Ayako & Presentation Topic

Junji Ito & his contribution to Gore Manga is my topic. This may fit during the Alternative Manga (too early ahhh!) or Contemporary Manga weeks. This would best fit in a Horror Manga section, however.

To begin I'd like to discuss the circumstances under which I read Ayako. I've liked some of Tezuka's past work (Metropolis, Astro Boy, Kimba) but was wary of reading a post-war manga. I was worried it would be too "masculine" or focused on wartime troubles or not have a good historical backing like that of Mizuki's Showa. Boy was I wrong. I read a scanlation of Ayako but would definitely add this to my personal collection because it affected me deeply. I feel the physical interaction with the manga would enhance the experience.
I ended up really appreciating the balance of Ayako's political and personal stories, as they intertwined and supported each other for the better. Whenever Jiro's side of the story became a little grueling (I only ever slightly felt this in the beginning when he was spying on Naoko and her DPP meetings), the next chapter would switch back to Jiro's home life and relieve me of it's political content. But that's not to say the political content was bad, either. The political motivations behind Jiro's decisions and the people he worked for weaved beautifully with the Tenge clan's life.

Ayako is a fantastic manga, it was hard to put down and I read it quickly while making sure to process the detailed spreads and stories that Tezuka had to offer. Ayako is about a girl raised in a cellar set on the backdrop of post-war Japan. Tezuka's choice to make every character nearly unrelatable could have been a disaster and derail the whole manga; making it unreadable, but it was not. Ayako may have been our protagonist; in a miserable situation, but I would say that even she was somewhat unrelatable because of her circumstances. (But, as an audience, we sympathize with her the most. She is just a hard character to insert ourselves into. If anything, you feel more like a part of this depraved family.)

The Tenge clan is dysfunctional and disgusting, really. They abuse their women, shame their responsible men, and manipulate clan meetings to further their control on families. In fact, every woman has a tragic backstory or reason for their existence. Ayako is produced from Pa Tenge raping Su'e, Ichiro's wife. Ichiro gives Pa his wife in exchange for land! Foul! Naoko is involved with a DPP leader that is killed, Jiro is involved in the cover-up of his death. And poor O-ryo, she is disabled to a degree and from another one of Pa's "affairs."

In the beginning I briefly rooted for Jiro, I believed he too was a product of circumstance. But then he sought to kill O-Ryo and Ayako to cover up his crimes, proving he was almost as bad as the rest of the Tenge family. He clearly feels some guilt and responsibility towards the situation, however, because he later sends Ayako money.

Ayako has no concept of the real world, no concept of love, and even--successfully--approaches her brother for sex. Ayako's warped sense of reality is because of her upbringing, and I find it the most interesting aspect of her imprisonment. She even states something along the lines of: "down here is not the real world, we have different rules" when trying to seduce Shiro. We are then introduced to the complexities of circumstance throughout the manga. A character whom we kind of like, Shiro, is convinced to do something bad: sleep with his sister.

Shiro wasn't immune to the perversion and immorality interweaved within the Tenge family. However, I feel Shiro redeemed himself in the end when he makes the cave collapse because the family won't apologize to Ayako. This essentially creates a cellar for them to die in, a hole just like the one Ayako was forced to live in for 23 years. Again, we return to the concept that normal rules do not apply and Yamazaki's death is justified as well as Shiro sleeping with Ayako was justified in their situation. I like how Tezuka explored these grey complexities through the characters of Shiro and Ayako and their navigation of their life.

Ayako was an exploration of complete depravity, and I believe, how depravity is sanctioned. It's truly a sad series of circumstances that you can only watch unfold, helplessly, a bystander.