"Shōjo" Spirits in Horror Manga

Author(s): Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase

Source: U.S.-Japan Women's Journal , 2010, No. 38 (2010), pp. 59-80
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press on behalf of International Institute of Gender
and Media

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42772010

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 S h ojo Spirits in Horror Manga

Hiromi Tsuchiya Dolíase

As has been noted by critics such as Ötsuka Eijiand Kondõ Masaki,1 Japanese girls have
always had a great fascination with the world of the supernatural. Many horoscope
and omajinai (magic spell) magazines are published for girls every month. Uranai
(fortune-telling) continues to captivate young girls. Horror manga that deal with
various themes (grotesque fairy tales, realistic stories submitted by readers, horror
stories that take place at school, etc.) are targeted at audiences ranging from schoolgirls
to housewives. What factors account for this interest? What kind of cultural significance
does it suggest? The aim of this article is to answer these questions by studying girls'
horror manga.
The genre of shõjo horror manga, despite its popularity, has not been carefully
examined because it has always been regarded as a vulgar subgenre of shõjo manga.
However, symbolically speaking, shõjo horror manga hold a significant position. Shõjo
horror manga explore worlds and images that go against the norm of shõjo manga. Whereas

mainstream shõjo manga are filled with flowers, ribbons, and cute imagery, shõjo horror

manga are permeated with blood, death, and ghosts. While shõjo manga' s main focus is
their characters' sensitive inner feelings of melancholy, love, solitude, and joy, horror
manga explore their characters' dark feelings of jealousy, anger, fear, and frustration.
One of the unique points of shõjo horror manga is that the gender relationship- which

Hiromi Tsuchiya Dolíase is Associate Professor of Japanese at Vassar College. Her research interest
is Japanese girls' magazines at the turn of the twentieth century. She is the author of "Ribbons Undone:
The Shõjo Story Debates in Prewar Japan," in Tomoko Aoyama and Barbara Hartley, eds., Girl
Reading Girl in Japan (Routledge, 2010); "Girls on the Home Front: An Examination of Shõjo no
tomo Magazine 1938-1945," Asian Studies Review 32, no. 3 (2008); and "Wakakusa monogatari to
nihon no shõjo" ( Little Women and Japanese girls), in Satoko Kan, ed., Shõjo Shõsetsu Wonderland
(Meiji shoin, 2008).

© 2010 by Jõsai International Center for the Promotion of Art and Science, Jõsai University

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60 U.S.-Japan Women's Journal No. 38, 2010

is a significant element of the horror genre- is absent or less significant. The ghosts are
female (mothers or peers), the victims are adolescent girls, the writers are women, and the

viewers are normally young girls.2 Shõjo horror manga's cultural function is to serve as
a means for girls to recognize the fearful truths within themselves. Vivid desires and raw
emotions, which are hard to express in regular shõjo manga , are revealed. Shõjo horror
manga and mainstream shõjo manga are two sides of the same coin: both represent inner
minds of adolescent girls. The examination of shõjo horror manga can help us find new
aspects of the idea of shõjo manga, which has thus far been considered simply a form of
escapist fantasy, a safe haven for adolescent girls.

History of Shõjo Horror Manga

Japan has a long history of supernaturalism: legends, myths, folklore, and stories of ghosts

have been handed down from generation to generation, influencing the horror stories,
manga, and cinema of today. According to Steffen Hantke, at least half of Japanese horror

stories and films deal with female ghosts and their vengeance.3 Traditionally in Japanese
culture, women who are wronged by men go through a symbolic transformation- beauty
into ugliness and cultured into wild. They take revenge upon men, and give a warning to
the male-centered culture. Women's unpredictability and subsuming power have been
viewed with mixed feelings of awe and respect.4 Shõjo manga inherit the tradition of
ghost stories- in particular, the conventional images of female ghosts are ubiquitously
observed. Manga artists show great fascination with ancient supernatural motifs and
enthusiastically incorporate them into their works.
Shõjo manga originated in girls' magazine stories before World War II. After
the war ended, the popularity of story magazines declined: Shõjo kurabu (Girls' club),
for instance, ended its publication in 1962, and was taken over by a manga magazine,
Furendo (Friend). Shõjo manga magazines became the most important and representative
medium of girls' culture. Early shõjo manga followed already established patterns of
magazine stories that tended to foreground sentimentality and fantasy dreams. One of the

most popular themes of shõjo manga of this founding period was the haha mono (mother
story), melodramatic portrayals of poor girls who endure hardships and eventually reunite
with their kind mothers.5 In a society devastated by war, searching for happiness was the

major theme of manga for girls.6 Visually, the image of girls presented in shõjo manga
was simple, originating in the pictures of girls drawn by Nakahara Jun'ichi,7 and further
popularized by the artist Takahashi Makoto, who "placed a star-shaped highlight next to

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 Hiromi Tsuchiya Dolíase 61

the pupil. This became the key visual marker for identifying a comic as a s hõ jo manga."*

The characters' unrealistic shiny big eyes represented their maidenly innocence and spiritual

purity: they were beautiful "good" shõjo (although the overexaggerated depiction of girls'
facial and physical features was viewed as unsophisticated by male critics).9
The diversification of shõjo manga started in the mid-1960s. In 1964, the
Kõdansha publishing company established a manga contest for newcomers. Many young
aspiring manga artists made their debut.10 At the beginning, many of the artists who got
involved in shõjo manga were men." Umezu Kazuo's appearance was epoch-making
because his stories broke the conventions of shõjo manga.11 His depictions of scary
women, ugly girls, and gruesome scenes were shocking and new, and caused a stir
in the beautiful world of shõjo. Umezu's "Mama ga kowai" (I'm scared of mama),
published in Shõjo furendo (Girl friend) in 1965, is one of his earliest works. The
story starts with a scene in which a pretty schoolgirl visits a hospital to see her sick
mother. The story never explains the
heroine's background or the cause of
the mother's sickness. Details are not

important; what is important is to scare

the girl audience. In the story, a snake

woman masquerades as the kind and
beautiful mother. Gradually she starts
to reveal her true identity- that of a
grotesque snake with a big torn mouth
(Fig. 1). The snake woman chases and
threatens the heroine, trying to eat her
up, a scene that even recalls the image
oi&yamanba (mountain witch).13 What
scared the audience the most was the

fact that the image of a mother, which

had always been kind and nurturing, was

subverted, symbolically revealing the

truth that a mother could be threatening.

By utilizing the motif of a grotesque

Figure 1: Umezu Kazuo, "Mama ga kowai." © creature, Umezu visualized a sense of

Umezz Kazuo/Shõgakukan 2005. maternal Otherness for his audience.

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62 U.S.-Japan Women's Journal No. 38, 2010

Umezu's appearance in the manga world shook up the prototypical image of a

"good" girl and subverted the "expedient" fantasy story. Umezu revealed his original
motive for writing scary stories in shõjo manga magazines thus:

At that time, shõjo manga always depicted the attachment of mothers and children,
of which I harbored suspicion. Daughters are grateful for their mothers, but also
sometimes bothered by them. Mothers often think of their daughters as their own
possessions, which is a scary thought.14

The monstrous mothers must certainly have scared the audience; at the same time, however,

the torture of the pretty but superficial heroines by these horrifying mothers must have

given the same audience a certain pleasure. Horror manga were quickly accepted by the
audience. Umezu's stories created a horror manga boom in the late 1960s. His manga
opened up the way for young artists and made them realize that it was all right to depict a

dark and grotesque world, deal with subjects that used to be considered taboo, and portray
"bad girls" and the all-devouring "Terrible Mother" (a Jungian mother archetype that is
the opposite of nurturing mothers).15

Abjection of Mother
Y amagishi Ryõko,16 who made her debut in 1 969, is a representative manga artist who dealt

with horror themes. The artistic and narrative qualities of her works are praised, and they
raised the level of the horror shõjo manga genre. She was one of the 24-nen-gumi artists (a

group of female manga artists born around 1949) who advanced shõjo manga and created a
revolution in the manga world.17 Her works appeared in magazines such as Ribon (Ribbon),

Hana to yume (Flowers and dreams), Büke (Bouquet), and Puchi komikku (Petit comic).
Although the titles of the magazines indicate cuteness and dreaminess, containing words
typically associated with shõjo culture, Yamagishi's works are anything but cute. Her scary

stories, which often deal with the complexity of mother-daughter relationships, deconstruct

the conventional "mother genre" in shõjo manga. Maternal pressure and confinement,
which affect the daughterly psyche, are well expressed in traditional Japanese gothic motifs

such as those of demons and foxes.18 As Mari Kotani states, "Whereas male depictions of
'the mother' evince romantic sentiments and nostalgia for the home, female writers tend
to focus on vivid mother-daughter conflicts."19 For adolescent girls, mothers are constant
reminders of their future social roles as wives and mothers. Although they desire maternal

love, they attempt to break the spell of motherhood, seeking alternative futures.

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 Hiromi Tsuchiya Dolíase 63

Yamagishi's "Yasha gozen" (Madam Demon), published in Puchi komikku in

1982, is a domestic tragedy of a fifteen-year-old girl who lives in an old-fashioned
house in a remote place. The heroine, who does all the domestic chores and takes
care of her family members (her sick mother, father, grandparents, and younger
brother and sister), is presented as a dutiful daughter trapped in domesticity. On the
surface, she is a good daughter who never complains about the domestic burdens she
endures, but behind her calm face, she hides a secret: she is actually pregnant with a

child by her own father. Half insane, the heroine ignores the fact that she was raped
by her father and is becoming a mother, performing the role of a good daughter by
keeping silent.
The heroine's fear and disturbed state of mind are, instead, expressed in the
realm of her imagination. One day, she sees a demon in an onnamen (a mask of a
woman's face; Fig. 2) After that, this figure frequently appears in front of her-
sometimes wearing the mask of an
onnamen and sometimes that of a

hannya (demonic female with two

horns)- disrupting the tranquility of
the heroine's daily life and plaguing
her with its existence. These masks,
used in Noh theater, represent the
superficial face of a woman and her
dark emotions hidden behind it. Enchi

Fumiko's literary work Onnamen

(Female masks) successfully utilized
the duality of masks, expressing the
superficial calm of a woman and the
suffering of her inner mind. Doris
Bargen explains that " Onnamen has
metaphorical as well as literal masks.
Facial expressions are often described
as mask-like

ing can hide or disguise the

Figure 2: Yamagishi Ryoko, "Yasha gozen." © can also be a form of self-disclosure
Yamagishi Ryõko/Ushio shuppansha 2010.
or revelation."20

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64 U.S.-Japan Women's Journal No. 38, 2010

The hannya mask, in contrast, is considered to represent an oni (demon), a

projection of a woman's deep emotional sufferings. Baba Akiko, in her Oni no kenkyu
(The study of demons), explains:

Hannya is the most representative oni in medieval times. We can witness the
expressions of agony and emotions coming from a fragile virtuous woman who
had no choice but . . . becoming a demon. The hannya mask is a sophisticated
symbol which indicates the devastated woman's facial expression caused by her
deep emotional sufferings.21

Just like noble Rokujö in Genji monogatari (The tale of Genji), who expressed an
uncontrollable feeling of jealousy and eventually hunted down and killed the hero
Genji's mistress and his first wife,22 women in ghost stories have been tortured by their
own demons (harmful feelings of jealousy and anger) - in other words, by a kokoro no
oni (demon in one's heart).23

The hannya in Yamagishi's story is interpreted as the manifestation of both the

daughter's suppressed emotions and her mother's anger: the mother's demonic spirit
tortures the daughter, who, albeit while being raped, has slept with her mother's husband.

As the heroine starts to experience morning sickness and increased appetite for food,
the appearances of the demon become more frequent; it watches her pregnant body,
threatening her psychologically. The heroine tries to ignore the existence of the demon
and even the fact that she is physically changing into a mother. One day, the demon
confronts her; the demonic figure turns into the actual mother of the heroine. After

killing her husband with an axe, she turns to the daughter and chases her. Eventually, the

heroine manages to escape and finds herself in a hospital bed. She gives birth to a baby
girl but, already insane, she does not show any maternal interest in her. She is, rather,
afraid of her baby, thinking that she was born because of the curse of the demon. In her

imagination, the newborn baby has two horns, like a demon. This symbolically implies that
the heroine, as the daughter of a demon mother, is also a demon- the fate of a domestic

woman handed down from mothers to daughters over generations.

The majority of shõjo manga between the 1960s and 1980s avoids the topic of sex
(although there were artists such as Takemiya Keiko, who explored male homoeroticism).

Yamagishi's manga is atypical; it deals not only with sex but with incestuous sex, breaking
shõjo manga's taboos. This breaking of taboos causes great fright and sensation for the
reader. Yamagishi expresses unspeakable disgust and uncanny feelings24 toward sex and

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 Hiromi Tsuchiya Dolíase 65

woman's sexuality, not only visually but also by emphasizing the sense of smell. In her
"Kirukë" (Circe, a witch derived from Greek myth), woman's sexuality is expressed as
an unpleasant odor (which according to Hashimoto Osamu is at odds with the opinion of
boys, who tend to consider women's sexuality to be fragrant).25 Through various artistic
devices, Yamagishi thus expresses the idea of abjection of the mother, the woman's body,
and women's sexuality.
The idea of a ghostly spirit lurking in domesticity is frequently observed in
Japanese women's literature. Enchi Fumiko's Onnazaka (Female slope), for instance,
depicts the agony of the heroine Rin, whose husband has mistresses outside marriage.
While Rin works hard to maintain the order of domesticity, she finds herself feeling
lonely and miserable. Her oppressed emotions are expressed through allusions to tragic
supernatural female characters such as Oiwa in Yotsuya kaidan (Ghost stories at Yotsuya)
and Rokujõ in Genji monogatari. Daughters in the world of literature and horror manga
have seen the struggle of their mothers and the tragedy that they endured in patriarchal
domesticity. Domesticity is a site of horrifying reality and represents both physical and
mental confinement for daughters. The utilization of the traditional image of female ghosts

aptly expresses the deep-rooted agony of women in domesticity.

Yamagishi's "Media" (Medea), published in Amie in 1997, similarly revolves
around a culturally and psychologically convoluted mother-daughter relationship. The
heroine of the story, Hitomi, is a boyish girl. A college student, she is very close to her
mother, who is divorced. She is pressured by her mother's expectations; her mother places
financial, family, and personal hopes on her, the only daughter. The mother keeps telling
her, "Hitomi, you have to have special skills for a better job. Don't be like me. If you can
earn money, you will never need to rely on men."26 Her statement reminds us of what Ueno

Chizuko calls the haha no shunen (the despair and grudge of the mother's generation).
According to Ueno, mothers tend to entrust their daughters with the hopes and dreams
that they themselves could not fulfill;27 that is to say, the high level of education in the
1990s for young women was the result of their mothers' realization that education and
obtaining certificates are the only ways for women to seek independence from men and
male culture.28 In the story, there is a scene in which Hitomi attends a women's studies
class. The professor teaches:

In America, marriage is based on a man-woman relationship ... but in Japan,

when children are born, the relationship between mothers and children comes to

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66 U.S.-Japan Women's Journal No. 38, 2010

be more valued. . . . When women adhere to the maternal role too strongly, even
murder of children may happen. . . . Japanese mothers think that children are their
possessions.29

Despite the fact that the mother expects her daughter to be independent, she herself often

does not know how to be independent from her daughter and how to become a woman,
not just a mother. Hitomi starts to feel annoyed by her mother's excessive love and
interference: the mother, for instance, makes lunch for Hitomi every day and, putting
on a girlish ruffled dress in an attempt to look young, asks her daughter to go out with
her. Her mother behaves in a shõjo-WYe way, but her fake innocence only emphasizes
her grotesquerie. The daughter knows that the mother hides her true competitive and
aggressive feelings behind her gentle maternal mask.
Hitomi's feelings of abhorrence toward her mother become insuppressible. Her
subconscious abjection of her mother is expressed in a scene in which the mother appears
to be a big grotesque fish. The scene evokes a sense of uncanny horror. The familiar
mother suddenly turns into the daughter's Other in the realm of imagination. In the dream,

Hitomi chops the fish into pieces, abjecting the mother.30

The manga artists of Yamagishi Ryoko's generation dealt with the issue of
the mother-daughter relationship critically,31 using horror imagery to express the
discomfort and burden involved with the idea of womanhood. Manga artists have
revealed "psychological problems that women readers find directly relevant to their
own experiences in Japanese society."32 However, due to the trivialization of shõjo
manga as a genre, its artists were neglected by mainstream critics. As a result, the
world of shõjo manga remained "closed to outsiders"33 and developed freely without
being exposed to criticism.34

Ghosts as Girls' Catharses

Like the domestic realm, school is a major environment for girls. School is regarded
as girls' ibasho (the space where they feel they fit in),35 but at the same time, it can b
a site of horror. Gakuen manga (school manga) has been the predominant subgenre of
shõjo manga since the 1960s; it deals with friendship and love, and the lively atmospher
enjoyed by students. School horror manga, in contrast, reveal dark aspects of the schoo
space. Today, bullying and increased competition have brought to schools the problems o
society. In girls' horror manga, the theme of ijime (bullying) is dominant and is explore
using ghosts.36 Employing monologues, a frequently used convention of shõjo manga,

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 Hiromi Tsuchiya Dolíase 67

the manga artists make female yürei (ghosts)37 speak for the adolescent audience of their
solitude and emotional sufferings.
Miuchi Suzue's "Shiroi kagebõshi" (White silhouette), published in Mimi in 1975,
is considered a horror classic.38 In the story, the heroine Suzuko transfers to a new high
school, where she has supernatural experiences. Suzuko at first feels that the atmosphere
of her class is strange and that her classmates are distant from her. Nobody dares talk to
her; she finds herself isolated. Soon she starts to see a ghost and is annoyed by its frequent

appearance. One day, she gets acquainted with a girl named Teruko who has reikan, the
ability to connect to the spiritual world. Teruko and Suzuko decide to use kokkuri (the
divination game) to summon the ghost.
Michael Dylan Foster's study of kokkuri explains that it is a hybrid of the Western

séance and the Japanese supernatural tradition. "Table-turning," which was popular in
the West, was imported to Japan in the 1 880s and was named kokkuri with the adaptation

of kanji characters for ko (fox), ku (dog), and ri (raccoon dog), animals that often appear
as yõkai (monsters)39 in Japanese folktales. The basic idea is that a group of a few people
circle around a table on which lies a sheet of paper containing the Japanese alphabet: they
place their hands lightly upon a coin, and then summon kokkuri. After a while their hands

will move according to kokkuri' s will. Foster states that kokkuri "entailed a reliance on
traditional representatives of the otherworld

on from place to place accruing on its journey a richer and ric

yõkai."40 Kokkuri in s hõ jo manga is presented as an authentic

access the spiritual world and provides significant means to s

In Miuchi's story, the ghost tells Teruko and Suzuko that
that she died when she was seventeen. After further investiga
had been bullied and isolated in class because of her physi
became friends with a girl who transferred to her school, but
Sayoko died due to her emotional suffering and physical probl
she has stayed in this class to torment the students.
Through the method of kokkuri, the ghost's story is thu
Sayoko, a lonely ghost, warns that she will kill Suzuko to ow
the ghost, not through violence but through mental enduran
With the spiritual support of a medium and her friend Teruk
Despite all the trouble caused by the ghost, at the end of th
grave of Sayoko and prays to console her soul.

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68 U.S.-Japan Women's Journal No. 38, 2010

In shõjo manga, discovering the stories of the ghosts and showing compassion for
them are more important than defeating them. The role of reikan girls is to become a sort

of projector of the ghosts' messages and sufferings. The experiences the ghosts had- being
bullied, feeling isolated at school, being betrayed by a best friend, and so forth- could
happen to anybody. The function that ghosts play here, therefore, is to provide catharses
for the readers; the worst experiences that the audience could ever imagine are reflected
in the ghosts, and the sublimation of their grudges provides readers with a temporary
release from their subconscious fear.

Fascination with the Ancient World

Girls' connection with the supernatural sphere sometimes extends to the ancient world. Many

horror manga involve the heroines in the mysteries of tragic episodes of the past. They
usually deal with anguished female ghosts who tell sad tales of their past suffering. Their
strong curse is directed not only at the characters in the manga but also at Japanese culture.

Miuchi Suzue's "Kuroyuri no keifu" (Lineage tree of a black lily), published in

LaLa in 1977, deals with the grudge of an ancient princess that has been passed down to
the heroine's immediate family. The story starts with a scene in which the mother of the
heroine, Akiko, dies mysteriously. The mother was a kind, ordinary housewife. However,
Akiko realizes that she actually did not know anything about her mother, including her past

and her family background. As she investigates the cause of her mother's death, Akiko
finds that she was the last descendant of the powerful HiryQ family, whose members had

been cursed by a ghost and killed one after another.

The story of the ghost is embedded in the master story. During the turbulent
medieval period, a warlord had prayed to a demon god for victory, promising that if he
won in battle, he would give his unborn baby to the god. His wish came true, and his
baby was born with two horns. This female child was called the "demon princess." She
was never treated as a human from the very day she was born. Knowing that her father
did not love her, she grew up to be a brutal and heartless girl. She eventually killed her
father and became a female warlord. In Japanese folklore, powerful women tend both to
be feared and to be destined for punishment: one day, her subordinate, HiryQ Mototsugu
(Akiko's ancestor), tricked the demon princess and presented her as a sacrifice to a demon
god. The HiryQ family took over, and Mototsugu became the new warlord. The princess's
curse on Mototsugu was so strong that it hunted down the entire HiryQ family, killing all
its members, even their descendants.

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 Hiromi Tsuchiya Dolíase 69

Although the princess was born as a demon, she was in a way a victim of the
male world. The demons in her mind- her excessive desire for power and love- were
created by society and culture. The image of a female oni (demon) is prevalent in
shõjo manga (Yamagishi's "Yasha gozen," for instance), and it suggests the misery
of an irui (one who is alien) who is hated and treated as a misfit by society. At the
end of the story, Akiko expresses deep sympathy and respect for the people who
lost their lives because of the curse, and also feels a strong emotional connection
to these ancestors. The story ends with the celebration and appreciation of life. The
critic Ishiko Jun writes:

What makes this story scary is not the woman's grudge, but the cruel minds of the
powerful men who created this tragedy. After finding out the background story of
the princess, the heroine bravely fights for life to break the curse - Greedy desires
of human beings are scarier than dead spirits.41

Ishiko also points out that "Miuchi goes beyond the genre of horror manga. She depicts
the development of a girl."42 Unlike a boys' initiation story, which emphasizes adventure
and battle, Akiko's development is closely related to the mental realm; cultivation of
bravery and compassion toward the weak are emphasized.
Akiko is a survivor; she seems to become what Carol Clover calls the "final girl"

who bravely confronts the killer.43 The final girl is an "androgynous female character
who suffers the monster's tortures throughout the film, but who ultimately defeats him
and survives."44 According to Clover, although the final girl in a film appears as feminine
at the beginning, she then starts to reveal masculine characteristics. By "obliterating
the female and replacing her with representatives of the masculine order,"45 male
viewers can simultaneously experience the pleasure of viewing tortured heroines and
the pleasure of watching the fight against the killers. Clover states that modern slasher
films allow for male identification with a female hero by "regendering the woman."46
However, if one looks at her closely, Akiko is slightly different from the norm of the

"final girl." The readers of "Kuroyuri no keifu" are girls; therefore, masculinization of
the heroine is unnecessary. Physical powers are seldom emphasized in shõjo manga',
rather, psychic power is valued more, because it helps heroines transgress reality.
Heroines hunted by ghosts are in a way chosen ones; they are taken into the ancient
past and become witnesses to unveiled mysteries. The heroines serve as miko (Shinto
shamans who act as mediums for communications with the spirit realm),47 becoming

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70 U.S.-Japan Women's Journal No. 38, 2010

mediators of past and present, this world and the world after death, which are empowering

experiences both for them as characters and for the readers.

Dark Romanticism and Gender Subversion in Shõjo Horror

Ima Ichiko's Hyakkiyakõ shõ (Tales of night parades of one hundred demons) is one of the
few shõjo horror manga that have been favorably received by the critical community. It was

nominated for the Tezuka Osamu manga award several times, and in 2006 it received
an award given by the Ministry of Education. Hyakkiyakõ shõ was first published
in Nemuki in 1995.48 Its stories are sophisticated, and they reference literature and
anthropology. Folkloric motifs such as marebito (divine beings), yamanba (mountain
witches), oni (demons), and zashiki warashi (child spirits residing in an old house)
are educationally and informatively arranged for her contemporary audience.49 Ima's
deep understanding of ethnologists such as Yanagita Kunio and Orikuchi Shinobu
is obvious and gives her manga "authenticity."50 Like Mizuki Shigeru,51 another well-
respected manga artist, Ima utilizes folkloric motifs and imbues "modern life with a
sense of the primitive and mystical."52
The title, Hyakkiyakõ shõ, is derived from the ancient idea of "a procession of
demons passing through the capital at night,"53 a concept that appeared in the Konjaku
monogatari shü (Tales of time now past) and Uji shui shû (A collection of tales from
Uji). According to Tanaka Takako's study, the image of these monsters originated
with the classes of people most discriminated against in society; the exclusion of these
people from the central community provided the townspeople with a sense of safety
and the idea of communal stability.54 The monsters of these tales of folklore- deformed
beings that are half human and half animal, or even half object- were well known in
the monster scrolls ( Hyakkiyakõ emaki of the Muromachi period and Gazu hyakkiyakõ
of the Edo period) that became popular in the eighteenth century, copies of which were
circulated for ordinary people's entertainment. It is important that what was supposed
to be invisible was visualized in the pictures, which strengthened belief in the idea
of the supernatural and even created familiarity with the supernatural creatures. The
monsters depicted in the pictures were messengers from the ikai (foreign world) and
were perceived with awe and respect.
Ima Ichiko's manga is a modern version of a Hyakkiyakõ scroll. Each episode reveals
the sad and tragic story of a yilrei (spirit of death) or a y õka i (monster), and is presented

through Iijima Ritsu, the hero of the story. Uniquely in this work, the main character is

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 Hiromi Tsuchiya Dolíase 7 1

male and is not the target of a grudge by ghosts. Because of his special ability to see the
supernatural world, he serves as a mediator for ghosts who want to tell their stories. Thus
he plays a shamanistic role just like characters in other shõjo horror manga.
Ijima Ritsu is a reikan shõnen (a boy with spiritual ability) whose power was
inherited from his late grandfather, Iijima Kagyu, a fiction writer who specialized in ghost

tales (the name Kagyü comes from Kõda Rohan's house, which was called kagyu an).55
His grandfather had the power to communicate with supernatural beings, monsters, and
ghosts and to conduct exorcisms. However, Ritsu' s powers are not as strong- although
he is the main character in the story, he is not presented as a conventional male "hero"
who fights against evil sprits. As Tanaka Reigi points out, the story is not a boys'
Bildungsroman, either.56 In fact, Ritsu's gender identity is blurred; his name is unisex,
and he was even raised as a girl when he was a child, to protect him from a supernatural
creature interested in a male heir to the line.

All the male family members are somewhat unusual and emasculated. For instance,
Ritsu's father actually once died, but Ritsu's grandfather made a contract with a dragon,
bringing his son back to life with the dragon living inside his body. Ritsu's uncle, who
had stepped into the world of the supernatural many years before, returns to this world;

confused by the changes that have taken place in society, he relies on his family.
It is obvious that Ima Ichiko erases male authority and creates a home that is free
from patriarchal influence. As previously mentioned, women's literature generally views
the home as a site of confinement and pressure. However, home in Hyakkiyakõ shõ lacks
hierarchical power structure and is presented as a space of comfort and protection. The
blurring of gender and gender roles disconnects the notion of home from social conventions,

making it a purely familial space. Home is a safe haven for Ritsu, who is a misfit at school
because of his ability to see ghosts. The only people he hangs out with are his female
cousins who also possess reikan, and the story revolves around this close family circle.
The ghosts' tales are seen through the eyes of the Iijima family members.
The stories narrated by the supernatural beings, in contrast, often involve the theme

of ie (the traditional family system) and the suffering of women.57 Unlike the warm family

sphere of the central characters, the idea of ie narrated by the ghosts is negatively viewed.
For them, ie is a site of horror. "Mishiranu hanayome" (Unknown bride), for instance,
deals with the folkloric theme of iruikon, a marriage between human and non-human;
typically the non-human parties are foxes, snakes, cranes, and so forth that transform
themselves into women. This story is about a rich family that has a tradition in which, for

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72 U.S.-Japan Women's Journal No. 38, 2010

the prosperity of the family, the oldest son (who inherits the family name) customarily
marries a protective deity- a snake.58 However, as time goes by, the tradition starts to be
ignored, and consequently the feeling of respect for the deities diminishes. One day, the
angry spirits of the snakes, in the forms of beautiful women, lure Tsukasa (Ritsu's cousin)
into the room in which they are confined. Upset about their disrespectful treatment by
the family members, one of the snake-girls says, "Who has brought the fortune to this
family? Humans easily forget what we have done for them."59 Enraged, she is no longer a

protective deity; in an attempt to destroy the family, she sets fire to the house. At the end,

however, the big snake is wounded and leaves the house, gaining Ritsu and Tsukasa's
sympathy. Non-human women become the victims of the traditional ie (family) system,
and their stories are sympathetically depicted through the eyes of Ritsu and Tsukasa.
Another central character is also involved in a relationship with an irui. In this
story, Ritsu's cousin Akira (a male name but actually a woman in this case) has a romantic
relationship with Ishi, who is half human and half ghost. Ishi is from the past; he had
built a miniature landscape in a box, which, because of its perfection, had created spirits,
and had eventually been lured into the world of the tiny garden. Ishi goes back and forth
between the world of the miniature and the real world. Ishi gradually comes to spend more

time in the box. Broken-hearted, Akira tries to find a way to go into the box. Normally,
it is a woman who is depicted as non-human, but here Ishi is treated as the outsider- a
reversal of gender roles. Also, it is usually a hero's role to travel and undergo adventures
to save the heroine, whereas in this story Akira sets out on a journey to search for Ishi.
Interestingly, the scene in which Akira rides on a train with the miniature landscape next

to her is very similar to Edogawa Ranpo's "Oshie to tabisuru otoko" (The man traveling
with the brocade portrait), a dark romance about a man who falls in love with a girl in a
picture and eventually finds a way to go into the picture to be with her. This subverted
male romanticism of loving a girl in a picture is recreated by Ima Ichiko as a romantic
tale of a girl searching for her lover in another sphere.60

Despite the fact that the tragic stories of ghosts involve their suffering under the
burden of tradition, the episodes revolving around the central characters often challenge
tradition by subverting gender and cultural and literary conventions. The element of
subversion is a common characteristic of shõjo manga. For example, the rapidly growing
genre of BL (Boys' Love) manga playfully bends gender by depicting beautiful male
couples having romantic and sexual affairs just like those of heterosexuals. In Yoshinaga
Fumi' s Õoku (The inner chambers), a fantasy story that takes place in the Edo period,

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 Hiromi Tsuchiya Dolíase 73

women are presented as the rulers (in this story, the shõgun is female and men are in charge

of the inner chambers). The fantasies of female manga artists take liberties that seem radical

in ordinary society. The artists avoid female subjugation to men in the world of manga.
Despite being less radical that the examples just mentioned, Ima Ichiko's usage of
gender-neutral names and subversion of conventional narrative patterns are considered
her intentional and playful means of challenging restrictions on female culture.
Ima Ichiko's manga contain a mixture of tradition and innovation. While they take
an untraditional stance toward gender, they also show affection for traditional culture
and the nostalgic landscape of the past. John Treat also points out the idea of nostalgia in
s hõ jo narratives by using Yoshimoto Banana's stories as examples. According to him, the
sense of nostalgia depicted in girls' stories is an idealization of the past: "Such nostalgia
would seem to prove that it is indeed a desire without object, a desire that is produced
simply for desire's sake."61 Hyakkiyakõ shõ is also the author's imagined Japanese past.
Although the stories are horrifying, Ima yearns for the past, which maintained a balance
between nature and culture, God and humans, and the supernatural and human worlds.
Through the depiction of a romanticized past, she enriches and adds colors to the
monotony of modern society.
Laura Miller's examination of the recent onmyõdõ (an esoteric cosmology that

emerged in the Heian period) boom explains the young female audience's fascination
with Ima's world of the supernatural:

Living in an extremely pragmatic science-oriented society, consumers of onmyõdõ

stories (or shõjo manga), goods and images are able to locate the fantastic, the
magical and the improbable in another world that validates the occult as authentic,
real and natively Japanese.62

Modern tales of bullying and the very real prospect of becoming a mother and a component

of male-dominated society created dread in the girl readers of the horror manga we have
discussed earlier. However, traditional Japanese culture as presented in Ima's manga
generates a different reaction in its audience. Because her ghosts are located in the distant
past or in realms one step removed from our world, the readers watch from a distance,
feeling, rather than horror, a kind of nostalgic yearning for the authenticity of past tradition

and culture. Nor is Ima Ichiko's Hyakkiyakõ shõ filled with bloody, murderous scenes. It is

an example of horror fantasy, which is considered a new branch of shõjo horror manga.

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74 U.S.-Japan Women's Journal No. 38, 2010

Conclusion

Japan has a long tradition of the supernatural in the form of folklore, visual arts, and
theatrical arts. It is obvious that shõjo horror manga are influenced by the Japanese
monster tradition and employ the images of yürei (ghosts), oni (demons), and yõkai
(monsters). These manga, by borrowing supernatural images, express the strong negative

feelings -abhorrence, anger, fear- of both their authors and their readers. These feelings are

the sources of horror. Shõjo horror manga are a means, or a good excuse, for girls to expose

their dark and negative inner feelings pertaining to girlhood- hatred toward mothers,
fear of isolation, desire for power and freedom, and subversive fantasy- things that are
normally considered taboo or shameful. Shõjo horror manga have developed together with
mainstream shõjo manga. Although the notion of kawaii (cute) has been emphasized in the
discussion of shõjo manga, 6Ì kowai (scary) is another important facet of girls' culture. Cute

girls and scary girls, good girls and bad girls are all important representations of Japanese
shõjo. Shõjo horror manga, which have been an emotional outlet for girls, are an important

medium in the maintenance of stability and balance in shõjo' s lives.

In this article, I have focused on various functions that the idea of horror plays

in shõjo manga. Shõjo manga and its subgenre, shõjo horror manga, both create
worlds of fantasy, but those of shõjo horror manga are populated with supernatural
creatures. Nevertheless, girls' horror stories, depicting the actuality of girls' dark
emotions, narrate the reality of adolescence. Shõjo horror manga allow readers to
experience the uncanny, and at the same time provide them with pleasure, thrills, and
excitement. By vicariously facing mysterious incidents and solving problems, girls
also obtain a sense of control and power, which, in their real lives as weak members
of society, they feel that they barely possess. Shõjo horror manga provide spark and
stimulation to the world of shõjo.

Acknowledgments
I am grateful for the valuable suggestions and comments of Tomoko Aoyama, Satoko Kan, and
Laura Miller.

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Notes

1. Otsuka Eiji, Shojo minzokugaku: ; Kondo Masaki, Reikan shojoron.

2. Shõjo horror is also unique from the perspective of Western horror cinema. As Laura
Mulvey's well-known study of horror film ("Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema") pointed out,
Western cinema is created on the premise that the viewers are male and that films are made to
satisfy male pleasure. Shõjo horror manga, however, are made for a female adolescent audience
to satisfy their needs, desires, and pleasures.
3. Steffen Hantke ("Japanese Horror under Western Eyes," 59) examined 52 horror films
listed in The Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia , concluding that at least 26 of them revolve around
women who take revenge on those who have wronged them.
4. Komatsu Kazuhiko ( Jnjinron , 122) also states that in Japanese patriarchal culture, female
bodies and sexuality were traditionally controlled by men; female fertile power was sacred, but it
was necessary for men to control it for the maintenance of their culture. Male ambivalence fear
and controlling desire- has aptly been revealed in Japanese myth and folktales.
5. Bessatsu Taiyo , 66.
6. Ibid.

7. Nakahara Jun'ichi (1913-83) was an illustrator, a fashion designer, and a doll artist. He
was a popular illustrator of Shõjo no tomo magazine. In the postwar period, he founded Himawari
(Sunflower) and Soreiyu (Soleil) magazines and continued to entertain girls and young women.
8. Takahashi, "Situating the Shojo in Shojo manga," 122.
9. Ibid., 125.
10. Yonezawa, Sengo shojo mangashi , 161.
11. These included Ishinomori Shõtaro, Matsumoto Akira (Reiji), and Koga Shin ichi, to
name a few. See Bessatsu Taiyõ.
12. Umezu Kazuo (b. 1936) made his debut in 1955. He is considered one of the forerunners
of the Japanese horror manga genre. His representative works include Senre; (Baptism) and Hyõryu
kvõshitsu (Drifting classroom). He received the twentieth Shõgakukan manga award in 1974.
13. Yamanba is a folkloric character. The basic story about a mountain witch differs

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78 U.S -Japan Women's Journal No. 38, 2010

depending on the place and time. But the typical image of a yamanba is that of an old woman
with a wrinkly face and bushy gray hair. She lives on a mountain. When she sees men, she
catches and devours them. In literature, a mountain witch is often used as a prototype of a
female who cannot live in a village, in other words, a social misfit (see Mizuta and Kitada,
Josei no genkei to katarinaoshi).
14. Umezu, "Umezu Kazuo rongu intabyu seikimatsu mokujiroku part 1," 74.
15. See Jung, Symbols of Transformation, 316.
16. Yamagishi Ryõko made her debut in 1969. Her Hi izuru tokoro no tenshi (Heaven's
son in the Land of the Rising Sun), a story based on the life of Shõtoku Taishi, won the seventh
Ködansha manga award in 1983. In 2007, she received the Tezuka Osamu manga award for her
Terepushikõra (Terpsichora).
17. The phrase 24-nen-gumi indicates artists who were born around the Shõwa year 24
(1949). Õshima Yumiko, Hagio Moto, Ikeda Riyoko, and Takemiya Keiko are representative
writers. Their skillful and revolutionary manga works are highly regarded and have influenced
manga artists of later generations.
18. Yamagishi also uses scary female characters from Greek mythology.
19. Kotani, "Space, Body, and Aliens in Japanese Women's Science Fiction," 398.
20. Bargen, "Twin Blossoms on a Single Branch," 148-49.
21. Baba, Oni no kenkyu, 12.
22. See Bargen, "Spirit Possession in the Context of Dramatic Expressions of Gender
Conflict."

23. Tanaka Takako, Hyakkiyako no mieru toshi, 12.

24. In "The Uncanny" (123), Freud defines the idea of "uncanny," stating that it is a "class
of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar." It is a sense
of familiarity in the unfamiliar. The mother's body or the female genitals, for instance, "offer an
image of an uncanny home, a sense of discomfort in the familiar" (Jonte-Pace, "At Home in
the Uncanny," 80).
25. Hashimoto, Hana saku otome-tachi , 203.
26. Yamagishi, "Media," 63.
27. Ueno, "Suraimu haha to hakamori musume," 78.
28. Ibid.

29. Yamagishi, "Media," 57.

30. Ironically, the story ends with the tragic murder of the daughter by the mother; after
discovering that Hitomi is secretly planning to go overseas to study, the mother is beside herself
and stabs her daughter.
31. Yoshino, "Shashin no naka no haha."
32. Ibid., 136.
33. Takahashi, "Situating the Shojo in Shojo manga" 135.
34. Yoshino Sakumi stated this in the interview that appears elsewhere in this issue
of US J WJ.

35. Fujimoto Yukari ( Watashi no ibasho wa dokoni aru no?) states that finding ibasho

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 Hiromi Tsuchiya Dolíase 79

(the place where they fit in) is one of the most important themes in shojo manga.
36. Noriko T. Reider points out that kaidan (gatherings to tell ghost stories, which originated
in the Edo period) are very much in vogue in Japan, as indicated by the popularity of Gakko no
kaidan (School ghost stories), originally a novel written by Tsunemitsu Tõru and later adopted
into film and animation. She states that kaidan used to be an "expedient means for covertly
expressing social and political criticism," although today these functions have diminished (Reider,
"The Appeal of Kaidan Tales of the Strange," 278).
37. According to Kazuhiko Komatsu (" Ghosts and the Japanese ," 411), yürei refers to "the
spirit of a dead person that appears to people in the form it had when alive." Belief in yürei was
"born from beliefs surrounding Japanese ancestral spirits."
38. Miuchi Suzue made her debut in 1967. Her gothic manga Yõkihi den (Legend of Yõkihi)
won the Kõdansha manga prize in 1982. She is best known for her long-running manga Garasu
no kamen (Glass mask), which started in 1976. In 1995, she received the Nihon Manga Kyõkai
Shõ (Japanese Manga Association Award).
39. Yõkai (supernatural creatures) have been a part of Japanese culture for a long time.
The term is translated as "monster, spirit, goblin, ghost, demon, phantom, specter, fantastic
being, lower-order deity, or, more amorphously, . . . any unexplainable experience or numinous
occurrence." However, the definition should be left open-ended; according to Michael Dylan
Foster {Pandemonium and Parade , 2), "the history of yõkai is very much the history of efforts
to describe and define the object being considered."
40. Foster, Pandemonium and Parade , 93.
41. Ishiko, "Jibun no chi to nihonjin de arukoto o jikaku saseru shojo tachi," 280.
42. Ibid.

43. See Clover, Men , Women and Chain Saws .

44. Briefel, "Monster Pains," 17.
45. Clover, Men , Women and Chain Saws , 59.
46. Ibid.

47. Õtsuka Eiji, Shõjo minzokugaku. Õtsuka is the first scholar who pointed out the
connection between shõjo and miko. He examines girls' fascination with everyday "rituals,"
such as shampooing in the morning, which resemble miko' s rituals of purification. Through
"girls' rituals," they mold themselves into "cute" shõjo. However, the miko element that I
point out here is foreign to either rituals or cuteness.
48. Nemuki is a horror manga magazine established in 1991 by Asahi Sonoramasha; now it
is published by Asahi Shinbunsha Shuppan.
49. In an interview with the Asahi Shinbun , Ima states that the inspiration for her horror
stories comes from the folktales and stories she heard from her grandmother (Asahi.com: My town
Toyama on January 10, 2009).
50. Tanaka Reigi, "Ima Ichiko Hyakkiyako sho ron," 154-56.
51. Mizuki Shigeru (b. 1922) is a respected manga artist. His masterpiece is Gegege no
Kitarõ (Spooky Kitarõ); in this story, he recreates the Japanese traditional image of yõkai
(monster) characters.

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80 U.S.-Japan Women's Journal No. 38, 2010

52. Foster, "The Other Worlds of Mizuki Shigeru," 23.

53. Foster, Pandemonium and Parade , 8.
54. Tanaka Takako, Hyakkiyako no mieru toshi , 169-70.
55. Kõda Rohan (1867-1947) was a fiction writer and an essayist. His representative works
include Gojünotö (The pagoda) and "Füryübutsu" (The elegant buddha). He also wrote many
horror fantasy stories.
56. Tanaka Reigi, "Ima Ichiko Hyakkiyako sho ron," 152.
57. Ima Ichiko's eighteen-volume Hyakkiyako shõ also contains realistic stories of women.
"Füin no ie" (vol. 4), for instance, depicts the emotional suffering of a girl who has a stepmother
but feels that she is not loved. She attempts to kill her stepsister in order to express her agonized
feelings to her mother. Abducted by a supernatural spirit that resides in the house, the stepsister
survives in the realm of supernatural. "Natsu no tekagami" (vol. 5) is the story of a mother who
is jealous of the relationship between her sick daughter and a man who frequently visits her. The
daughter eventually runs away from home to be with him. The mother, who disagrees with the
marriage, becomes evil; she is killed in an accident, but her grudge remains and curses the
husband of her daughter. "Kogoeru kage ga mierumono" (vol. 5) is the story of the spirit of a
young woman who does not know that she is dead, and thinks that she lives an ordinary life. Her
grudge against her boyfriend's mistress creates the shadow of a cat that keeps growing in her room.
Dark emotions of women are vividly and realistically exposed in these stories.
58. Nina Cornyetz, following the ideas of Orikuchi Shinobu and Nakagami Kenji, explains
that "the ancestors of the Japanese people worshipped and enshrined snakes as deities." The snake
has a dichotomous meaning of deity and demon. Quoting an idea of Nakagami, Cornyetz explains
that "the original snake of Kumano legends was male, and that the conceit of the snake- woman was
imported along with Buddhism, producing new legends to transform, displace, and/or accompany
Japan's existing ones" (Cornyetz, Dangerous Women , Deadly Words , 177).
59. Ima Ichiko, "Mishiranu hanayome," in idem, Hyakkiyako sho , vol. 3: 101.
60. See Satoko Kan's article elsewhere in this issue of USJWJ for an examination of Ranpo's
"The Man Traveling with the Brocade Portrait." There are many examples of stories that deal
with romantic relationships between human girls and demons, such as Ashibe Yüho's Deimosu
no hanayome (Bride of a demon). Being connected to the supernatural world is viewed as power
for girls, and the idea of being chosen by heroes in different spheres (the past or the supernatural
world) is considered greatly romantic by the shö jo manga readership.
61. Treat, "Yoshimoto Banana Writes Home," 383.
62. Miller, "Extreme Makeover for a Heian-Era Wizard," 41.
63. Treat, "Yoshimoto Banana Writes Home," 358.

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