Ken Asamatsu

My reaction to reading the fiction and introduction to this collection after reading it in 2007.

“Introduction: Rush Hour of the Old Ones”, Robert M. Price -- Price, who has edited several Lovecraft inspired anthologies and who has a degree in theology, purports to find some similarity in the broad mythology of the Cthulhu Mythos and Aum Shinrikyo: humanity must be purged from Earth to make way for supernatural beings who will be worshiped by the worthy members of the cult. Price also provides some interesting material on how the group’s theology evolved. he also looks at similarities between Budhhism and August Derleth’s corrupted interpretations of the Cthulhu Mythos. (Nov. 13, 2007)

“The Plague of St. James Infirmary”, Asamatsu Ken, trans. R. Keith Roeller -- This story shows what I’m told is a characteristic Japanese love of icon -- kami -- in their extreme form. This is sort of interesting melange of American icons fixed in the Japanese mind, specifically Chicago and its gangsters. Taro, the Japanese bodyguard, turns out to be Kaitaro Hasegawa (I assume a real Japanese writer) who created a beloved fictional one-armed, one-eyed samurai (which Taro temporarily is, due to injuries, in this story.) Price’s notes reveal Michael Leigh, the occultist character, to be a borrowing from Henry Kuttner’s foray into the Cthulhu Mythos. There is a certain unintended humor here -- besides the improbable assertion that Michael Leigh’s implied ancestor, Judge Leigh of the Salem Witch Trials, moved to Chicago (my research says the first whites arrived in the 1770s there) with it being noted that the Japanese “have an exceptionally keen spiritual sensitivity”.

“The Import of Terrors”, Yamada Masaki, trans. Kathleen Taji -- This story effectively combines the firebombing of Kobe -- and less obviously its devastating earthquake fifty years later -- with some of the elements of H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Whisperer in the Darkness” and “At the Mountains of Madness”. Two Japanese boys, fleeing the firebombing and starved, enter the mysterious house of a Russian immigrant. They encounter a strange creature who urges the boys to eat it. But they also see the maimed body of the Russian. Still living, he tells them not to eat the alien, that to do so will let a parasite live in their bodies for fifty years, and, when it emerges, catastrophe will result. He even kills one of the boys to stop him from eating the alien but then dies. The narrator, the surviving boy, tells at story’s end how he feels strange impulses and must return to Kobe. Price's brief introduction actually helps appreciate the story. He reminds us that Lovecraft’s tale linked the aliens in the Vermont woods with Indian myths and the Mi-Go of the Himalayas and that they feared other aliens. That enemy they feared is implied, believes Price, to be the parasite infecting the alien (seemingly one of the Old Ones from “At the Mountains of Madness”). Price also points out the timing of the narrator’s return to Kobe and the portent of disaster would have been understood by a Japanese audience to mean the Kobe earthquake. Price also compares the state of the boys to the “hungry ghosts” of Buddhism and Hindu reincarnation, a state two notches below being reincarnated as human. However, I don’t quite buy all of Price’s implications. Yes, the Mi-Go are linked to the Himalayas but they aren’t in this story though, admittedly, the parasite may be one they feared. (Russian Nikolai’s maiming seems to reveal a man, and not a Mi-Go, horribly injured by the parasite bursting from his body -- though how it got to be the size and shape of an Old One is really explained). Nevertheless, it’s an effective story. There’s no reason why a Lovecraftian tale has to slavishly and precisely link itself to the details of the Cthulhu Mythos to work.

’27 May 1945”, Kamino Okina, trans. Steven P. Venti -- An interesting mythos story set during the midst of the Battle for Okinawa. A priestess of the island’s Cthulhu cult undertakes a mission to release, seemingly, some nascent Deep One forms from beneath Shuri Castle. There is a nice bit at the end of the story tying the destruction, that day, of the castle by an American battleship, the secret nuclear testing two years later on a South Pacific island, and the reluctance of American to have a G8 summit in 1992 at the restored castle to the events of the story.

“Night Voices, Night Journeys”, Inoue Masahiko, trans. Edward Lipsett -- Forgettable story that invokes the old sex-death link to little effect. The story explicitly mentions Yog-Sothoth.

“Sacrifice”, Murata Motoi, trans Nora Stevens Heath -- An odd story with a happy ending. A lot of stock horror elements are there: an unfriendly village with a strange ritual/cult, an urbanite retreating to said village to heal an ill (bad skin), and the village has unusually large and prize vegetables due to their special soil. The protagonist fears his sick wife may be being prepared as some sort of human sacrifice to the Soil God who produces a soil so good that it may be eaten. Said soil may be the product of human sacrifice or, editor Price speculates, the excrement of the Soil God. Because of this speculation and because ingesting such large quantities of soil makes the protagonist’s wife youthful and beautiful and cures her dermatitis, I was reminded of the Japanese sexual fetish (not widespread) of eating human excrement.

“Necrophallus”, Makino Asamu, trans Chun Jin -- A sado-masochist tale that has a certain emotional believability and consistency. A sadist who likes to beat women encounters a mysterious alien, figured like a woman, who may have been born on Yuggoth, her mother disfigured by her grandfather wielding the alien dagger Necrophallus, which maims the narrator and gives him ecstasy at the same time.

“Love for Who Speaks”, Shibata Yoshiki, trans Stephen A. Carter -- A reworking of H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”. Both stories feature “people” who find that they are really hybrids of humans and Great Old Ones, heredity calling them back to the ocean and an acquatic existence in the deep. But, whereas Lovecraft’s story is a horrifying revelation, genes pulling the hero to a repulsive fate (his cousin, after all, shoots himself rather than go to the ocean with the inhabitants of Innsmouth), the protagonist here finds freedom in not only realizing her biological destiny but escaping from the control of her unloving husband. It is the character of the husband -- a gnostic like figure, editor Robert Price notes, who has become enamored with the pleasures of the surface world rather than attending to his calling of finding “women” who are daughters of the Great Old Ones --that has no comparable analog in the Lovecraft story.… (mere)

The last of a fascinating, rare, unique series, "The Dreaming God" concludes this collection of eldritch Cthulhu Mythos fiction from Japan, and while not the strongest entry in the Lairs of the Hidden Gods series, it is a nice end to an interesting assemblage of tales. I quite enjoyed viewing Lovecraft's style of cosmic horror filtered through a Japanese point of view, and the stories here highlight some thought-provoking aspects of Japanese culture. For instance, Lovecraft's story "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," seems to resonate strongly in the series, with three stories in this volume drawing inspiration from the Deep Ones depicted in that story. These stories are, in my mind, some of the most compelling in the series and "City of the Dreaming God," by Yufuko Senowo was my favorite here, as two academics realize how strange the little Japanese mountain town overlooking the sea really is, with some intriguing philosophical and theological debates included as well. Fushimi Kenji's "Rshanabi Street," also provides a dark exploration of a seedy, but mysterious, street in Tokyo, making for some very atmospheric moments. A worthy conclusion to an intriguing series.… (mere)

The third of four titles in the "Lairs of the Hidden Gods" anthology series of Lovecraft inspired fiction from Japan, "Straight to Darkness" offers more unique cosmic horror tales in English for the first time. With awesome cover art drawing from the four seasons, this "autumn" entry includes some very interesting takes on the "Cthulhu Mythos." Like any anthology, there is a mix of ideas, and while I can't say I really enjoyed all of them, there is some neat, scary stuff in here for devotees of Lovecraft. The translation in a few of the tales were a bit stilted, but for the most part, I feel that they come through with all of their spookiness intact. Some were traditional pastiches such as Kida Junichiro's "Keepsake of the Grandfather," in which a family heirloom from the South Pacific brings strange and unwelcome attention in 1930s Japan, while others, such as Takeuchi Yoshikazu's "She Flows," take an entirely mundane but bleak look at the horror of life for a pair of young women in the soul numbing ennui of contemporary Japan (not Lovecraftian in style, but Lovecraftian in spirit, perhaps?).

My personal favorites were Sano Shiro's "Horror Special," which deals with strange goings on at the filming of an adaptation of the "The Dunwich Horror" for Japanese TV and Aramata Hiroshi's "The Road," in which a Japanese tourist in Providence, RI, encounters ghosts from Lovecraft's life. "C-City," by Kobayashi Yasumi, just might be the best interpretation of Cthulhu in the modern world I've seen yet.… (mere)

This is volume 2 of a planned 4 volume collection of translated original short fiction by Japanese authors, These have been previously published in Japan but are basically completely new works and completely new authors to us English speaking westerners. Regular readers may know I thought the first volume was brilliant, a stunning triumph. My impression is more tempered this time but I also give this volume a resounding recommendation. We simply must have more of this Japanese fiction! I do hope Kurodahan Press, the publishers, reaps in lots of yen so they will be encouraged to keep us supplied with a steady stream of Japanese mythos fiction, not just these 4 volumes.

Some housekeeping: The price is $20. There is no discount from Amazon (boo!), but if you order more than $25 worth of stuff it ships free (yay!) for downgraded shipping (boo!). Page count was a just short of phenomenal 357, so quite a bargain really. This includes a 4 page introduction by Asamatsu Ken, a 10 page introduction by Robert Price (a familiar figure to all of us), 2 pages for titles in front of each story, another 2 page introduction by Price in front of each story, and the last 24 pages devoted to an essay on mythos role playing games and notes about the authors. No calculator available, but this left 291 pages for 7 stories, an average about 42 pages each. This book is generally longer than most homegrown mythos collections and has fewer stories. Some amount to novellas. Is that the Japanese way? Are short stories less short than in the US? In any event, the authors were allowed sufficient page count that characters and plot could be developed at leisure, imagery could be lingered over. The same lotus scented surreal atmosphere seemed to exude from this volume as from the earlier one. A special note must be made of the cover art by Yamada Akihiro. It is simply lovely, one of the most gorgeous mythos covers ever. An octopoidal thing drifts dreamily in the seaweed, but don't venture too close! The book is, I think, POD, and my copy was flawless. Alas it is already a bit beat up but it hasn't been handled too gently here. Mostly I have only grateful praise for the translators except in two instances that I will note later.

I think the forward by Asamatsu Ken, "Life with Gills" set the mood for the book perfectly. This time, however, I was not enamored of the Price's introduction. He was off on his pet themes regarding the mythos, now about mythos cult members. It was a trifle (or more) long winded and didn't really add to my appreciation of the subsequent stories. I did not read his individual story introductions until I had finished each one, as there were sometimes minor spoilers. Mostly I felt neutral about them.

My comments about the individual stories may contain spoilers so please skip the rest of this if that will be a problem for you.

Ashibe Taku: "The Horror in the Kabuki Theatre" translated by Sheryl Hogg

I believe this was the longest story in the book, practically a novella. I had some heartburn with it. A group in Japan has a copy of the Necronimicon and are trying to invoke the power or presence of the Great Old Ones by inserting chants or imagery about them into performances in the Kabuki theaters bear Edo in 1806. The premise that these entities can manifest into existence from thoughts or words on a page dovetails nicely with many mythos stories or themes here in the US. The spin here that was original that by writing a play about their defeat, humans, the playwrights and the players can combat the Great Old Ones using words, just as they are trying to be manifested through words. Unfortunately I found this tale somewhat dry. The back ground is true history of Japan and Kabuki, with much discussion of the names of playwrights, actors and prop makers, and listing their work. Here is where a detailed introduction could have done real service to the uninitiated westerner. I have no context for this story historically or culturally. I think I have only ever seen a minute or two of Kabuki on TV or in movies. The same is true for Chinese opera but in the film Farewell My Concubine the screen imagery was vivid enough that I could at least catch glimpses of what it must have been like. This text did not do the same thing for me (except the ceremony where the world was decreed), and I don't know whether the blame lies with the translator or the author (or me, for that matter). For example, as creatures manifest and swallow whole theaters full of patrons and performers there was no sense of fear or tension in the prose. The people who were there who were not swallowed up didn't evince much reaction at all. I wonder if I wrote a story for a Japanese periodical and listed the names of Shakespeare's plays, and the major actors and set designers of the period if it would read like so much word salad to my audience. I feel a bit guilty that I didn't Google Kabuki and read up on it instead of just griping about my lack of context.

Matsudono Rio: "Taste of the Snake's Honey" translated by Erin S. Brodhead

This is a Yig story and was quite fine. A young man with tastes for ghoulish and violent kinky sex gradually achieves self realization. His detachment from the atrocities inflicted for his enjoyment ends up internally consistent and necessary to the story. I would love to read some more of Mr. Matsudono's fiction. Initially I thought there were unusual juxtapositions of present and past tense, but this was only in the first part of the story. Author or translator? I dunno.

Matsuo Mirai: "Inverted Kingdom" translated by Usha Jayaraman

This was a superb story of a woman living a mundane existence as a housewife who then finds her destiny is not so mundane after all. Realization comes to her and the reader gradually, at first dimly glimpsed and then more clearly. If not for "Terror Rate" it would have been my favorite in the book.

Konaka Chiaki: "Terror Rate" translated by Kathleen Taji

Goodness, this was wonderful! A young lady in need of supplemental income agrees to participate in a scientific experiment where she merely has to spend the night in a house where her fear will be measured. Well plotted and deftly written it has pride of place in this anthology.

Tanaka Fumio: "Secrets of the Abyss" translated by Bruce Rutledge and Enomoto Yuko

In this nifty story a man in search of a cure for his gravely ill wife comes across an unusual fish in a nearby flooded quarry, after observing a dog eating something from the old mine. The flesh from this creature has perhaps less than salutary effects on her and him. It was a very agreeable read.

Nanjo Takenori: "A Night at Yuan-Su" translated by Usha Jayaraman

A man wanders one night through the streets of Yuan-Su in search of who knows what. Who is real? What is real? Is anything real? You might wish to reread "He" by HPL before reading this story. It was dreamlike and well crafted, another fine addition to the mythos. I really liked it.

Hirayama Yumeaki: "Summoned by the Shadows" translated by Sheryl Hogg

A family settles into a house where the rent is unexpectedly low just because there's a grave in the back yard. Complications ensue. Not a bad premise, not a bad story, it just did not knock my socks off the way some of the others did.

Yasuda Hitoshi: "The Cthulhu Mythos in Gaming" translated by Edward Lipsett

This essay was diverting enough, but seemed rather generic to me. I would have been interested in more complete or detailed description of homegrown Japanese mythos gaming or of the gaming community.

That's about it! I was not as completely won over as I was for Night Voices, Night Journeys. In particular I think "The Horror in the Kabuki Theatre" was too long and too dry, and, well, too obscure for me. On the other hand I would not part with my copy. Four of the stories were superb gems, rating with the best of modern Lovecraftian fiction. 1 was very good and 1 was OK. I think everyone should have this book on their shelves. It is indispensable reading for serious mythos fans. Heck you can't beat the value for the money so go for it! I await other opinions with interest. Even more so, I impatiently await volume 3!… (mere)