Umezu Kazuo: JapaneseOverturesto Madness and Death by Ng Suat Tong In Inventing Leonarda, Renaissance expert A Richard Turner recounts the tale of biographer Luigi Lanzi, who in 1782 chanced upon a Flemish painting of the Medusa in the Uffizi gallery in Florence, and connected it with Vasari'sdescription of a simllar daY-mci painting which once hung in the Palazzo ddla Signoria. According to Turner, the attribution was "an instant success• leading to the "inventi~n o_fa new, [modern] Leonardo by the nud-nmeteenth century.• Of this attribution Shelley wrote:"lts horror and its beauty ~ divine," in his poem "On the Medusa of Leonardo da Y-mciin the Florentine Gallery." Yearslater, critics would come to describe works with a similar combination of terror :ind ~uty. as co~tituting part of the "horrific sublime. Yet tune would show the attribution of the Medusa head to Leonardo to be fallacious; an important lesson for connoisseurs who would allow their intellects to be overtak~n by clouds of nostalgia and mere reputatton. !his is a lesson we might apply to the co_m,cs~o~ror genre. To understand the perce1_vedl!m1ts of horror (and, in particular, childrens horr?r) in comics, one need only look at a selecnon of EC horror titles. _Revered, yet laboring under the constraints . of the short attention-spans and cxpectauons of both readers and authorities EC horror titles would appear to be mo~ often recommended than actually read Reading through the EC horror and "sus~ pense" anthologies, we are continually faced with the distressing poverty and shallowness of ~e verbose scripts; the sheer abjectness of which contrast so markedly with the richness o_fthe accompanying imagery. Too many ston~ are excuses for the next horror cum shot while others seem conservative in their focus on retribution. We should not denigrate the line by claiming more for them than is necessary, nor should we excuse their shortcomings by way of their antiquity and the fact that they were meant for children. Yet stared simply, they are not among the best comics horror stories everwritten. Then what are? Some of the works mentioned in discussions on these matters include
Gaiman and Dringenberg's Sandman #6, Moore and Campbell's From Hell, Burns' BlackHok and various tales from the Stephen Bissette-edited Taboo anthology. Still, it is richly apparent chat Wercham, the Kefauver hearings and the Comics Code have resulted in an American horror comics marker so diluted it has prevenred extended exploration of themes and resulted primarily in rushed, tepid works. The Japanese horror manga market allows us a glimpse of what mighr have been, had American horror comics not been castrated at adolescence: not an overflowing abundance of high art, but a mature and unapologetically commercialized genre of comics. In Japan, horror manga, as a form of enrcrtainmcnr, has been found co be particularly suited to the castes of young girls. As such, ic is not uncommon to find horror artists such as lnuki Kanako, the so-called Queen of Horror, drawing disquieting stories abouc inquiring young children, or Ito Junji (whose delicate lines grace works such as Tomieand Uzumak1)lodged intelligently in the "female" section of your average manga store. There are others, far too many co name. Yet towering over all of these, and co whom every successful Japanese horror artist hence has been compared, is Umezu Kazuo. It is a rare thing co find an artist whose works bring one to a new understanding of the limits of comics. The manga of Umezu Kazuo are important because they represent a high watermark. The attentive comics reader will find in them a level ofinsighc and instinct chat forever links an author with a genre or type of comic. In America, we have Kum.man and his great contributions co war and satire, Kirby and superheroes, Barks and children's comics, men who were ac once consummate professionals and unassuming artists. In horror, few have come close co Umezu Kazuo Umczu Kazuo was born in 1936 in Wakayama, Japan. Producing his first work in 1955 (Mori no Kyouda1),he is sometimes mentioned in rhe same breath as Tczuka and
is perhaps besr known among regular Japanese folk for his humorous manga, Makoto-Chan. The point of divergence from average horror manga lies in Umczu's mastery of horror and suspense, terms I use with qualifiers, for it is Umczu's unflinching portrayals of human ugliness which are of prime interest. Produced for the most pan for Japanese school children and teenagers, his comics seem paradigms of what such comics should be - violent, vile and educational. They have scarred a whole generation of Japanese children and references to these works can be found cropping up in a slew of Japanese popular culture artifacts decades after publication. Ac every turn, Umczu demonstrates an understanding of the fiendish undercurrents chat can plague a child's mind and rhe perversions that these minds can engage in. Umezu doesn't fulfill the expectations of children; he expands and challenges them. Umczu's most famous children's horror work (though it might just as easily be labeled science ficcion/fancasy) is probably The FwatingClassroom(1972-74; othe.rwise known as The Drifting Classroom). Thesubject of ac least two lackluster movie adaptations, this is the story of an elementary school boy named Shou Takarnatsu, who is trans• ported, together with his entire school, into a barren wastcland theexact nature of which is only revealed later in the series (they have in fact been launched into the future). What follows is a series of atrocities in which the entire school of children is decimated as they form tribal factions, search for food and water and wage war against a group of evolved insecc-like creatures. The most desperate deeds arc committed against their own and, Shou, whose moral instincts approach those of a saint, has to contend with murderous adult schoolteachers, an outbreak of the plague, bigoted classmates and domineering female students (who just happen to be larger and stronger than the males presumably because of early puberty). It's Lordof the Flus on amphetamines. TheFwatingClassroom brings the realities and metaphorical aspects of childhood into sharp focus by means of an isolating plot device which can be found in novels like
It's Lord of the Flies on amphetamines. toMICS.KXM.
Camus' The PI.Jgue or Saramago's Blindness. It is invigorating children's adventure mixed with the odd hard lesson. It is also potentially injurious to the minds of I 4-year-olds and makes the periodic grumblings about "unsuitable" toys like DeathRowMarv almost laughable. The children of The Fwating Classroom do not simply die, they suffer and die horribly. Plague victims are mercilessly ostracized and forced co die alone or killed outright. Rarely have children been so brucally apprised of the nature of death. Needless to say, most parents would probably find a year's subscript.ion to Playboya more suitable gift for their children. It is chis unflinching honesty which makes Umezu's work so essential. More problematic from an aesthetic point of view are the quirky B-movie aspecrs of the plot Umczu obviously revels in. The science in his stories is often inexact and the environmental issues expressed, while unique for their time, simply have noc held up over the years. Some cynical adults will no doubt cringe at the idea thar Shou's "girlfriend" is physically handicapped, though chis is never made an issue of by Umezu. Similar outcry may be expressed at the fact thar, as in much of children's literature, it is the weak and inrclligent who are constantly preyed upon (or, in this case, occasionally driven to megalomania). Umezu uses these individuals as points of identification and ic is Shou and his group of moderate friends who do nor lose their honor in the cales' dlnouemmt. In shore, formula and cliche are inherent in chis series. Yet despite its faults, The Fwating Classroomremains a comic so highly evolved chat it may cake a few more decades before anything similar is produced in the West. While Umezu believes (for the most part) in the "triumph of good," he has no compunction about informing his young reaaers about the hard facts of life. As such, Shou never does return co earth to apologize to his mother who he argues with so bitterly ac the start of the story. While Umezu offers his readers some hope that Yu-Kun (Shou's pre-school friend who is returned to the present time at the end of the story) will be able to alter the future hence reversing the deaths of a multirude of unfortunate schoolchildren, the author himself is of the opinion this will in fact not cake place. He states no less in the afterword to the republished Fwaring It would, he writes, mean a wasted Clarsroom. journey for Shou and his friends. The child who picks up The Fwating Classroomleaves with an understanding of death, evil and the true meaning of friendship and this is perhaps its best recommendation.
Left: Umctu Knuo's 8/«Jd, Orochi: <caching children about death, evil, and crue friendship with. c.ombin.ac.ion of innoctnu and gore.