Tono Monogatari

When a more "traditional" culture confronts modern industry and technology, the mass infusion of science and "rational" management usually drives away the old in an almost exclusive favor of the new. This process, often exploitative, has repeated itself continually throughout history. For example, Japan saw many threats to its more traditional Shinto culture, beginning with thwarting an early attempt at European Imperialism in the 16th century. Already exposed and inoculated against smallpox, this disease that brutally ravaged many people conquered by Europeans had very little effect in Japan. Not to mention that Japan's militant warring states period presented prospective expropriators with an intimidating and formidable class of heavily armed warriors. Efforts to convert the Japanese to Christianity also met violent resistance under Toyotomi Hideyoshi and the Tokugawa Shogunate, but 1853 changed everything when ships commanded by U.S. Admiral Perry appeared in Japan demanding diplomatic relations and an opening of trade. Observing global events in the age of Imperialism, and fearing excessive subjugation or outright destruction, Japan began a rapid and nearly miraculous modernization. The 1868 Meiji Restoration inaugurated a movement that led to the Japanese victory over Russia at the decisive Battle of Tsushima in 1905 and culminated in the cult of the Emperor, rampant nationalism and surrender in World War II. Following the American Occupation of the 1950s, Japan once again modernized, this time from the ashes of defeat, into an economic and technological superpower. Its traditional Shinto culture managed to survive, though without its early Showa-era militarism, but it could have easily vanished completely.Shigeru Mizuki, one of Japan's most acclaimed manga artists, lived through the entire Showa era and even lost an arm serving in the Japanese army in Papua New Guinea. His extremely popular 1960s "Kitaro" series drew on stories he had heard from "Nonnonba," his nanny, about "yokai," or animistic ghost-spirit-deities, who often take human form and either directly intervene in human affairs or just provide a cause for otherwise "unexplainable" events or phenomena. Some remained mere wisps, shudders or intuitions, but others could injure or kill people. Many credit Mizuki for reviving these traditional entities by popularizing them for modern audiences. As Mizuki's work matured, it took on political and existential themes and moved into "gekiga," or "adult" or "literary," manga territory. In 2008, he serialized the classic "yokai" work called "Tono Monogatari," originally published in 1910 by Kunio Yanagita. This book compiled supernatural stories from the city of Tono that Yanagita collected in earnest after realizing that such stories had begun to vanish in the shadow of Japan's modernization. Mizuki inserted himself into the stories, supplanting Yangita's narrative voice almost completely, in a manner very similar to his mangum opus 4-volume "Showa." A few stories even include a character that resembles Nezumi-Otoko. In 2010, the collected installments appeared in book form in Japan and over a decade later an English translation finally arrived, compliments of Montreal publishers Drawn & Quarterly, who have kept a generous stream of Mizuki works flowing into the English-speaking world.Those with little to no background on either Mizuki or "Tono Monogatari" will learn everything they need to know from the book's introduction. It tells of how Inoue Enryo, using his vast 1896 catalog of "yokai," depicted traditional spirituality not only as a silly superstition, but also as a mental disorder. His arguments found great favor with the 20th century Emperor cult and its monotheistic tendencies. Inoue's work thus helped debunk traditional regional beliefs so their energy could get redirected into a fierce new singular nationalism uninhibited by countless spirits, ghosts and "yokai." Yanagita, aided by Tono resident Kizen Sasaki, tried to counter Inoue by popularizing traditional folk tales in literature, spicing them up and adding his own first-person narrative along the way. Unfortunately, his resulting book met with poor reviews and seeped into obscurity until a population disillusioned by the excessive militarism of World War II looked back on itself and found these tales a refreshing glimpse of their cultural past. The once ignored "Tono Monogatari" became a Japanese literary classic, praised by Yukio Mishima and appropriated by Mizuki for his renowned manga work. Yanagita's book preserved Japan's folk heritage and Mizuki's extremely popular manga, written in yet another rapidly modernizing era, brought it to a wide and modern audience. One could argue that Yanagita and Mizuki both helped save "yokai," and to some extent the supernatural, from cultural oblivion.Mizuki's version numbers individual tales within chapters, but he apparently didn't include every tale from the original book. He dramatizes Yanagita's introduction and appears himself in manga form after a few pages, as he reflects on the nature of Tono itself: "Tono really is a big bowl, just like ol' Yanagita said." Many of the tales have an episodic and fragmentary feel, as if asking the reader to fill in the implications of each story themselves. Not all have conclusions and some seem to serve as mere suggestions. Many, like the best folk tales, allow the imagination to run wild. One of the first tales features Kahei Sasaki, who comes across an enormous bare-chested woman in a mountain forest, possibly a "Yama Onna," or "mountain woman." He shoots her, takes a lock of her hair and quickly falls asleep. While asleep, a large hairy man, probably a "Yama Otoko" or "mountain man," takes the lock of hair, smells it and walks away. Another man, cutting bamboo grass in the mountains, encounters a beautiful woman carrying a crying child. She passes him by, but he soon returns home, falls ill and dies. Mizuki ponders on this story: "some kind of poisonous aura, maybe?" In another tale, a village daughter disappears, only to turn up with a grisly tale of a man who kidnapped her and who had eaten all of her babies. Mizuki's observation: "you never know what'll happen when spirits get their hands on you." Many of the short stories leave a chill and easily qualify as horror stories.Multiple chapters get organized into larger sections and these share themes, the first of which involves mountains. Each section includes a short introduction, written by the book's translator, to give some context for the tales. But the book, including Mizuki's own embedded commentary, never tries to explain or deconstruct anything, it lets the tales, which presumably have no "real" explanation, speak for themselves. This helps preserve their true power, as readers can do what they like with each story. Another one involves a man who goes insane and murders his mother with a sickle. Depictions of beguiling carved kami also make a few appearances. House spirits called "zashiki warashi" help with the chores, scare people and supposedly bring good fortune, but Mizuki encounters a pair leaving a house, which he says means "disaster for that family." Bad mushrooms prove prophetic in this sad case. Later on, a deceased grandmother walks to the sleeping quarters, causing a "little off" daughter to begin ranting. This "Granny" had "a little too strong" attachment to life, according to Mizuki. Elsewhere, greed causes a woman to fill a magic grinder with rice, only to get sucked into a puddle. She only needed to put in a single grain to gain a fortune. A hunter kills a giant priest by disguising a scalding rock as mochi. Huge men appear everywhere in Tono's forests.Another section collects tales of "Animals and the Supernatural," including wolves that can transform into "yokai." Mocking them can lead to a stable full of dead bloody horses, as one man discovers. Wolves also attack people on trails. One man has to shove his arm down a wolf's throat to ward it off, but to no avail. Irascible Futtachi monkeys can create bullet proof armor from pine sap and sand. A heartbroken woman transforms into an owl after her husband mysteriously vanishes while she walks with him in the forest. A sister killing another sister over potatoes causes them both to become giant birds. Some humans give birth to kappa babies, who tend to have red rather than green faces in Tono. Terrifying Tengu can also surprise sleeping hunters. A woman comes across a "mayoi-ga," or a house that allows those who find it to take anything they want. The woman takes nothing, so the house sends a rice bowl to her, which creates an endless supply of rice. "I wish that'd happen to me," Mizuki says. One can argue that it did. He then explores some of the lands known for the Samurai warrior Abe No Sadato. Then a farmer's beautiful daughter and a horse have a passionate love affair, which doesn't end very well for anyone, especially the horse. Mizuki also talks to Kizen Sasaki about the heretical sect that worshipped the "Amida Buddha." Their rituals remind Mizuki of "Nonnonba."A ghostly woman appears in a door frame and begins cackling wildly. In another story soon after, Mizuki tells "a man" (one who looks suspiciously like Nezumi-Otoko) that he doesn't need gold because "Kitaro's brought me all the wealth I'll ever need." Then a horrifying skeletal "Yurei" terrifies a boy in a doorway as he walks to the bathroom. A man, "proud of his skill at Sumo," foolishly fights a giant. Others find him later dead with his limbs chopped off. Obsessed by a unique human shaped rock, a rock gardener tries to move the rock, only to get flown into the air. A man has to "take a dump" and comes across his wife who died in a tsunami walking with a man who died in the same tsunami. She tells him "I am married to this man now." Foxes take the form of humans, and just about anything else, to fool people. If killed, they transform back into foxes, as one man who thinks he has inadvertently killed his wife discovers to his relief. Gongesama fight each other and can even save burning buildings by eating fire. They can apparently even "eat away" a child's headache. Handy. Mizuki finds himself in a hut where people once abandoned the elderly. He quickly wishes he had never gone in there. Mizuki then visits the Yanagita family house and talks to the wife of Yanagita's son. A surprise visitor then arrives, Mizuki and the visitor have a small argument and then Mizuki tells the final tale of "Tono Monogatari." Prior to this, Mizuki reflects "there were a lot of yokai in the old days. Though I don't feel them now...""Tono Monogatari," more than anything else, contains a vast amount of cultural memory (though later embellished by Yanagita and Mizuki). It preserves a distant worldview that still lurks beneath the "rational" concrete of modern life. Through its seemingly senseless or meaningless stories, it says something about the ways that humans used to relate to their world. Not that ghosts and spirits have disappeared completely from the modern world, of course, but they no longer carry the same cultural weight. The tales likely attempted to explain something, to give advice or to provide consolation. Someone saw something. Someone dreamt something. Someone never returned from the forest. Someone died mysteriously. Someone came across a dose of unbelievably good luck. Creepy sounds emerged from the wood. People have always sought explanations for things and "Tono Monogatari" contains numerous examples of how people traditionally tried to explain the surroundings that they found themselves existing in. Far from silly superstitions, these tales remain an indelible part of humanity's spirituality and speak to us on a level that many probably can no longer fully understand. Mizuki in manga form doesn't even pretend to comprehend them and spins theories. Not only that, they are often fascinating and entertaining in their own right. Yanagita brought these obscure stories to a Japan awash in modernization. Mizuki then revitalized them not only for Japanese audiences but also now for English-speaking audiences who would have otherwise never heard of "Tono Monogatari." As much as some people would like such "folk tales" to vanish forever, they seem to thrive despite so-called "human progress." They help awaken a sense of mystery to life that "rational" interpretations sometimes don't allow for or eliminate altogether. Though doubtlessly relics of the past, they remain an important part of what it means to be human. Hopefully even more of Mizuki's fantastic work will make its way into English soon.

Shigeru Mizuki was an absolute master of combining the humorous and the downright terrifying sides of Japanese folklore and his adaptation of Tono Monogatari does not disappoint. The book opens with a nice forward giving the context in which the original Tono Monogatari was written, which is really helpful in understanding the structure of the book. Keep in mind, Mizuki's Tono Monogatari is a comic adaptation of the original. The stories are unrelated vignettes recorded in the early 20th century. Mizuki does a fantastic job of capturing the spirit of the original tales with his intricately detailed art and his love for Japanese folklore really shines through. Following Mizuki through these classic tales really is a treat for anyone interested in Japanese folk legends.

Learning about the mythic soul of a place is always given such weight, but Mizuki loves people and yokai so much, you'll feel the fun and joy of being awed and frightened and grossed out, as much as you feel the reverence of history.

This book is one of Mizuki's best, from all the previous work I've read of his the art seems a lot cleaner and confident, and his storytelling is just as humorous and full of heart as ever.Previously Nonnonba was my favorite work of his, but perhaps this surpasses it?There should be more Mizuki in the west, thankful for the Translator Zack Davisson being a champion to bring him to English readers.

Very interesting stories and illustrations . I read it as soon as it arrived and I will read it again tomorrow. It is a pleasure reading this book.

I really enjoyed these stories of yokai. The translation was good, keeping the feel of the culture and emotions.

Another fantastic book about Yokai.Not so much Gegege no kitaro but stories about the creatures themselves.

Mizuki’s art is great and his insertion of himself as a character helps tie the otherwise completely disjointed narrative together, but that’s about it as far as the redeeming qualities of this work are concerned. There are better folktales about Japan out there including ones on Emishi culture, yokai and kami and the forests and mountains in the Tohouku region, despite Tono Monogatari being considered a classic.

Lovely , wholesome art. The story is on point.The book is also jam packed with lots of stories