The Mention: This is another step down the Junji Ito rabbit hole and, thanks to an internationally released film, possibly one of his more famous concepts. This is the story of the village of Kurouzu-cho as narrated by Kirie and, unlike previously read Ito works, this is one whole story (the edition I read was the deluxe edition that collects all three mangas). The village is haunted by, cursed by even, the shape of a spiral. It starts with individual obsessions and grows chapter after chapter until it consumes the village. The story involves some stupendous body horror and a darkly Lovecraftian edge (only named as such as a simile as to be honest it is more pure Ito), which touches into cosmic horror.
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| stake |
I have recorded this as a mention because there is a mention of vampires in passing and one chapter (that has a touch into another) that is definitely a vampire chapter, but they are small parts of the greater whole and the book itself is not a vampire story. The first mention occurs in chapter 7, entitled Jack-in-the-Bix. Mitsuru Yamaguchi is a schoolboy who loves to jump out and surprise people with a “boo”, he starts doing this to Kirie as he is attracted to her but the feelings are not reciprocated. When she refuses a present from him he, to prove his love, steps in front of a car to stop it with the power of his feelings. He is run over and dies but then haunts the poor girl after she opens the refused present (of a toy Jack-in-the-Box). Shuichi, her actual boyfriend, and she go to the cemetery to dig his corpse up (cremation has ended because of the spiral curse) and he carries a stake to hammer in his heart to prevent him coming alive – to which she responds, “I don’t think he’s a vampire”. Of course, once in the grave what would a Jack-in-the-Box do but spring out?
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| vampiric mothers |
That was just a mention but chapter 10: Mosquitos and, in coda chapter 11: The Umbilical Cord, does contain vampires of a twisted Ito type. Mosquito sees the village plagued with mosquitos, often in spiralling columns, and they are particularly feeding on pregnant women including Kirie’s cousin Keiko. Kirie happens to be hospitalised at the time and there are attacks on patients who seem stabbed and drained of blood. Eventually Kirie faces the truth, the hospitalised pregnant women are rising from bed at night, with hand drills that they stab into patients to drink their blood, nurturing their babies (just as a female mosquito drinks blood to nurture her eggs).
The babies nourished with blood are born in the next chapter, starting with Keiko’s baby, and the mothers had taken to feeding from blood packs prior to the births. They all seem like healthy, beautiful babies. Kirie, however notices that their bellies seem to swell and manages to injure herself again prolonging her hospitalisation. The hospital starts serving a strange meaty mushroom – which she avoids – and then she discovers that the swellings under the baby clothes are cords and placentas regrowing and the “mushrooms” are from a crop of mushroom like placentas growing from where they were dropped when the babies were born. The sinister Doctor Kawamoto understands that the babies wish to return to the womb and, starting with Keiko, he opens the mother and replaces her baby but she now has to feed it and has developed a spiralled stinger where her tongue was that she can use, mosquito like, to feed. Kirie escapes the hospital and we don’t return to the symbiotic vampire mother and child. Thanks to David who got me this for Christmas.
In Hardback @ Amazon US
In Hardback @ Amazon UK
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