by Osamu Tezuka
English Translation by Camellia Nieh
Book Design by Chip Kidd
Production by Hiroko Mizuno, Mami Yamada, Ayako Fukumitsu, Shinobu Sato, and Akane Ishida
Original Japanese Language Publication in Big Comic (Biggu Komikku) 1976 to 1978.
English Language Publication by Vertical, Inc. in 2007.
. . .
"You and I are bound by fate. When you fall, I'm prepared to fall with you."
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
Once upon a time in Japan-
At the end of the 1970s-
Widespread disillusionment with the self-immolating excesses of radical left-wing violence . . . The Red Army factions spent more time "purifying" their own ranks into oblivion than they did smashing capitalism. Left wing thought is now mostly entombed within academia and pretentious theoretical texts of surpassing tedium and opacity.
Widespread cynicism with the entrenched right-wing conservatism of the Japanese government . . . It's a man's world of rigid gender roles and consolidated political blocs. It's all about who you know and who you blow. Having a dumptruck of cash money also helps.
Normalized denialism of the atrocities committed by Japan against China and Korea during World War II . . . Hey, lotta war criminals in the executive suites, doncha know!
And now Japan has to live with the fresh stigma of being perceived as a forward operating base for America in its protracted war of folly against Vietnam.
And what of the scores of civilians annihilated by conventional firebombing campaigns during World War II conducted by the U.S.? All this followed by Occupation, censorship of thought and culture, and infuriating land reforms. There are those who resent the heavy hand of Uncle Sam.
What of the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki-the Bomb is Everywhere, now! The USA and the USSR could spark off any day and lay waste to the entire human population of Planet Earth! Why bother with questions of right and wrong when it could all become twisted and fused rubble in a flash crimson instant?
And do people still think on the six million systematically murdered by the Nazi death machine of the Holocaust? Germany and Japan had been allies in World War II. How do you come to terms with that?
People forget. Willfully and/or accidentally.
Because the economy is hotting up, and the past is pointless.
But, into this world of amoral greed and dominance a monster of revelation is born to remind people of what has been buried-
MW gives us a doomed pair-a Catholic priest and a terrorist serial killer-who find themselves drawn to the fires of hell in late 1970s Japan. These fires manifest in different forms for each one. The priest has convinced himself of the literal hellfire of spooky religious damnation. The terrorist's body and mind burns during intense episodes of agony due to his exposure to a chemical warfare substance as a child. Priest and terrorist are also drawn to the flame of a forbidden love for each other-well, it's supposed to be forbidden on the part of the priest, who presumably has sworn off carnal desire. The terrorist is way less uptight. For what it's worth, the priest beats himself up on a spiritual level for his desires. The good father doesn't resist his desires, of course, which should come as no surprise for anyone with even a passing familiarity with the mechanics of performative public piety, institutional/political homophobia, religious hypocrisy, etc. These two are bound to each other as they pursue a mission of cruel vengeance against the government of Japan.
Our terrorist is named Michio Yuki, a handsome banker who looks like a manga riff on Clark Kent. Yuki comes from a respectable family. His older brother is a kabuki theater actor specializing in female roles. Fifteen years ago, he was on a coastal vacation when he's assaulted by a gang of scruffy hippies. One of these teenage hooligans is named Iwao Garai. Garai holds Yuki prisoner inside a cave where they spend the night. In the morning, the entire population of the coastal town has been killed due to exposure to a chemical warfare agent. Yuki is also exposed. Garai is spared. MW's plot is driven by the mystery of the chemwar substance: who made it? Why? How did it get loose during a time of peace?
Yuki's neurological damage deprives him of a conscience, but his intelligence and determination are unaffected. He studies his older brother's female impersonation techniques and uses an alternate identity as a woman to contrive various blackmail scenarios to work his way up through the hierarchies of Japan's male-dominated business and political elites. Yuki's seeking the truth behind the mysterious presence of deadly chemical weapons being housed on Japanese soil. Yuki's lack of conscience and unconstrained rage allows him to engage in all manner of atrocities-torture, rape, murder, bombings, blackmail, stolen identities-to get what he wants. And what Yuki wants, ultimately, goes beyond the simple truth or even bloody vengeance.
Garai grows up to become a Catholic priest. He tries his best to deny his hooligan past as a drugged-out hippie. Garai also attempts to suppress his homosexuality, but he cannot deny the spark between himself and Yuki. This leads to comical displays of bogus sexual conservatism, but as Yuki's rage spirals out of control, Father Garai tries to prevent violence. But the Good Father just can't bring himself to expose Yuki to the police. Part of it is his fatalistic love, but, in a telling sequence, it is also due to the moral confusions of the mid-century: Garai listens to the fears of his flock, who are riled up by a media story of an unknown madman injecting poisons into chocolate candies. This leads him to ask God why He allows mass slaughter by chemical warfare and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Powerful states and obscure individuals both seem to indulge the desire for indiscriminate massacre. Anybody paying attention upstairs?
Yuki looks at this moral confusion more decisively: I'm free to do as I please and unleash my inner beast! Truly, Yuki reveals himself to be a monster shaped by both unjust external factors as well as his own rage and sadism. Yuki wants to know the secret behind the chemwar substance so he can use it for himself. Yuki desires the power of mass slaughter just as nation states covet the Bomb. Why should scummy politicians and their bloated government systems have all the fun, eh?
MW gets super-dark, no question. These weighty moral dilemmas-and amoral dilemmas-get a deft and pacy treatment from God of Manga Osamu Tezuka, who shapes it all into a grandiose superthriller that evokes Akira Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well, Hiroshi Matsuno's The Living Skeleton, Kon Ichikawa's An Actor's Revenge, and the perverse cruelties of Italian giallo cinema. We see it mostly from Yuki and Garai's perspectives. Together, they are,perhaps, one of the most dysfunctional couples in all fiction. Edward Albee was writing light chamber comedy by comparison.
Tezuka's cinematic visuals evoke the hard-boiled black and white of film noir and Akira Kurosawa's dynamic riffs on noir: Yojimbo, High and Low, The Bad Sleep Well. Tezuka also uses the deft fluidity of comics to weave in visual metaphors of mythic allusions-to evoke the hermetic tragedy of romance gone toxic-and metamorphic monstosity-to evoke the veneer of human civility ruptured by the loosing of inner cruelty. MW is an effective mixture of realism and expressionistic hyperbole.
MW gives us a cynical view of late 1970s Japan wherein everyone is acting as some sort of stage character due to the rigid norms of masculinity and femininity; of class position and family name; of church and state. Politicians serve money. The media is widely perceived as just another weapon in a national game of conformity control. This rigidity allows a bright, ruthless operator like Yuki to prevail. The more conflicted Garai ends up a well-meaning fool, both lost in aggrandizing self-flagellation fantasias and in deep denial about his sexuality. In the bleak reality of MW only a psychopathic terrorist can be truly free of all the interlocking layers of bullshit.
