The Crystal Ball and the Euphonium:
A story of two kinds of leadership, and
Hibike! Euphonium's final boss
Some will remind us of the saying:While the Romans deliberate, Saguntum is lost.On the other hand, when the few decide everything, simply on the basis of their own affects, freedom and the common good are lost. For human wits are too sluggish to penetrate everything right away. But by asking advice, listening, and arguing, they’re sharpened. When people try all means, in the end they find ways to the things they want which everyone approves, and no one had ever thought of before.
Introduction
The period immediately preceding the Kansai Regionals round of the All-Japan Band Competition in Hibike! Euphonium S3 must have been the darkest time for the Kitauji concert band. Unlike in the previous years where a single audition determined the band's A-division ensemble roster for the whole year, Kitauji has now begun holding auditions before each round of the competition. The results of the audition before Kansai Regionals, announced in S3E8, thus mark the first time that people in the band are losing positions they had already earned in a previous audition for Kyoto Prefecturals. Among other changes, Kanade Hisaishi is sent to be B-division ensemble, decreasing the number of euphoniums in the competition roster from three to two, and the number of tubas is increased to an unprecedented four. Transfer student Mayu Kuroe is selected to play the euphonium part in the soli of the band's free choice piece, unseating the soloist at Prefecturals, the band's president Kumiko Oumae, in her final year of high school.
The rank-and-file members of the band buzz with disquiet over Taki-sensei's Kansai roster, either on their own or on other's behalves, with particular focus on Mayu being chosen over Kumiko to play in the soli. As we approach S3E10, the malaise spreads upward, becoming the focus of the section leaders' meeting in S3E9. When Kumiko privately admits to her best friend Reina Kousaka, who is also the drum major, that she herself has doubts about the new roster, Reina tells her that she is a failure of a president. The tension properly explodes in S3E10 when the band openly questions the grounds for the multiple audition system, and the band's student leadership is subsequently torn asunder in public. Reina and the vice president Shuuichi Tsukamoto fight in the corridor, in full audial range of the members in the band room. After school, Kumiko's attempt to get Reina on board with asking Taki-sensei to explain his roster choices to the band is rejected. Everything lies in tatters, with Kansai Regionals only a weekend away.
Feeling lost and defeated, Kumiko decides to use a one-time special item given to her one year ago. Instead of taking the train home, Kumiko follows the address on a postcard to the Kamigyou Ward of Kyoto, where the vice president of the Kitauji concert band of two years ago, Asuka Tanaka, now lives.
Kumiko seems completely unaware, however, that the beloved senpai she sees as a source of help is in fact someone whom she will eventually have to overcome. As Ayano Takeda, author of Hibike! Euphonium, says in the afterword of the final novel in the series:
While I was hesitating if I had anything left to write, Kitauji's secret boss Mayu Kuroe appeared after waiting for her chance. (BTW, Asuka's the final boss, LOL).This essay is dedicated to telling the story of this forgotten front, overshadowed by the struggle taking place in the light over the final form of Kitauji's meritocracy. It is no coincidence that Kumiko ends up in Asuka's living room when things begin to fall apart. Concurrent with the birth of the culture of meritocracy in Kumiko's first year, there was also born a particular ideal of leadership that grows out of the characteristic dispositions of Asuka Tanaka. A leader animated by such dispositions will appear capable of swift and decisive action. She will proceed according to the course of action whose support outweighs that of all the others in the aggregate point of view, even if it requires overruling the feelings and wishes of those opposed. Kumiko was unknowingly caught in its grip for most of S3, and almost completely surrounded by peers who were animated in a similar way by its core ethos. But had it not been overcome, Kitauji would have been defeated at Kansai, and not just in the sense that they wouldn't have made it through to Nationals. Meritocracy at Kitauji would also never have gained a human face. The reason why Asuka is the final boss for the band is because she was the representative of this ideal who was most difficult to resist. Ironically, that is because the willingness to overrule others appears in its most charitable guise in her character.
Against this backdrop, a very different style of leadership, that has its source in Kumiko's very different characteristic disposition, finally came into its own on the morning of Kansai Regionals in Kumiko's third year. Typically, a leader animated by such a disposition will look more like she is vacillating, delaying everything until the last moment. Sometimes, she really is vacillating. But this is because of her unaggregated concern for each and every person. She refuses to let anyone give up on what matters to them, and will always try her best to avoid overruling anyone's feelings and wishes, even those opposed to hers as things stand, and even if it seems like the simplest way to fulfill some goal.
The story that I will try to tell is concentrated around Kumiko and Asuka, as the two starkest embodiments of the two types of leaders. Truthfully, it is not the straightforward linear progression suggested by Takeda's phrase 'final boss'. For it is simply false that Kumiko could have managed to do what she eventually did without Asuka's input, or the input of all of her peers. This is compatible with Kumiko being the only character on this occasion who could have put that input to meaningful use.
Our discussion will be carried out in four movements. In Part I, we shall extract a more detailed account of Asuka's and Kumiko's characteristic dispositions through a historical survey of the events up and through S2E10. In Part II, we see how and why Asuka has become the person that she is, and reveal the systemic weakness of the leadership style that grows out of her characteristic dispositions that yet escapes being exposed. In Part III, we put everything together in the historical present, revealing Asuka to be the final and most dangerous of the forces preventing Kumiko from acting on her characteristic disposition, and pushing her to a course that would surely end in disaster. In Part IV, we see how, once finally freed from her paralysis by Kaori, Kumiko's characteristic disposition allows her to find the way forward that will do justice to everybody's feelings. Then, I give some closing reflections.
Part I
One major reason why we are looking first at S2E10 is because the second season of Hibike! Euphonium is the season expressly dedicated to Asuka's story and her relationship with Kumiko. Since Asuka is already two years graduated by the time of S3, this is our best source of evidence about Asuka's characteristic dispositions, while at the same time we also see the younger Kumiko beginning to solidify the dispositions that will animate her throughout the rest of the series.
But we are also pointed here by Asuka's parting words to Kumiko at the end of their conversation in S3E10. Kumiko is unable to accept Asuka's suggestion that she take the soli from Mayu, but still has no idea what to do about the problem. Asuka responds to her despair:
Not my problem! But what I like about you is that you just speak your mind without thinking about the consequences. Like you did to me. Just so you know, I still don't think you were right about a single thing you said. But I had no choice but to take it because you threw a tantrum. (Asuka-senpai?) You never do anything until the last moment anyway.Here, Asuka is alluding to the events of S2E10. Right on the cusp of Nationals in Kumiko's first year, Asuka almost resigns from the A-division ensemble, and it is only Kumiko's desperate intervention in an emotional explosion behind the school that prevents this from happening. Kumiko succeeds, but Asuka still thinks better judgment would come down in favour of her resignation. Hence her description of said explosion as a 'tantrum', conjuring the (endearing) image of a child attempting to force their way despite being unable to back it up with compelling reasons.
The goal of this Part is to show that the interaction between Asuka's and Kumiko's characteristic dispositions is responsible for Asuka coming to remember S2E10 this way. Kumiko did have good reasons to oppose Asuka's decision to resign, but Asuka could not have recognised them as such given the person that she is. Their characteristic dispositions will be elucidated in the process.
Inside Asuka's head
Let's start by trying to reconstruct Asuka's deliberation. We learn along with Kumiko in S2E9 that Asuka has a very strong personal reason to remain in the A-division ensemble. Asuka plays the euphonium to maintain a connection with her father, the famous euphonium player Masakazu Shindou, who her mother divorced when Asuka was two, and has since prevented her from seeing even once.
This alignment begins to fail in the latter half of S2. We again find out along with Kumiko in S2E9 that Asuka has only been able to participate in band conditional on a fragile agreement with her controlling mother that her grades would always take precedence. Now, the timeline of the band's preparations up till Nationals also happens to coincide with third-year students' usual preparation window for university entrance exams, giving rise to the staffroom incident in S2E7, where Asuka's mother visits the school and attempts to force Asuka to quit, striking her across the face in the staffroom when she tries to say she doesn't want to. Taki-sensei refuses to accept a forced resignation, and so on paper, Asuka remains in the A-division ensemble. But from this point on, Asuka's attendance at practices becomes increasingly irregular. By mid-S2E7, she has been absent for an entire month, and only makes a surprise appearance to play in the station concert in S2E8. By then, it is an open question among all members of the band whether Asuka will be able to perform at Nationals at all.
The effect on the band's morale is as one would expect. At practice the day after the staffroom incident, Asuka receives the entire bass section's expressions of worry that she will not be able to play with them at Nationals. To her credit, Asuka anticipates what is coming, and immediately has Natsuki Nakagawa begin preparing to replace her as first euphonium. Yet, it is only at the end of S2E8, with less than a month to Nationals, that Natsuki is officially named the backup first euphonium should the worst come to pass. In other words, Asuka's absence remains live and salient, affecting the band throughout this entire period. Following the first month of Asuka's absence, a rumour that her mother is pressuring the vice principal of the school to remove Asuka from band sends the ensemble into such disarray that Taki-sensei cancels ensemble practice.
Putting the above all together, we have the following two propositions:
- Asuka strongly desires that her father hear her play at Nationals.
- Asuka genuinely believes that it would be 'for the best' (better for the band) if she were to resign, because she cannot guarantee that she will be able to play at Nationals.
The relation is this: (2) defeats (1), and the reason is that for Asuka, (2)-type reasons always defeat (1)-type reasons. In the earlier portion of S2, we see Asuka block Nozomi Kasaki's attempts to rejoin the band on the grounds that Nozomi 'would not be an asset to the band'. We also have evidence that this invocation is not merely public-facing. Asuka vetoes Nozomi's application to rejoin because Mizore Yoroizuka, the band's sole oboe and previously close friends with Nozomi, suffers anxiety attacks at any sight or mention of Nozomi, although Nozomi herself is completely oblivious to this. In private in S2E5 and S2E9, Asuka admits that she was aware of Nozomi's obliviousness and confusion, and she knew how much Nozomi regretted quitting the band in the previous year due to the conflict with their now graduated seniors. But she weighed those feelings (a (1)-type reason) against the importance of preserving the band's sole oboe (a (2)-type reason), deciding on that basis to block Nozomi's reentry and leave her in the dark about the situation with Mizore, lest she trigger an anxiety attack right before Regionals by seeking reconciliation. (2) defeating (1) as above is simply another instance of this more general pattern that we are beginning to see here.
Given the effects of her absence on morale though, wouldn't it be more natural to think that it would instead be for the best if Asuka tried to remain in the ensemble and then brought the morale back up with her return? What exactly is the reason that Asuka thinks it is 'for the best' that she resign?
The answer lies in a subtle ambiguity in the meaning of people's worry that Asuka will not be able to play at Nationals. Consider Asuka's reunion with the bass section again. Aside from Gotou, who explicitly asks whether Asuka is taking any risks by coming to practice, the reactions of the other members of the bass section are all simple expressions of relief that Asuka has returned. Such expressions can be interpreted as indicating concern for Asuka's welfare, in the vein of Gotou's question, but they can equally well be interpreted as indicating concern for the speakers' own welfare, which the speaker might take to depend on whether Asuka quits. Asuka's reply very clearly indicates which interpretation she takes - she completely ignores Gotou and tells the bass section with a smile that she 'won't make any trouble for them'.
I'm fine. I won't cause trouble for anyone. Isn't that good enough? All that matters is how the performance turns out. That's it.Thus, we are able to see that this early in S2E7, even before the start of her long absence, Asuka already has it in her head that:
- The other members of the band are primarily concerned about themselves and their performance, and only secondarily about her, if at all.
Unlike (1) and (2), which mainly concern Asuka herself, (3) makes many predictions about other people's actions and thoughts. We have already seen a bit of how it colours the way that Asuka interprets even the information that she is able to receive directly. But worse still, we have evidence that (3) is a fundamental starting point in all of Asuka's thinking.
To see this, we need to revisit the Nozomi-Mizore incident. Asuka eventually finds out in S2E4 from Kumiko that she had misread the situation between the two of them. Mizore's panic attacks were not a sign of hatred, but rather indicated her fear that Nozomi did not consider her as close a friend as she considers Nozomi, since Nozomi quit the band the previous year along with many others, but did not inform her at all. That is, she wants to be close to Nozomi, and similarly, the oblivious Nozomi also cherishes her relationship with Mizore. So it was all a misunderstanding, and there had never been any need to keep them apart in the first place. But here is what Asuka says about it all:
Ultimately, Mizore-chan was fixated on Nozomi-chan because she was afraid of being alone. Yuuko-chan was just insurance. ... I think people are fairly calculating in terms of their behaviour.
This concludes our reconstruction of Asuka's interpretation of the situation when she enters the conversation in S2E10. By way of review, we attempted to capture it in the following three propositions:
- Asuka strongly desires that her father hear her play at Nationals.
- Asuka genuinely believes that it would be 'for the best' (better for the band) if she were to resign, because she cannot guarantee that she will be able to play at Nationals.
- (Asuka genuinely believes that) the other members of the band are primarily concerned about themselves and their performance, and only secondarily about her, if at all.
What Kumiko sees
Thus far, we have followed the development of events up till S2E10 from Asuka's point of view. It is time for us to switch perspectives and move forward into the confrontation proper through Kumiko's eyes. If Kumiko truly had good reasons to dissuade Asuka, then she must have possessed them by the time she decided to initiate the confrontation. It is because her efforts in the initial phase fail that the subsequent explosion is required, and this then influences how the event is remembered by Asuka. This section is devoted specifically to the initiation phase and Kumiko's reasons.
Keep in mind here that unlike us, Kumiko does not have a clear view of what is happening in Asuka's head. Following her visit to Asuka's house in S2E9, Kumiko has become aware of Proposition (1). But during the visit, Asuka does not commit herself to either staying or leaving the ensemble. The first sign Kumiko gets that something is wrong comes two days after the visit, when she overhears Asuka tell Haruka and Kaori that she has decided to switch her focus to exams, and is ready to let Natsuki play in her stead. Kaori attempts to dissuade Asuka by telling her that Natsuki said she would rather Asuka play, but Asuka dismisses this, arguing that no matter Natsuki's true preferences, publicly, she would still have had to present as concerned for Asuka in order to avoid running afoul of the informal social order in the band.
This is a seriously distorted view of events. In early S2E9, it is Natsuki herself who asks Kumiko to negotiate Asuka's return with Asuka's mother during her visit to the house. If Asuka's interpretation were correct, then these observations would render Natsuki an extremely incompetent liar. On this same occasion, Nozomi and Mizore also approach Kumiko unprompted with messages for Kumiko to pass to Asuka:
Tell Asuka-senpai that we're waiting for her.Kumiko fails to complete her mission, firstly because Asuka has timed the visit to coincide with her mother's absence, and secondly because of her shock at finding out about Proposition (1). But the fact that someone had to act as envoy from the band to Asuka already shows the enormous difference in how they arrived at their respective pictures of the situation. Absent for an extended period of time, and receiving only reports via text message from Haruka and Kaori, what's inside Asuka's head (in this case, specifically Proposition (3)), must bear most of the responsibility for the picture of the situation that she ends up with. She is even absent for the weakest evidence that the band's motives are not as self-centered as Proposition (3) would suggest, such as Haruka's attempt in S2E8 to rally the band after the first month of Asuka's absence. After Haruka's speech, the band at large realises how much they had been relying on Asuka, and agrees to step up their efforts to keep things running so that Asuka will have the space she needs to sort out the problems at home. This is weak evidence, since Asuka is correct that people can say very different things in public from what they actually feel. But it would have been the easiest to obtain by direct access, since all one would have had to do was show up at band practice, and Asuka isn't even able to do that.
In exact contrast, as envoy, Kumiko has all the weak evidence that one could gather from public scenes like Haruka's speech, and much stronger evidence gathered in private conversation with different members of the band. Aside from all the characters named above, we also see that the entire bass section is present the morning after the visit to receive Kumiko's report to Natsuki, invested both in Asuka's return and her welfare. So we see that unlike Asuka, Kumiko's picture of the situation is formed via direct access to the situation on the ground, and her direct access also reaches much further than a typical member of the band would see by attending practice.
The story is not yet complete, however, and there are two ways of seeing this which both point to the same thing. One way in which the above falls short is that for all we have said, Kumiko herself has made no contribution to her having her good reasons. All she did was show up to practice and then be recruited by Natsuki. Another way, perhaps more serious, is that it is an open question whether the above really delivers any good reasons. Strictly speaking, what follows from what has been said so far is that Kumiko will have the more accurate view than Asuka of what the band members want. But these are (1)-type reasons, and we already know what Asuka thinks of (1)-type reasons - they are always defeated by (2)-type reasons. More concretely, the band's honestly conveyed preferences about Asuka's participation could well mean nothing to someone who thinks 'all that matters is how the performance turns out'. They could simply dismiss all those honest preferences as failures of practical reasoning.
I have to admit that immense difficulties arise here from unclarity about how the notion of 'for the best' as Asuka uses it is related to the preferences of the band's members. That it is what Asuka takes to be the band members' ultimate wishes, and that this ultimate wish is for them to have an excellent performance, was my best attempt to explain how 'for the best' figures in Asuka's cognition. Drawing this equivalence at least explains why it matters to Asuka whether people are saying what they are truly feeling, but yet she dismisses people like Haruka and Kaori whom she cannot reasonably doubt are actually concerned for her. Ultimate wishes cannot be simply read off what typical people say, because people are often misleading or reticent about what they want. At the same time, even honest folk can be misguided about what would serve their ultimate wishes, so Asuka could think that although people like Haruka and Kaori are honestly concerned for her, they really shouldn't be, since she is only contingently instrumentally useful for the performance. If, more realistically, Haruka and Kaori's ultimate wishes instead really are for Asuka to play in the band, this would still count for almost nothing in aggregate against the rest of the band members' assumed ultimate wishes for an excellent performance, to which Asuka is still only contingently instrumentally useful.
Thus, on my view, Asuka's notion of 'for the best' requires two abstract operations to be carried out on even honestly conveyed wishes before they can constitute a basis for action. First, it must be determined whether and how those wishes serve each individual's ultimate wishes. Second, if we relax the assumption that each individual possesses the same ultimate wish, it must be determined how the various individual ultimate wishes are to be aggregated collectively.
It's not necessary that Asuka be able to recognise Kumiko's good reasons as such in order for Kumiko to have them. The point of this detour was to show that whatever it is Asuka takes good reasons to issue from, it is something highly abstract. And the first step to understanding Kumiko's distinctive way of approaching situations involves taking seriously the possibility that good reasons don't have to be grounded in such abstract considerations. More radically, it might even be said that the young Kumiko's thinking simply isn't explicitly organised around any notion of good reasons or 'for the best', and often doesn't look like deliberation on action at all. That is to say, Kumiko probably wouldn't be able to clearly articulate what good reasons are if you asked her. But her actions seem to be moved by certain things in the way that one would be moved by seeing them as good reasons.
Take, for example, her conversation with Reina at the Fireworks Festival in S2E1 about Nozomi's situation (at this point, neither of them know that Mizore is also part of the story). Reina gives Asuka-style arguments about how Nozomi should have understood the consequences of quitting last year, and is worried about Nozomi destabilising the ensemble if she were to rejoin. Although Kumiko is able to understand the points Reina is making, her attention rests mainly on how sad it must be for Nozomi not to be able to play in an ensemble with everyone, given how much Nozomi loves the flute. Note that Reina hasn't exchanged even a single word with Nozomi before passing judgments which themselves seem designed to remain valid no matter what Nozomi might feel. It is Kumiko alone who has actually talked with Nozomi previously, and she is clearly extremely concerned for how Nozomi feels and whether she is getting what she really wants. After the Fireworks Festival, it is also Kumiko's feelings of concern that lead to her hearing out Nozomi and other involved persons in more detail, even promising Nozomi that she will get the truth from Asuka. In other words, Kumiko's disposition to attend to particular people's feelings is what is responsible for her steadily improving epistemic position.
The pattern endures throughout S2. Reina and Kumiko's conversation about Asuka's case in S2E8 almost perfectly mirrors their discussion of the Nozomi-Mizore incident. Namely, Reina again gives Asuka-style arguments to show how Taki-sensei's decision to replace Asuka should she fail to commit by the weekend seems reasonable. Regarding Nozomi, Kumiko could only express her concern via a speculative assertion. Now, however, we see Kumiko forlornly ask a question:
Is that how you really feel?Even in private, even after she has been entrusted with a mission for a cause she strongly believes in, Kumiko feels the need to check whether Natsuki is going to be hurt by what she has asked Kumiko to do. And Kumiko does this by again asking a question, putting no additional pressure on Natsuki to give any particular politically correct reply.
As much as Kumiko wants to know how Natsuki really feels for its own sake, this invitation for Natsuki to speak her mind without any extra pressure also seems to be her way of making sure that Natsuki not forget about her own wishes even while trying to help Asuka. Had Natsuki become selfless to the point of hurting herself, or been coerced into this position, she would have reminded herself of herself through her answer to Kumiko's question, and perhaps been brought back to her senses. Kumiko's foremost concerns here are again the feelings and wishes of the particular people involved in the situation. She cannot bear to see anybody hurt themselves by giving up on what matters to them. This is the driving force characteristic of Kumiko that motivates her actions throughout the entirety of the series. Arguably, it first showed itself in late S1 when Reina wavered before the re-audition with Kaori. Then, Kumiko pulled Reina back from forfeiting by aggressively reminding her of her dream of becoming special. What we are seeing now is an addition to her repertoire of ways to remind people of themselves, a by-product of which is that she quite naturally creates opportunities for people to speak their minds.
It follows from the above that what Kumiko sees is really very different from what's inside Asuka's head. This was already true in the weak sense that Kumiko is simply much better located than Asuka with respect to the situation on the ground. I have just shown that this is not the most fundamental difference between them. If we widen our view as above, and admit that Kumiko is motivated by something that has an equally respectable claim to being a source of good reasons as Asuka's 'for the best', then even had the two been equally well-located, Kumiko would still have good reasons for her choice that Asuka would be unable to recognise as such.
We can also see now that this more fundamental difference between them overdetermines Kumiko's superior epistemic position. As we saw earlier, attempting to act on Asuka's 'for the best' requires at least two abstract operations to be done on even honestly conveyed wishes. One could interpret Kumiko's questions as a less paternalistic way of ensuring that honestly conveyed wishes do indeed serve an individual's ultimate wishes. In which case, the important difference here is that Kumiko's thinking bypasses the aggregation operation. Even setting aside the distorting effects of Proposition (3), it is partly because Asuka was already prepared to sacrifice Nozomi and Mizore's relationship in the aggregate, that she never bothered to dig deeper then. But Kumiko's concern, and thus the amount of attention she pays to every person she interacts with, remains brute and undifferentiated by any aggregate considerations. She will thus always more fully exploit her location with respect to the situation on the ground through her invitations to people to speak their minds freely.
Of course, Asuka is herself one of the people who has spoken her mind to Kumiko, in S2E9. Circling back to the immediate prelude to the confrontation, Kumiko decides to dissuade Asuka because she hears Asuka tell Haruka that she 'has made her decision', and is truly 'okay with this', just as she 'has been saying all along'. Given what she has just learned about Asuka's background in S2E9, Kumiko knows just how much playing in the competition matters to Asuka, and so she is convinced that Asuka is feigning nonchalance. She has to stop Asuka from throwing away her dream.
Kumiko vs Asuka
Having vindicated the idea that Kumiko had good reasons for her choice that Asuka nevertheless wouldn't be able to recognise as such, it only remains to explain how Kumiko still successfully manages to dissuade Asuka, even degenerately. For it is compatible, perhaps even likely, given all that has been said, that Asuka remain unmoved by anything Kumiko says.
As I said earlier, Kumiko is not fully aware of what is going on in Asuka's head. In particular, the fact that she is not aware of Proposition (2) very nearly causes her to misread what she is up against. At the start of the confrontation, she speaks as though Asuka were in the same situation as her sister Mamiko. Like Asuka, Mamiko chooses to act against a (1)-type reason she has, going to university in accordance with her parents' wishes instead of pursuing the beautician's career that she really wanted. But unlike Asuka, Mamiko never told herself any (2)-type story that her choice to go to university was 'for the best'. She chose to ignore those wishes in order to fulfill their parents' expectations, avoiding the friction of having to justify a career path that they might not have understood or supported. Her resolve crumbles on its own halfway through S2 as those wishes reassert themselves, and the ensuing family fights are how Kumiko learns about the situation.
Since Kumiko doesn't know whether Haruka and Kaori know the full story about Proposition (1), it is open to her to interpret Asuka as also being held back from acting on Proposition (1) by worries about what the other band members want. Hence her initial effort to dissuade Asuka by conveying to her the band members' wishes for her to stay. Predictably however, this initial effort is stopped dead in its tracks. Asuka simply wheels out the same argument used against Kaori earlier, namely, that people would say they wanted her to stay no matter what they really felt, in order to avoid running afoul of the informal social order in the band. Kumiko can only insist that she is simply sure that the wishes she is reporting are honestly conveyed, in response to which Asuka twists the wedge deeper with an attack on Kumiko herself.
Asuka says some truly hurtful things here, but we shall remain focused on how Kumiko slowly begins to grasp the severity of the situation that she is facing. As she can now see, something like Proposition (3) is clearly so deeply entrenched in Asuka's head that all claims about what the rest of the band want will simply be disregarded. The worst is yet to come, however, as Asuka moves to end the conversation by comforting the now stalled Kumiko:
It'd be best if I fade out like this. Don't worry. Everyone will forget about me soon enough. Head into the competition with everyone on the same page.These lines reveal what the defeat of Proposition (1) by Proposition (2) boils down to, materially speaking. In these lines, and indeed throughout the entire conversation, Asuka has not once acknowledged her own wish for her father to hear her play in the National competition. It has been completely suppressed, as though the events of S2E9 never even happened. Here Kumiko finally realises that she is not dealing with Mamiko's situation transposed into a different body. Even Asuka herself is no longer looking out for Asuka. With her deliberation completely taken over by what is 'for the best', she has decided that her leaving the ensemble 'doesn't really matter'.
In the end, it doesn't really matter, since all the third-years will be leaving anyway.
It is a mix of desperation, confusion, and sadness at this state of affairs that finally pushes Kumiko over the edge:
What is it that you're trying to say?! You're right! You're right about the band, the competition... everything! But that doesn't matter at all! I truly want to perform with you. I want to perform with you!If Asuka will not hear the truth about the rest of the band, then so be it. She cannot reasonably deny the feelings of someone who is standing in front of her shouting their wish for her to play right in her face.
(You're acting like a child-) What's wrong with that?! Why are you trying so hard to be an adult? You think that you're so special, think that you can see through everything! You're just a regular high school student! What about any of this is 'for the best'?!
You want your father to hear your performance, don't you? You want to go to Nationals more than anyone else, don't you? So why are you throwing all that away? Pretending that you're dealing with it and giving up after all that is just plain selfish! It's not right...
You told me to wait, so please don't just give up. Don't make choices that you know you're going to regret. Give up after you've given it everything you've got! I want to stand on that stage with you! I want to play in that hall with you! I want to hear you play your euphonium!
This is no rational argument, but there is a rational structure to its effect on Asuka. Nothing that Kumiko says entails any new conclusion about what is 'for the best'. In fact, if taken literally she seems to be suggesting that her own wish for Asuka to play, a (1)-type reason, trumps (2)-type considerations grounded in 'for the best'. But the sheer violence of Kumiko's outcry, as well as the fact that Kumiko's (1)-type reason has as its basis Asuka's Proposition (1), allows Asuka to hear her own suppressed wish projected back at her in Kumiko's voice, reinforced and coloured by Kumiko's refusal to let her throw it away. This same event weakens Proposition (3)'s support of Proposition (2). For there is now in Kumiko at least one person in the bleak and lonely world that Asuka inhabits, who understands the full details of the situation, who unlike her friends Haruka and Kaori has no reason to be partial to her, who nevertheless cares enough about Asuka (perhaps more than Asuka cares about herself) to stop her from doing something that might well be in the band's best interest. And this all for the sake of her dream. Asuka is moved to tears, although she doesn't let Kumiko see them.
This need not cause Asuka to reverse her position on how (1)-type reasons weigh against (2)-type reasons. It cannot, since we know the future Asuka's position on the decision eventually reached here. But the restoration of the formerly suppressed Proposition (1) to her attention with extra reinforcement, as well as the temporary weakening of Proposition (2) via the weakening of Proposition (3)'s support, free Asuka enough to use her stellar mock test results to convince her mother to let her return to the ensemble.
Of course, those stellar results would have arrived just the same. But we don't know that Asuka would have decided to use them to secure her return, had it not been for Kumiko's intervention. She might well have decided that it would still be 'for the best' if she didn't disrupt the roster the band had been practicing with for up to a month or more at that point with an abrupt return. It would be a grave mistake to read Asuka as the purely self-interested, calculating character that she seems to think everyone else is, since we only have evidence that she is prepared to sacrifice people's wishes when it is called for by the aggregate. There are no instances of her being prepared to take such drastic measures when she can see no benefit to anyone but herself. On my reading, the tragedy Kumiko prevents is precisely that Asuka is so deep in her own head she can see no benefit to her remaining in the ensemble to anyone but herself, and is thus ready to sacrifice herself for what she thinks is best for the band. Her position on the matter in the future shows that she never heard the voices of all the other members of the band who were speaking through Kumiko. Fortunately, she at least managed to hear herself.
Part II
We have seen how the interaction of Asuka's and Kumiko's characteristic dispositions as we have explicated them is responsible for how Asuka remembers S2E10. Kumiko was moved by her unaggregated concern for each and every person to stop Asuka from throwing away her dream. But the aggregative thinker Asuka remembers this as an occasion on which she was moved to act against what she saw as the best choice in aggregate given the information that her dispositions made her think she had. It is thus understandable why she can only recall Kumiko's intervention as a tantrum. With this account of Asuka's characteristic dispositions in hand, we can begin our study of the leadership style that grows out of them.
It will first be shown that Asuka's characteristic dispositions were developed in response to the very specific circumstances of her home environment, which sufficiently resembled the circumstances of the Kitauji concert band to mark her out for leadership. This origin story reveals a systematic weakness in Asuka's leadership style. The remainder of the Part will be devoted to explicating it and explaining how it remained unnoticed throughout Kumiko's three years.
For unto us a Child is born
Let us begin by observing that Kumiko's non-aggregated concern explains her typical uncertainty about what the right course of action is and Asuka's observation that she never does anything 'until the last minute'. It so happened in S2 that everybody's wishes converged on Asuka remaining in the ensemble and that Kumiko was in a position to know so. But this is not the typical state of things. In a segment of the novels that coincides with S2E3, we are shown a far more typical type of problem situation and what happens to Kumiko when she is dealing with them. While listening to Yuuko's retrospective account of Kaori's stake in playing the trumpet solo in 'Crescent Moon Dance', Kumiko is shocked to find herself temporarily brought over to complete sympathy for Kaori's claim to the trumpet solo, contravening her convictions about Reina's deservingness in S1. In light of this, Asuka's observation is unsurprising. Kumiko's unaggregated concern leaves her prone to vacillating when she is confronted with compelling reasons for jointly incompatible courses of action. She finds herself tugged in so many different directions by her sympathies for the people involved that she cannot attain any certainty that some course of action is the right one. So she will usually not act until her hand is forced.
In contrast, if there is one virtue of Asuka's approach to dealing with situations, it is that it usually never takes her very long to decide what to do, and once having decided, she is prepared to see it through. I think that Asuka is able to commit because she is able to convince herself that she has already considered and weighed all the relevant factors against each other. In other words, completing the aggregation step of acting on 'for the best' yields certainty about what to do. A further consequence of this is that Asuka will have access to reasoning that can be used to pre-empt or answer questions from others.
Noticing this connection raises a natural explanation for why Asuka has become the person that she is, namely, having to deal with her controlling mother. Asuka acknowledges that raising her was a huge burden for her mother to take on alone. However well-meaning Asuka's mother's intentions though, the facts are that:
She's very restrictive and gets hysterical at the drop of a hat.As shown by the staffroom incident, Asuka's mother is prone to reacting badly to developments that risk disrupting her plans for Asuka. She also cannot be counted on to make space within those plans for Asuka's own wishes. When Asuka wants something then, the burden falls entirely on her to present it to her mother, along with reasons for it that her mother would be able to recognise as good reasons. Note that this is different from Asuka's mother merely being able to believe that the given reasons are good. It is of course possible for Asuka to secure agreement from her mother by deception, but this would yield a rather fragile basis for whatever arrangements are agreed upon as a result, with the added penalty of losing her mother's trust if the deception should be exposed. As I imagine it, since Asuka's mother isn't actively trying to harm her, the main danger to be avoided is her mother losing her patience and shutting down the entire negotiation process, which could happen if Asuka's reasons look half-baked or arbitrary. If Asuka instead takes it upon herself to contemplate beforehand how her wishes could really be justified from a point of view sensitive to both hers and her mother's, she can quickly initiate and conclude negotiations with her mother, arriving at arrangements that she is already prepared to act on, and that will withstand a degree of continued scrutiny from her mother's point of view.
...
She has her own idea of happiness inside her head, and a wind ensemble isn't in there.
It makes sense then that a disposition in Asuka to have her thinking be guided by (2)-type reasons over (1)-type reasons, and a global version of Proposition (3), would be selected for in this type of environment. Having her thinking guided by an aggregate notion like 'for the best' in Proposition (2) would ensure that Asuka arrive at a basis for her decision sensitive to how her wishes and her reasons for them weigh against her mother's. She will speak, not from only her point of view, or from only her mother's, but from the aggregate point of view. And given the risks of disclosing her wishes before she is able to defend them, a global version of Proposition (3) would also helpfully furnish for Asuka a picture of the situation that will not leave her decision dependent on charity she cannot reliably expect to receive. Since childhood, Asuka has had to constantly hone her ability to act swiftly and defensibly without directly gathering information.
Consider next the interaction of such a set of dispositions with the circumstances of the Kitauji concert band. In a large, diverse group of people like the band, it is common for people to simply be uncertain about what to do, creating a demand for some kind of guidance. A central part of what a leader is supposed to do is decide upon, articulate, and if necessary, defend a course of action that everyone is to participate in. But as we just saw, this is pretty much what Asuka has already been doing at home under much higher stakes. Thus, her characteristic dispositions would also explain why she was chosen for leadership.
This leap of intuition is borne out by the evidence. It is a well-worn topic of discussion among the characters in S1, and an extreme source of insecurity for Haruka, that Asuka had originally been chosen to be president. And we can see why this is so. As Nozomi tells Kumiko in the novels, during the conflict before Taki-sensei's arrival between the third-years and the first-years, Asuka was able to maintain a position of neutrality by speaking from a position supported by 'grand principles' (in the Chinese translation of the second novel in the series: '她总是能以大道理推翻对自己不利的事，大家都对她言听计从...'). The imperious third-years are said to have regarded the then second-year Asuka with respect ('... 就连三年级也对她敬畏有加。'). This is later independently confirmed by Natsuki. The third-years turn their wrath onto the bass section when Natsuki insults them for bullying Nozomi, and it is again Asuka's intervention that restores peace. In both the anime and the novels, Asuka's ability to make things happen while maintaining neutrality stands out from the deep entanglement of her cohortmates Haruka, Kaori, and Aoi, who either were targets of abuse themselves or tried unsuccessfully to prevent the mass resignations that decimated the band's strength. At the end of the whole debacle, she was probably the only incoming third-year who possessed an aura of undefeated authority. And so it is quite understandable why she was the original choice for president.
Even when she rejects the position and is instead named vice president, Asuka is regarded by the band members as their real leader in all but name. In early S1, when Taki-sensei first dismisses the band and threatens to cancel their SunFes performance over their terrible ensemble playing, it is Asuka who takes the initiative and restores order, sending everyone to sectional practice. For most of S1, Haruka herself constantly looks to Asuka for assurance in performing all but the most basic of presidential duties, even waiting for Asuka's cue to lead the band's battle cry.
I wonder that myself. I don't really know. But I feel like she always sees right through me. She always knows what I'm thinking. So I want to surprise her. I want the real me to take a step beyond what Asuka expects.Asuka always seems to know what is going to happen next and what to do about it. And this is exactly how someone with Asuka's characteristic dispositions would present to an external observer. Asuka never looks unsure because she can rarely afford to even be unsure. By the time of S2, the band has become so reliant on Asuka's presence that, as Haruka says in her S2E8 speech, they 'made her special'. Hence the low morale and disarray during her long absence.
There is thus a clear connection between Asuka's upbringing and the position of high esteem she holds in the eyes of the band. In a sense, the idea of a 'leadership style' that grows out of Asuka's characteristic dispositions is something of a misnomer. For Asuka did not become the person she is in response to the actual demands of leadership in the band. On my account, she became the person that she is due to the circumstances of her home life, and this happened to give her an edge over her contemporaries in responding to the circumstances in the Kitauji concert band. On top of resemblance between the two situations described abstractly, there are also clear concrete parallels between the imperious third-years of the pre-meritocracy era and Asuka's mother. Conditional on adequate performance, the first provider to meet the demand for guidance generally becomes the sole provider. And Asuka certainly proved herself more than equal to the task in the eyes of her bandmates. Until the staffroom incident of S2E7, probably none of them had any idea of what she was going through at home, and even afterward, it is not natural to wonder whether Asuka's seemingly stellar performance as a leader might be explained by a merely coincidental resemblance between the circumstances of her home life and the circumstances in the band. Yet this is what a close examination of the evidence suggests.
Because this coincidental resemblance is what enables Asuka to perform while operating as per normal however, it follows that she will be systematically handicapped if something happens in the band that can only be addressed by an action that she has never been able to perform given the circumstances at home. The next section will produce an account of such a situation.
Acting without a shield
We said earlier that at home, there is considerable danger to Asuka disclosing her wishes and reasons for them before they can withstand a minimum threshold of scrutiny. Speaking from the aggregate point of view is supposed to ensure that Asuka's mother will recognise them as justified from her point of view without too much effort and time, ensuring that she goes along with what Asuka says. But if Asuka cannot find a way to present her decision as justified from the aggregate point of view, then given the danger, she had better say nothing at all.
To this we now add another factor: because of her mother's temperament and absolute power over her, Asuka is not used to there being leeway for the terms of a problem situation to change, either via change in material conditions, or via change in how her listener sees the situation. But even were she to consider such leeway a possibility, she might even regard such leeway as dangerous, particularly if she cannot tell whether the change will be in her favour or not. The combination of these two factors implies that the following is possible:
that a situation arises where, unless things change, Asuka cannot present any choice as justified from the aggregate point of view.In such a situation, given how we have modelled Asuka's characteristic dispositions, Asuka will be stuck. Even if she were to harbour private convictions about what to do, she will not be able to act on them. I think that we can see this on display during Asuka's handling of the trumpet solo incident in S1, when the band fell apart over Taki-sensei's assigning the trumpet solo to Reina over Kaori. Amid the rest of her shining service record, this incident stands out starkly for her inaction.
Let me first explain on what basis this incident counts as a case of inaction. We know from hindsight that at root, the trumpet solo incident happened because the band had no measures to assure themselves that the influence of personal favour from prior acquaintance had been completely eliminated. Structural innovations like the very idea of a public re-audition were made on that occasion to solve the problem, and still more were required in Kumiko's third year, suggested by Kumiko herself. And it might be thought that I count this as an occasion of inaction because the innovations show that Asuka could have done something else and didn't. This is not what I am saying. What Kumiko eventually did in her third year was something exceptional, well above the reasonable standard for judging a student leader's performance. That Asuka could have done more is shown by the fact that Haruka did do something else on her own initiative, even without making any structural innovations.
Next, one might wonder whether Asuka's inaction is explained not by her characteristic dispositions, but instead because she was not trying particularly hard to deal with the situation. For she did say to Kumiko in S1E9 that she 'simply doesn't care who gets to play a solo or whatever'. The reason why this explanation fails is because it is much more likely that Asuka was lying. We know from S2E9 that at this point in her vice-presidency, Asuka didn't think the band had any chance of making it through Prefecturals even after their reforms, let alone achieving their goal of playing at Nationals. Meritocracy had been adopted only for its instrumental usefulness towards this goal, and only from a meritocratic standpoint are the two questions of who the better trumpeter is, and who deserves to play the solo, equivalent. Since Asuka thought that the meritocratic reforms would make no difference to the competition outcome, she had no reason to think the two questions equivalent. She could well have thought that it didn't matter whether the soloist really was the better trumpeter, while still having had other reasons, not based in merit, to favour one of the trumpeters becoming soloist over the other. Given her closeness to Kaori and the facts of Kaori's plight over the previous two years, it is likely that she did privately harbour such sympathies. And indeed, in S1E10 when Kaori takes up Taki-sensei's offer to contest the audition results in a public re-audition, we see Asuka conceal a smile for her.
The real explanation for Asuka's inaction seems to be that she couldn't have given any committal answer that would have withstood a sufficient degree of scrutiny. As she was no doubt well aware, the disquiet around the audition results was still at least nominally meritocratic in motivation. The first-years, who would remain in the band for the next two years, had not experienced the old system and had no particular attachment to Kaori. So Asuka could not count on them to sympathise with Kaori. In fact, Kumiko and Asuka had the above conversation precisely because Hazuki suggested having Asuka convince the rest of the section leaders to support Reina's claim to the solo. More poignantly, when Yuuko attempts to privately convince Reina to forfeit the re-audition by explaining the facts of Kaori's situation, Reina replies:
I am not saying that Asuka requires the band to be in unanimous agreement in order to exercise her authority. As we saw earlier, aggregation involves weighing different people's wishes and the reasons for them against each other, and we have already seen Asuka decide on other occasions that some people's wishes or reasons are outweighed in the aggregate and must be overruled. Hence her decision to sacrifice Nozomi and Mizore's relationship, and her initial decision to sacrifice herself over Haruka and Kaori's attempts to dissuade her from resigning from the ensemble. But neither of those occasions risked alienating such a large swathe of the band, and in neither of them did the division perceivably extend to the underlying basis for the aggregate point of view. Nozomi had only Natsuki and Kumiko as allies attempting to convince Asuka to let her rejoin the band, and none of the three challenged Asuka's framing of the decision as depending on whether Nozomi would 'be an asset to the band'. Similarly, Kumiko never explicitly challenged Asuka's deciding whether to stay or leave the ensemble depending on whether it would be 'for the best', in effect admitting that Asuka was correct about what the right choice was from the aggregate point of view. Or, at least, that she couldn't prove that Asuka was wrong.
During the trumpet solo incident however, there were two incompatible bases for the choice of soloist, each arrived at only by overruling considerations that a large group of people could reasonably regard as relevant. The reasoning in support of Reina appears to ignore the obvious flaws with the audition system as it stands and the special significance of this opportunity for Kaori given the conditions she had endured under the old system. The reasoning in support of Kaori appears too close to the old system with all its flaws, and seems to ignore the fact that Reina is in no way responsible for the circumstances she would be forced to submit to. Hence, whatever her private sympathies, Asuka could not have convincingly claimed to be speaking from the aggregate point of view in supporting either candidate, given the situation as it stood.
It is interesting at this point to note that the same applies to Haruka and Taki-sensei. No matter how one views Haruka's actions, she cannot be said to have put forth a solution to the band's problem that she was certain was justified from the aggregate point of view. Her attempt to restore dialogue seemed to be motivated by the recognition that there wasn't one, and the only way she could see to find common ground again was for the band and their teacher to talk to each other openly. Even with our knowledge of the future, we also cannot say that Taki-sensei put forth a solution that he was certain was justified from the aggregate point of view. In the last essay, we saw that the public re-audition almost failed to create a firm mandate for the soloist since most of the band abstained from the vote, the fact that he could not have known which way the band would vote notwithstanding.
It would have been unthinkably dangerous for Asuka to begin any such dialogue at home with so much left open. In other words, she has never been able to act without the shield of the aggregate point of view. Thus, when the band is divided at such a scale and such a depth that no appeal to a supposed uniquely correct aggregate point of view is convincing, if Asuka continues to operate as per normal, she will end up hamstrung by her own dispositions while others remain free to move. This is the systematic weakness of Asuka's leadership style, and it has its source in the exact same dispositions that said style grew out of.
Accidental entrenchment
It remains to explain how Asuka's systematic weakness avoided being exposed for so long. Part of the reason has already been mentioned above: Anyone who even noticed Asuka's silence during the trumpet solo incident probably thought it would be too demanding to hold her responsible for a problem that seemed to require major structural innovation by a teacher to solve. But that would only explain why Asuka's systematic weakness avoided being exposed on that occasion. In between the trumpet solo incident and the historical present of S3E10, there were still almost two full years for it to come to light. So why didn't it?
The answer lies in the relationship between the aggregate point of view and the social arrangements of a given society. It is a commonplace observation in real life that there is something of a chicken-and-egg relationship between social arrangements and the aggregate point of view. And this is also exactly how the story of Hibike! Euphonium itself began.
In Kumiko's first year, all members of the band save Aoi were at least nominally on board with the goal of appearing at Nationals, and thus went ahead with instituting meritocracy as a means towards that goal. That was an instance where the aggregate point of view had a firm basis and drove a change in social arrangements. The trumpet solo incident was brought about by those social arrangements, and showed that something had been missed by the aggregate point of view. Nobody had thought to consider whether Taki-sensei had been previously acquainted with any of the students. In turn, the investigation that revealed Reina and Taki-sensei's prior acquaintance was motivated by dissatisfaction with the initial audition results, showing that people had declared support for meritocracy without taking seriously one of its basic consequences: that there was a real chance that the suffering of people like Kaori under the old system would be discounted as irrelevant. The progress of these new social arrangements thus also eroded the basis for the aggregate point of view. Taki-sensei's innovation led to the occasion for Kaori to offer the solo to Reina, solving the immediate problem of choosing a soloist, and the band's subsequent record of spectacular victories vindicated the new system in the eyes of the band. Further change in social arrangements, and events that changed people's attitudes, thus eventually gave rise to a new basis for the aggregate point of view.
But the trumpet solo incident was the last occasion in Kumiko's first two years on which there were any substantial changes to social arrangements. It was hence also the last occasion on which there were divisions within the band of comparable scale and depth. The second half of Kumiko's first year revolved around much smaller events like the Nozomi-Mizore incident and whether Asuka would be able to join the band at Nationals. In Kumiko's second year, there were no further changes made to the audition system. Having already been instituted one year prior, it added incumbent status to the testament of the band's shining track record. In other words, after Kitauji's first victory at Prefecturals in Kumiko's first year, a basis for an aggregate point of view was formed that would remain firm just so long as social arrangements remained basically the same as when it was first formed. This stable equilibrium meant that there was never again another occasion when a leader had to act without attaining certainty that their decision was justified from the aggregate point of view. The circumstances that could have revealed Asuka's systematic weakness to the band at large thus never arose.
Despite having herself had to speak against what must have looked to her like the aggregate point of view in S2E10, Kumiko did not see herself as a leader when doing so, and was probably happy enough that her beloved senpai managed to join the band in the end. But even had she paused to reflect, the details of the situation would also have made it difficult for her to attribute the debacle to Asuka's aggregative thinking. For we can see with the benefit of the analysis in Part I that the interaction of Proposition (3) with Asuka's absence from the band bore at least as much responsibility. Those two factors were what closed Asuka's mind to Kumiko's initial attempts to persuade her to stay by reporting the other band members' sentiments, forcing Kumiko to speak from her own heart. But had Proposition (3) not been active, that initial attempt might have instead been received as an appeal to the aggregate point of view in the ideal case where everybody shares the same ultimate wish. Kumiko would not think of this as an appeal to the aggregate point of view, since she sees herself as simply conveying many individual people's wishes as they are, and was not prepared to overrule any of them. But she could make this kind of appeal. If everybody shares the same ultimate wish, then nobody has to hurt themselves by giving up on something that matters to them.
Whether Asuka's return would really serve that ultimate wish, i.e. whether the band's musical cohesion would be aided by her remaining, also matters in the aggregate point of view. But the fact that Taki-sensei waited to remove Asuka from the ensemble for so long suggests that he really thought that it would be for the band's benefit if she played at Nationals. So Kumiko would also have had the band director's musical authority on her side if she had claimed to speak from the aggregate point of view. It thus follows that even if Kumiko had reflected afterward, and even with the clarity we have, she would not have been able to see Asuka's weakness, since Proposition (3) emerges as the main culprit in Asuka's head forcing her to speak from her own heart and be received so. She would probably arrive at the same assessment of Asuka's conduct that she made after the Nozomi-Mizore incident, namely, that Asuka has too cynical a view of human nature. This is also true, but it is logically independent of the aggregative disposition that is the source of Asuka's weakness.
The effect on the band's perception of Asuka, and by extension, of Asuka-style leadership, is as one would expect: All of Asuka's colleagues and successors use her as the benchmark for their performance as leaders. Haruka's S2E8 speech successfully disabuses the band of any notion that Asuka is exempt from unpleasant realities of the human condition like her mother's power over her. But the starting presumption shared by her and the rest of the band, that Asuka is the better exemplar of leadership, remains undisturbed. Indeed, Haruka's appeal to the band to help her support Asuka is a request rather than an order.
I told you I could do this myself. Last year Asuka-senpai did it herself too.the implication being that the best Yuuko could hope for given her limits is to imperfectly approximate what Asuka can do. Finally, when Kumiko becomes president herself, she similarly wonders whether she has 'caught up with where Asuka was two years ago'.
And I told you earlier that it was only because it was Asuka-senpai that she could do it herself.
Unfortunately for Kumiko, this peaceful era of stable equilibrium is about to come to an end during her term as president. In Kumiko's second year, although the band adheres to the same audition system that was instituted in her first year, they are defeated at Kansai and fail to advance to Nationals. Thus, things begin to move once again. When Kumiko, Shuuichi, and Reina take over as president, vice-president, and drum major respectively in their third year, they are convinced that something must be changed in order to avoid a repeat of the previous year's painful failure. Hence their decision to institute auditions before every single round of the band competition, which Taki-sensei agrees to and which they then announce to the band in S3E5. Mayu questions whether she should be allowed to audition since she is a transfer student, but ultimately does not question the system itself. All other questions are similarly mere clarifications. With no objections forthcoming, the Kitauji concert band heads forward under the auspices of the aggregate point of view constituted two years prior, completely unaware of the coming storm that will soon erode its basis.
Part III
In the previous Part, we saw how Asuka and the leadership style associated with her are systematically handicapped when the basis for the aggregate point of view has been eroded and cannot be recovered unless something changes. We have also seen how historical accidents have prevented this systematic weakness from being exposed. For some of her successors, this results in their taking Asuka as a respected source of guidance. For others, even if they did not develop similar aggregative tendencies specifically due to Asuka's influence, it means that these tendencies remain their first instinct even when dealing with a situation that cannot be satisfactorily handled in such a fashion.
The time has now come for us to return to the historical present of S3E10 and interpret the events up through S3E10 from Kumiko's point of view in light of the above insights. It will first be shown that by the time of S3E10, the basis for the aggregate point of view has been eroded, resulting in the formation of two incompatible bases around the multiple audition system. We will then see how the distortions of reality present in Asuka's interpretation of the situation are not random. They are exactly the distortions we would expect her to make given the person she is, and show her willingness to proceed with a course of action even if it requires overruling opposed feelings and wishes. This then reveals Asuka to be the final and most dangerous source of counsel preventing Kumiko from acting on her characteristic disposition, the other two sources being Kanade and Reina.
The slide
To start us off, note that dissatisfaction over the results of auditions actually predates the occasion in question. Already as far back as Kyoto Prefecturals, Mirei Suzuki had already come to Kumiko to express her dissatisfaction about Suzume Kamaya being selected over Satsuki Suzuki for the competition ensemble. To her ears, Satsuki is clearly the more technically proficient tuba, despite Suzume's edge in volume. But Mirei's dissatisfaction never went as far as to question the entire multiple audition system itself. Our task is to explain how this gradual slide happened and then coalesced into two incompatible bases around the multiple audition system.
Mirei's dissatisfaction could not have extended to the multiple audition system because the results of the Kyoto Prefecturals audition were functionally no different from the results of the single audition that would have been held in any other year at Kitauji. It was already to be expected that some people would fail to make it into the competition ensemble for reasons that might not be obvious, and this partly due to the nature of music. Despite also having her own questions about Suzume being chosen over Satsuki, Kumiko manages to placate Mirei by conjecturing that Taki-sensei had to make his decision based on each player's contribution to the balance of the whole ensemble's sound. And it is indeed quite plausible that being the conductor and a much more experienced musician, Taki would be able to detect nuances that the regular band members cannot. He himself is unable to detect nuances of woodwind and percussion playing that his friends Niiyama-sensei and Hashimoto-sensei respectively can, which is why he invites them to be guest instructors at Kitauji every band camp. At this stage then, the band hadn't yet experienced any discontent that could specifically be attributed to the presence of multiple auditions.
But the band's inability to understand the reasoning for the roster choices has a different significance when the roster is clearly a consequence of the new multiple audition system. Earlier, we saw how the single audition system won legitimacy by delivering results clearly superior to those of the seniority-based system of assigning parts. The old system had gotten Kitauji nothing more than bronze (i.e. a participation award) at Prefecturals, and so the single audition system proved itself the moment Kitauji broke through Prefecturals to Kansai Regionals. Each new system hence must earn legitimacy through comparison with the track record of its predecessor. The multiple audition system has big shoes to fill, since its predecessor already brought the band all the way to Nationals once. The band's inability to understand the changes to the roster for Kansai thus makes salient the uncomfortable possibility that the extra rounds of stress from having to compete against their friends to maintain their seats, and the pain of some from actually losing their seats, serve no purpose at all.
This is not the mere fear that the new system will not bear fruit. Due again to the nature of music, and perhaps due to general facts of life, there will always be the possibility of failure no matter what the band does. The specific fear is that the multiple audition system has resulted in arbitrary changes to the roster, meaning that people are being asked to sacrifice their dreams for no good reason. For example, as Kanade tells Kumiko in private in S3E9 after the audition results, she finds it implausible that anybody's playing has changed significantly since Prefecturals.
Although Kanade makes this argument about the roster changes in general, it does the most work in Kanade's criticism of Taki having Kumiko play the soli at Prefecturals and then changing her out for Mayu now. Exchanging a euphonium for an extra tuba could indeed be justified by considerations of balance, but balance could not possibly justify the exchange of one euphonium for another. To Kanade and others, like Midori who expresses her view outside the konbini in S3E9, this change only confirms what they had privately felt all along: that there is almost no difference in ability between Mayu and Kumiko. In which case, it is difficult not to see the choice of one of them over the other as arbitrary from the viewpoint of musicianship. Kanade and Midori are the only two members we see making this specific point about Mayu and Kumiko's relative abilities, but it does seem to be the best explanation for the general outpouring of sympathy for Kumiko in a Kitauji that has already been meritocratic for two years previously. And the appearance of such a general outpouring is not a mere artefact of Kumiko being the viewpoint character. During the public explosion in S3E10, members of the band appeal to Kumiko specifically, expecting her to sympathise with their feelings about the atmosphere in the band because she too, from their point of view, fell unjustly under the axe of the multiple audition system.
On the other hand, this reasoning is not shared by all members of the band, and that is how we can see that the basis for the aggregate point of view has been eroded. We get a completely different view of the audition results from Mayu's friend Tsubame Kamaya that is nevertheless based on the same premises.
Divisions are also present even within the faction that is in favour of Kumiko playing the soli. For Midori does not share Kanade's uncharitable read of Mayu as an enemy seeking to distract Kumiko with her repeated offers to concede the soli if Kumiko should ask her to. She has accurately perceived that Mayu is genuinely uncomfortable about having to play the soli over the rest of the band's sympathies, and questions the decision to switch Kumiko out for Mayu in part because of the difficult position it has placed Mayu in for little expected gain.
For her own part, Kumiko is, true to form, torn between her sympathies for all sides. Part of her of course wants to play the soli with her best friend in their last year of high school. But because of her belief in meritocracy, Kumiko also wants to obtain the mandate to do so on the basis of merit. After losing the audition, Kumiko initially cannot find a way to entertain her own confusions about the roster changes, including her being switched out for Mayu for the soli, because to question the audition results seems to be to question the very system that she is so proud of upholding. For it was the institution of meritocracy that finally gave everybody at Kitauji a fair chance to achieve their dreams without being crushed by the tyranny of personal favour. She cannot tell whether her doubts issue from genuine questions about musicianship or her hurt pride from losing the audition.
To specifically question Kumiko being switched out for Mayu is logically distinct from questioning the multiple audition system itself, but the divisions in the band over the latter find their expression in divisions over the former. Because the choice between Kumiko and Mayu is the choice on which the lack of a clearly perceivable basis is the most glaring, it has become the flashpoint of the band's feelings about the multiple audition system. And it is of course true that part of Kumiko's paralysis is due to how the audition results affect her pride as a musician. But the preceding paragraphs clearly show that by now, she is aware that as things stand, a decision favouring either her or Mayu over the other can only be made by overruling considerations that sizable swathes of the band reasonably regard as relevant. The reasoning in favour of Kumiko ignores the feelings of those in the band who love Kitauji's meritocracy and its promise of a decision protected from personal favour. The reasoning in favour of Mayu ignores the confusions of the band about Taki's overall strategy and the effects of those confusions on the band's morale, as well as Mayu's own plight.
The revelation in S3E10 that it was the student leaders and not Taki-sensei who came up with the idea of multiple auditions without consulting the rest of the band makes no essentially different contribution to the dynamics above. It simply adds weight to the impression that to proceed with the Kansai roster produced by the multiple audition system is to ignore the feelings of a sizable portion of the band. Namely, because the system that produced that roster wasn't even adopted with their input. Since those feelings are real and reasonable, the multiple audition system cannot be convincingly defended by appeal to the aggregate point of view, and the same is true of the feelings on the other side.
Kumiko vs Asuka, reprise
Having moved out of her childhood home at some point upon starting college, Asuka is now living with Kaori, and both are present when Kumiko visits in S3E10. We can now proceed to examine Asuka's analysis of the problem in light of what we have seen of the situation on the ground. As we learned in Part II, Asuka is unable to act when there is no decision that can be justified from the aggregate point of view, and does not consider the possibility of leeway for the situation to change. Thus, if the situation is as above, where the basis for the aggregate point of view has already been eroded, we should expect her to distort reality in ways that would enable her to declare one side's feelings real but outweighed. This would enable her to impose an ersatz aggregate point of view on the problem, without which she will be unable to offer Kumiko any useful guidance.
Unfortunately, unlike in S2E10, we do not know exactly how Kumiko relayed the situation to Asuka and Kaori. But Asuka instantly grasps that the soli is the flashpoint of the band's discontentment, and simply tells Kumiko that from an 'objective and logical' standpoint, she should let Mayu step down and take the soli back. Stunned, Kumiko asks:
But what's the point of an audition then? Kitauji is meritocratic. When Reina and Kaori-senpai auditioned on the year I entered... Point is, I can't change that now, after we've been doing things that way all this time.prompting Asuka to give her reasoning.
It is a testament to the power of Asuka's analytical insight that she has correctly reconstructed most of the situation with the little information she has access to, which is also what we would expect given the costs of gathering information in her childhood home. Even the reason why she readily constructs an ersatz aggregate point of view now when she didn't during the trumpet solo incident issues from a real difference between the two occasions: back then, there was no indication that either Reina or Kaori was reluctant to play the solo. But here, there are already signs suggesting that Mayu might even be grateful if asked to step down.
On the other hand, it is false that Kumiko's reluctance to accept her recommendation is rooted in nothing but selfishness. It is true that Kumiko's pride has been hurt by losing the audition, and that she would regard it as a betrayal of her own values if she had to obtain the soli through means other than a fair contest in the audition. But as we saw in the preceding section, these values are not only hers. They are also at least Tsubame's and Hazuki's, and Kumiko already knows about the latter due to the konbini conversation. It is again unfortunate that we do not know for sure whether Kumiko also reported Hazuki's sentiments to Asuka. We also don't know that Asuka wouldn't have just written off Hazuki and other lovers of meritocracy as a minority faction. But it is clear that Hazuki's omission from the picture makes it a lot easier for Asuka to cast Kumiko's reluctance as exclusively self-serving. Thus, in the language of the reason types developed earlier, Asuka transforms Kumiko's love for meritocracy into the most base and unflattering (1)-type reason, easily outweighed even by others' (1)-type reasons and especially by the (2)-type reason of restoring the band's morale before the competition.
This is not to say that Kumiko has been convinced that Asuka's read on her motives is correct. For there is no reason why she would simply forget about what Hazuki said to her outside the konbini, or why her own feelings would disappear simply because of what Asuka has said. But she also cannot simply reject this account of the situation, given the kind of person that she is. Asuka's interpretation of Kumiko's motives is after all still based on facts that Kumiko is also aware of: her own strong investment in the audition system and the roster it created, and that she has been ignoring the uncomfortable position she has put Mayu in by denying Mayu's requests to forfeit the audition. Kumiko is thus still unable to rule out the possibility that Asuka is correct, not even to herself.
It might initially seem confusing how Asuka could possibly attribute to Kumiko such base motives given how much Kumiko has done for her, until we recall how she remembers the S2E10 confrontation, which we analysed in Part I of this essay. Since Asuka remembers that occasion as Kumiko throwing a tantrum, she is already primed to see Kumiko as someone primarily motivated by (1)-type reasons over the aggregate considerations that feature in (2)-type reasons. To make things worse, since Proposition (3) prevented Asuka from taking seriously any of Kumiko's testimony about the other band members desiring her return, Kumiko's (1)-type reason on that occasion would have looked to her like exactly the kind of narrowly self-serving (1)-type reason that she has attributed to Kumiko in the present. Finally, since the global version of Proposition (3) primes Asuka to see everybody as primarily narrowly self-interested, she also seems to miss something we have seen mentioned multiple times in the preceding section: that people's feelings towards social arrangements are just as easily moved by the effects of those arrangements on others' welfare as by the effects on their own. There are clearly many people lamenting the results of the Kansai audition for Kanade despite their own positions being secure. Why couldn't Kumiko's love of meritocracy be similarly other-regarding?
In light of the analysis conducted in the preceding Parts of this essay, the errors in Asuka's interpretation of the situation in S3E10 look less like chance and more like the exact distortions of reality that would be caused by her characteristic dispositions. These distortions suit the basic tendency of aggregative thinking: proceed according to the course of action whose support outweighs that of the other, overruling the feelings and reasons of those opposed.
Tema con variazioni
Attentive readers will no doubt have noticed by now that there are two glaring omissions in the array of people whose views on the soli we have surveyed in detail, and that these two people are people whose views Kumiko would surely have known: Shuuichi and Reina. I have held them in reserve because their leadership positions make it more appropriate to treat them together with Kumiko and Asuka. These four are the people who possess the most power to address the situation in light of how they perceive it and the information they receive from those without such power.
For completeness, we need only mention that Shuuichi doesn't believe that Mayu plays better than Kumiko, and is somewhat sympathetic to the doubts of the band. Nevertheless, his main contribution is limited to trying to restrain Reina's aggressive responses to any voiced grievances from the band. It is Reina's view of the situation that will be most helpful for us to understand the sense in which Asuka is the final boss for the Kitauji concert band.
Reina's feelings about the situation are arranged quite differently from the band at large. As we saw above, most of the band pays particular attention to the soli as the flashpoint for their dissatisfaction with the Kansai roster. For Reina, the euphonium part of the soli is just one of the positions on the roster. Despite also wanting to play the soli with Kumiko, she is nowhere near as disturbed by Kumiko being switched out for Mayu, because she is absolutely certain that the band will make it through to Nationals with this roster, giving Kumiko another chance to win the soli back from Mayu. This shows that unlike the rest of the band, Reina has no doubts about the Kansai roster. But this itself is an understatement. Reina's belief in the roster is so strong that she refuses to entertain any suggestion that people's doubts about it might be reasonable, going out of her way to berate members of the band that she catches expressing confusion about the Kansai audition results. Kumiko's finally admitting to having her own doubts about the roster is also what occasions her calling Kumiko a failure of a president and freezing their friendship. She stops replying to Kumiko's messages and starts cycling to school instead of taking the train together with Kumiko.
We thus know that Reina would have vehemently opposed Asuka's proposal that Kumiko take the soli back from Mayu. Comparing the two's remarks reveals that the difference-maker here is their interpretations of Taki-sensei's position in this whole debacle. Asuka thinks Kumiko is asking for an explanation that Taki cannot give because there isn't one. She thinks that Taki really has no good reason to choose either Mayu or Kumiko over the other, and thus that he would be 'screwed' if he even tried to talk to the band about the audition results. This is again what we would expect the aggregative thinker Asuka to say. Taki is 'screwed' because he cannot convincingly claim that there are considerations on either Mayu's or Kumiko's side that outweigh those on the other's. And so, he cannot overrule the feelings of those in favour of either.
Kumiko's last attempt to win Reina over before visiting Asuka was to suggest that they have Taki-sensei explain the audition results. Like Asuka will do later, Reina rejects the idea, but instead because she sees Kumiko as asking for an explanation that Taki should not give. Unlike Asuka, she is absolutely certain that Taki does have a good reason for his choices, and so if he wanted to, he really could give an explanation for them. But 'everyone just needs to trust Taki-sensei'. To Reina, Taki-sensei's authority as the instructor is the main source of stability and direction in the band. To attempt to explain his choices would be to admit that the band's questions about them are reasonable, and Reina cannot see any way that he could admit that the band's questions about the roster are reasonable, and yet maintain that it is justified in its current state:
The club would be even more messed up if Taki-sensei said anything about the auditions. Anyone who's upset now won't be satisfied unless the audition results get changed.She forbids any discussion of the audition results because she thinks that would open the door to revising all the controversial roster decisions. This would be even more likely to happen if Kumiko were to take the soli back from Mayu as per Asuka's suggestion. Hence Reina would agree with Asuka that having Taki-sensei explain the roster is not the solution, but reject her proposal for Kumiko to take the soli back. Kumiko's conversation with Taki-sensei on the morning of the public explosion suggests that Asuka's interpretation of his position is probably closer to the truth. For he could well have clearly explained his choices to Kumiko and then all the same told her not to share their conversation with everyone else, avoiding the cascade that Reina is so concerned to prevent. And yet, he did not.
The differences between Reina's and Asuka's respective approaches to the situation, however, matter a lot less than the similarities. Earlier, we saw Asuka claim that Kumiko should take the soli back from Mayu in spite of her feelings. Or, to be more precise, what she thinks she is feeling, since on Asuka's account Kumiko is just being selfish at bottom even though she talks and thinks as though she is upholding meritocracy. Similarly, Reina thinks that Taki-sensei and the student leadership should keep the current roster and refuse to discuss it in spite of the feelings of the rest of the band. Or, to be more precise, what the rest of the band think they are feeling. After all:
That's not because they don't understand! Most of them are just ignoring their lack of effort and whining and complaining that things aren't going their way, aren't they?!
The final character whose hypothetical disagreements with Reina are of interest to us is Kanade. As we just saw, Reina thinks that any discussion of the roster would lead to the audition results being changed. Based on the band's timidly probing the possibility of abandoning the multiple audition system and 'going back to how we did it before' in S3E10, we can imagine the likely result of such a floodgate being opened, namely, the Kansai roster reverting to the Kyoto Prefecturals roster. And this, in effect, is what we saw Kanade arguing for in the first section of this Part.
Reina would surely reject this reasoning, and her hypothetical complaints on this front find more purchase than her unrealistic idealisation of Taki-sensei. The whole multiple audition system would become a farce if people refused to accept any change in the roster after the first round of auditions. For one, the system was supposed to maintain a sense of urgency during rehearsals, as Kumiko, Reina, and Shuuichi suspect that the reason for their defeat at Kansai last year was people being too relaxed after the end of that year's auditions before Kyoto Prefecturals. The risk of being cut from the ensemble was meant to give people an incentive to work hard throughout the year. But obviously any such incentive vanishes if Kanade's argument is accepted.
More importantly, however, if Kanade got her way, Taki-sensei would essentially be forbidden from making any improvements to the ensemble that he happened to only think of after the first audition. Given Reina's reaction to Taki-sensei's decisions being questioned after the fact, it is not difficult to imagine her probable reaction to an argument that would restrain his decision-making autonomy from the start. What underlies this argument of Kanade's is clearly the conflation of the existence of room for improvement with incompetence.
At this point, the traces of a familiar pattern should already be visible. Just like Asuka and Reina, Kanade casts the feelings and reasons of those opposed to her favoured course of action in an extremely uncharitable light. Kanade thinks that Taki-sensei should stick with the Kyoto Prefecturals roster in spite of what he is feeling. Or, to be more precise, what he thinks he is feeling, since the change in what he now thinks is the best music for the ensemble is really just meandering. After all, wasn't he also sure on the previous occasion that he had figured out what the best music for the ensemble was? Is he going to come to doubt this latest decision too? Thus, it turns out that Kanade, Reina, and Asuka all display the exact same tendency that is characteristic of the aggregative thinker: proceed according to the course of action whose support outweighs that of the other, overruling the feelings and reasons of those opposed. Kanade's variant of this pattern is perhaps the most interesting, because unlike the other two, she finds opposed feelings that issue from one and the same person, and requires of them that they overrule themselves.The final boss, in full view
When we put everything together, it becomes clear what formidable forces have been arrayed against Kumiko throughout S3. As we saw in Part I, Kumiko's characteristic disposition is her unaggregated concern for others. She cannot bear to see anybody give up on what matters to them. Reina's, Asuka's, and Kanade's respective recommendations regarding the situation with the Kansai audition results all require Kumiko to act on a tendency that is anathema to her. But almost since the beginning of her term as drum major, and well before things really began to fall apart, Reina has shown herself more than willing to proceed with 'what it takes to get gold at Nationals' even if it requires overruling the feelings and wishes of members of the band. She was willing to drop less experienced members of the band from the lineup for the Sunrise Festival, historically a low-stakes event that the entire band would participate in together, saying that 'I don't think we'll have time to take care of the kids who can't keep up at practice'. In response to reports of low morale at the section leaders' meeting after the Kansai auditions, she similarly says 'it's fine to leave them if they aren't taking it seriously'. Whenever Kumiko or Shuuichi have expressed any concern to her about how the band members are feeling, Reina has simply insisted that this is what it takes to get to Nationals. She thus bears major responsibility for giving Kumiko the impression that there is no way for the band to move forward while also doing justice to everybody's feelings and wishes. In other words, that Kumiko's characteristic dispositions must be reined in for the sake of the band's goals.
Kanade's input is less frequent and less directly related to Kumiko's characteristic disposition, but it is of a piece with Reina's attitude towards the main consequence of Kumiko having her unaggregated concern. As we saw in Part II, Kumiko's unaggregated concern makes it very difficult for her to attain certainty that any course of action is the right one. She is constantly open to new perspectives and thus tugged in many different directions. Sometimes, this really is vacillation. But both Kanade and Reina speak as though it is never appropriate for a leader to show any openness to new perspectives after having arrived at a decision, whether their own or others'. Hence Kanade's finding Taki-sensei blameworthy for 'meandering', and Reina's adamance that Taki-sensei shouldn't even admit that the band's questions about his decisions might be reasonable and deserve explanation. There is seemingly no middle ground for Kanade and Reina between absolute certainty and incompetent vacillation. Thus, we see two major sources of counsel broadcasting to Kumiko the idea that as a leader, she must act from a place of absolute certainty that will not entertain any opposing views. Ironically, this counsel is probably actively contributing to her state of paralysis. For it is against her nature to simply overrule others' feelings and force them to give up on what they care about. But she is now being told that she cannot act until she is prepared to do just that.
It was already bad enough that the other two have been agitating against Kumiko's characteristic unaggregated concern, but inspection reveals that Asuka has done the most damage even in the short time that she gets with Kumiko. Kumiko's reluctance to accept Asuka's proposal is, as we saw, also partially founded on a love for meritocracy that is shared at the very least by Hazuki, and in small ways that she hasn't realised yet, is also shown in the actions of other members of the band that she has paid attention to. Yet, Asuka manages to plant in Kumiko the suspicion that what she thinks is information gleaned from paying attention to others with her unaggregated concern is really just disguised selfishness. Thus Asuka not only goes against Kumiko's characteristic disposition, but threatens to discredit it and cut Kumiko off from its guidance permanently. At the same time, in characterising Taki as 'screwed' simply for his inability to explain his choice of Mayu over Kumiko for the soli, she has subtly reinforced the impression that a leader can only act from the state of complete certainty found in the aggregate point of view. Finally, Asuka's account of the situation contains none of the unrealistic idealisation or uncharitable blame of Taki-sensei that plagues Reina's and Kanade's accounts, while correctly recovering almost all the remaining details, including Mayu's discomfort. It is thus much harder for Kumiko to find any inaccuracies that would suggest Asuka has missed something, without which, the overall impression is that the place Asuka claims to speak from really is the aggregate point of view.
This is the true shape of the final boss for the Kitauji concert band. Against the backdrop of we have uncovered, Asuka emerges as the final and most formidable of the forces trapping poor Kumiko by preventing her from acting on her unaggregated concern, and she is also the only one who comes close to completely destroying it. In the ersatz aggregate point of view that Asuka has imposed on the situation, Kumiko must take back the soli from Mayu, ignoring any opposed feelings from others and overruling some of her most cherished values. Kumiko's characteristic disposition remains active and prevents her from accepting the proposal even while she is frantically wondering if Asuka is right that she is just being selfish, but at the same time she is still unable to act because she hasn't been able to show that any other course of action is justified by what she has little choice but to regard as the aggregate point of view. And all this while Kansai is only one weekend away. It is no wonder that she is left in complete despair after listening to Asuka.
This is not merely a personal crisis for Kumiko, as we can see by considering the three options that currently exist for her now:
- Do nothing.
- Act according to what she now thinks is the aggregate point of view and take back the soli from Mayu.
- Act without the protection of the aggregate point of view.
If Kumiko chooses option (a), then the situation remains the same. The band's unresolved frustrations from the Kansai audition continue to show in their tense playing, as noted by Hashimoto-sensei immediately after results were announced. This decreases their chances of making it to Nationals, and sullies the record even if they do make it and win the gold. For that gold would have been achieved at the cost of ignoring the feelings of a sizable swathe of the band and in spite of the deteriorating atmosphere. Meritocracy most certainly would not have gained a human face in Kumiko's third year, and faith that it ever could would be further dampened by the addition of another year's experience as supporting evidence that there is a dichotomy between warmth and merit.
If Kumiko chooses option (b), the preceding arguments show that the consequences would be nothing short of catastrophic. At the very least, there will be violent, potentially friendship-ending objections from Reina, and disappointment from the members of the band who share Kumiko's belief in meritocracy. It is likely that the choice to reinstate the Kyoto Prefecturals euphonium soloist destabilises all or a large part of the roster only one weekend before Kansai Regionals, severely decreasing the band's chances of breaking through to Nationals. And even if they do make it, Taki-sensei will lose considerable autonomy to make further changes in the next audition, correspondingly affecting their chances of winning the gold at Nationals. I honestly find it difficult to imagine a scenario that ends well for the Kitauji concert band if Kumiko chooses option (b), to say nothing of the fate of meritocracy if this were to come to pass. Once a precedent has been created that audition results can be overturned for non-merit reasons, it will become very difficult to prevent the pollution of the audition system by all kinds of non-merit considerations, resulting in even the barebones implementation of meritocracy at Kitauji becoming a complete sham.
It thus follows that Asuka is the final boss, not just for Kumiko, but for the entire Kitauji concert band. The beloved senpai Kumiko decides to visit in her hour of need turns out to be the single source of counsel most likely to lead her to either stagnate or sink the dreams of the entire band.
In the next Part, we shall see how Kumiko, once finally freed once again to act on her characteristic disposition, manages to pull the band back from the brink of self-destruction. But before proceeding, I want to emphasise that despite all the damage that has been done on this occasion by Kumiko's closest advisors, it is difficult for me to find them worthy of blame.
I do not have the space to develop accounts of how Reina and Kanade developed their own variants of the aggregative tendency to overrule people's feelings. But the latter two sections of Part II show us that at least in the history of the Kitauji concert band that they have experienced, there was never any occasion that would have given them reason to be cautious about leaning into such tendencies.
As for Asuka, it is clear that nowhere in this entire sequence of events has she acted contrary to what we described in Part II as her 'operating as per normal'. Every move that she has made in this story is exactly what we would expect her to do given the account of her characteristic dispositions that we extracted in Part I. It would be quite miraculous if Asuka suddenly began acting against her nature just because it is Kumiko's hour of need, and I think we should not hold her to a standard that it would take a miracle for her to meet. That Asuka is acting exactly like how she normally does instead suggests to me that she was genuinely trying her best to help Kumiko solve her problem. It is not her fault that her upbringing has made it such that this is the only way she knows how.
Part IV
In the previous Part, we saw the powerful forces pushing Kumiko to act in a way that is anathema to her unaggregated concern for others. The specific content of her three closest confidantes' counsel matters less than the fact that they would all have Kumiko simply overrule the feelings and reasons of those opposed to the course of action they recommend. All of them contribute to her paralysis by suggesting that leaders must speak from such a place of certainty that will entertain no questions or objections. To this we add the damage specifically caused by Asuka: undermining Kumiko's trust in her own feelings about the situation, even those she has due to the attention she has paid to others, by casting them as mere selfishness. Kumiko still cannot bring herself to accept Asuka's proposal, but it looks like she has no other options.
It was probably the greatest stroke of luck for the band that Kaori happened to be present when Kumiko and Asuka met, for her input here is what finally frees Kumiko from the quagmire. Soon after having ground Kumiko down, Asuka ends the conversation as she walks off to take a shower:
Not my problem! But what I like about you is that you just speak your mind without thinking about the consequences. Like you did to me. Just so you know, I still don't think you were right about a single thing you said. But I had no choice but to take it because you threw a tantrum. (Asuka-senpai?) You never do anything until the last moment anyway.Prompting Kaori to say to Kumiko with a slightly melancholic smile:
I'm jealous. You got through to her.
Does this mean that ironically, Kumiko is now also about to proceed with her favoured course of action in spite of what Asuka thinks, overruling the considerations that Asuka thinks relevant? This conclusion would only follow if there is no way to acknowledge that the feelings of someone opposed to us are reasonable as things stand, without also having to go along with what they favour instead. The main goal of this Part is to show that for someone like Kumiko, there does indeed exist a way to do this. At any rate, Kumiko certainly believes so, as we can see from the way that she departs from Asuka's house. Very much unlike her three closest advisors, Kumiko does not recast Asuka's counsel into something that would be easy to overrule. And she well could have, since her first year has already given her ample examples of Asuka's cynical view of human nature, which she could have claimed is what Asuka's counsel really expresses. Instead, Kumiko bows at the door and tells Kaori:
Please tell Asuka-senpai that she got through to me.
What Kumiko sees, reprise
After Kumiko departs Asuka's and Kaori's house, the next scene in the anime shows her running homeward while her voice narrates her message to Reina and Shuuichi in the executives' notebook to inform them of her decision to speak to the band right before Kansai. It is up to us to reconstruct how Kumiko arrives at this decision in light of the visit and based on the information she has at her disposal.
Prior to visiting Asuka, Kumiko's initially favoured solution to the problem seems to show that she was more aligned with Kanade's read on Taki-sensei's position. For Kanade clearly thinks that Taki ought to have some explanation he could give for the roster changes, including the soli. This would not have addressed the band members' feelings about the multiple audition system being adopted without their input, but it still might have seemed like a promising way to address the main source of their disquiet. Here we can see the contribution of Asuka's analytical insight to Kumiko's picture of the situation. If Mayu and Kumiko really are so close in ability, then indeed, Reina was correct that asking him to give an explanation is not the right solution. But because of Asuka, Kumiko can now see this clearly without having to deny her own doubts about Taki's roster or accept Reina's uncharitable read on the other band members who also have doubts. She realises that in the staffroom on the morning of the explosion, her teacher had already given her the only response to her question about the roster that he could give: an assurance that he is trying his best to help the band fulfill their dream. That he cannot give an explanation more precise than an appeal to 'balance' is probably, again, due to the nature of music.
But this does not exactly make things easier. As we saw earlier, the danger of admitting that Mayu and Kumiko are so close in ability is that it becomes very hard not to see any decision between them as arbitrary with regard to musicianship. This actually strengthens the case in favour of those who have doubts about the roster, and so a decision to stick with the roster risks coming off as their reasonable doubts being ignored or overruled. Even Kumiko had been trying to convince herself that Mayu really was better than her in order to suppress her own doubts about Taki-sensei's decisions, which had been present since Prefecturals. And of course, the initial adoption of the multiple audition system without the band's input remains unaddressed.
On the other hand, to take the soli back would be to overrule Reina's worries about the entire roster being destabilised right before Kansai, as well as to undermine Taki's future decision-making autonomy. It is compatible with there being almost no difference between Kumiko and Mayu that there are in fact minute, almost undetectable differences that the band has to trust Taki to detect with his experience. They cannot conclusively verify that he is right, but that is precisely why they had to trust him in the first place. Similarly, Kumiko may concede, and eventually does later, that she cannot be sure that she isn't just being selfish. So she cannot know that her love for Kitauji's meritocracy, and the love for it she detects in other members of the band, is real rather than merely the expression of her own selfishness. But she doesn't know for sure that it's not real either, and so she cannot simply dismiss it out of hand.
We thus see that immediately after departing Asuka's house, the situation as Kumiko perceives it is still liable to trigger the kind of vacillation that we saw at the start of Part II. True, she has now been released from the burden of attaining a state of absolute certainty that will entertain no questions or objections. In fact, due to her inability to rule out Asuka's read on her motives, she cannot attain such certainty anymore. But her unaggregated concern still will not let her proceed until she can see how she wouldn't be forcing people to give up on something that matters to them.
The way that Kumiko breaks this impasse seems to be of a piece with the way she deals with the trouble around the Sunrise Festival practices in S3E3. Notably, this is a problem that Kumiko deals with before she is disoriented by losing the soli in the audition, and without the input of either Reina, Kanade, or Asuka. So unlike in the rest of the season, her response to it is guided exclusively by her characteristic disposition, which is free to act unfettered without the pressure of her advisors or their doubts about its true nature. As we are about to see, Kumiko does not solve this earlier problem by speaking from the aggregate point of view. Having been freed from having to do so by Kaori, she can now draw on what she has already learned from this earlier incident to address the situation in the present.
Interlude
With Kitauji beginning to gain a reputation as a strong band school, the new first-years consist of a mix of beginners and seasoned veterans with prior band experience. During the difficult practices for the Sunrise Festival in early S3, the ire of Reina and the new recruits with prior band experience falls disproportionately on the beginners. Reina berates new French horn Yuki Takekawa so harshly in front of the entire band during marching practice that she starts crying and has to be led away to rest by first-year clarinet veteran Sally Yoshii. Two first-year veterans later complain to Kumiko about weaker members going home instead of practicing, comparing them unfavourably to Sally, who practices diligently despite being a veteran. Rumours begin to spread that the beginners are planning a mass boycott, while Kumiko independently notices Sally looking more and more downbeat during practice, and visibly uncomfortable around Reina. The two eventually get to speak privately in S3E3 when Kumiko visits her house to check on her when she falls ill.
In Sally's room, Kumiko learns that Sally is being torn apart by conflicting feelings about the situation in the band. Sally agrees with Reina that tough training is indeed what is needed for the band to get gold at Nationals, but she favours a differentiated training program where beginners will not be subjected to such a gruelling regime. After all, she reasons, only the competition ensemble members have to train that hard. It further turns out that the rumours were true, and some beginners really had considered quitting. Sally has been trying to get them to stay, telling them that they will enjoy the results of their hard work. But the plight of people like Yuki is making her wonder if she has instead been contributing to their suffering by keeping them in the band against their will instead of letting them leave.
Here we see in miniature a situation with the same structure that Kumiko is currently faced with in the present. Each beginner first year who is currently suffering in training could either be encouraged to stay or allowed to quit, but not both. Like Sally, Kumiko is also troubled by the possibility of people quitting due to the harsh training, and is not fully convinced that there is any level of gain that would make their loss worth it. We see in S3E1 that despite the miracle of the band making it to Nationals in her first year, Kumiko remains troubled that they made it there at the cost of losing Aoi, who quit the band to focus on her college entrance exams. As she says in the student leaders' notebook:
We're not Kitauji unless we're all there.But on the other hand, as she says later, Kumiko herself had also pondered the idea of a differentiated training program in the vein of Sally's suggestion, for basically the same reason of not wanting the beginners to suffer against their will. And she also thinks that Reina is simply doing what she is supposed to do as drum major: try her best to make the band better. From this other point of view, that some beginners quit might be regarded as a regrettable but necessary evil. So, as in the historical present, there are two incompatible options, each with reasonable considerations behind them that Kumiko is reluctant to simply overrule.
The way out is pointed by Kumiko's chance sighting behind the school a few days prior, of Yuki practicing marching on her own initiative with a bandmate clapping the time for her.
If Yuki wants to improve as a musician, and wants to go as far as possible with the band towards their goal at Nationals, the idea of instituting a differentiated training program looks quite different. It would almost certainly only widen the skill gap between the veterans and the beginners by systematically allocating them less time with Taki-sensei and their more advanced peers. Yuki might have an easy happy time in the band if it were instituted, but she might well end up looking back and realising that she could have gone much further had she been pushed harder. Certainly it seems even more likely that placement in the A- or B-division ensemble would begin to depend disproportionately on prior band experience. Thus, to institute such a training program would in effect make Yuki give up on something that matters to her.
Just because Yuki wants to improve doesn't mean that she would endure absolutely anything to stay, however. If she looked back on her time in the band in her third year and remembered nothing but harsh browbeating and constantly having to prove herself to her peers, she might well end up regretting having joined as well, no matter how much she had improved. Yuki wants to improve, and she wants to have warm memories of her time in the band to look back on. Her threshold for how much punishment she is able to take on her own before finally giving up on staying might differ from others, the fact that she is clearly receiving more punishment than the veterans notwithstanding. But it is clear that if she quit due to the treatment she has received thus far, with the motives she has, it would be her giving up on something that matters to her despite having rather stayed under different circumstances. And there can be no question that she would leave the band with nothing but bitter memories of her time there.
Although we only see Kumiko catch sight of Yuki, training on one's own initiative is only the most overt and unambiguous marker of the compound wish just noted. For the other beginners could also have quit anytime if that were all they wanted. Their continuing to show up to practice despite their tears thus gives Kumiko confidence that they are not simply suffering against their wishes. Thus Kumiko can say to Sally:
I think all of our members want to get better to some degree.and thank her for what she has been doing. With Sally's encouragement, the beginners can continue doing their best to improve in the band, but without having to withstand everything alone. And indeed, the fact that Sally was worried that she was forcing them through more suffering shows that she is exactly the kind of understanding friend they need around them.
It is instructive to compare this to the way that Mayu breaks down the situation when she learns about the rumoured boycott. Mayu tells Kumiko that she thinks it's 'a good thing' if the beginners are allowed to quit, since:
People who want to quit get to be free from the club. Everyone staying behind gets to focus on performances without worry.In the world as Mayu sees it, people choose different things simply because they want different things. Either people care about performance and will endure anything to stay in the band, or they don't and so they just quit since that will set them free. She seems to think that the things people want are all and only the available choices. Or what is equivalent, that it is impossible for people to make different choices even though they all want the same thing, and in fact because they want the same thing.
Of course, it is no accident that Mayu sees the situation this way. As we saw in the last essay, Mayu's entire character arc exemplifies in miniature the hitherto untranscended dichotomy between merit and warmth that Kitauji has been caught in. Even Kumiko, when administering the vote in S3E2, speaks in these terms that were handed down to her from her first year:
Will we endure difficult practice to produce results? Or will we focus on enjoying the club?The truth, however, that Kumiko is probably only dimly beginning to grasp from that chance sighting of Yuki, is that people want some mix of both, not only one or the other. Thus, whether Yuki chooses to stay or quit depends only partially on what she wants. Her eventual choice is made via the interaction between her wishes and the present conditions she faces. And the same applies even to her veteran peers. Indeed, we do not see anybody clamouring for Yuki to be shown the door. The two first-year veterans complaining to Kumiko want their less experienced peer to catch up with them by staying behind to practice more. But because they are spared Reina's ire due to their prior experience, they likely do not understand how things feel for a beginner in this year's Kitauji concert band. If they started in a band when they were much younger, then they also would not have the felt what it is like to be a beginner being compared to peers with vastly more experience. And this is likely why they interpret their less experienced peer's different tolerance threshold for harsh practice as laziness.
Kumiko then sums up the situation for herself and Sally, in words that I am convinced come back to guide her during the Kansai roster debacle, although we are not explicitly shown that they do:
Concert band has a lot of people. There are beginners and advanced players. People think about things differently. I think it's hard to find one correct answer. That's the thing.Didn't Asuka also try to bring everyone's wishes together though, by deciding whose carried weight and whose didn't in aggregate? And if those wishes are incompatible, isn't this the only way to bring them together? Kumiko is about to say something that Asuka would never say:
So I think the president's job is to bring everyone's wishes together.
So yeah... Bring it all to me. (To you?) Mm-hmm. Whether it's something weighing you down personally, or some issues the other first-years are having... Tell me everything. I'm sure everyone has similar problems.Back in S1, it was noted by the senior members of the bass section that Asuka often gets angry when people are distracted during practice by problems in their personal lives. These problems do not matter to her unless there is some good reason why they would be relevant to the band's performance. Or in other words, Asuka does not have the unaggregated concern for others that is Kumiko's characteristic disposition. She does not engage with other people's personal feelings unless it will help to solve some problem, and even then solving the problem takes precedence over those feelings, as it must if the feelings are opposed.
This paints Kumiko's last statement to Sally in the appropriate light to connect it to the historical present. Making fun of herself and her grandiose declaration, Kumiko laughs:
I guess that doesn't solve anything, huh? But I feel like we can figure out if we talk it through. I mean...
We're all aiming for the same goal.
The importance of Kumiko having the unaggregated concern that Asuka lacks emerges upon considering why Kumiko was nevertheless stuck during Kansai despite having had this extremely instructive experience before. As Kumiko has herself said here, she is aware that her unaggregated concern 'doesn't solve anything'. At least, not in itself. When the situation has the overt appearance of a problem that needs solving, as after the Kansai audition results were announced, Kumiko may well have also trapped herself by thinking that she had to quickly find a solution, even though doing so would cut against her characteristic disposition.
This points to an even more fundamental reason for its importance: namely, that said underlying unity, even when it exists, is by no means easy to find. When faced with opposition, is much easier to concoct uncharitable explanations that allow us to distort and overrule the views of those opposed to us, as Kumiko's three advisors have shown. It is also easier to quickly arrive at a solution to the problem without consulting those most intimately involved, as Reina did by passing judgment on Nozomi in S2, and Mayu did in assessing the position of people like Yuki without even talking to her.
The state of mind and the actions that allowed Kumiko to find said underlying unity seem clearly anathema to the aggregative thinker as we have seen her. Even now Kumiko is not certain whether her read on the beginners' motives is correct, but then neither was she certain when earlier having her own thoughts about separating the beginners and veterans. That she wasn't certain then is probably why she did not act immediately upon hearing rumours and seeing signs suggesting the boycott was imminent. And this enabled the sighting of Yuki that allowed Kumiko to see beyond the choice to either quit or stay by giving her a glimpse into Yuki's motives. As we saw with the way she administered the vote at the start of her third year, Kumiko herself unwittingly reproduced the dichotomy that seems to rule out the possibility of such complex motives, so it is quite unlikely that she would have been able to contemplate this possibility herself. Finally, Kumiko also bothered to invite Sally to share her honest feelings with her instead of inferring from her demeanour that she wasn't willing to do 'what it takes to get to Nationals'. Only thus was she able to present a way forward that would do justice to both Sally's and Yuki's feelings, or at least, her best guess at the latter.
The underlying unity, if it exists, can only be found if we 'talk it through' in good faith, resisting the urge to quickly settle on a solution to the problem, and remaining open to new perspectives. This is exactly what someone with an unaggregated concern for each and every person does best. But even for them, it is very hard indeed.
What Kumiko sees, reprise (cont)
The signs of the underlying unity Kumiko needs were already noted by her when she fought with Reina in S3E9. Facing the band's division over the Kansai audition results, Reina has been emphasising the whole time that following Taki-sensei is 'fundamental', since he is the instructor. To which Kumiko replies that people are indeed following him. Despite their clear uneasiness and confusion, nobody has stopped coming to practice or lodged protests on the level that tore the band apart two years prior.
On that occasion, the conversation quickly moved ahead to the question of whether Kumiko had doubts about Taki's roster. But if Kumiko reflected now, she would be able to see that the band's behaviour even under the present conditions is rather similar to what she saw with Yuki, writ large. For if they didn't care about the outcome for the band's dream of reaching gold at Nationals, they could have done either of those two things or something worse anytime. That they haven't shows that they were serious when they voted at the start of the year to go for the gold. And, ironically, the strength of their wish to get the gold is probably exactly why they are so hesitant to simply go along with a roster whose basis they cannot understand. Rather, going along with no questions or doubts would be what they did if they didn't care at all.
She would also be able to see at this point that just like the first-years, Reina and Kanade are each led to opposed views due to their respective locations in the situation despite their both wanting equally fervently for Kitauji to make it to Nationals. Each has interpreted the rest of the situation in a way that would accommodate the part they can see most clearly. Reina, due to her previous acquaintance with Taki, and due to being the drum major, experiences Taki as much more than just the instructor standing on the podium giving them directions. So it is somewhat understandable why she has such faith in Taki, even if her image of him is too idealised. Correspondingly, she interprets the band's dissatisfaction as the unfounded resentment of lazy members. In exact contrast, Kanade, being much closer to the rank-and-file of the band, and with little direct contact with Taki, cannot help but find him and his roster at fault for being the cause of her bandmates' reasonable doubts.
The band's direct plea to the student leaders to 'do something about the bad vibes in club' is sufficient evidence that despite their wish to go to Nationals, the band at large is still intensely troubled by their unresolved doubts about the roster, the interpersonal conflicts around the roster, and their hurt at not being consulted about the multiple audition system. And this is what Reina has been fixated on, missing the fact of their compliance and its significance. Nevertheless, the band is complying, but still in spite of these troubled feelings. This gives Kumiko confidence, as she says to Reina and Shuuichi in the executives' notebook, that all the members of the band share the same compound wish:
But I want all of us to perform well together. And I want us to be glad we did. I'm confident Taki-sensei and the club members feel the same about that.
While the preceding account did not go into detail about the content of Kumiko's decision, I believe it will be no surprise given the analysis in Part III that she eventually decides to stick with the Kansai roster. There it was shown using information that Kumiko already had at her disposal that the consequences of meddling with the roster would be undoubtedly worse than the situation now. But even without those reflections, we know that Kumiko's belief in meritocracy and the audition system that is its material implementation is one of her most cherished values. It would be a miracle if she moved against it. As she tells Reina and Shuuichi in the notebook, it was the fact that she could relate to the band's feelings that had held her back from saying anything. In other words, Kumiko's unaggregated concern held her back from taking action despite her belief in meritocracy because at that point, it would have meant having to make people give up on something that matters to them. That same unwillingness to overrule or discount people's feelings has now allowed Kumiko to finally see the underlying unity that eluded everyone, and will allow her to act on her belief in a way that she can accept.
Note that it is compatible with the presence of such underlying unity that the basis for the aggregate point of view has eroded. For what produces the opposed views despite the underlying unity is the interaction of that shared wish with present conditions. And just because everybody is in the band, doesn't mean that everybody is facing the same conditions, let alone facing them in the same way. So even having found the underlying unity, Kumiko still cannot claim to speak from the aggregate point of view, particularly when addressing the entire band at once. She may have seen something that the rest of the band hasn't managed to see, but she cannot expect them to believe her just because she says so. Indeed, Kumiko tried two years prior to tell Asuka what she saw when there wasn't even any opposition among the rest of the band, and Asuka was still not able to believe her.
How else can Kumiko make use of this information she possesses, if nobody will believe it when she tries to show it to them? In the next section, we shall see that the way Kumiko finally gets through to the band is by revealing some information. But the fact of the underlying unity is really only what enables her to act in such a way that this much more important information is revealed. The latter is what reunites the band behind it with a common purpose.
Kansai
On the morning of Kansai Regionals, the band's leadership has already been reunited after reading Kumiko's message in the student leaders' notebook. But the rank-and-file remains unsettled. Suzume accidentally plays a note on her tuba before they reach the preparation room, and gets frantic just from tuning her instrument. Other members of the band similarly wonder whether they will be alright. They have continued doing their best even after the explosion of S3E10, and today Taki-sensei has already done all he can by voicing his approval of their sound after they run through the opening bars of the free piece. It is up to Kumiko to address the unresolved feelings that continue to weigh down their hearts.
It is worth watching Kumiko's speech yourself to feel the full force of her delivery. In the forthcoming analysis, I have tried to capture as much of its effect on the situation facing the band as I can, but it still pales in comparison to the real thing.
True to form, Kumiko initially embarrasses herself as she accidentally voices aloud her internal pep talk to just speak her mind to the band.
At Kitauji, the first-years and third-years can compete in the same ring. For that, I love it.Kumiko starts off by declaring her love for Kitauji's meritocracy and its promise: a fair competition where everyone can be rewarded for their own effort, regardless of their social position. She explains the club's particularly strong drive to get the gold, alluding to the dream passed down to them from the Kitauji concert band of two years before. That this dream has continued to elude them has filled the senior cohorts and the leadership with simmering discontent and resentment.
And I want for us, Kitauji, to get the gold at Nationals. I've wanted that for two years. But we never made it. The second-years, third-years, and Taki-sensei, must all be thinking the same.
Why, dammit?
Which is why we, as the executives, decided that we needed to change something and proposed the audition format this year. I don't think we were wrong about it. I also think it's a decision befitting of Kitauji.Descending from history and generalities, Kumiko begins to touch the source of those unresolved feelings weighing down the band's hearts: the multiple audition system and the roster that it has created.
We can see the relevance of what has been said so far in light of the earlier insight about people being differently located despite all being members of the same band. The first-years may not understand the significance of Kitauji's meritocratic culture and the dream of getting the gold to their senpais. Both that culture and that dream were born together in the same blaze of glory at Kyoto Prefecturals in Kumiko's first year, only to never find fulfilment even two years after. This information is a revelation for the first-years and a reminder for the senior cohorts, who were also not consulted about the new system. The band is now getting an explanation for the radical reforms that they were owed after the fact. Surely, one might think, they can see that they would have accepted it had they been consulted early on?
Since they are already in the concert hall, there is no prospect of the roster changing any longer, and so the band must know that Kumiko is trying to reconcile them to this unchangeable fact. One way that could be done is indeed to give them an explanation for multiple audition system being implemented and suggest that since they would have accepted it if given earlier, they should now also be ready to go along with the roster the system created despite their feelings. And if this is how Kumiko wants to be received, then we should be disappointed. For even Asuka and Reina could have made this sort of appeal if they were in her place. It still requires of the band, or even takes it as given, that they will accept the explanation and overrule whatever they feel now about the roster. Perhaps this is indeed what Kumiko's audience hears at this point, since the anxiety on their faces hasn't yet begun to vanish.
But then Kumiko again does something that Reina and Asuka could never do on their own:
But it's true that some were apprehensive about it. As the president, I'd like to apologise for that.Having acknowledged their feelings, she sinks into a deep, almost 90-degree bow.
I'm sorry! (すみませんでした!)Shuuichi immediately stands and follows suit. Though initially stunned, Reina eventually also stands and bows deeply. Through this gesture, the student leaders acknowledge that the band's feelings remain reasonable and real, even after the explanation that they have been given. They are not trying to reconcile the band to the system and the roster by speaking from the aggregate point of view, since if they were, they would not think they had anything to apologise for.
That said, however, it is still possible for someone to see that they have something to apologise for, and having apologised, yet think that their listener now owes it to them to go along with their intentions. This is not what Kumiko thinks, for she then says:
I'm not sure all of you can accept such a belated apology...At this point, Kumiko finally fully discards the shield of the aggregate point of view:
... but... But still, I want to win gold with Kitauji!Because Kumiko does not take it for granted that the band will accept her apology, she cannot and is not commanding the band to follow her, expecting them to obey. But she can show them where her heart leads and why. As she continues speaking, the faces of her audience finally begin to change:
Maybe that's selfish. But I want those of us here to put on the best performance ever so we can blow away all the discontent and hesitation and make it to the Nationals.Prior to this moment, since as far back as the Sunrise Festival, the band had always had their pain, dissatisfaction, hurt, and confusion overruled with Reina's phrase 'this is what it takes to get to Nationals'. They always had to just go along with what the leadership commanded them to do, in spite of their feelings. But now, Kumiko is not speaking from the aggregate point of view, and she is not overruling their feelings. She is showing to them a (1)-type reason, a personal wish to go to Nationals. And the basis of this (1)-type reason contains, in addition to Kumiko's own feelings, all the (1)-type reasons of the rest of the band. For isn't this what their continued effort under the conditions of their discontent indicates?
After a year of watching us, I realised... There's no way we haven't gotten good after we practiced so much. There's no way we wouldn't get through to people with how much we put into it.
Kitauji can do it! We can do it! So have confidence! Have faith in what we've done!
If Kumiko had tried to tell the band, fixated as they all were on their opposition, that said opposition really issued from an underlying unity that only she could see, this would have rung hollow. As I said earlier, the band is aware that Kumiko has a very strong incentive to say anything that would reconcile them to the unchangeable fact of the Kansai roster. By inspection we can also see that this path to persuading them would still be basically indistinguishable from what her advisors have been doing, namely, transforming the band's feelings into whatever most suits their favoured course of action. That is why the underlying unity that Kumiko thinks she can see could not be the main subject of her address to the band.
What seems to have happened instead is that grasping the underlying unity allowed Kumiko to hope, even though she couldn't know for sure, that the band's hearts would lean the same way if she revealed hers to them. By leaving their feelings untransformed and showing how they have been incorporated into the basis for her own, Kumiko showed the band that she wanted to go to Nationals because of how they felt about everything so far, rather than in spite of that. And so, even though she was expressing a personal wish to go to Nationals, the band was able to hear their own wishes projected back at them in Kumiko's voice, reinforced and coloured by her refusal to let them throw everything away by shaking themselves apart before the performance.
At this point, Kumiko's emotion has overcome her too, and she trails off as she tries to regain control of where her speech is going. But she need not say anymore. Midori begins tapping her feet on the floor, and as she claps, Hazuki declares that she wants to go to Nationals too. Midori follows suit, and soon many members are also declaring their desire to go to Nationals amid the thunderous applause.
Thus, as I promised to show: the existence of the underlying unity made all this possible to begin with, and grasping it allowed Kumiko to act. But it was a piece of information about Kumiko herself that would really bring it into being for the band as a whole. And there would not have been this piece of information if not for Kumiko's unaggregated concern.
There is a lingering puzzle here that reveals a beautiful phenomenon. Didn't the underlying unity consist in the band sharing a compound wish, viz. 'Everyone wants to play well together and be glad they did'? Yet, the band seems only to express the first half during the cascade. The band might fail to advance past Kansai despite playing well by a reasonable standard, but the fact is that what will get them to Nationals is connected to the part of the compound wish that has more to do with how they play than how they feel. So how do we know that the underlying unity has been recovered?
The reason why Kumiko had to first articulate it to herself and to the student leaders as a compound wish was because she was speaking under conditions where the two wishes seemed opposed. Both then had to be explicitly invoked in order to guarantee that actions taken would serve the goal of getting some mix of both, rather than just one or the other. But since Kumiko managed to incorporate the band's feelings into the basis for going for Nationals with the Kansai roster, action taken in service of each now also serves the other. Midori and the rest of the band need only declare their wish to go to Nationals, since that is the part of the compound wish that is not yet fulfilled. So the seemingly missing second half of the compound wish in Midori's exclamation is actually itself evidence that the underlying unity has been recovered. The compound wish only has to be invoked in its full form when the conditions within the band's control threaten its fulfilment from the start.
Finale
We have thus finally seen how the very different leadership style that grows out of Kumiko's unaggregated concern was able to come into its own on the morning of Kansai Regionals in Kumiko's third year. The danger of such a leader falling into vacillation when confronted with opposed views is real. But if there is an underlying unity in virtue of which that opposition arose in the first place, and if she manages to see it, she will be able to move forward in a way that does justice to everyone's feelings. Despite being unable to speak from the aggregate point of view, she can reveal her own wish to her fellows, which due to that same unaggregated concern, has incorporated all of theirs into its basis. And thus when she calls them to follow her forward, they can all join her without denying any part of themselves. Thus is the opposition overcome and all reunited behind a common purpose.
With the main part of this grand story concluded, it only remains to tie up some loose ends. Afterward, we will be in best position to make some closing reflections.
The secret boss and the final boss
The only character who remains unmoved after Kumiko's speech is Mayu. This is not surprising. The reason why the band is able to hear Kumiko speaking their wishes back at them in her voice is because they have spoken them to her, and they can trust that she has heard them. This is clearly not true for Mayu. On many occasions throughout S3, Kumiko has tried not to hear Mayu's genuine unease about auditioning for the soli, and refused to be vulnerable to Mayu. In particular, after she loses the Kansai audition, Kumiko refuses to let Mayu even finish offering to concede the soli to her, telling her that she will simply play because she was chosen. On the morning of Kansai, Mayu does tell Kumiko that she will do her best when playing the soli, but does so before Kumiko's speech. And she says it is so that Kumiko will have a chance to play it at Nationals. Clearly, Mayu is going along with the roster and the band's goals in spite of her feelings, seeing herself as doing this for Kumiko's sake. So why is she the secret boss of the band and not the final boss, when her arc is only properly concluded during the S3E12 re-audition?
The answer has to do with the specific reason why Kumiko and Mayu couldn't communicate thus far. As we can see clearly by now, the band members at large all want some mix of merit and warmth, but the mix can vary. Certainly Reina, for example, cares a lot less about warmth than she does about merit despite caring about both. In a sense, Mayu is the anti-Reina. Mayu's preferred mix contains a lot more warmth than merit. Thus she plays to the best of her ability because she has pride in her music, but will indeed step down if asked to.
The problem is that Mayu's variant of the compound wish does not interact well with the dichotomy between warmth and merit that Kitauji is still caught in the grip of. Remember that as we saw, what is explicitly vocalised as a wish is what has not been fulfilled. Mayu is obviously excellent at the euphonium, and so she primarily voices her wish to get along with everyone. But because meritocracy had been adopted first for its ability to produce results, and because the band's instructor before Taki-sensei had been seen as over-privileging warmth at the cost of merit, she has been interpreted as having no care for merit at all, and thus someone for whom no meritocracy has a place. She is the secret boss because up to this point, Kitauji's meritocracy had simply overlooked the possible existence of someone like her. And so it is also understandable why Kumiko felt threatened by her. Under present conditions, she could not help but see Mayu as a threat, not only to her chances of winning the soli, but to the meritocratic system that she loves so dearly.
Notably, although earlier Asuka had grasped that Mayu was in some sort of difficult position, she assumed based on Mayu's offers to forfeit that Mayu had no attachment to the soli at all, missing the significance of her having played well enough to win the soli anyway in the first place. She was too focused on trying to solve the problem to look deeper into Mayu's feelings, focusing only on what could give way in the aggregate point of view. That Mayu could have simply played badly instead of trying to make Kumiko ask her to forfeit only first comes to Kumiko's attention when Kanade points this out to her in S3E11. But Kanade still interprets this uncharitably as an attempt on Mayu's part to insult or disorient Kumiko before the final audition. It is Kumiko who, freed from the need to speak from the aggregate point of view and now primed to look further than the site of opposed choices, eventually manages to see Mayu's variant of the compound wish right before their re-audition in S3E12 and speak it to her.
It thus follows that the final boss of the Kitauji concert band was decisively overcome during the speech at Kansai Regionals in Kumiko's third year when Kumiko finally stepped out of the shield of the aggregate point of view and allowed her unaggregated concern for each and every person to animate her decisions. The dawn of the meritocracy with a human face had not yet come. But when it did, it arrived borne aloft on the tailwind of Kansai, for it was here that Kitauji's leader properly found her voice.
Origins
We devoted a large portion of Part II to explaining how Asuka became the person that she is. She was not simply born with the qualities that she now exemplifies, and we even saw in Part III that she is not unique in the way she approaches situations, though Kanade and Reina may not see themselves as speaking from the aggregate point of view. It thus seems fitting to wonder how Kumiko became the person that she is, or at least how her unaggregated concern for others was kept alive despite her having been surrounded by so many contravening personalities.
To start with negative explanations, part of the answer surely lies in the fact that there was no counterpart to Asuka's mother in Kumiko's life. Thus there was much less need for Kumiko to shield herself with the aggregate point of view. When Kumiko wants something at home, there is a much better chance that both she and her parents are able to at least negotiate in good faith, both parties puzzling out in the process what their true wishes and the reasons for them are, and how they weigh against each other.
The only character who really puts Kumiko on the defensive is her sister Mamiko in S1. During the period before she quits college in Kumiko's first year, Mamiko is constantly shown telling Kumiko to give up on concert band since it will be pointless for getting into college. This does send Kumiko into a crisis of faith, especially when she struggles with part of the competition piece despite her best efforts and Taki eventually has Asuka play that part alone. But unlike Asuka's mother, Mamiko is only rarely at home to harass Kumiko like this, and clearly she has no power to actually stop Kumiko from participating in the band. Otherwise this arc couldn't have lasted as long as it did. It also only takes Kumiko finding her own reason for playing in the band to drive Mamiko away. As it turns out, that reason is very simple:
There is a point. I like playing the euphonium!Once Kumiko is able to admit this to herself, she no longer just sits and takes Mamiko's attacks, and the moment Kumiko stands up for herself, Mamiko backs down and doesn't harass Kumiko again. It goes without saying that Asuka's mother would never have accepted such a baldly (1)-type reason as this had she been the one terrorising Kumiko.
The absence of someone like Asuka's mother in Kumiko's life also opens up space for her to be concerned about others that Asuka didn't have. Asuka's most seemingly callous moments, such as during Haruka's breakdown after Aoi quits in S1, are cast in a completely different light when one considers the need for Asuka to keep her commitments at a low enough level to honour the contract with her mother. Haruka's breakdown raised the possibility of Asuka helping Haruka with the presidential duties, perhaps even taking the office itself, because Haruka is convinced that Asuka would have been able to prevent Aoi from quitting if she had been president as originally intended. Asuka responds that Haruka should have refused the office just like she did, essentially telling Haruka that it was her own fault for taking on more than she could handle when she didn't have to. This wounds Haruka so badly that she misses school the next day. But Asuka's concealed smile when she sees Haruka start to grow as a leader suggests to me that she cares for Haruka and probably wouldn't have done that if not for the need to protect her hard-won time in the band. And the band absolutely would have fallen into disarray if Asuka's mother had forced her to quit when Haruka's leadership abilities were in such an underdeveloped state. Thus, the absence of such a figure in Kumiko's life also gave her the space to be concerned for others' feelings in addition to her own. She never had to cut herself off from people's pain for the sake of other goals.
We know, however, that before coming to Kitauji, Kumiko was still someone who rarely dared to move against the wisdom of the crowd, a far cry from the brave young woman we just saw who dares to speak from her heart without the shield of the aggregate point of view. Even if her thoughts were relatively free of the need for a shield, she was still unable to act on those thoughts. What changed?
Kumiko has her own account of her growth, but it is at best also partial. She credits having met Reina with the change in her personality, as she tells Mayu in S3E12. And it is true that Reina is the first person Kumiko met who wasn't just comfortable going against the flow, but in fact took pride in 'not doing what everyone else is doing'. That is her reason for climbing up Daikichiyama with Kumiko in S1E8 instead of going to the Agata Festival like everybody else. So there is some reason to think that Kumiko learned from Reina the courage to do what she wants even if few might understand her reasons for it. Unfortunately, as we saw earlier, Reina cares so little for the opinions of others that she has no qualms about trampling on them when they seem to go against her beliefs, with even her best friend Kumiko not being spared. The Kumiko we saw earlier is not just someone who dares to speak from her heart without the shield of the aggregate point of view. She is also someone who does so with utmost care for others' feelings.
I think that there are three key characters who have had a clear hand in shaping Kumiko into who she has become. They shall be listed here along with their contributions.
The first character is Kumiko's senpai Natsuki. I think that she bears at least as much responsibility as Reina for helping Kumiko find the courage to be herself around others, and she does so in a way more closely aligned with Kumiko's unaggregated concern. It seems that Kumiko's passivity at the start of the series was caused by trauma from a senpai's bullying after Kumiko was selected for a competition over her in middle school. If Kumiko hadn't had subsequent experience to the contrary, she might well have come to hold her own version of Asuka's Proposition (3) and never felt safe enough to act without a shield. Indeed, when Kumiko is selected over Natsuki in her first year, she is initially afraid that history will repeat itself. Instead, Natsuki invites Kumiko out for a milkshake, thanks Kumiko for having encouraged her to practice in the first place, and says they'll play together in next year's competition instead, moving Kumiko to tears.
Natsuki is thus the first to show Kumiko that there are people out there who will be happy for her if she does well, even at cost to themselves. For Natsuki clearly also wanted to get into the competition roster, given how hard she practiced in comparison to usual. But she was still able to find it in her to notice Kumiko's worry about how their relationship would be affected and take action to affirm it. This careful attention to others' feelings and wishes (in service of what we can see is Natsuki's compound wish) has much more in common with the Kumiko we saw earlier than Reina's behaviour throughout the story.
Secondly, we have Mamiko again. Mamiko's story vividly illustrates to Kumiko the costs of seeking refuge in a path that would be easiest to defend to others, as she did with her initial choice to quit band and study to get into college despite really wanting to be a beautician. She tells Kumiko herself in the conversation where the two sisters reconcile:
My regrets... My failures... I'll accept all of them. I want to choose my own path!In other words, it's okay not to be able to answer all the questions that people have about something you believe in. Better that than the refuge of platitudes and conventional wisdom that ultimately trapped Mamiko in a path she never wanted. Mamiko also shows this to Kumiko through her actions, for she is forced out of the Oumae family home and cut off from financial support soon after her decision to quit college, but continues working at her dream and maintaining contact with Kumiko. In one stroke, her arc thus shows Kumiko the dangers of giving in to easily available framings of the situation she is facing, and also shows her that it is still possible to fight for one's dreams without the shield of the aggregate point of view.
I should have just told them that. Even if they were against it, it would've been better that way.
The huge difference in the way Kumiko and Reina approach a conversation about love in the novels covering Kumiko's second year seems to hint at Mamiko's influence. This is not the first time that Kumiko and Reina have leaned in different ways over some issue, but it stands out to me because Kumiko seems to articulate exactly the danger that Mamiko's story has shown to her in S2. While trying to puzzle out Kumiko's feelings towards Shuuichi, Reina immediately rushes to analyse them using a Venn diagram and ends up developing a toy logic of likes and dislikes using De Morgan's Law. Kumiko is impressed, but ultimately a little scared of looking at Reina's diagram:
... The moment that numbers or words take form, they move from being something hazy into something absolutely easy to understand. I feel that even things that weren't meant to be in a definite shape could even transform and fit one.Indeed, back then, Mamiko was able to 'pretend she knew everything' by giving her choice 'a definite shape' through the lens of the platitudes and conventional wisdom presented to her. I would say that it was Mamiko's continued influence that gave Kumiko the ability to resist her three advisors in her third year, all of whom were extremely adept at imposing 'a definite shape' on the situation around the Kansai roster, enabling their overruling of opposed views and preventing them from looking beyond the opposition to the underlying unity. She deserves to be credited for this.
But the character who I think deserves the most credit for being a role model to Kumiko, exemplifying something like her unaggregated concern for each and every person in a leader's capacity, is Taki-sensei. As the band director, Taki sometimes has to make tough calls such as the aforementioned decision in her first year to remove Kumiko from a part that she was struggling with in the free choice piece. But he does not only see his students as the instruments they play. In S1E12, Taki reveals that he still remembers Kumiko had earlier promised to master the part she was struggling with:
By the way... Practice that part that you were having trouble with please. For the Kansai competition.
I haven't forgotten that you said you could do it.
Taki-sensei also models for Kumiko in S3 exactly the way that a leader who respects their fellows' concerns would see them for what they are, namely, investment in their shared goal, and so not dismiss or overrule them out of hand. When Kumiko visits his desk on the morning of the public explosion and questions him about the Kansai roster changes, Taki doesn't make her feel bad for asking her question despite the difficult position he is in and the amount of thought he surely had already put into making it. Neither does he give her false confidence by pretending that the reasoning around it is much more solid than the band members can see. Both of those options would make his student leaders hesitant to share their doubts and opinions with him, and so deprive him of their valuable perspectives on his decisions. Instead, we can see that just as the band has to trust him to find the best music for their goal, he has decided to trust Kumiko to understand his position and so take his words in the appropriate light. Thus, in modelling this openness to receive questions and doubts, Taki-sensei also subtly shows to Kumiko that contrary to what her advisors have been broadcasting to her, it is okay for a leader to speak without having attained absolute certainty, and okay to treat their fellows' questions about their decisions as reasonable. He even tells her that he is happy that she has brought her questions to him.
The final interaction I want to discuss involving Taki-sensei in turn shows the origin of such unaggregated concern in him and how core it is to his teaching ethos. In S3E11, Kumiko visits Taki-sensei's desk again, and he commends her for her speech at Kansai, confessing doubts that even he could have done what she did. In the past, he had often been confused about the meaningfulness of his job, having to build up a band every year for a competition that happens only once a year, only to have to build it up again next year once the senior cohort graduates. He'd even complained to his now deceased wife Chihiro that his job seemed 'as pointless as stacking rocks on the river Styx'.
The younger Taki's view is reminiscent of what Asuka says to Kumiko in S2E10: 'It doesn't matter (whether she gets to play in the ensemble), since the third-years will be leaving soon anyway'. And indeed, in the widest sense of things, in the aggregate point of view of the universe, the fate of a single year's high school band doesn't seem to matter at all. But Taki shares Chihiro's reply with Kumiko:
... they're not rocks. They're people.
Taki-sensei and Kumiko have the last mentioned exchange only after the turmoil of Kansai has passed. But I have included it to show that just like with Asuka and Kumiko, the things we see him doing throughout the series are not random accidents. The very reason why Taki originally became Kitauji's band director was to fulfill in her place the now deceased Chihiro's dream of leading her alma mater's band to the gold at Nationals. And I have no doubt that, her belief being as core to his teaching ethos as it is, his heart was warmed when he stood behind Kumiko during her speech at Kansai and saw what kind of president she had grown into.
Coda
Aside from considerations of balance, an important reason why we made that last detour was to show that just like Asuka, Kumiko was not born with the qualities that she displayed at Kansai. And so, in a very important sense, the overcoming of the final boss at Kansai was not only her accomplishment. If one were to conclude based on the above study that we should simply find people like Kumiko and leave it all up to them, we should respond by asking: from what point onward are we to leave it up to them? Kumiko could have been a very different person if she had been born in a different home, or if she had met different people throughout her three years. Just like her peers, Kumiko is also not immune to the limits of her location in the situation. The three characters just mentioned who contributed so much to Kumiko's growth were nevertheless not the people she interacted with most frequently or explicitly held in high esteem as role models. Thus despite their influence, she was still almost unable to overcome the paralysis induced by the counsel of Reina, Kanade, and Asuka. And on the occasion of Kansai, it seems that the intervention which averted disaster was made by Kaori, with whom Kumiko does not have a close relationship at all, but whose single comment was what finally freed Kumiko from paralysis.
This is also why, as I said in the introduction of this essay, it is somewhat misleading to call Asuka a 'final boss'. Such language similarly suggests that things would have turned out much better if the person so-named never got involved in the situation in the first place, hence why they had to be overcome. But as we saw, Asuka, Kanade, and Reina each made important contributions to the picture of the situation that Kumiko eventually put together, pointing out to Kumiko things that she could not or would not see by herself. So the achievement at Kansai was also the achievement of all of them. The part of all this which might properly be called the achievement of Kumiko alone, her formative influences aside, is creating the conditions under which it was possible for so many people with opposing views to contribute to and subsequently identify with the same achievement. This she did with some key decisions she made, the bases of which we elucidated earlier. But none of them were unilateral decisions on behalf of the rest of the band about how to solve the entire problem.
This is how, although 'the few' might decide, as is the case in any organisation with a leadership hierarchy like the Kitauji concert band, they nevertheless do not decide 'everything', or only 'on the basis of their own affects'. I think that Kumiko's characteristic unaggregated concern is the factor that differentiates what Spinoza describes in the opening epigraph of this essay from the complete descent into chaos and anarchy often imagined to be the outcome of allowing people to 'try all means'. To 'try all means', according to Spinoza, is clearly not something that one does all on one's own, or by trying one's best to simply overpower and outmaneuver those who are opposed to oneself:
... But by asking advice, listening, and arguing, they’re sharpened. When people try all means, in the end they find ways to the things they want which everyone approves, and no one had ever thought of before.Asking advice, listening, and arguing, are all communal, relational activities which require people to engage with each other in good faith and pay close attention to each other. This is what gives one's fellows time and a safe space to bring to one's attention parts of the picture that one did not possess and could not have come to possess on one's own given one's location. And it was only by this means that someone came to see a way forward that everyone could get behind, when initially, nobody could have with the information they started with.
I believe that this essay has already amply shown the many ways in which a leader who can act only with the shield of the aggregate point of view, or even one who only leans into the aggregative tendency to simply overrule opposed views, will look decisive but systematically prevent themselves and their fellows from achieving the common good. But it is also instructive to consider what it must have felt like to be in Asuka's shoes as opposed to Kumiko's. For Chihiro Taki's line '...they're not rocks. They're people' is equally true of leaders as it is of their fellows. Leaders also want to lead well and be glad that they did.
Despite the lustre of Asuka's external appearance, the world that her characteristic dispositions have made her think she lives in looks like a rather lonely and miserable place. Those same dispositions constantly distorted and turned away relevant considerations contained in the viewpoints of those who arrived at conclusions different from hers, and forced her to shut her heart to them in case they had to be overruled for the sake of the goal. Thus, even as a leader surrounded by her friends who love her, and her peers who adore her, Asuka probably felt no less lonely than at home. She could only ever decide based on her own affects because she could never hear anybody else's.
In contrast, it is clear to see that Kumiko, of all people, could not ignore other people's affects even if she tried, and this just is her unaggregated concern for each and every person described with different words. True, Kumiko's inability to close her heart to the people around her has sent her into vacillation, and as we saw it did cause her to retreat into herself for safety in her early years. But it also meant that she eventually saw the good people around her for what they were, and found a place to be herself openly. Even when Kumiko had to act on something that only she could see, as she did at Kansai, her characteristic disposition ensured that the picture of the situation that guided her was assembled with the help of all her friends and peers. And so she was never truly alone in the way Asuka was. The affects of her fellows were never far away, for they always lay at the base of her own.
Closing remarks
The grand story of the two kinds of leadership now completed, I want to descend back down from generalities. In these final closing remarks, I will talk a bit about the Kumiko and Asuka who appeared in this essay, how they came into being, and how my feelings about them changed as I wrote.
When I first began writing this essay, Asuka was supposed to star alone, and it had originally been conceptualised as a takedown of Asuka. Throughout S1 I had found her in equal parts alluring and infuriating. My first primitive model of her described her as someone with unreasonably high confidence in her own read of situations, while having a powerful ability to seize the initiative in dialogue by framing them to her advantage. The chink in Asuka's armour appeared in S2E10, when for the first time, it looked like the sources of her power over others were exactly what would sink everything that she cared about, and even made her hurt those who were trying to help her, such as Kumiko. Having also been trying for months to puzzle out the exact sense of Ayano Takeda's calling her the final boss, I was convinced that I had found the kernel of the answer, and that mix of attraction and infuriation that I felt towards Asuka became just infuriation. This earlier model of Asuka Tanaka strongly resembled Emma Woodhouse, from the Jane Austen canon. But unlike the benevolent though deluded Emma, this Asuka was only pursuing her own interests under the cover of the common good.
That earlier version of Asuka is common among the fanbase, and also has more in common with Asuka's own understanding of herself. In S2E9 and even more so in the novels, Asuka seems to think of her situation in S2 as a kind of retribution for her inaction during the trumpet solo incident and her meddling with Nozomi and Mizore's relationship. So even she thinks of herself as self-interested and calculating. But if this were the whole truth, then what exactly did Kumiko see that made her grow to love Asuka, as she says at the end of S2? It is of course easy to say that Kumiko was simply mistaken about Asuka's true nature, and point to Asuka's treatment of her in S3 as supporting evidence. But this would raise the same puzzle about Kumiko asking Kaori to thank Asuka for getting through to her when she left. Most importantly though, if Asuka really were only self-interested and calculating, then why, on S2E10, was she so resistant to the interpretation of events that would best serve what she saw as her own personal wishes?
It was the attempt to see the Asuka that Kumiko seemed to see that birthed the Asuka who appears in the current essay. In light of this analysis, Asuka's assessement of her own conduct in S2E9 stands out as perhaps the greatest disservice that her mother did to her. In creating a home where no personal wish could be received as legitimate without the shield of the aggregate point of view, she made it such that Asuka could only ever see an action to be motivated by regard for the common good if it required overruling the doer's personal wishes. For clearly Asuka of all people would be no stranger to the fact that it is possible to use the language of the common good to legitimise personal wishes. And when an action is consistent with a regard for both, it is indistinguishable from that action done out of regard only for one's own interests. As I showed, there are no instances of Asuka acting against the common good as she perceived it. But there are also no instances of her acting acting against her personal wishes until S2E10, when she finally revealed herself, even by this extremely demanding standard, to have a truly selfless regard for the common good. It is also no surprise then, that in S3E10, Kumiko's reluctance to take the soli back from Mayu, consistent with both a love for the meritocracy cherished by many at Kitauji, and with a regard for her own self-worth and her own values, is interpreted narrowly as the latter. The willingness to proceed even if it requires overruling others' feelings and wishes then falls out as a consequence of the original principle that everyone's personal wishes must always give way to what is 'for the best' in aggregate.
It took considerable digging beyond the surface evidence, including her own read on herself, to see this much more noble Asuka hidden under the shield that her mother had forced her to cover herself with. Because of that shield, my Asuka ends up undermining the common good and herself despite her clearly outsized regard for the former. But once she was revealed, my infuriation completely vanished, and I was overwhelmed with sympathy for her. I could not even return to being allured, since what had formerly seemed to be her power now instead reflected the position of weakness she had been kept in for most of her life. It seems rather tragically realistic that even after having escaped her childhood home, Asuka's last interaction with Kumiko ended on such an ambiguous note, i.e. it is not clear whether she will ever grow out of this way of seeing the world. She was very fortunate to meet Kumiko in her final year at Kitauji, and she is equally fortunate to have Kaori by her side now.
Writing this essay also made me revise my interpretation of Kumiko. In my notes, I had initially also used the notion of a 'tantrum' to understand her outburst in S2E10, and for some months I had been thinking of this project as a vindication of tantrums as opposed to Asuka's cold calculation. Imagine my amused horror when I realised that it had most likely been Asuka herself who made this notion salient and thus coloured my understanding of Kumiko's actions. It thus also took quite some time for the Kumiko who appears in the above essay to come into being in my mind, and for me to see past her own understanding of herself as a fundamentally passive and indecisive person having to catch up with her more 'decisive' peers. Ironically, after analysis it emerges that Kumiko has much more in common with the adult characters in the series than her explicitly avowed role models do. Mamiko and the two teachers are extremely tolerant of people not having everything worked out yet, and are happy when Kumiko is brave enough to admit that she isn't fully sure about what to do. This could not be further from the way Reina and Asuka deal with uncertainty and opposition, rushing to quickly settle on a solution while overruling opposition, the degree of charity being the only difference between them.
The Kumiko who appeared in this essay grew out of my dissatisfaction with the way I had represented her in my previous work, where she seemed to simply do just what was needed for the triumph of the meritocracy with a human face. That Kumiko perhaps appeared a little too sublime and messianic, because we did not get a glimpse into her internal psychology. I suspect that I didn't go deeper into her internal psychology then because I simply couldn't. As I wrote this current essay, I learned that although I found the young Kumiko very relatable, there was a part of me that had internalised Asuka-esque instincts about leadership in particular. This clouded my vision, as did initially seeing Kumiko through the lens of tantrums. For a time, even though I had learned to be suspicious of how other characters, and especially Asuka, viewed Kumiko, she still did not have any positive characterisation beyond being not-Asuka, i.e. Asuka's foil.
Things did not really begin to click until I leaned into my confusion about Kumiko pointing out to Natsuki reasons to prevent Asuka from returning to the ensemble. This seemed counterproductive to her other goals and clearly irrational. But after seeing this structure once, of Kumiko pursuing a goal without explicitly factoring in its relation to her other goals, I began to see it all over the place. The Kumiko of this essay gained her first positive characterisation when I realised that her choices tracked each person and their goals individually, thus yielding a single consistent principle rooted in care that would yet induce this sort of seemingly disorganised caring behaviour and Kumiko's signature appearance of indecisiveness. Thus began the arduous task of showing that there was a way that Kumiko could have arrived at good reasons for the choices she made, even if it would have taken her significant effort, and even if she would sometimes have to act on hopes rather than knowledge. I daresay that Kumiko's unaggregated concern is at least as readily imaginable and actionable as the aggregative tendency that Asuka exemplifies. I think, in fact, that it is how we naturally treat our friends and other loved ones. To see such extraordinary feats derived in small steps from such an ordinary principle thus charmed me to Kumiko's character even more, as well as gave me hope that this character I have grown to love is not too sublime for human nature. I should hope someday to act with such love and courage. And though it will not be easy, at least there seems to be a way that begins from somewhere familiar to all of us.
Finally, while I had initially been stuck with seeing Kumiko through Asuka's eyes or by foil with Asuka, completing the analysis of Kumiko has in turn yielded a new lens with which to view Asuka, giving her a signature object of her own to match Kumiko's euphonium.
This idea, that Kumiko resembles a euphonium, was actually first articulated by Asuka in S2E9. After Asuka tells the whole truth about her dream to Kumiko in this episode, something of a rehearsal in allegorical terms of the real confrontation in S2E10 takes place. Kumiko is intensely saddened when Asuka denigrates the music that her father composed, and tells Asuka how much she loves to hear her play it, demanding that Asuka play it for her right now. On hindsight, and with our knowledge that Asuka thought of her situation as retribution, it appears unlikely that Asuka intended to ask for Kumiko's help when she invited her to her house. Rather, it seems she intended to confess her sins to Kumiko and submit herself to judgment, before giving up the fight. This reconciles Asuka's playing the music unprompted during band camp, which is when Kumiko first heard it by accident, and her throwaway utterance now that she might have preferred if Kumiko 'tore it to bits'. If Asuka expected Kumiko to share her interpretation of events as retribution for her selfishness, she would have been extremely surprised and moved that Kumiko still loved the piece of music so much despite its association with that avowedly selfish dream. Kumiko had really heard her out, and was now allowing, in fact demanding, that she play the music that Asuka felt herself forbidden from playing. Thus Asuka brings Kumiko to the riverbank and plays the music Kumiko loves so much for her. Right before she begins is when she comments on Kumiko's resemblance to a euphonium.
What was Asuka gesturing at with that comment? Just like Mayu later who could only express her pride in her music through her playing, playing her father's music with the instrument he sent her has been the only way that Asuka was able to express her personal wish to let him hear her music. In hearing Asuka out and then asking that she play the music for her, Kumiko thus used her voice to make Asuka's voice heard on two counts. Not only did Asuka finally manage to tell someone her dream in words without a shield, the music from Asuka's euphonium was now recognisable as part of her real voice, and the wish it expresses audible to just that very same person. This structure, of Kumiko using her voice to make others' voices heard, is only exemplified even more clearly in Kumiko's signature move that we saw in this essay: to project people's wishes back at them in the voice of her own, which has theirs as its basis due to her unaggregated concern. Thus this essay reveals Asuka's comment to be one of the only charitable and accurate observations she makes about Kumiko. Like the euphonium in the concert band, Kumiko is able to both sing on her own and support other voices by reinforcing and colouring them with her own sound.
Tragically, however, this highly touching interaction in S2E9 happened in a context when Kumiko's behaviour was still within acceptable range as judged through the lens of the aggregate point of view. Having finally been able to tell someone about the dream she had been fighting for, Asuka was now contented enough to retire from the battlefield. But since the question of her remaining in the ensemble was completely skirted, it wouldn't be until later in S2E10 that Asuka would understand just how far Kumiko would go to stop her from throwing away her dream. And I think that this is why at the riverbank Asuka, as always, got the rough contours of the pattern right, but yet failed to grasp it fully. Indeed, on every occasion that we surveyed in this essay, even though she was looking directly at Kumiko, it seems that Asuka could never really see her. What Asuka saw instead seems to have been only an image in a seemingly clear medium, much like the image of Kumiko in her crystal ball during the S2 cultural festival.
Somehow, this final foil has rendered Asuka lovable in her own right in my eyes, over and above the sympathy that I noted earlier. This is perhaps due in part to the aesthetically pleasing symmetry of both this essay's stars now having their own signature objects. But I feel that the crystal ball's being part of the traditional suite of magical tools is testament to how fundamental the desire for clarity and certainty is to human nature. And so, I think that its being designated Asuka's signature object aptly reveals her to be the most noble embodiment of one of the most characteristically human flaws. Furthermore, it seems doubly fitting and part of Asuka's charm that we can find all this symbolism embedded within her cultural festival costume. With Asuka, her disguises and shields turn out to be the most revealing. After all, as we have seen, it just is her nature to appear only under their protection.
That is all that I have to say. As before, I do not expect everyone to accept all the claims that I made above. But I would be happy enough if it raises new questions about the series. For I am even more sure now that to see something anew with a new question in mind truly constitutes the joy of re-reading things.
Fin
