Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 3 Omnibus Edition

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  “What do Demon City and Hong Kong have to do with each other?”

  “Well, in fact, I—”

  What followed was an interesting confession about his personal life. But since I’ve got to work with these people, I’ll spare you the details. At any rate, what surprised me the most was the fact that I’d kept up a constant enough output (some months, I have to admit, more than others) to write a five-volume story with nary a pause.

  I’m not saying it was easy. There were some nights when my editor, Mr. T, camped out in the other room demanding one page an hour (I was probably in a slump at the time). And there were some excruciating months where it was a struggle just getting to double-digits. (I must apologize to Seki-kun at SFA. “Hey, it’s not just you,” goes over like a lead balloon these days.)

  And yet the number of characters continues—vexingly—to increase.

  However a story may move of its own accord, it’s not because the characters have escaped from the writer’s grasp. The author is their god. Their fates rest in my hands.

  So I’m scratching my head bald and covering the table with dandruff. Startling my dozing editor with shouts of “Wake up, you big idiot!” Kicking over kitchen chairs and smashing oranges against the wall. Hey, these battles are all in the cause of breathing life into my Demon Princess.

  To be honest, when I get to feeling like that, wrapping things up with a nice big bow really wouldn’t be all that hard.

  But with this effort, I don’t want anybody to conform predictably to the stereotypes and end up with the regular mix of good and bad guys and sidekicks.

  Each of the players on this stage has lived a life and shows up carrying a good deal of baggage. As the pages accumulate and the story expands, all will be accounted for. I can’t pin down when I started thinking about it this way—perhaps before I began writing, or not long after, or one or two volumes in.

  As a result, everybody in the cast of characters I provided earlier—Shuuran excepted—was still alive after three volumes. And even Shuuran—

  When it comes to storytelling, I’ve come to believe that an artist claiming that such things are “out of his hands” is more likely making excuses for intellectual laziness.

  So it is my intent that Yashakiden become at least a five-volume novel.

  At the same time, haven’t I been the kind of writer who gets tired of a series and will call it off at any minute? As long as I’m entertaining the possibility either way, a fifth volume will never happen. So it will happen. There’s no stopping me now.

  What exactly is going on here? A friend asks me, “If that’s the case, then you’ll keep on writing until you’re completely satisfied?”

  “We don’t much care how much longer it goes on,” answered Mr. T and his boss.

  “Three is about as far as most readers will go,” I reply.

  But in defiance of all my expectations, Yashakiden is turning into a monster of an epic adventure. I can’t say at this juncture if that’s good or bad. The only thing that is certain is that I shall press on.

  I’ll keep on writing, even not knowing if the light up ahead isn’t the end of the tunnel but an oncoming train.

  How is this all going to end? This isn’t just about the book. My body and soul haven’t been doing so well of late. I don’t eat. I’m getting forgetful. To make things worse, my cholesterol is through the roof, despite my BMI staying the same. I’m looking into an abyss of sorts as well.

  I’m told (politely, of course) that in another year I’ll turn that unlucky age (42). That being the case, I’ve only one option left to me—and I don’t mean something highfalutin’ like: “Create a work of art with which you are completely satisfied.”

  I’ll just keep on writing.

  As unruffled and unperturbed as Setsura Aki and as coolly determined as Doctor Mephisto. And when Mr. T reads the last page of this year’s serial, he’ll say, “Yep, and onto number five.”

  Hideyuki Kikuchi (while watching a color version of The Picture of Dorian Gray)

  December 24, 1989 (Christmas Eve)

  Original Volume IV Afterword

  The twilight wars continue—Setsura versus the Demon Princess and her gang. And my editors versus me. Every time I complete a volume, my book publisher and magazine editor say, “Hey, you haven’t finished it. After one more volume, right?”

  I feint and bob and weave. “Sure. I’ll wrap it up in six volumes. You guys don’t want me just dragging this thing out, do you?”

  When fighting a twilight war, it’s best to avoid a head-on confrontation. So they’re not going to declare, “You’re doing a seventh volume!”

  And I’m not going to shout, “The hell I will!”

  No, it’s better to begin by assessing the battlefield in civil and courteous tones. In any case, we’ve come to the end of volume four. The end is in sight. But as Confucius said, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Step by step.

  And that journey gets even longer when the story starts taking side trips along the way. I’m well aware of that. And though I know I’m guilty here of getting the ends and means mixed up, I do love the diversions.

  Granted, any journey goes smoother with all the bumps smoothed out and the pacing evened out. But as another philosopher said, you’ve got to pursue your bliss.

  I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m in no hurry to wrap up Yashakiden with a pretty bow. Sure, trilogies are easy to digest. I could crank them out, one after the other. Except that’s not my style.

  Yashakiden is well on its way to six volumes. That makes at least two more after this. I can’t say whether my readers will consider that “short” or “long,” but having come this far, I do know that the necessary ingredients in the rest of the Setsura/Mephisto series are beginning to gel.

  As is the deeper nature of Setsura and his alter ego. The killing art of his devil wire, and his special (physical) abilities sans it. The sights and sounds of Demon City. The lives and livings of its ordinary citizens.

  For the time being, at least, Demon City Shinjuku and I aren’t ready to part ways yet. My publisher asks, “How about a new Makaikou? Another Manhunter story? When you are going to write a sequel to Night Tales?”

  They’re trying to lure me down that rose-petal path.

  But I’m a pro too, and see them coming a mile away. I’ve got my explanations and excuses lined up, and my defenses readied. It always comes down to a wrestling match in the end, so my workout regime is proceeding apace.

  I’ve got it in mind to send for one of my old kenpo instructors. It’s time for this writer of action novels to become a man of action in more than just words.

  Well, it looks like I’ve wandered off on a tangent here. There are still hungry wolves lying in wait along the paths Setsura and Mephisto are treading and licking their chops. Here’s to hoping you will savor to the fullest the best that is yet to come, in those two volumes to come.

  Hideyuki Kikuchi (while watching Dementia)

  May 31, 1990

  A Vampire Tale Like No Other

  Everything begins with “Demon City.” It now goes without saying that Hideyuki Kikuchi’s roots as an author trace back to his debut novel, Demon City Shinjuku. Also well known is the frightening thrill he got from simply seeing a poster for the movie Dracula in his formative years.

  Thus it stands to reason that his second authorial effort, Vampire Hunter D, should revolve around vampires.

  The long-awaited Yashakiden came seven years after his debut and took him back to where he started. Demon City became the foundation and the driving force behind this epic tribute to the vampire genre.

  Published in thirty-seven magazine installments over four years and compiled into eight volumes, the sheer scale of the project is impressive enough. All the more so considering that everything Hideyuki Kikuchi has done since his debut—or ever since he was first entranced by the picture of fear and dread molded into human form and clothed in a black cape—permeates these
pages.

  As such, Yashakiden does not simply represent the culmination of Kikuchi’s work as an author, but the epitome of the fantasy horror genre in Japan and beyond its borders.

  Yashakiden is the story of the all-out war between the citizens of Shinjuku and a vicious vampire gang.

  Ever since Bram Stoker’s Dracula, humans have been fighting these heliophobic vampires. Novels, movies or manga, this interspecies conflict has pretty much been the rule. Though the scale alone—setting an entire city against a gang of the undead—is not what sets Yashakiden apart in this instance.

  Robert R. McCammon’s They Thirst takes place in a Los Angeles that has become an island and the domain of a vampire king. In two of the last Hammer films, Dracula A.D. 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula, Dracula plots the conquest of the world.

  Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend and the manga Teen Town ZF by Kazuo Koike and Hitoshi Hirano create worlds where the vampires have already taken control. Ryo Hanmura’s Arteries of Stone and Kiyoshi Kasai’s Vampire War posit vampires guiding the currents of history from the shadows.

  Rather, what sets Yashakiden apart is the nature of the conflict. In the aforementioned cases, no matter how far-flung the setting, the element common to the genre is that of humans fighting vampires. The human must resort to collective action and armaments against the stronger vampires.

  In Yashakiden, to be sure, the people of Shinjuku raise arms against Princess’s gang. But this is Demon City, where the “people” aren’t all ordinary humans. The genie Setsura Aki and the Demon Physician Doctor Mephisto, to start with. Along with the witch Galeen Nuvenberg, the doll girl, an ectoplasmic raven, and a supernatural Special Forces unit.

  Not to mention the clan of the unequaled Toyama vampires. And all manner of fantastic and grotesque creatures waiting in the wings.

  Yashakiden is more than monster duels or mutants in a civil war against each other. Getting away from the human-versus-vampires formula also frees the conflict from the conventional two-dimensionality of good and evil, right and wrong, heaven and hell, light and dark.

  Driving the point home, Kikuchi drives a stake through the Manichaean simplicity of Demon City versus the vampires by creating divisions within their own ranks and creating a love-hate relationship between Shinjuku and the “outside world.” Allies turn on each other. Enemies make pacts. And break them.

  The Machiavellian schemes multiply. Distinguishing friend from foe becomes well-nigh impossible. A tried-and-true ally like vampire clan leader Yakou becomes Princess’s servant. Mephisto himself has turned bodily into a vampire, leaving Setsura to face the deadly struggle by himself.

  With genie against monster and monster against other monsters, this is a heroic supernatural battle with scarcely a true human among its combatants! And so the traditional conceit of vampire-versus-human has been completely cast aside, with the leading men and ladies all vampires or non-humans.

  The allies are as strange as the enemies, and even words like “enemy” and “ally” are hard to pin down. These are the kinds of roles made for a world haunted by vampires.

  Kikuchi seems to imbue all of his characters with multiple facets. As with Setsura’s dual personalities, “D” as well was born into the no man’s land between two worlds, endowed with qualities binding him to both, yet doomed to be accepted by neither.

  Vampires can likewise be said to be citizens of those ambiguous borderlands. Less immortal than being cursed with immortality. Living with the memories of a mortal life that they can never return to, mortals being now only the source of their sustenance. Wandering forever through the twilight world.

  Princess and her gang have lost their homeland and practically everything that makes them human, including death. These creatures of the night are sealed within an endless twilight, stealing through the world aboard their ship, seeking a place of sanctuary. If anyplace in the world would ever take them in, it must be Demon City Shinjuku.

  Vampires did not appear in Shinjuku because the city was already corrupt and evil. Rather, built on the boundary between the real and the surreal, Shinjuku calls out to those expelled by the outside world. To these eternal “borderlanders,” there can be no place else for them but smack dab in this border city.

  There alone they could put their wandering pasts behind them. There alone they could embrace the faint hope of calling the place their own. Except that only through slaughter and violence could they convince themselves such a destiny was assured.

  Not even Shinjuku could reject them. The moment it tried, Shinjuku would cease to be Demon City. However it might try to kill them afterwards, it would first invite them into its house without reproach. That is what made the city what it was. Every freedom was condoned. The freedom to live. The freedom to die. The freedom to fight and destroy.

  To live in Shinjuku was to fight every day to stay alive, to be bound by nothing but the individual conscience. Anything—animal, vegetable or mineral—willing to fight to the bitter end could fan the flames of its own life. Only when that thing ceased to struggle did it lose its rightful raison d’etre.

  In this dog-eat-dog world, only the logic of exclusion is forbidden. No matter how strange, it is allowed to live and let live. Two thousand of its citizens once proclaimed that, “No matter what manner of life form, here it has the right to live to the best of its ability.”

  Even the mayor, described by some as an “absent-minded bank guard,” wouldn’t be cowed by a contingent of the Special Forces, fearlessly declaring:

  All who choose to live here are accorded all the rights due them as citizens of this ward. As long as they choose to live here, we will do what we can to protect them. No matter how noble your cause, no matter how much power you flaunt, as long as it’s coming from the outside world it goes into the circular file. This is Demon City Shinjuku. What may make sense elsewhere won’t pass muster here.

  That which defies the existing order Shinjuku takes in, all the illogic that the inexorable march of modern society has striven to stamp out. And so the anarchy blossoms.

  Except that the more order that modern society tries to impose upon reality, the more often disorder erupts cataclysmically in strange and distorted ways. By contrast, the steady diet of grotesque death that constitutes daily life in Demon City means that, as the mayor puts it, “Nobody comes to this city with hopes for a rosy future blossoming in his chest. And nobody leaves suffused with newly-found happiness.”

  So from whence comes this boundless sense of freedom and vibrant sense of life? Confronting the conventions of both fiction and reality, Kikuchi poses the problem to us: the absolute safety whose absoluteness must at some point corrupt absolutely versus the omnipresent danger of a bewitching and liberating disorder.

  What do we lose in our inevitable bargaining for safety and security? What do we lose in order to maintain the status quo? There is no firm answer to such hypotheticals. But as long as Demon City exists, Hideyuki Kikuchi will continue to lob such rhetorical explosives in our direction.

  In 1997, fifteen years after Hideyuki Kikuchi’s debut, John Carpenter’s Escape from New York (in which Carpenter turned Manhattan into a Demon City-like penal colony) came to Japan. That year as well, the magical city of the century, Hong Kong (previously transformed by Kikuchi into Wicked City) was returned to China. And that year, Kikuchi began writing about the Devil Quake that gave birth to Demon City Shinjuku.

  Yoshiharu Sasagawa (while watching The Great Yokai War)