In the blazing first episode of Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku, the main characters Gabimaru and Sagiri Yamada-Asaemon are introduced, and their dynamic begins to take shape, but the series also introduces the viewer to Gabimaru's raison d'être: his wife Yui. As seen in Gabimaru's flashbacks, Yui is a woman carrying various scars – both visible and invisible, that are directly related to her status as daughter of the chief of the ninja village of Iwagakure. Yui cannot escape the patriarchal shackles imposed upon her by the role she must play in society because of the view of women and womanhood not only in Edo Japan but in Iwagakure itself.
One of the talking points from Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku episode 1 is the appearance of Yui's unsightly scar, which looks more graphic than its depiction in the manga, assuming a phallic appearance that some viewers took to the internet to poke fun at; however, is it possible that this was deliberate? Could there be a way to reconcile this ugly interpretation of Yui's scar with her character's journey?
The Good Wife
Over the course of the first episode, Gabimaru first gives an unreliable account of his relationship with his wife, and the origins of their relationship, as well as the reason for his arrest. It is revealed towards the end of the episode that Gabimaru left Iwagakure with the intention of starting a peaceful life with Yui; however, the village chief was never going to allow them to escape, leading to Gabimaru's capture and placement on death row.
Throughout the first episode, flashes of Gabimaru's origins, his life in Iwagakure and with his wife are shown to be dark and dreary at first; however, this was an attempt by Gabimaru to kill his feelings for his wife whom he loves very much. Each appearance of Gabimaru's father-in-law, the Iwagakure chief, depicts him as a cruel, ruthless individual. Yui's disgrace; her horrible scar inflicted upon her by her father was effectively a branding: with her face irreversibly scarred for the sake of control. The fear of going against her father also meant that she had no say in the arrangement of her marriage to Gabimaru, making Yui much less like a daughter and more like property in the eyes of the chief. Gabimaru's own parents were victims of the village chief himself.
Property
As Gabimaru explains to Sagiri, the village of Iwagakure is not a place one is allowed to leave: anyone who tries will be seen as a deserter and promptly put to death. Once a member of the village, one is put through training so rigorous it either kills its participants, or grants them superhuman abilities, and their life is dedicated to extinguishing the lives of others. Any dissent is met with capture and subsequent death. As Yui explains, "In Iwagakure, men are soldiers, and women bear children"; however, she uses the phrase "kodane noutsuwa", which would translate more literally to "a vessel for offspring", with emphasis on "offspring" as seeds – a clear objectification of women and the understanding of the children they bear as simply the soldiers of the future. This is the very sequence in which the branding of Yui's face is shown, and she explains that her father did it to prevent her from ever being able to live as a normal woman. This reasoning may also be part of Yui's insistence to be as normal as possible in her home life with Gabimaru, as her pursuit and living of a normal existence would be antithetical to her father's desire to exert total control over their lives.
Branding as a form of control is a form of mutilation that is synonymous with the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, especially when it comes to the antebellum period in the history of the Southern United States. Branding for slaves can be traced as far back as Ancient Greece, but the practice itself is recorded as a way to identify livestock and goods as far back as Ancient Egypt, 2000 years BCE. Branding is one of the major methods of dehumanization suffered by enslaved individuals in various locations and time periods, and throughout history, various methods of mutilation created deliberately in the subjugation, oppression and the domestication of women have been created – methods far more heinous than experienced by Yui in Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku.
Scar Tissue
In the original manga, Yui's scar is less pronounced, but it still has the same shape overall: straight down past her eye, branching off and bulging slightly towards her cheek in a manner that resembles the forked tongue of a snake more often than not. It is much less difficult to look at it in the manga because it has a much simpler shape and takes up less space on Yui's face. In the anime; however, the shape is almost always emphasized as straight down past the eye, with the two bulges creating an unfortunate similarity to a certain organ in the average male anatomy. Yui's statement of what life is for women in the village of Iwagakure – a life of total objectification, subjugation and oppression – is almost entirely summed up in her father's branding of her face.
Given that a steel rod was used in the incident, the phallic shape of the branding object in the hands of the patriarchal figure in her life almost turns the shape of Yui's scar into the visual representation of both herself, and women in general in this socio-political context as simply vessels: the person-shaped container with value solely contingent on their ability to give birth to and raise children. Not even being the chief's daughter could protect Yui from being perceived this way, least of all from her own father, and the crude, unfortunate appearance of Yui's scar serves as a constant reminder that her life was never fully hers.