishment does not fall upon the body indiscriminately or equally; it is

calculated...torture forms part of a ritual."(Foucault 34) Beyond that there are two parts to the

ritual that torture must adhere to, "It must mark the victim...And...public torture and execution

must be spectacular...,"(34) and we see Yamori adhering to all of these principals when he

tortures Kaneki.

Yamori's method for torturing Kaneki does certainly produce pain and it does not fall

upon the body equally. Kaneki is stuck sitting in a chair, shackles around his wrists and ankles,

and a majority of the torture is done to his digits. In fact, for the whole time Kaneki is tortured

there is never anything done to his face and his clothes stay more-or-less intact. Yamori is very
 Rogers 5

calculated in the way he tortures Kaneki, just as Foucault would expect any good torturer to be

and this means he already meets two of Foucault's three criteria. The final piece of the triad is the

two-part ritual, which Yamori does. Kaneki's fingernails and toenails are black and the skin can

be seen in layers from where they were clipped off and a new appendage grew back, meaning he

is marked by the torture. The other part of the ritual, that is must be spectacular, means that there

must be a certain amount of spectacle involved in the torture--someone else either has to see the

torture or see the marks of the torture. This is done in two different ways, the first is the three

different people that come in to mop up the blood that comes from Kaneki's fingers and toes

being removed. The other way this torture is spectacular is by the very fact that it is part of an

anime series created for people to watch. The torture is spectacular, and must be spectacular to

be interesting for the audience--if it was not shocking then there would be no point in the torture

scene to start with. By this paradigm, Yamori is doing everything a good torturer should

according to Foucault's logic.

The part of Kaneki's torture that takes up most of the time the two of them spend together

is Yamori using a bladed clamp to chop off Kaneki's fingers and toes. Because Kaneki is a ghoul

he regenerates missing pieces of himself fairly quickly and this torture goes on and on as Yamori

fills up a bucket with the dismembered body parts. This is characterized by Kaneki saying of his

torture, "Meanwhile, Yamori took my hands and feet again and again, and again, and

again..."(Mikasano) showing not only that it was ongoing but that the torture is affecting him

psychologically. Following that description of the torture a dialectic is already starting to be seen

functioning between Yamori and Kaneki. By showing Kaneki that every time his fingers and

toes get taken off they grow back forces Kaneki to realize he is not human and Kaneki displays

this realization when he says, "Every time my fingers and toes grew back in, I knew that I had
 Rogers 6

become a monster." (Mikasano) This is the start of the dialectic where Kaneki starts to realize

more of his own identity because of the torture that Yamori puts him through.

Hegel says, of what he calls the Master and Slave dialectic, "The lord is the

consciousness that exists for itself...The lord relates himself mediately to the bondsman through a

being [a thing] that is independent, for it is just this which holds the bondsman in bondage; it is

his chain from which he could not break free in the struggle, thus proving himself to be

dependent, to possess his independence..." (Hegel 544) and this effectively describes the

situation that Kaneki and Yamori are in during these scenes of torture. Yamori is the lord in this

scenario, a consciousness that exists for itself and is independent because of it. Meanwhile

Kaneki is the bondsman because he is literally in bondage, chained to a chair, and cannot break

free in the struggle between himself and Yamori in order to possess his own independence. It is

important to note that these bonds are purely psychological in terms of Hegel's dialectic. If

Kaneki can ever gain his own independence then he can break through the bonds that keep him

bonded to Yamori. Kaneki must recognize himself for what he is, both human and ghoul. By

denying the ghoul within him, he is too weak to take on Yamori but the torture he goes through

operates as a dialectic process and, "the truth of his certainty of himself."(545)

Hegel explains a certain process by which this dialectic works. The first is that there must

be two people responding and reacting to each other because, "Each sees the other do the same

as it does; each does itself what it demands of the other, and therefore also does what it does only

in so far as the other does the same. Action by one side only would be useless because what is to

happen can only be brought about by both," (542) meaning that the dialectic cannot happen

without two individuals being able to react to one another. In the case of Kaneki, he is the one

who is changing but there are actions on both sides because if only one person was performing
 Rogers 7

actions there would be no one to react to what he is doing. Hegel is saying that if a person cannot

see others react to them then that person cannot learn anything about themselves. It takes

performing actions and seeing how other people react to those actions to get a sense of what their

identity is. Yamori is constantly showcasing how weak Kaneki is and that it is Yamori's privilege

as the stronger of the two to do whatever he likes to Kaneki. This is a similar situation to what

Hegel is saying about the lord and the bondsman. By entering into this state where Yamori is

torturing Kaneki and showing Kaneki things about himself by taking advantage of his

powerlessness due to his incomplete self-consciousness. However Yamori is not the only

character in the torture room with Kaneki because inside Kaneki's head is Rize who is working

on Kaneki psychologically, also in a dialectic, to show him that he needs to accept the fact that

he is a ghoul.

Just after the scene where Kaneki talks about losing his fingers and toes only for them to

grow back the scenery changes to an all-white world where Kaneki is still bound to a chair but

Yamori is nowhere to be found. Only Rize is with Kaneki in this place which can be thought of

as Kaneki's mind or consciousness. Currently, it is white and innocent. Rize immediately asks

Kaneki to tell her about his mother and this tour of Kaneki's memories reveals that he idealized

his mother and wanted to emulate her. He sees her as a person who never harmed another person

and, on the contrary, worked herself to death trying to help everyone--including giving money to

her sister. This starts to reveal the reasons for Kaneki's own philosophy, "It's better to be hurt

than to hurt others,"(Mikasano) which shows why Kaneki has such a hard time accepting that he

is a ghoul in the first place. To identify as a ghoul would mean killing humans in order to live

and he is unwilling to hurt others. Because of his philosophy he is also unable to defend himself

against ghouls like Yamori who want to prey on the weak but in the world of ghouls there is no
 Rogers 8

force like the police to protect people so Kaneki is left in bondage to Yamori. This is why Riza's

comment about his philosophy is, "Which is why you're going through all this," showing him

that it is his philosophy to not hurt others and stand up for himself which caused him to be in the

position of getting tortured to start with.

The scene goes back to the torture room with Yamori and the violence against Kaneki

increases, this time in the form of Yamori putting a centipede in Kaneki's ear. Instead of trying to

fight back, Kaneki begs Yamori not to do it. Of course, being the sadist that he is, Yamori only

gets pleasure from the begging and looks to be in a state of ecstasy when he watches Kaneki

writhe in pain from the centipede. Kaneki is then back in his subconscious with Rize who

teasingly reminds him of his philosophy not to hurt others. She then points out that Kaneki's

idealization of his mother is misplaced because she chose to overwork herself trying to support

her lazy sister rather than pay attention to him, her son, and ultimately died from overworking

herself--leaving him all alone. Then Kaneki is brought back to the torture chamber for one final

act of cruelty from Yamori. He has tied up a couple and tells Kaneki to choose which one

Yamori kills but if he does not choose one or the other then both of them will die. Kaneki tells

Yamori, "There's no way I can pick one! If you have to kill someone, kill me!," (Mikasano) and

seals the fate of both. Yamori tells him, "It's all your fault," (Mikasano) which is what Rize tells

him shortly after when Kaneki is also saying that it is all his fault, "You'll just sit there blaming

yourself, an keep blaming yourself, but going on blaming yourself won't change anything. You

don't try to change. It's all your fault," (Mikasano) and there is this repetition of "all your fault"

from all three characters at this point.

A discussion of Hegel's idea on how thought processes works is necessary to understand

the mechanics going on in this next scene, this conversation between Rize and Kaneki. Hegel
 Rogers 9

explains the system by which a person makes new thoughts and connections about phenomenon

in this way: everyone starts with a "thesis" like, "All salad is bad," then an "antithesis" conflicts

with that thesis: "Salads are good for the body," and this antithesis combines with the thesis in

what he calls a "synthesis": "Sometimes salad is good," which becomes the new thesis and the

process starts all over again.(Hegel 23) This is how a person comes to make new thoughts and

principals that they understand, like going from salad being a bad thing to realizing sometimes it

is good to eat a salad. Hegel also explains this as, "Of the Absolute it must be said that it is

essentially a result, that only in the end is it what it truly is...,"(11) meaning that an absolute

thought does not mean it is the absolute truth. Whatever people think to be the truth are merely

the current results of their thesis-antithesis dynamic and eventually their thesis will meet a new

antithesis and synthesize a new thesis.

With that dynamic in place, an analysis of the dialogue happening between Rize and

Kaneki can begin. Through this dialogue it becomes obvious that Kaneki is the thesis in the

situation and Rize offers the antithesis which Kaneki has to synthesize through in order to come

to a new thesis. This happens again and again until Kaneki finally comes to a realization he has

been needing to come to from the beginning of the season. What is important to remember is that

Rize is not doing this from the kindness of her heart, she is a ghoul who was going to eat Kaneki

until unfortunate events ended up in the two of them being combined into one thing. As such, she

is more interested in Kaneki acting like a ghoul for her own sake--because she wants to revel in

what she previously took pleasure from by killing and eating all the time. Because this is her

motivation, her method for making Kaneki see her point of view is to play on his fears and goad

him into anger. She does this first by reminding him of all the people he cares for that have not

died yet, the people he cannot protect because he is weak and will not stand up for himself. His
 Rogers 10

principal of not wishing to hurt others gets in the way of him begin able to save anyone else,

much less himself. Her goal is to get him to re-think his principal and instead adopt one so that

he will hurt and kill people to get what he wants--the same principal that Rize lived by when she

had a body of her own.

After Rize shows him images of what Yamori will do to Kaneki's friends after he is done

with Kaneki, the following dialogue happens between the two:

"You see, this is the way of life you chose. This is the future you chose. Why are

you crying? Why are you sobbing? You chose to be hurt rather than to hurt others,

right? You're nice and wonderful. But while it seems like you're choosing both,

you're really forsaking both. Your mother was the same way. If she had turned

aside her intolerable sister's requests, she wouldn't have died from overwork."

Says Rize.(Mikasano)

A lot is happening in the first part of the dialogue between the two of them because Rize is

invoking a lot of thoughts and memories from Kaneki then putting them into question. The first

part is a question for him to think on because it is her main point: "You chose to be hurt rather

than to hurt others, right?"(Mikasano) and this is an important point because this is the thesis

Kaneki currently has. She is providing the antithesis with the rest of her argument in order to

change his thesis into one that she can agree with. To further her points she reminds him that by

choosing nothing he is not saving anything, but losing everything. The use of the word 'both'

here should invoke memories of the couple that Yamori just killed in front of him because

Kaneki did not choose one over the other. She then challenges his idealization of his mother,

which is where he is getting his principal ideal from to start with. She notes that his mother
 Rogers 11

would not have died so early on if she was not working to provide for herself, her son, and her

selfish sister who was taking advantage of her.

What she follows up with is also a jab at Kaneki's mother, and an effective one because it

begins to get Kaneki synthesizing. She points out, "What a foolish mother, huh? If she loved

you, she should have abandoned her foolish sister,"(Mikasano) which gets a realization out of

Kaneki. He comes up with a new thesis thanks to Rize's antithesis, "Stop talking. Mom. Why?

Why did you leave me all alone? I missed you. I hate being alone. I wish you would have chosen

me! I wish you would have lived...for me!,"(Mikasano) and this is just the sort of reaction that

Rize was trying to get from Kaneki with her antithesis. Following this outburst from Kaneki is a

very fast-paced back-and-forth dialogue between the two where the dynamic of a thesis-

antithesis can be seen happening:

"Even if it meant forsaking your aunt?" Asks Rize.

"Even if it meant that!" Kaneki exclaims.

"Even if it meant hurting someone?"

"Even if it meant that!"

"Even if it meant taking her life?"

"Even if it meant that!"

"Good boy."(Mikasano)

This quick back-and-forth dialogue between the two of them is an ideal example of how

Hegelian dialectics operate. Kaneki brings the thesis and Rize is applying the antithesis. The two

combine in a synthesis that brings about Kaneki's new thesis which Rize then, once again applies

an antithesis to, and this cycle happens again and again until Rize has gotten the final result that

she wants from Kaneki. At the point Rize says that last line she flies at Kaneki with open arms
 Rogers 12

and a heartfelt look on her face, looking simultaneously like Kaneki's savior and a motherly

figure when she wraps him up in her arms. Rize has finally managed to illicit a change in

Kaneki, who has synthesized a new thesis rather than his principal of letting himself be hurt

rather than hurt others. But Rize is not done quite yet with applying her antithesis to Kaneki's

thesis. She managed to get him to say that in the past he should have killed his aunt in order to

save himself and his mother, but she has not yet been able to talk about Kaneki's current situation

and his future from that point on.

The following dialogue is the last series of thesis-antithesis dynamics going on between

Rize and Kaneki for the episode, and for the first season as a whole:

"That's right Kaneki. There are times when you have to give up one thing to

preserve the other. Your mother couldn't do that. That isn't kindness. That's just

being weak. She didn't have the strength--the resolve to turn her back. Can you

still remain on the side of being hurt? Can you abide someone like Yamori?" Asks

Rize.

"No. I can't!" Kaneki exclaims.(Mikasano)

This exchange is the point that Rize knows she has caused a lasting change in Kaneki. He really

has changed his principles at this point and will not hesitate to fight of Yamori, meaning he will

not die at Yamori's hands and consequently neither will what is left of Rize's consciousness. That

was the immediate concern, her own well-being in this body that she no longer has control over

herself. Instead, she now has to manipulate Kaneki into doing what she wants him to do with the

body that they both inhabit. In a broader perspective, Kaneki has been struggling throughout the

season with the aversion to eating human flesh. He has been lucky to meet people who make this

easier for him by scavenging for flesh then neatly packaging it up as if it was meat from a
 Rogers 13

butcher shop but the fact of the matter is that in the ghoul world every ghoul has to be able to

fend for themselves and Kaneki's reliance on others is a form of weakness. This is also

contradictory to Rize's personality because when she had her own body she would eat human

after human with reckless abandon--so it is in her interest to return to that lifestyle she enjoyed

beforehand.

Once Kaneki has accepted this new thesis he is able to fight back against Yamori

however before he does that he has to fully absorb his antithesis, Rize. In the fashion of being a

ghoul, the only way to absorb something is to literally consume it so he pins her to the ground

and proceeds to devour her. Rize is not displeased by this, she talks in what sounds like a

motherly sort of way, "To live is to devour others. Eat,"(Mikasano) and so she gets eaten. This is

the point that Kaneki says what he has never before admitted in the season, "I am a

ghoul...,"(Mikasano) and that statement represents Hegel's earlier issue that the bondsman does

not have a sense of his own identity so he is dependent on the lord. Now that Kaneki has

accepted the ghoul side of himself, he is no longer without his own self-conscious identity and

can break away from the lord. He does that by breaking free of his chains literally, on a

metaphorical level he is also breaking the chains of his bondage to the lord, and gets into a fight

with Yamori. What is interesting about the end of this fight is not that Kaneki wins, it is what he

does after winning the fight between the two of them. Kaneki inverses their roles and stabs

Yamori again and again until he starts to count back from one-thousand just like he had Kaneki

doing, this establishes a new master-slave situation but rather than play with Yamori, Kaneki

does the same thing with Yamori that he did with Rize once he has absorbed the lesson that

Yamori taught him. Yamori said that it was the right of the strong to be able to do what they

wished with the weak so Kaneki does to Yamori what Yamori wanted to do to him, he eats
 Rogers 14

Yamori. This physical eating is the first time he eats actual flesh that he killed himself and

proves that his whole ideal of not hurting others has changed into one that prioritizes hurting

others to protect himself. Riza did a very good dialectical job of transforming Kaneki into the

hybrid, or rather the ghoul, that she wanted him to be.

The series also does something unique during this fight scene. Normally they play the

usual opening song at the beginning of the episode but it curiously never plays at the beginning,

the episode just begins to unfold. But while it might seem like either producers forgot, or chose

not to, play the song it ends up being played during the fight between Kaneki and Yamori. What

playing the opening song at the end of the episode signifies then, is not just the end of the

episode at this point, but it implies that this moment is just the beginning. Perhaps, the start of a

new beginning for Kaneki now that he has fully identified himself and incorporated the ghoul-

side of himself to complete his hybridity. Hegel would say that he has become a full self-

consciousness now that he has broken through his previous bondage and recognized his full

identity. His new sense of self will lead to new relationships, changes to the ones he currently

held, and likely a lot of dead bodies to eat if Rize continues to have her way with Kaneki. It turns

out that producers did not forget the opening song at all, they chose to place it at the end to signal

to viewers that there is still more to come.

The field of anime studies is still in its infancy and most scholars who even deign to pay

attention to this medium of growing popularity prefer to look at the different anime series

through media theory or by looking at it in terms of genre. (Denison 15, 101) Very few scholars,

if any, have sought to utilize literary and philosophical theories in order to better examine and

analyze the conflicts and dilemmas that different animes are trying to wrestle with. Tokyo Ghoul

is an anime that shows a conflict happening between two opposing sides that cannot help but
 Rogers 15

wage war due to their differences but ultimately have more in common with one another than

they have differences, just as groups find themselves in conflict against each other though each

side has just as valid a reason to be as the other. This is embodied within the main character,

Kaneki, who struggles with finding a balance between the ghoul and human within himself.

Sometimes he goes too far from one extreme to the other and cannot find balance but the hope

that is presented throughout the anime is that he is working every day to achieve that balance.

This translates very easily to people who struggle with managing the whole of their identities

themselves and that is why Hegelian Dialectics can be applied to the mechanics that the fictional

Kaneki goes through in finding his identity, because Kaneki struggles with the same basic issues

people in reality.

This study of Kaneki's change in identity could be added to by including an analysis of

Jung's idea of the shadow as well as Freud's conversation about the Oedipus Complex, because

those are also issues that Kaneki is struggling through in the episode and ultimately have to be

worked through in order for him to form his identity. However, showing that there are even more

theories that could be applied to the anime proves that some of the same concepts used to

analyze literature for further meaning can also be used on anime. The medium of anime itself is a

fruitful one and anime studies is a worthy pursuit for academics just as the field of film studies is

also a growing one. True, anime is a younger medium and even younger if one considers that

westerners still have to rely on English translations of the Japanese animes are originally

published in but that makes them no less worthy of analysis, nor any less full of depth than any

classical novel. This examination of Tokyo Ghoul and Kaneki's change of identity through

torture and Hegelian dialectics should prove that while the field of anime studies is new, as is

this particular anime, there is much to be gained from the study of the story it offers.
 Rogers 16

Works Cited

Denison, Rayna. Anime : A Critical Introduction. London: Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2015. Print.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison. 2nd Vintage Books ed. New

York: Vintage Books, 1995. Print.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Arnold V. Miller, and J. N. Findlay. Phenomenology of Spirit.

Oxford England: Clarendoess, 1977. Print.

Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2. ed. New York, NY: W.W.

Norton & Co., 2010. Print.

Mikasano, Chuji, et al. Tokyo Ghoul. Complete First Season /. Collector's edition. Flower

Mound, Texas: FUNimation Productions, 2015. DVD.

Pinkard, Terry P. Hegel's Dialectic : The Explanation of Possibility. Philadelphia: Temple

University Press, 1988. Print.