YuriKuma Arashi is not ONLY about being Gay

It is 100% about being Gay, every detail of it is very very Gay.  But that's still not the only thing it's about.

The confusion and misunderstanding that comes form trying to interpret YuriKuma Arashi is that people have trouble understanding that other social commentary is also going on here.  All of Ikuhara's shows are about multiple things not just one thing.  To some extent they're all about the same collection of things but in different ways.

The other thing YuriKuma Arashi is about is Xenophobia.  It baffles my mind that a show which aired while Donald Trump was running for President where a "Wall of Severance" keeps two "Races" of people apart is a prominent plot point, but no one noticed that because it's apparently a given that nothing in an Ikuhara show should ever be taken literally.  

To Erica Friedman the Bears represent "Real Lesbians" whatever that means.  Others are constantly suggesting some less on the nose variation of that.  None of those theories explain why it is ONLY among the Bears that Heterosexual Reproduction is confirmed to exist at all.  The actual text makes them as a society less Gay then the humans but somehow symbolically they are the Prue Gays.

The Bears are Gaijin, that's why they have a religion vaguely molded after Christianity, because Japan still sees Christianity as an inherently foreign religion in-spite of it being there for centuries now.

I've seen it said a few times now that in Japanese society Lesbians are sometimes called Bears as a way of stereotyping them as predatory.  Somehow this never came up in ANY of the pre 2015 Lesbian Japanese media I've watched (I have seen a Wolf analogy used instead in Your Fault), but whatever I'll take their word for it.  It's still not the only connotation the Japanese word for Bear has in Japan's cultural collective subconscious.

In the Kojiki one of the non Yamato tribes of Japan who the Yamato slowly subjugate and conquer is named Kumaso, a combination of Kuma which means Bear and So which means "attack" or "layer on".  This Bear imagery seems to have been partly for the intention of dehumanizing them.  But if the real people behind the Kumaso were a tribe that shared a common Jommon ancestry with the Ainu like the Emishi, then it's notable that the chief Kamuy of the Ainu pantheon is a Bear.  It's also worth mentioning that the Emishi were known for their thick facial hair.

I wonder if maybe Ikuhara was also aware of Korean Mythology having the mother of Korea's first King be a divine Bear who became Human.  Since a lot of modern Japan's immigrant population is Korean.

JoseiNextDoor I think was the blogger who I recall making note of the show's use of the Pink Triangle symbol which came from Nazi Germany.  Well another symbol Nazi Germany used in a similar way that was similarly reclaimed by their victims was the Yellow Star of David.  And if you look closely you will find Yellow Hexagrams in YuriKuma Arashi as well.  You'll also find Hexagrams of other colors, since it's actually very easy to make a Hexagram out of a Lily.  Which is why I've come to suspect the origins of the Star of David as a Jewish Symbol partly lies in The Hebrew Bible's Lily imagery (Shushan is the Hebrew word for Lily, the female name Susana derives from it.).  It's easy for us Americans to forget that Germany's Anti-Semitism problem was also an Anti-Immigration problem, because Jews were among Germany's Eastern European immigrants, like Rosa Luxemburg, so the Anti-Semitism was also tied to Anti-Slavic Racism.

The thesis of YuriKuma Arashi is that Lesbianism is the answer to Racism.

I first learned about the Kumaso because I was once into reading up on theories about Japan being one of the Lost Tribes of Israel which I currently don't consider likely.  But one argument one Author made was that that the word Kumaso came from Chemosh and thus the Kumaso were the Moabites and the Kojiki's narrative for Emperor Chuuai was partly based on King Saul.  That chronology is kinda off considering it was earlier Emperors the same author claimed were based on David and Solomon.  And I I would think the Northern Kingdom's memories of Moab would focus more on the House of Omri and it's conflict with Mesha.

It's a silly connection since I already explained how Kumaso has a well known Japanese etymology.  But for the purpose of tying the Kumaso into how to understand YuriKuma I kind of like having this association in my head.  Since Ruth was a Moabitess and there is a long history of Lesbians identifying with Ruth and Naomi.