Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 5 Omnibus Edition

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  The sturdy shaft of wood bit into her white throat. The cane split neatly in two—Kikiou’s body lifted into the air and sailed over the railing—it was hard to tell which happened first.

  The Demon Princess listened entranced as Kikiou’s screams faded into the distance below them. She reached her hand to her throat. “Why leave this intact, Setsura?” she asked. “You didn’t save Takako, but punished the traitor who turned against me. Go ahead and cut away. The results will always be the same.”

  Holding one end of the invisible wire, the beautiful silhouette stood there, not moving, as if transfixed by the moon.

  “I’ll be going then. After giving my servants below a taste of my own medicine, I will set forth on a long, long voyage. I won’t return until after you are dead. At that time I will bring Kikiou’s prophesies to pass and build him his citadel. Adieu.”

  In that moment, Princess’s head flew into the air. The story would be told from that moment on that another pretty half-moon was painted in the sky.

  Like a fountain of fresh black ink, her blood erupted upwards. The headless torso balanced a moment longer on the railing, swayed in the manner of a woman too drunk to catch herself, pitched forward, and was swallowed up by the darkness.

  Once upon a time, foretelling her own destruction, the Demon Princess had told Setsura that she would die only when she had lost the will to live. Knowing that moment had come, and allowing Setsura’s attack to proceed—there was no way to truly comprehend what manner of mind she possessed.

  Shinjuku was no less a Demon City to demons.

  “It is over.” Mephisto’s voice came from the stairwell behind him.

  Setsura didn’t turn around. “How long have you been there.”

  “I am sure you noticed.”

  Setsura didn’t answer. The two approached the steel railing and looked down at the world below.

  “The ship is on the move,” Setsura said.

  The white foam rose on the road, covering the feet of the retreating figures assembled there. The road became a canal and the ghost ship set sail. It turned left at the intersection and headed back to the world from which it came.

  Kikiou stood on the bow of the ship. Next to him, the exquisite limbs and head were laid out in the manner of a pious offering.

  With the fallen Takako in his arms, Mephisto looked down from the railing just as the ship turned past the Mitsui Building. Kikiou glanced up and called out to them.

  “What did he say?” Setsura asked.

  “Hmm,” Mephisto answered.

  “Like, see you around sometime?”

  “Hmm,” Mephisto said. He glanced at Setsura’s neck. “I couldn’t make out what he said at first, but I think he said you look awfully worn out.”

  He would have continued but clammed up. His one weak spot, the lips of that strikingly cool countenance moved and the verses reached his ears.

  Crossing the waters we’ve crossed before

  Seeing the flowers we’ve seen once more

  Spring breezes along the river bank roads

  Before we know it, we’ve made our way home

  He added, “We’ll have to hope they don’t drop by again anytime soon.”

  Setsura had greeted this same ship upon its arrival, and with the same verses. By the time his final farewell reached the ground, the roads were dry again. As if taking those words as a signal, the people there on the street trudged off into the dark to the streets and the houses they called their own.

  Original Volume VII Afterword

  The other day, a novel featuring the same white doctor so prominently featured in Yashakiden: The Demon Princess was published. I was signing books at a department store in Yokohama.

  That day I received quite a shock. Because Toya-san happens to inhabit the place. (A more precise term than “live,” believe me.)

  Thankfully, no suspicious shadows bulged out from the line of fans, and the signing proceeded in an orderly fashion. Then in the afternoon, I found myself greeted by four girls who looked like college co-eds. They smiled at me in a manner that said another shoe was about to drop.

  Huh? I couldn’t help thinking.

  “This girl is the one who sent Mr. T the letter.” They pointed to the girl wearing the glasses on the end.

  Ah, Mr. T and that letter. No more needs to be said about that. The woman who’d written him in the afterword mentioned in a previous volume. The stationery and the handwriting had both struck me as that of an adult woman (a compliment!), a supposition that had apparently led me in the wrong direction.

  (Incidentally, the inclusion of a telephone number just to make me jealous seemed a scam on his part, and the photograph was actually of his girlfriend. What kind of man am I dealing with here?)

  The girl has contributed quite consistently to the reader’s corner in The Lion magazine (Asahi Sonorama Publications), where a manga I’m writing is appearing (lots of resemblances). Every time she sends something in, it gets printed. Little gems within an already fine work. That’s why I recognized her name.

  The girls and I went our separate ways, all smiles. No matter what the world, the human smile is as necessary as air.

  Describing this incident to Mr. T later, he opened his eyes a bit wider and said, “Huh, I always thought it was a young lady.”

  His eyes sparkled. And no wonder. College co-eds, after all. Apparently he favored youth over experience.

  The assumption that Mr. T had addressed his “love letter” (see the previous installments in this story) to the aforementioned co-ed turned out to be off the mark. But since then, more letters have come his way, overflowing with feeling. It got to the point where: “There’s talk of starting a fan club for me.”

  By the way, no mention of the young lady in question starting a fan club for me. Just to screw with him, I put my foot down and said, “No way.”

  Well, then.

  Whenever it comes time to write another installment for Non Novels, Mr. T and I decamp to a summer resort on the outskirts of Tokyo and set to work. A hotel in the city would be fine with me. But everybody at Shodensha says that once it gets past noon, the well goes dry.

  In a nutshell, I’m packed off to a desert island with a guard standing over me. Have these people no respect for human dignity? That’s not necessarily why, but I have the strong sense that my pleasant trip is about to end. In fact, Seisaku Yoshida has something to do with this, though in any case, risk always attends the resort writer (I can’t go into the reasons here, but according to Mr. T, Seisaku Yoshida is “sexy”).

  Yashakiden finishes in the next volume (really). Granted, it’s too soon to start getting sentimental, but I truly feel that we’ve come a long way together.

  I apologize to my readers, who might in some small way be experiencing similar emotions, but take heart. The structure of a new adventure with Setsura and Mephisto is already taking shape. I’ll start writing it the day after the serialization is put to bed. I’ll make it ten volumes this time (no, just kidding).

  When it comes to Maohden, Demon City Blues and Double-Faced Demon, my reaction is more muted. They have come to the end of their runs. What happens after this cannot be written.

  What happens next. What comes after this. That’s what writing is always about.

  Time flows inexorably towards tomorrow.

  Hideyuki Kikuchi (while watching Pet Cemetery)

  June 16, 1991

  Original Volume VIII Afterword

  Yashakiden: The Demon Princess has concluded its journey. I deeply appreciate all the readers who spent the time to make the trip with me. This afterword brings us to the end of that road.

  These are the people who made it possible for me to write Yashakiden. To briefly sum up: Mr. N, the editor in chief at Non Novels who okayed the serialization in thirty-seven installments.

  My editor, Mr. T, who put up with my attitude, my moods, my flights of procrastination, and faithfully and diligently watched over me and pestered me tit for tat.
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  Mr. I, who suffered through all the troublesome revisions and saw the book through to publication.

  My senpai, Kyushu University’s Assistant Professor H, who found words of praise for this work alone.

  Manga Artist A, who always offered criticism in the gentlest terms.

  Mr. T’s lifelong rival, Mr. W from company K, who never failed to cheer him up, while spurring him on to the next manuscript deadline.

  And more than anybody, the illustrator, Jun Suemi, who has labored patiently over these past four years without a single complaint, exercising an imagination to make my hair stand on end.

  And, of course, all my readers.

  Oh, that reminds me. Bubbling into my thoughts when I’m dead on my feet, accompanied by bursts of laughter, stirring the pot of my writerly inspiration, the love of my life, Toya-san.

  I know I’ve said it before, but Yashakiden currently stands as my best, and longest, piece of work. There were, of course, many twists and turns getting there.

  I promise a hundred and twenty pages and, finishing fifteen, send Mr. T back to the publisher staring into space.

  Due to a series of unfortunate events, I don’t get home on time, and Mr. T, left out in the freezing cold, calls me from a nearby laundromat and says, “Next time I’m bringing soap and a towel” (there’s a public bath next to the laundromat).

  There’s been talk of an anime series featuring Setsura Aki, but I’ve turned them all down. I may be the one writer in the world harboring such a dislike for the medium (manga is different, as the choice of an artist may be settled in advance).

  But when other jobs were getting me down, and another Yashakiden loomed, strangely enough, my mood improved. I’m not kidding (really, I’m not, Mr. T). That’s how attached I’ve become to the characters in this story.

  I had actually mapped out the last scene several years before. Writing it, I uncharacteristically thought to myself, Ah, so this day has finally come.

  And one more thing I don’t usually say.

  Everything that has gone into this story, as I’ve described, must now be poured into the further adventures of the black-clad P.I. and the white doctor. That is the only way I can think of thanking you.

  I promise that we will meet again soon. I’m looking forward to it.

  Hideyuki Kikuchi (while watching Bride of Dracula) October 11, 1991

  Omnibus Afterword

  I’ve just finished reading the eight volumes of the paperback pocket edition of Yashakiden: The Demon Princess.

  I have a hard time talking about my actual writing, but I can say it now: this is Hideyuki Kikuchi’s most powerful work, and of the two hundred some odd books I have written, contending to be ranked as my best.

  (Warring with the opinions of my readers, who will come to their own conclusions in that respect.)

  Yashakiden was born out of what has since become a worldwide infatuation with vampires. There is the belief that an artist is born to create a particular work of art. Call it fate, and I’ll say I came into this world to write about an otherworldly genie wrapped in black.

  I’ve written about this before, but the one thing that fostered my fascination with vampires more than anything else was a single movie, the 1958 production of Dracula from Hammer Films, running only eighty-one minutes.

  The six-foot-three Christopher Lee plays the Count of Transylvania, and like the original, never wears anything but black.

  That is why my first vampire novel, Vampire Hunter D (or rather, my first novel about a vampire hunter), featured a man in black.

  I’ve touched on this before as well, but the character in the movie I find myself empathizing with the most is not Count Dracula, but Doctor Van Helsing, played by Peter Cushing.

  When I was in fifth grade, I was still drawn more to the light of wisdom than the monsters of the night, to good more than evil. While I say that I prefer vampires, accursed beings, and ghosts and goblins as my superheroes, it’s because in the end, that same ordinary sense of justice still rules.

  As I’ve grown older, my affection for the otherworldly has grown stronger. My long-held dream of creating a vampire hero, arising out of those dark and evil mists, finally came to fruition in Vampire Hunter D, albeit with a bit of a twist.

  Perhaps due to a deep-seated and lingering fear toward the monstrous, the protagonist, D, was not a “true” vampire, but remained half-human. I named his fierce antagonist Count Magnus Lee. Dracula still held me in its thrall.

  Ever since Christopher Lee’s depiction of Dracula was etched on my soul, my pen has traced his outlines.

  Tall, lean and refined, and yet turning into a ferocious and ruthless predator and destroying his opponents when the rock meets the hard place. Clothed in black, shunning the light and haunting the night, his only true abode. In particular, those sharp and bitter and often bitingly humorous words, disconnected from the mundane world, issuing at times from those bloodless lips.

  And—this a personal preference and a “service” to my readers—possessed of beauty. A person is his face. The same goes for magic and evil. What’s inside should come later.

  Applying these ideas to Yashakiden must have raised elementary questions in the reader’s mind.

  Even if I clad Princess all in black, she nevertheless hails from Asia and isn’t exactly known for her sense of humor. And, of course, she’s a she. The European General Bey, bearing the blood of Dracula in his veins, also differs considerably from my “ideal” of a vampire.

  The answer is—Setsura Aki.

  My child of Dracula isn’t Princess or General Bey. It’s Setsura. He doesn’t drink blood. But he doesn’t need to. Setsura is the direct descendant of my Dracula, the “grown up” version of D. D’s beauty, ruthlessness and gentleness, and dressed in black—I distilled all those qualities into a senbei shop owner in Demon City.

  Princess, General Bey, Gento Roran, Galeen Nuvenberg, Yoshiko “Urp” Toya—it is only natural that they all be drawn to him.

  In any case, Demon City Shinjuku does make an ideal stage for storytelling. And I have to say it comes together quite nicely (though the original credit goes to John Carpenter’s Escape from New York).

  Old-fashioned black capes, blindingly handsome young men, overly dramatic monologues, beautiful women with skin like pearls sailing ancient ships, pale-faced men and women attending black-tie affairs, coffins hidden in the basements of western-style houses—nothing is out of bounds or off the table.

  A city where a sports car rocketing down Shinjuku Avenue passes a black carriage pulled by six horses coming the other way and nobody bats an eye.

  I believe the vampire story has become the modern version of the epic romance, in the classical sense. And for an epic romance, the right stage is necessary. That’s why I’ve said that I created Demon City Shinjuku in order to write Yashakiden.

  That conviction hasn’t changed.

  Hideyuki Kikuchi (while watching Dracula)

  September 30, 1997

  Of Monsters and Metropolises by Mari Kotani

  Yashakiden: The Demon Princess is a captivating work of urban fantasy.

  Hideyuki Kikuchi made his debut in 1982 with the publication of Demon City Shinjuku. In that first novel, an imagination rooted in the magic of the metropolis had already begun to express itself. And has not stopped flowing since.

  From the 1980s up till now, fantasy based in an urban setting has flourished in Europe and the United States. Constructed with the blessings of contemporary science, the hope was that these glittering new cities would greet the new century and race forward into the future.

  These dreams dashed, the scene is now one of that accumulated knowledge and everything they spawned gathering dust and decaying away in a miasma rising from the ruins like a perpetual fog.

  The city has become like an ancient temple or monastery, wrapped in a mysterious, transcendental state of being.

  Our high-tech culture gave birth to the information society, whose hardware took
over our urban spaces in the blink of an eye, changing our perspective of the future along with our view of the present. At the same time, the fantasy world since the 1980s has often seen the city itself depicted as the implicit personification of supernatural phenomena.

  Whether ghosts of the dead clinging to a primitive perspective, or events bound by karmic relationships to the past, they imagine indivisible existences, intertwined with those persistent passions and sentiments, calling forth demons within and without.

  You might have had the experience of suddenly noticing that among the streets and alleyways a strange warp in the air has opened its maw, and what you believed was a bustling amusement quarter appears to you as a desolate landscape.

  And not a simple vacant lot, but ruins transformed into a world filled to the brim with monsters and demons. Narrative works of all ages and cultures have documented this transfiguration of the urban landscape, though one with as grotesque and violent a world view as that offered by Demon City is rare.

  The allure of Demon City is tied to the imaginative power of Shinjuku itself. Shinjuku as the “urban.” Shinjuku as the “stage.” The real Shinjuku turned into a demonic realm. While an entirely imaginary place, here and there where this city of the new century invades its ghostly precincts, we can expand upon the accumulated meaning of those reflections and reverberations.

  In The Dramaturgy of the City (Kobundo, 1987), the sociologist Shunya Yoshimi discusses the city as it correlates with eras and ages. He offers Shinjuku as a model of the 1960s, and touches upon the four unique characteristics that it imbues: vigorously assimilative; forward thinking; self-transformative; and possessed by a sense of “being in this together.”

  It is no exaggeration to say that, even now, Yoshimi’s sociological analysis of Shinjuku explains well the world view of Demon City that Kikuchi has been writing about since 1982. This “Shinjuku” rose out of the rail lines that converged there, swallowing up the influx of people from the surrounding areas, and step by step inventing itself.