BODY HORROR IN JAPANESE MEDIA: MANGA

by

Tatiana Ivanchenko

A Third Year Research Project in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Studies at The School of Advanced Studies University of Tyumen

June 2020

МИНИСТЕРСТВО НАУКИ И ВЫСШЕГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ Федеральное государственное автономное образовательное учреждение высшего образования «ТЮМЕНСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ»

ШКОЛА ПЕРСПЕКТИВНЫХ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЙ (SAS) ТЮМГУ

Директор Школы к.ф.н., Ph.D. А.В. Щербенок

КУРСОВАЯ РАБОТА

БОДИ-ХОРРОР В ЯПОНСКИХ МЕДИА: МАНГА 50.03.01 Искусства и гуманитарные науки

Выполнила работу Студентка 3-ого курса Иванченко Татьяна Сергеевна Очной формы обучения

Руководитель Джонс Дж. А. Питер PhD

Тюмень 2020

DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY By submitting this research project, I hereby certify that: I am its sole author and that any ideas, techniques, quotations, or any other material from the work of other people included in my research project, published or otherwise, are fully acknowledged in accordance with the standard referencing practices of my major; and that no third-party proofreading, editing, or translating services have been used in its completion. Tatiana Ivanchenko

WORD COUNT: 4753

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TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………… ……………………….5 INTRODUCTION…​ …………………………………………………………………6 WHO IS A PROTAGONIST OF BODY HORROR ………………………………..7 JAPANESE TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE OF MODERNITY…​ .…………………8 A BRIEF HISTORY OF MANGA…​ ………………………………………………10 WORKS CONSIDERED …………………………………………………………..12 NATURAL …………………………………………………………………………12 JAPANESE FOLKLORE AND URBAN CYBORG BODY ……………………...16 A SENSE OF OWNERSHIP AND AGENCY …………………………………….19 INDUSTRIAL FEAR ……………………………………………………………....21 CONCLUSION…​ …………………………………………………………………..25 BIBLIOGRAPHY…​ ………………………………………………………………..27 FIGURES…​ ………………...………...... …………………………………………32

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ABSTRACT

Considering interrelationships between the human, nature, and technology in five manga comics — Ōtomo Katsuhiro’s A​kira​ (1982-1990), Iwaaki Hitoshi’s

Parasyte ​(1989-1995), Itō Junji’s U​ zumaki ​(1998-1999), G​ yo​ (2001-2), and M​ old

(1991)​ —​ this paper explores relationships between primal fears, heritage, and cultural change in modern Japan. To the extent that Japanese manga has been influenced by Western tendencies, I approach these works through the lens of the body-horror, familiar from Western film studies. I investigate several motifs that constitute the horror narrative of these works: the body, the natural, industrial fear, and the cyborg. Although this exploration can be attributed as a general contribution to manga studies, it also deals more broadly with the particular culture of Japanese studies of religions and folk beliefs in the urban environment. I argue that the relationships of human and inorganic, or organic but foreign objects are depicted in a way to attest to a belief that nature and technologies are foreign to each other – and therefore their fusion being frightening. But at the same time I have noticed that the very possibility of this fusion (what is imaginable seems possible) shown in given works, forces the reader to speculate, whether they are so different to the extent of ultimate incompatibility. And the consequence of allowing this fusion to happen is implemented in the Haraway’s concept of the cyborg.

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INTRODUCTION

The human has changed its conception of itself throughout the course of history. It has imagined itself as part of an evolutionary tree, medicalized its body, and more recently approached the moral dilemma, through creating conscious robots, of its affinity to machines. Works of culture in modern Japan, as of one of the countries aspiring to technological superiority, have developed certain dreams of scientific leaps along these lines. Consequently, it has also been afraid of harmful technologies and their potential threat to the organic human body. Body horror plays on exactly this fear, as it explores how a fusion of the body with foreign objects can inevitably result in disaster. In this paper, I will explore this human fear from the perspective of social constructivism, although I simultaneously assume the biological determinist position. Although fear is a defense mechanism, hard-wired into humans to protect them from basic dangers, I suggest that some more complex fears are culturally defined and can become more or less scary, depending on stages of culture. This was the case, for example, with the commodification of Oni demons in Japan, which emerged as a result of a trend towards rationalization which began as early as the

17th century, and which was later driven further by the advent of consumerism.1

1 Noriko Reider, Japanese​ Demon Lore: Oni from Ancient Times to the Present​ (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2010), 91-95.

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By considering the treatment of body horror in Japanese manga, I am not only talking about works being officially tagged as belonging to the body horror, but rather works presenting graphic violations of the human body as one of the main components of the plot of the manga novels. Being violated in any way, the human body, as I argue, becomes the one of a cyborg, enhanced and expanded through time and space, losing or gaining organic or inorganic parts.

WHO IS A PROTAGONIST OF BODY HORROR?

Graphic violation of the body is not a new subject of art and literature (whether you consider Hans Andersen’s original tales, or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein). But as a solid genre, body horror appeared in Western cinema in late 1970s, before having its fame decline after the 1980s. Legit, dictionary body horror is characterized by uncontrollable and graphic changes of the body, and is divided into two sub-groups: medical (with a medical setting, where the protagonist is usually a scientist or doctor inflicting the disaster on himself); and non-medical.2 Either way, bodily violations in the genre lead to the victim losing basic functions, feeling a disgust towards their own body, and the frustration of not being able to escape their horrible condition.

2 Shelley F. Baker, “Body-horror Movies: Their Emergence and Evolution.”. PhD diss. (Sheffield Hallam University, 2000), 4-8.

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Moreover, the resulting mutant poses a danger for the rest of society. Body horror, in fact, does more than showing images: it explores relationships between the human and its self-image, and the mutant and the society.

This mutant, I would argue, is nothing less than a Harawaean cyborg: a creature of blurred boundaries. For the cyborg, living in-between is usually the only possible way of existing. While diluting the boundaries between human and machine and human and animal, the cyborg also observes changes in how usual things become framed in a new way. For instance, an organism becomes a biotic component, and the absence of the divide between public and private is defined as a cyborg citizenship.3

Donna Haraway states how previously existing divides should be eliminated, as they bring with them some confusing and exploitative biopolitics. It is my aim to insert this insight into the study of cyborgs and their constructions in Japanese culture.

JAPANESE TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE OF MODERNITY

Modern times in general are characterized by a break with traditional habits, including a wider unification and pluralization of times,4 the advent of new

3 Donna J. Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto,” ​Manifestly Haraway ​(University of Minnesota Press, London,2016), 14-15, 28-29.

4 Stephen Kern, The​ Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918​ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).

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technologies and thus changing living habits within the environment.5 In modern times the “struggle” (they may not fight consciously, but rather attempt to cohabit) between humans and the environment has taken a big step forward. This is not only because the latter became “armed” with nuclear reactors or the Arctic ozone gap, but also because the environment has managed to shift the human perception about himself.

The Japanese experience of modernity has consisted of rethinking or reconstructing (national) identity in the light of the globalization, natural disasters, and wars. At some point in time, Japan experienced a so-called “cultural homelessness,”6 ​during which time it felt an alienation towards itself, and tried to identify with and at the same time to reject the West, with its standards and aesthetics. At the same time, it attempted to establish itself by oppressing others, while deciding what to do with the fast proliferation of the mass culture.

One of the main figures of early-modern Japanese literature was the city landscape and its transformation. The city was used to express different feelings and ideas. Disruptions made by an earthquake in Kanto region (1923), during which half of the old Tokyo was destroyed, were interpreted as losing the cultural roots together

5 Robin Walz, Modernism​ ​(London: Routledge, 2008), 3.

6 Seiji Lippit, Topographies​ of Japanese Modernism​ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 5-7.

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with the historical buildings of the city. The disaster inflicted, thus, “the sense of fragility of the modern city”.7 Depicting the urban environment or space in general was connected to the events the writer intended to set, and to the general mood and ideology of the novel. Thus, Shanghai was depicted as a dirty and decaying space, as the writer expressed the justification for imperial aspirations or national anxieties of

Japan of that time.8

Postwar Japan continued the construction of its identity. This time the country underwent the trauma of six years of colonization and great losses of people and capital. Japan needed to rebuild itself as a strong and competitive country, one that could stand no lower than USA, its former colonizer,9 while also imposing the revised form of Shinto on citizens as a state religion to promote nationalist values.10

Restoring these glories, Japan boosted its technological and economic progress, while manga, all the way after World War II, played a role by establishing a vast international market and cultural influence.

7 Lippit, 22–23.

8 Lippit, 22-23.

9 Roman Rosenbaum,“Reading Shōwa History through Manga,” Manga​ and the Representation of Japanese History,​ ed. by Roman Rosenbaum (London: Routledge, 2013), 47.

10 James Shields, “Land of Kami, Land of the Dead’: Paligenesis and the Aesthetics of Religious Revisionism in Kobayashi Yoshinori’s ‘Neo-Gōmanist Manifesto: On Yasukuni’,” Manga​ and the Representation of Japanese History,​ 190-191.

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF MANGA

The beginning of graphic stories is said to be the e​maki ​picture scrolls of the

8th century, which were carried by Buddhist storytellers (Fig.1). The word “manga” was based on the Chinese word “manhua”, or “impromptu sketches”.11 However, the first real narratives resembling those of contemporary manga appeared in erotic and satiric prints, and the closest to the modern comics were the so-called “yellow books”, k​ibyoshi,​ which appeared in 1775. Yellow books were mass-produced and included stories with different themes, illustrated by pictures with accompanying text and other expressive means.

Western comics, which were eventually to merge with the aesthetics of Japan, were brought to the country by Charles Wirgman (1835 - 1891), who visited in 1863 and started to publish his magazine, the interest in which stirred the future development of Western-style comics in Japan.12 The first Japanese new-style comics were created by Rakuten Kitazawa (1876–1955), who studied cartooning and fused it

11 Robert Petersen, Comics,​ Manga and Graphic Novels: A History of Graphic Narratives (ABC-CLIO, 2010), 38-40.

12 Petersen, 42.

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with more traditional ways of depiction, and these works returned the word manga

13 into the world of graphic narratives.

Post war graphic works — g​ekiga​ — were more serious than how the comics had been before the war, and were aimed at an adult audience. Yoshihiro Tatsumi, born in 1935, led g​ekiga ​to a more cinematic mode of depiction, meaning shortening the text for the sake of the picture. It was then lifted to the perfection by the Osamu

Tezuka(1928–1989), ”The God of Manga” who, among all his revolutionary attainments, which have constituted modern manga, brought such innovations to the media as masking, the still signature, and the style of drawing the eye iris.14

The estimated influence of manga raised it to an international level, awarded by officially established prizes for attainments in graphic art. The variety of manga became vast: noir, educative, graphic novels, etc. Manga deals with narratives about the changing world and transformative historical events. At the same time, it explores the way experiences and their representations are treated by the media.15 Therefore, as one of the crucial channels of information, it can be viewed as a tool both for promotion of ideas (or expressing anxieties) and for their tacit absorption and domestication.

13 Petersen, 128.

14 Petersen, 173-175.

15 Rosenbaum, 273-275.

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WORKS CONSIDERED

During my analysis, I intend to explore four different concepts: the “natural”; the “body”; “identity” (agency); and “industrial fear”. I will explore these through five different manga (G​ yo​, P​arasyte,​ U​ zumaki,​ A​kira,​ and the short manga M​ old ​from the 7th volume of T​he Junji Ito Horror Comic Collection​ [H​ orror World of Junji Ito​):

Slug Girl)​, all of which date from the late modern period of Japanese history (c.1980

16 – 2005) .

NATURAL

One of the biggest debates in body horror focuses on how the works explore the divide between culture and nature. If we decide that human-built inorganic creations constitute a second nature, we may then have to accept technologies as natural, not without some resistance. In cases of alienation from technologies on the level of discourse, humanity may doom itself to an eternal rivalry which may add to the list of existential anxieties.

There is also an idea of re-connecting the human with nature, usually to address the mistake of not being careful, or to ease the extent of ruthless exploitation.

16 See the bibliography 13

The methyl-mercury poisoning disaster in Minamata in the 1950s, caused by the chemical company Chisso, raised the question — before unknown — of unseen dangers and the refusal of government to take responsibility.17 The philosophy of

Ogata Masato (born in 1953), a Minamata sufferer, formed as a critique of modernization, and was based on the idea of a “life-world” — the connectivity of all living beings and souls, which stems from the Japanese animist traditions.18

Animism may be taken as an example of regulatable coexistence. Everything in nature that was not understandable was located in the realm of gods (e.g., the god of thunder is responsible for the scary sound from the sky), and regulated by a system of gifts and worships. People were responsible for the maintenance of gods, as an un-worshipped god would turn into an evil spirit.19 In turn, gods provided people with all they needed. And through history, long after humanity started to describe everything scientifically, nature seemed to somehow retain its ability to take revenge.

Akira ​(themed post-apocalypse, cyberpunk, action, and anti-utopia) shows us ruined relationships with this new type of nature, which is perceived as the same as the old one: the object of pagan belief in its agency and responsiveness, but whose

17 Shoko Yoneyama, "‘Life-World’: Beyond Fukushima and Minamata," Asian​ Perspective​ 37, no. 4 (2013), 571.

18 Yoneyama, 575-576.

19 Reider, 4-5.

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language had drastically changed. Originally published by Young Magazine from

1982 to 1990, A​kira​ employs innovative techniques and was one of the first manga to be translated into English. The anime adaptation became even more famous, and helped manga to proliferate in the world market.

The narrative of A​kira ​takes us beyond a stage of deadly viruses, reflecting on the whole physical structure of reality in which the human is able to exist. We are introduced to the world as something that moves forward after recurring “big bangs", which lead to new universes. People are able to turn into pure energy, gaining an ability to manipulate other objects, to fly, or disappear and appear at other locations.

We see how the new types of life emerge from the ruins of the artificial world, after the human has tried to genetically modify the society of the future and failed once again.

Junji Itō’s manga (H​ orror World of Junji Ito)​, however, invite us to look at nature in a way that is more familiar. This collection, consisting of 16 volumes, was originally published from 1994 to 1998. Reprinted in the 2000s, some stories received adaptations, and in 2018 the J​unji Ito Horror Collection ​as an anthology received a series adaptation. Unfortunately, M​ old,​ which I consider later in the section, was not officially published in English. The unifying component of all Itō’s stories is the atmosphere of urban legends, with all mutations having an organic appearance. They illustrate how differently the organic world can become strange, without playing the

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“structure of the reality has changed” card. Itō’s stories serve to scare us by reminding us that “old” nature feels safe only because we have successfully studied and got used to it.

Mold ​tells a story which features a man returning from abroad to Japan, and moving to the area which became infected with mold, from which he later himself falls a victim. It was found that his house was infected by the family of the biology teacher, who turned into mold-like organisms as a result of his experiments. People who have turned into mold creatures are shown to have merged with a surface, being surrounded by huge “pipes” stemming from themselves. Having lost their human form, they become a passive part of the natural environment (Fig.2). Here, the nature which has created a cyborg seems itself to be of a foreign or mutated origin: it has already lost its previous place in taxonomy, and now, “injected” with new characteristics, gains an extra ability to pose new, unexpected types of dangers to the body. In this sense, it presents a new ability to construct cultures that are creepily close to those of the human. But in the end, they pose the question: How is the human different? Our bodies came from nature, so why should we not perceive everything we make as an extension of the natural environment?

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JAPANESE FOLKLORE AND URBAN CYBORG BODY

Let us next consider the means of communication with the environment — the body. The body enables us to feel the illusion of “being one,” in the sense that the human is deceived into thinking that consciousness is something superior to the body,

20 something that was well expressed and proliferated during the time of enlightenment and rationalization. Looking from the outside, it becomes evident that consciousness is turned upon itself. According to Daniel Black, the body and, for example, the machine co-constitute through representations and reflections of each other. Machines are studied like live bodies, according to Black, while the body is mechanized thanks to medical progress. And, more importantly, they are not “like” each other: the machine is a body, and the body is a kind of machine.21 Building on his observations regarding the human, I nevertheless will maintain quite the opposite view: there cannot really be a comparison or co-shaping unless the two different entities encounter one another. Thus, I do not think that the outside world consists of human shapes - rather, the opposite. This is why the cyborg could be created in the first place. It needs to consist of “foreign” parts.

20 Rene Descartes, Meditations​ on First Philosophy with Selections from the Objections and Replies, ed.​ and trans. by Michael Moriarty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 19-20.

21 Daniel Black, Embodiment​ and Mechanisation: Reciprocal understandings of body and machine from the Renaissance to the Present​ (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2014), 14-15, 17.

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“In Japan, we have rakugo storytellers who tell kaidan ghost stories...I wanted to incorporate that style in No Longer Human” (Junji Itō, 2019).22

Japan has never really been alienated from the body and its natural functions, as happened in the West. Indigenous beliefs were tied to the body, fusing the supernatural and spiritual with the material. Take for example Shinto, the indigenous natural religion, which, influenced by Buddhism, gave bodies to their gods and evil spirits. During early modernism, Shinto was imposed on citizens as a state religion, propagating nationalist and imperial values. Japanese people did not avoid a turn to atheism, which otherwise characterized the modern era. But, as other nations, it retained the “matsuri-consciousness,” which involved going to shrines, celebrating such holidays as Obon, and taking part in festivals23. I see the urban horror stories as continuing in this tradition, moving from folk beliefs in gods or carnivorous demons to urban-folk, which is the return of the traditional folk stories, but with both the supernatural forces and the environment changed according to the time, leaving the stories of the past under the common name of “folk legends”. The urban horror stories subject victims to different elaborate violations: mouth slitting as a

22 Vizmedia. “Junji Ito Interview | Adapting No Longer Human | VIZ.” Dec 17, 2019. YouTube video, 4: 12, Hyperlink​

23 Shields, 209.

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punishment for the wrong answer (K​ uchisake-onna)​; being drained of blood (T​oire no Hanako-san)​; or getting members partly amputated (T​eke Teke)​. Urban horror stories are devoted to making ordinary things scary by defamiliarizing everyday life.

All countries, perhaps, retain their modern horror stories (for example, Uspensky’s

Red Hand, Black Bed Sheet, Green Fingers ​of the USSR). But Japanese ones are

24 25 famous to the point of entering mainstream culture.

Akira ​gives the body a completely different use. On the one hand, we are introduced to it as the embodiment of pure energy. Yet, on the other, it is shown as something very material, although in between the organic-inorganic divide, existing in between being completely materialized and being in the state of free movement, or being able to manipulate matter. At the same time, A​kira ​presents us with the classical mutation-by-merging-with-technologies trope. Tetsuo, the one whose supernatural abilities became superior to Akira’s, was able to go through it. His nature seemed to not care about being “different" from iron pipes and wires, merging easily with them through the similarity of the atoms which participate in the synthesis

(Fig.3).

24 “10​ Creepy Japanese Legends That Will Leave You too Scared to Sleep Tonight”. Scoopwhoop.com, Last modified in 2017. https://www.scoopwhoop.com/Creepy-Japanese-Legends-Will-Leave-You-Scared-To-Sleep/ 25 “Top​ 10 Creepiest Japanese Urban Legends”. Enki-Village, Last visited 28 May, 2020.https://www.enkivillage.org/japanese-urban-legends.html 19

The manga fools us at the beginning into thinking that Akira is a name for the event. Later we are introduced to a classical boy-who-was-experimented-upon-to-death, Akira, and at the end, after the new world has emerged, the reader comes to conclusion that Akira was at the same time the human and the phenomenon, because he bears in himself all information about life and the universe. It is notable that Akira’s nervous system was preserved by scientists, hinting to us of ultimately biological origins of his power which was, as in the end the reader will find out, a power to change the evolution. In the narrative,

Akira is woken up from a cryogenic sleep and freed by Tetsuo, and looks like a little boy. The animated film adaptation A​kira (​Katsuhiro Ōtomo,1988),26 directed by

Ōtomo himself, shortens and changes their encounter, making it more understandable. In this version, the moment the preserving vessels with Akira’s neural system remains are broken, Akira communicates with Tetsuo, and with his explosion into the new universe, Tetsuo’s body becomes a conductor to the other dimension. In manga, however, this transformation occurred later. Tetsuo did not just merge with the environment, he evolved to a condition in which he was not unable to keep his physical form. He had lost the body, it is apparent. But where did his mind go?

26 Akira​ .​ Directed by Katsuhiro Ōtomo. Japan: Tokyo Movie Shinsha, 1988.

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A SENSE OF OWNERSHIP AND AGENCY

If agency is about being the ruler of one’s own reality, identity is about being the only ruler. The body horror genre violates both, because it violates the “I,” and

“I” is the lens through which the human perceives reality. For example, P​arasyte

(tagged body horror, horror thriller and science fiction) explores the theme of alien invasion to dissect this problem. Published by Monthly Afternoon and Morning Open

Zoukan, this manga appeared from 1988 to 1995. It is the only work in this project that was explicitly tagged as body horror.27 Like many others, it received anime and live-action adaptations. Parasytes, the creatures at the center of the story, have their own consciousness and, moreover, are smarter than humans, being able to ensnare them in a lot of difficult situations. And if the main character had a parasyte who helped and protected him, others underwent bigger changes (Fig.4), losing their will and giving away their bodies to alien organisms, which, as was suggested by one of the characters, were in competition with the human branch of evolution.

Gyo ​(tagged horror and supernatural) shows supposedly mechanic legs, working thanks to corpses they captured. Being one of Junji Itō’s works, it retains his urban-legend style, while bringing it to a bigger level. Published in Big Comic Spirits

27 “Parasyte”. Wikipedia, Last modified 27 may, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasyte

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from 2001 to 2002, it was praised by critics. The work’s “legs” seem to possess an intellect, aiming to move, catch and feed, while, unknown to their victims, they infect them with a virus that turns people into their food. There will be no life development for these creatures without a corpse to feed on — the body which does not recognize itself or the world around. Thus, G​ yo ​shows the body as continuing to exist even after it has been emptied of its “essence” (Fig. 5), and highlights the struggle between living and new types of (non)bodies. Towards the end, significantly, we see machines operating on two or more people.

Does the cyborg imply the absence of any boundaries between health and disease? Ultimately, the answer seems to be a provisional “yes”. If we are to spare the disease of the negative connotations given to it by humans, we can see this as one more way the human might be changed. This challenges the notion of death, too: being not the end, it is instead another form of being. Being-a-corpse, then being-the-bones, and ultimately being-the-molecule: this is the logic revealed here.

INDUSTRIAL FEAR

We are returning to the city landscape, whose architecture provides the comfort zone for everyday Japanese life. The built environment is considered to be a lifeless and neutral territory, one which is completely submissive to the owner.

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An intriguing combination of fascination and fear of the industrial is shown in the Russian play T​he Foul (​“Griaznulia”).28 ​In the play, the urban environment becomes hostile to the protagonist. He finds out that he is being chased by someone who leaves an enormous amount of grease, fat and long black hair on his drains and bed sheets, and the sense of unsafety provokes his “industrial“ fear. T​he Foul​ serves as an example of a culturally specific (Russian) treatment of the same themes employed in U​ zumaki. Uzumaki (​tagged dark fantasy, horror and supernatural) was published in Big Comic Spirits from 1998 to 1999, and received anime, live-action, and video game adaptations.

In U​ zumaki,​ there is a disturbance of the balance between the owner and the environment in the sense of mental health and anxiety. A fear of nature is pretty natural, yet the advent of industry brings another type of fear: a fear of nature emerging somewhere it is not “supposed” to be. The opposite is possible too: the emergence of the abnormally unindustrial city. (Here I am referring to the idea of

Mary Douglas about something being out of place being perceived dangerous).29

Kurouzu, the “main character” of U​ zumaki,​ is a mutated town, which inflicts the

28 Konstantin Steshik, “Griaznulya” [The Foul], 2016. https://www.netslova.ru/steshik/gryaznulya.html

29 Mary Douglas, Purity​ and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo ​(London: Routledge, 2001).

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spiral onto its inhabitants: people become fascinated with spirals, people become spirals, twisting themselves (Fig. 6) in a form that is not compatible with living, and the smoke of their burned corpses curves into a spiral in the sky above the crematorium. The place becomes scary, because it becomes a home for this phenomenon, the embodiment of the abstract concept of either a curved line or concentric movement. This infliction was provoked by another town in ​Uzumaki,​ one located under Kurozu. This unknown place, full of seemingly naturally built monuments under the ground, consists of spirals (Fig.7). It bears the Lovecraftian atmosphere of an encounter with an unknown civilization, simultaneously resembling the human while being completely different, and, more importantly, combining features of abnormal nature and the fearful city.

Neo Tokyo (A​kira)​ can be perceived as scary too, although in quite a different sense from U​ zumaki ​or G​ ryaznulya​. It is rebuilt after the war on an artificial island, and is politically unstable. It is a place where people’s basic needs are not satisfied: it witnesses religious processions, and gang wars. Even if we are only introduced to the deviant part of the citizens here, we can see that either the unlawful suburban area is too large (Fig.8), or that the whole Neo Tokyo is not very polished. Also, the fact that the military commander is at the head of the government suggests that it has been seized by force at some point in time, and therefore the place may not be thoroughly regulated. Japan has a history of being ruled by military commanders in pre-modern

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times, so the return to this state may refer to a felt need for stricter governance for

Neo Tokyo. Equally it might stand as a reflection of earlier negative experiences, for example, of Japan’s postwar colonization. Neo Tokyo, the capital and the strategic place for the country in general, could not be seized in the unstable situation between wars if it were to be constantly armed.

Gyo​ presents the fear of being cast out of the habitual environment, alongside the main character’s girlfriend’s paranoia about the terrible smell of corpse gases which seem to follow her everywhere. The manga shows the beginning of the disaster again near the Kanto region, where Tokyo is located. Looking at the speed of invasion from the sea, it is made evident that living people are at risk of becoming the minority. Thus, the neutral environment is unable to protect humans from everything, and does not care about who will be its “owner”. There is also a fundamental link with industry in ​Gyo​, as these mechanic legs are said to have been produced by people for military purposes. Later, actually, characters find out that these machines might not be made from exclusively mechanic parts – they as well might be a result of the m​ utation​ of the virus transmitted by these machines and remains of the ship sunk near Kanto region, which returns us to A​kira’​s theme of the “inter-species” evolution.

The dysfunctional modern city becomes a stage for these different events.

Either the city kills, or else the city is killed, but whichever way around a clear bond

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is to connect the health of the human with that of the environment. We can make a parallel, saying that the outside is showing the inner state of the human’s mental health with its plastic waste and coldness, or that it itself is being internalized, harming the human.

Interpretations of the trope of the scary city go in two directions. First, there is the view that the human is scared of merging with the city, perhaps because they both characterize society and the discourse of the cyborg in the same way. Alternatively, and for a similar reason, we may interpret the human and the city as becoming rivals.

But whichever way we see it, the same conflict is apparent. If the cyborg is in the ordinary city, we see that it must affect it in a significant way.

Posthumanism, postmodernism, post-dualism - these all have vital implications for cyborg existence. We might understand these implications through the distinction between affinity and identity.30 First of all, the latter might appear impossible for cyborgs. Cyborgs can only create new types of identities, and one of them is “not really defined”. Post-something is very unstable as a theoretical lens, and we might prefer to define cyborgs as at least current-something. If the cyborg-entity is at least affordable, the cyborg-space poses the reformation of the whole way of living: logistics of urban life; the function of the city for its inhabitants; and the extent to which it can be exploited. As I already stated, a rough and radical clash will end up in

30 Haraway, 17.

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rejection, which was, I think, demonstrated well in the science-fiction or post-apocalyptic manga of late-modern Japan.

CONCLUSION

Modernity surely is beautiful, with its radical new ideas, the appearance of new discourses, and advent of the internet and globalization. But modernity is also cruel: unstoppable progress and scientific inventions disregarding human fate, defeats in wars, anxieties following these defeats, attempts to restore ruptured identities. Many of these anxieties may be traced from works of art, including manga, one of the most important Japanese media. The four concepts I defined here comprise discourses on changing the relationships between the human and the environment, and the human and its self-image, through depicting narratives about half-real/half-fictional modern disasters. Regardless of what was done in these manga, whether the body is dead or alive, as long as it was done by the entity considered foreign, the result is something dangerous. All along, the genre pays attention to what happens, in these processes of great change and estrangement to the human and its self-image. The notion of a resulting “cyborg” is pretty broad, and it can be used in the sense of an enhanced human, of something consisting of heterogeneous organic and inorganic parts, or

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more generally of a liminal being. And this, as one of the big implications of modern human existence, may be found in one form or another.

Japan constructs its cyborgs paying careful attention to their psychology (in the case of human cyborgs, like in A​kira)​, or to how they change someone’s mind (in the case of cyborg nature, like in U​ zumaki​). More importantly, all works one way or another show clashes between ordinary people with creatures of the future. They dramatize an evolution gone “off-track,” and observe not only the physical, but also the psychological responses to these issues, one of which is fear and another of which is curiosity. Any new creature - be it a human merged with a parasyte or a walking corpses or kids with supernatural abilities – they mark an ambivalent turn in the history of the human body.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

MANGA Note on sources: it is a common thing for comic books to not be so widespread as books, go out of publication or be published by unofficial sources(which are also usually free). Moreover, English sources mostly provide the basic information about ever-published antologies, while Japanese ones tend to provide the dates of very first publications. So, I will provide here the original information on each manga and versions of translations (on Russian) I accessed for my analysis.

Itō, Junji. G​ yo Ugomeki Bukimi​ (Fish: Ghastly Squirming). 2001-2002. First serialized in S​hougakukan​: B​iggu Komikku Supirittsu ​(Big Comic

Spirits). Itō, Junji. R​yba​ [Fish]. Translated by Junji Ito manga. Mintmanga.live. Submitted 12 August 2009 – 6 August 2010. URL: h​ttps://mintmanga.live/ryba.​

Itō, Junji. K​ abi​(Mold). 1991. In I​tou Junji Kyoufu Manga Collection(​Ito Junji Horror Manga Collection), 7: N​ amekuji no Shoujo​(Slug Girl), Chapter 3(1997), first published in A​sahi Sonorama: Harōin Zōkan(​Monthly Halloween), 1991. Itō, Junji. P​lesen’​[Mold] K​ ollektsiia Uzhasov ot Dziundzi Ito[​The Junji Ito Horror Comic Collection]. Translated by Junji Ito manga. Mintmanga.live. Submitted April 4, 2014. URL: https://mintmanga.live/the_junji_ito_horror_comic_collection/vol7/3?mtr=1.

Itō, Junji. U​ zumaki​ (Spiral). 1998-1999. First serialized in S​hogakukan​: ​Biggu Komikku Supirittsu (​Big Comic Spirits).

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Itō, Junji. S​piral’ ​[The Spiral]. Translated by Gaikoku, Sakhalinskoe Anime Dvizhenie. Mintmanga.live. Submitted April 17, 2016. URL:

https://mintmanga.live/the_spiral.​

Iwaaki, Hitoshi. K​ iseijū​ (Parasyte, lit. “Parasitic Beasts”). 1989-1995.First serialized in M​ orning Open Zōkan​ (1988-1989) and G​ ekkan Afutanūn ​(Monthly Afternoon, 1990-1995). Iwaaki, Hitoshi. ​Parazit​ [Parasyte]. Translated by Scan Dogs. Mintmanga.live. Submitted 8 March 2010 – September 19,2010. URL: https://mintmanga.live/parasite.​

Ōtomo, Katsuhiro. A​kira(​Akira). 1982 – 1990. First serialized in S​hūkan Yangu Magajin​ (Weekly Young Magazine). Ōtomo, Katsuhiro. A​kira[​Akira]. Translated by ZBOY, Orden Otgoloskov Vostoka, Access Manga, Gurren-Dan Gang, KANSEI. Mintmanga.live. Submitted November 16, 2010 – December 8, 2014. URL: h​ttps://mintmanga.live/akira.​

FILMOGRAPHY

Akira.​ Directed by Katsuhiro Ōtomo. Japan: Tokyo Movie Shinsha, 1988.

Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack.​ Directed by Takayuki Hirao. Japan: Ufotable, 2012.

BOOKS, JOURNAL ARTICLES, WEBSITES

Baker, Shelley. “Body-Horror Movies: Their Emergence and Evolution.​”​ PhD diss.

Sheffield Hallam University, 2000. h​ttp://shura.shu.ac.uk/19305/.​

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Balanzategui, Jessica. "The Prosthetic Traumas of the Internal Alien in Millennial J-Horror." T​he Uncanny Child in Transnational Cinema: Ghosts of Futurity at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century, ​185-216. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018. doi:10.2307/j.ctv80cc7v.10. Black, Daniel. E​mbodiment and Mechanization: Reciprocal Understandings of Body and Machine from the Renaissance to the Present.​ Farnsworth: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2014. Brown, Steven. ​Tokyo Cyberpunk: Posthumanism In Japanese Visual Culture.​ New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A​ Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia​. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. Descartes, Rene. M​ editations on First Philosophy with Selections from the Objections and Replies.​ Edited and translated by Michael Moriarty. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Douglas, Mary. P​urity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Abingdon: Routledge, 2001. Haraway, Donna. M​ anifestly Haraway.​ Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016. Hardacre, Helen. S​hinto: A History​. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017 Helmreich, Stefan. “Homo Microbis: The Human Microbiome, Figural, Literal, Political”. T​hresholds​ 42 (2014): 52-59. Ingulsrud, John and Kate Allen. R​eading Japan Cool: Patterns of Manga Literacy and Discourse​. Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2009. Kern, Stephen. ​The Culture of Time and Space 1880 - 1918.​ Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983.

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Lippit, Seiji. T​opographies of Japanese Modernism​. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Petersen, Robert. C​ omics, Manga and Graphic Novels: A History of Graphic Narratives.​ Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2010. Reider, Noriko. J​apanese Demon Lore: Oni from ancient times to the present​. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2010. Roman Rosenbaum ed. M​ anga and the Representation of Japanese History.​ Abingdon: Routledge, 2013. Rosenbaum, Roman.“Reading Shōwa History Through Manga.” M​ anga and the Representation of Japanese History​. Edited by Roman Rosenbaum, 40-60. Abingdon: Routledge, 2013. Siegers, Rien T., ed. ​A New Japan for the Twenty-First Century: An Inside Overview of Current Fundamental Changes and Problems​. Abingdon: Routledge, 2008. Shields, James. “Land of Kami, Land of the Dead’: Paligenesis and the Aesthetics of Religious Revisionism in Kobayashi Yoshinori’s ‘Neo-Gōmanist Manifesto: On Yasukuni’.” M​ anga and the Representation of Japanese History​. Ed. by Roman Rosenbaum, 189-217.Routledge, 2013. Steshik, Konstantin. “Griaznulia”[The Foul]. Netslova.ru. January 19-23, 2016. https://www.netslova.ru/steshik/gryaznulya.html.​ Sumiya, Mikio.“Japan: Model Society of the Future?” A​nnals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science ​513 (1991): 139-150. www.jstor.org/stable/1047087.​ Vizmedia. “Junji Ito Interview | Adapting No Longer Human | VIZ.” Dec 17, 2019.

YouTube video, 4: 12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpPIJC45RG8. Walz, Robin. M​ odernism.​ Abingdon: Routledge, 2013.

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Yoneyama, Shoko. “Life-World”: Beyond Fukushima and Minamata.” A​sian Perspective​ 37(2013): 567-592. h​ttps://www.jstor.org/stable/42704846.​

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FIGURES

Figure 1 Illustration for G​ enji Monogatari Emaki(​The Tale of Genji) Scroll III, Scene 3. Handscroll. C. 1660 Spencer Collection, New York Public Library Access May 30, 2020 URL: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e3-b771-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

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Figure 2 Man discoveries molded corpses on the second floor of his house. Junji Itō, c. 1991 Kollektsiia Uzhasov ot Dziundzi Ito​[Itou Junji Kyoufu Manga Collection], Vol. 7, ch. 3: P​lesen’ ​[Mold], p 38(80). Published April 4, 2014. Fragment of a scanned manga page Mintmanga.live. URL: https://mintmanga.live/the_junji_ito_horror_comic_collection/vol7/3?mtr=1#page=3 7

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Figure 3 Tetsuo got the mechanic hand Katsuhiro Ōtomo, c. 1985 A​kira[​Akira]. Vol. 4(Originally named K​ ei I)​, chapter 29, p 7. Published November

16, 2010. Fragment of scanned manga page Mintmanga.live.

URL: h​ttps://mintmanga.live/akira/vol4/29?mtr=1#page=6

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Figure 4 People are being killed by an aggressive parasyte Hitoshi Iwaaki, c. 1989 Parazit [​Parasyte], Vol 3, chapter 23: K​ haos i Ubiistva[​Chaos and Murders], p 12. Published March 31, 2010. Scanned manga page Mintmanga.live URL: h​ttps://mintmanga.live/parasite/vol3/23?mtr=1#page=11

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Figure 5 Woman captured in the machine, running around at the street Junji Itō, c 2001. Ryba ​[Fish]. Vol. 2, chapter 2: M​ ekhanizm Smertel'nogo Zlovoniia[​Mechanism of Deadly Stench], p 17. Published July 8, 2010. Fragment of a scanned manga page Mintmanga.live URL: h​ttps://mintmanga.live/ryba/vol2/2?mtr=1#page=16

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Figure 6 Main character’s father is dead Junji Itō, c 1998 Spiral’[​The Spiral]. Vol. 1 chapter 1: ​Spiral’. Chast’ 1​[Spiral. Part 1]. p 40. Published April 17, 2016. Scanned manga page Mintmanga.live. URL: h​ttps://mintmanga.live/the_spiral/vol1/1?mtr=1#page=39

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Figure 7 The Spiral town Junji Itō, c 1998 Spiral’ [​The Spiral]. Vol. 3 chapter 19: K​ omplektatsiia​[Complectation], p 13. Published April 17, 2016. Scanned manga pages Mintmanga.live. URL: h​ttps://mintmanga.live/the_spiral/vol3/19?mtr=1#page=12.​

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Figure 8 Part of the city Katsuhiro Ōtomo, c. 1985 Akira[​Akira]. Vol. 1(Originally named T​etsuo)​, chapter 4, p 24. Published December

8, 2014. Scanned manga page Mintmanga.live URL: h​ttps://mintmanga.live/akira/vol1/4?mtr=1#page=23.​

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