BOOK REVIEW: THE CRIMSON LABYRINTH (2006)

by Yusuke Kishi


Originally published in Japan in 1999.
English translation by Masami Isetani and Camellia Nieh
English edition published in 2006 by Vertical, Inc.

Review by William D. Tucker. 


Fujiki wakes up in a canyon of red rock. He doesn't remember how he got there, but he remembers who he was: an unemployed salaryman who was down and out on the streets of Shinjuku, sleeping in a park, and dumpster diving meals from discarded bento boxes out behind a convenience store. Now, he's seemingly been transported to another world, or maybe another reality, by parties unknown.

Fujiki's abductors have left him with a box full of nutrition bars and a handheld gaming machine (think Game Boy) that tells Fujiki that he is trapped in the Mars Labyrinth and that the game has begun. What kind of game? The machine elaborates that Fujiki must survive in order to return to Earth and receive the prize money. Further, the machine states that the players of this game must make their way to various checkpoints and make decisions which could determine whether they live or die.

Is this some sort of elaborate prank? Is it a hallucination? Is Fujiki really on Mars? What kind of people would render you unconscious and toss you into the middle of an elaborately staged survival game? Reality television producers? Are these people even human? Or are they Martians?

Fujiki starts to find his way to the first checkpoint. But he's not alone. He encounters a woman named Ai Otomo, who has also been conscripted into this game. Back in Japan, she drew pornographic manga. Now, she stumbles around a maze of red rock, at just as much of a loss for explanations as Fujiki. Fujiki and Ai put their heads together and figure out how to count off their paces to find the first checkpoint as per the handheld gaming device's instructions, and they find the other Japanese citizens who've been conscripted to play this twisted game: all of them are people recently unemployed or forgotten in the wake of Japan's exploded bubble economy. Perhaps that's why they've been abducted. What's a few less jobless folks to worry about? No, these people will not be missed. And what else, if anything, does that say about the motivations of the unseen abductors?

Each player has been provided with a handheld gaming device. At the first checkpoint, where all the players are gathered, they are beamed more information about the nature of the game, including the following prohibitions: no climbing the canyon walls, no drawing large figures in the sand or on the rocks, no making multiple fires in close proximity, no making whistles to emit loud noises, and no signaling with mirror-like objects. Violators will be severely punished. The players are then presented with the following choice of initial paths:

"IF YOU CHOOSE TO SEEK SURVIVAL ITEMS, GO EAST. IF YOU CHOOSE TO SEEK SELF-DEFENSE ITEMS, GO WEST. IF YOU CHOOSE TO SEEK FOOD, GO SOUTH. IF YOU CHOOSE TO SEEK INFORMATION, GO NORTH."

Wouldn't you know it? Fujiki and Ai end up going north. Fujiki, who specialized in game theory at college, reasons that the abductors must have some reason for offering up such a seemingly impractical choice as an initial opening move of the game. Fujiki also reasons that if this is indeed a game, then the very first choice will probably have far-reaching ramifications, maybe even life and death consequences, and so that first choice had better be a damned good one. Of course, as Fujiki also realizes, game theory depends on the rather huge assumption that all the actors in question are rational, which is scarcely a given in real life. Therefore, game theory as applied to real life is, as Fujiki puts it, "worse than useless." But why would the people behind the Mars Labyrinth design a game that could not be rationally solved? Even if Fujiki is wrong, surely there must be some design, some underlying logic to be figured out that one might win? But such thinking assumes that the game has been designed in such a way that actual victory is possible, that it has been constructed to be fair.

Hey, real life ain't fair. Games exist as a part of real life. Therefore . . .

 . . . Fujiki and Ai set out along the northern path in search of information.

The Crimson Labyrinth is a lean but protein rich meal. It's one of those books you just about have to read in one sitting. It's all plot, and pacing, and suspense, with just enough precise characterization to keep you intrigued. The setting is rendered with enough detail to bring it to life, but not so much that it becomes a travelogue. It has one of those highly exploitative yet engaging premises that you just have to get to the bottom of, even if you suspect the conclusion might not be as satisfying as the journey. As it happens, author Yusuke Kishi knows how to parcel out the suspense even once he's tipped his hand. He's not just concerned with a big payoff, some out of left field shocker of an ending, but he also wants to ask some tough questions about human nature within the context of the survival game:

Are these players faced with a zero sum game, where only one can win? Or is there a possibility for a cooperative victory?

What are the penalties for violating any of the five prohibitions? Why have such prohibitions in the first place?

If you're faced with a zero sum game, where you have to compete with your fellow human beings for a single victory position, what are you willing to do to win? If it's a zero sum game, can Fujiki and Ai both win? Can Fujiki and Ai trust each other?

Who are the abductors? Are they human? Are they telling the truth? Why would they lie? Why would they be honest? Can the information provided by the handheld gaming units be trusted? Whoever the abductors are, they must be some sort of organization with considerable resources, perhaps even paranormal powers. What kind of an organization would put on a survival game of this nature? What are their ethics and/or morality, if any? Is there some larger agenda? Is it all just for kicks?

Maybe none of this is real. The point of view character is Fujiki. Can his perceptions be trusted?

How does one make an ethical choice within the context of a zero-sum game? Is it possible? Is ethical decision making entirely dependent upon context? That is to say, if we can only choose from the options that are known to us, and none of them are ethical, how do we decide what the most ethical of unethical choices is in a given situation?

What about good and evil? Are these things inherent in who we are? Or are they products of the choices we make? Are they woven into the fabric of reality, or are they just illusions we project onto our daily lives? We typically imagine ourselves to be good even when we do evil. Don't we typically let ourselves off the hook for transgressions large and small?

Does one have to play the game, or can you just walk away from it?

The Crimson Labyrinth is one of those books with such an over the top premise that it inspires all sorts of speculations as you read it.

Of course, I can't tell you what the Mars Labyrinth is. You have to read it for yourself . . .

----

Okay, digression time.

What is it about stories about sick games played with unwilling participants for life or death stakes?

The Crimson Labyrinth was published in 1999, the same year that saw the original publication of the notorious cult classic Battle Royale. BR was all about a group of young Japanese students who were pitted against each other in an elaborate death match for sinister purposes by the government.

I suppose it goes back to "The Most Dangerous Game," a short story by Richard Connell published in 1924 about a depraved aristocrat who sets up expeditions to go human hunting for fun and profit. This short story was knocked off in 1993 for  the Jean Claude Van Damme epic Hard Target which reset the action from a remote Caribbean island to New Orleans and tossed in motor cycles, martial arts, and assault weapons.

In 1987 you had the Schwarzenegger classic The Running Man which was about a futuristic televised gladiator spectacle involving condemned prisoners going up against high tech assassins in a bombed out dystopian landscape--all set up by evil, Reaganomic corporations which had overrun America by that time.

In 1997 there was The Game, directed by David Fincher, which was about a wealthy man, played by Michael Douglas, who is conned into participating in what starts out as some kind of alternate reality LARP which turns into a deadly, all out assault on his financial assets and his life.

I've heard some people compare The Game to John Fowles's 1965 novel The Magus about a man being manipulated by elaborate illusions that might threaten his life.

Then there are the Dream Park novels published throughout the 1980s and 1990s by Steven Barnes and Larry Niven which imagine a high tech theme park where the participants engage in LARPing scenarios writ large derived from world mythologies, sci-fi and sword and sorcery literature and gaming products. These novels intertwine murder mystery plots with unusual pastiches from sci-fi and fantasy literature and offer intriguing takes on the line between reality and fantasy. Unusually, the participants in these Dream Park games are willing participants. Do people like to have their reality toyed with from time to time?

Most all of these stories seemingly involve conspiracies of one kind or another. The players come to think of themselves as being persecuted, of being at the hands of heartless machinations by powerful evil forces. In the case of The Running Man and Battle Royale, the bloodsport is explicitly set up by the ruling classes for purposes of control and pacification of the general populace. In those works in particular the suspense doesn't derive so much from the unraveling of secret conspiracies as it does from the life and death struggles of who survives and who dies.

"The Most Dangerous Game" and Hard Target are about smaller scale operations. In the former, it's one Russian aristocrat, and in the latter it's a New Orleans based gang that hires itself out to wealthy degenerates who wish to hunt homeless people on the streets of the Big Easy. The cops don't exist on the crazy Russian's island, and in the New Orleans scenario they've been bought off, as per usual, by the criminal organization of interest. Depraved gamesmanship doesn't necessarily need the backing of oppressive governments or rapacious corporations. It just needs the desire and sadism within the human heart. Maybe a few bribes for the local gendarmes if the operation involves a couple dozen players or so.

Maybe these kinds of stories (if indeed they can be said to be of a kind, or kinds, I'm casting a wide net here), work on an author's and an audience's sense of fair play. Even when these stories seemingly cheat, it's within the context of the game. A betrayal of the rules within a game is that much more stinging. A gaming scenario is also a quick and dirty way of contriving drama, of manufacturing conflict.

Corruption of varying degrees figures into these sagas. Is a human life worth sacrificing for the sake of sport?  Are we all just pawns in the gamesmanship which goes on between nations and transnational corporations?

Where do our true loyalties lie as humans? To Team A or Team B? What about Team C? Why Teams? Should we try to reach out to our fellow humans as humans, and discard such childish pursuits?

Is it possible to say no to the game, whatever that may be? Do we have to play?

What if you want to play? If everybody quits, and you're the last gamer, how does that position differ from its opposite? The lone quitter and the last gamer . . . are they that far apart?

Maybe there are more subtle grades of distinction to be made, but most of these stories, excepting the Dream Park books, deal with the terrors of bloodsports, of zero-sum games at their most naked and savage--stripped of all economic, nationalistic, and ideological posturing and hand-waving. In the end, those that make the games want you to play. They won't let you quit. They want to put you on a team, dictate the rules, and set the terms of victory. At most, the player might be able to choose their team or what weapon they'll use to kill the other guy.

You can't win if you don't play. But what price victory? Sometimes you lose even if you win.

MANGA REVIEW: THE BOOK OF HUMAN INSECTS (2011)

by Osamu Tezuka

Originally published in serial form in Japanese in Play Comic, 1970-1971

English Translation by Mari Morimoto, 2011

Published by Vertical, Inc.

...

"Why not be Number One?"

-Goro Hanada, Number Three Killer (Joe Shishido) in Branded to Kill (1967)

...

Review by William D. Tucker. 

How does one survive in a corrupt world? Does one meet corruption with integrity and honesty? Do you resist the sources of corruption--government, corporations, big media, organized crime, the family, religious institutions, power brokers, violent political extremists--and if so, how does one resist? If the corruption of the world is pervasive, who can you trust? Maybe a few close friends. If the corruption of the world is total, then you can only trust yourself.

If you can only depend on yourself, then you better be tough, smart, and resourceful. Ethics are strictly optional, to be used only as they can give you an advantage in a given situation. That is to say, only do the right thing if it's to your advantage. Do the right thing if it'll elevate you in the eyes of those whom you would seek to manipulate to your advantage. Even in a world of absolute corruption, appearances are everything. People still have their vanity even in the absence of ethics. No one, even at their most dishonest and self-serving, truly thinks of themselves as evil. Sure, they might have some guilt, but nothing they can't live with, nothing they can't explain away, and anyways they were just doing what had to be done.

Massive wars have been perpetrated on the basis of lies, delusions, and self-serving rationales. If those that wage wars of folly can sleep at night, publish bestselling memoirs, and collect generous speaker's fees to cultivate more lies and more folly in the hearts and minds of the next generation of highly placed perpetrators . . . well, why shouldn't everybody have a piece of the game? What's a little graft, a little theft, a little murder now and again? Didn't some villain with a British accent in some movie say, "Kill a dozen people, you're a murderer. Kill a million, you're a conqueror?" And didn't someone else, maybe a grand philosopher, say, "Nature is organized murder?" Surely, as biological entities, we are all a part of nature.

The Book of Human Insects is about a person uniquely suited to survival in a totally corrupt world, a young woman named Toshiko Tomura. She's an acclaimed novelist, actress, and graphic designer. She's also a woman in a man's world, Japan in the 1970s. You would think she would be a role model to the young women and girls of Japan, a feminist icon of achievement and empowerment. Maybe she is, but she's an icon with a lot of baggage if that's the case.

You see, Tomura has a preternatural ability for mimicking her fellow human beings and absorbing their talents. All she has to do is spend time with someone, say they're an actor, and observe what they do in minute detail. Tomura goes to rehearsals, studies the script, and learns the lines. She starts out as the understudy, but soon she's the star. Well, that's not so unusual in the world of theatre.

But after she conquers the world of theatre, Tomura has fantasies of becoming a great novelist. So she latches onto an up-and-coming female novelist, finds out what she's researching, and then studies the same research materials. Tomura gets her novel to press before the up-and-comer can do so, and bingo. Tomura's an award-winning novelist.

The up-and-comer hangs herself in a hotel room. Call it collateral damage. Hey, life is struggle. Life is war. War isn't about making nice with the enemy. War is what George C. Scott talked about in the beginning of that movie Patton. The speech in front of the flag. Youtube it. It's about slaughtering the enemy. And not getting all broken up about it on the inside. You do your murder, and you move on to the next battle.

And so Tomura progresses through society, seeking out unwitting role models to mimic so that she can absorb their talents and co-opt their would-be success and achievement. Along the way, she meets others who are more like predators than mimics: an anarchist terrorist for hire, a right-wing yakuza who's a behind-the-scenes fixer, a corporate executive who would no doubt dig dropping sake bombs with the Goldman Sachs and Enron crowds, and others, all of whom have trouble seeing the moral forest for the ethical trees. Or maybe it's the other way around. What's the sacrifice of one tree when the whole forest is still standing? But what if you're not satisfied with cutting down just one tree? Just one more. And one more after that, there's plenty left. Now let's clear cut this mother . . .

The Book of Human Insects is a comic book, a manga, by Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka was the Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Harvey Pekar, Alan Moore, Akira Kurosawa, Shohei Immamura, Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, and Walt Disney of Japanese manga all woven into one, singularly driven man. He wrote superhero comics for kids, like Astro Boy. He pioneered girls' comics with Princess Knight. He did talking animal stories, like Kimba the White Lion. He wrote horror, science fiction, historical drama, Shakespearean adaptations, crime stories, satire, and hard-boiled crime fiction, and sometimes he wrote stories that combined elements of all of these things. He created an anti-heroic surgeon, Black Jack, who became, along with Astro Boy, Kimba, Princess Knight, and others, one of the iconic characters of Japanese manga. Tezuka also did slice of life, confessional material, and experimental works. He told all kinds of stories using the conventions of manga storytelling: text and panels and sequential images.

Tezuka's broad interests as an author seem to be tied to a voracious appetite for all manner of culture, high and low. The man went to medical school, could've been a doctor, but, no, he decided to do what he loved and draw funny books. Here's a man with enough of a grasp of hard science to hack it at a Japanese medical university, and yet also has a fine appreciation for what makes a good story. His comics are filled with allusions to movies, Disney cartoons, and classic literature. Film noir, samurai epics, spaghetti westerns, Dostoyevsky, ancient mythology, history, tabloid sensationalism, new age pseudoscience, surrealism, neorealism, tragedy, comedy, humor, and gore are all present in his works.

Tezuka also pioneered the distinctive manga look: big eyes, simplified faces and bodies, but with dynamic scenic layouts, and a cinematic sense of pacing, and montage. American comics have traditionally gone for muscular figures in highly compressed stories taking place within morally simplified worlds. Tezuka's protagonists are sometimes short and stout, sometimes thin and lithe, and sometimes grotesque and deformed, but they are almost never simplified. Even his unabashed heroes, like Astro Boy, end up dealing with life, death, and complex moral quandaries. Tezuka approached his comics like an auteur filmmaker, paying attention to every last detail of production, and he even created his own stock company of characters who take on different roles in different stories, sometimes even breaking out of their usual casting to show a new side of their acting chops.

The Book of Human Insects is Tezuka telling a serious story with quite a bit of restraint. Usually, his manga are filled with visual puns and gags, even in serious stories. In his epic Adolf, which deals with Nazism, Hitler, and genocide, one of the main characters has a candle growing out of his head, and , no, it wasn't exactly meant as comedy. But Insects has only a few visual oddities that I noticed. During one scene, someone makes reference to Yukio Mishima's spectacular suicide, and a guy in the rather tacky uniform of Mishima's notorious private army appears to put in his two cents. No, there aren't that many visual gags. Tezuka also foregoes using his stock company of characters for this story. No guys with candles in their heads, no Astro Boy or Black Jack.

But Insects is rife with wild and bizarre imagery which establishes a kind of eerie mood and helps illustrate the nature of Tomura as a mimic. Tomura is graphically compared with bugs that mimic owls, and metamorphose into other forms. Such transformations are understood as natural, as the consequences of evolution and survival mechanisms in action. No one would accuse an insect that mimics the appearance of another creature of being a liar. Such creatures have taken on deceptive appearances in order to survive in a hostile, murderous world. By that logic, Tomura isn't evil. She is merely adaptive.

Remember, Tomura is a woman in 1970s Japan, a patriarchal society that, for all its progress, still views women as subservient to men. Even a woman who is artistically inclined, and accomplished and acclaimed at that, will often be expected to give all that up when she gets married to some corporate executive. All of the giant corporations are run by men. All of the government leadership is exclusively male. A woman either accepts this, or has to go her own way.

Moreover, the society is thoroughly corrupt. Bribery, graft, assassination, deception, and betrayal are all business as usual. And all the major players are men. A woman could very well look at this state of affairs and ask, "Why not get my end? Why not be number one? A man in this world wouldn't even think to ask the question. He would just proceed on the basis of stark reality."

But Tomura, as Tezuka tells it, isn't so much coldly calculating as she is following her nature. Yes, she plots and schemes and has a callous disregard for others, but it's not always clear that she is consciously cruel or destructive. This is what makes Tomura such a fascinating character. Is she evil, or is she just following her own nature? Is evil something that objectively exists, or is it something that we project onto reality? That is to say, is there a way to define evil scientifically, or is it more of a fuzzy, mystical-religious notion? And, once again, how do we define evil within a totally corrupt society? By definition, in such a society corruption is inescapable. Try as one might, one cannot get away totally clean.

You could show up to work every day, pay your taxes on time and never steal, murder, lie, or cheat. But your tax dollars go into the coffers of a corrupt government that hires dishonest corporations with sweetheart deals to build projects that may never be properly finished. Organized gangsters and right wing extremists exert their influence and demand their tributes in the form of bribes and hush money. Intimidation, murder, and disenfranchisement are used against those that step out of line, resist, or try to bring about reforms. This is the world that Tomura must navigate.

Along the way, journalists try to get the scoop on her past, and oppressive men try to conquer her. As I read, I asked myself, "Where is Tomura going? Is this a story of self-destruction? Will society punish Tomura for her survival adaptations? Or is she the perfect organism to negotiate this labyrinth of lies?"

I was surprised where the story went. I don't want to give away too much, but it definitely does not cop out even as it takes some rather unlikely melodramatic hairpin twists and turns. I say unlikely, but not necessarily impossible. Tezuka is never one to shy away from outrageous melodrama, even downright bathos, and fantasy, but Insects is disturbingly credible for all its dramatic license and exaggeration.

The Book of Insects is another triumph of book design from Vertical, Inc. Vertical has become the primary publisher of Osamu Tezuka's manga in English in the USA, and each new volume is handsomely turned out with evocative collages of resonant images drawn from the manga themselves. Insects is no exception. Vertical seems to approach Tezuka's books like another publisher would approach the latest Johnathan Lethem or Johnathan Franzen novel: with utmost respect and seriousness. And also, a sense of using Tezuka's distinctive illustration style as the basis for eye-catching covers and dust jackets. Insects is well worth reading, but it'll also look good on the shelf once you're done. But don't just let it sit there. Loan it to a friend.

BOOK REVIEW: A SLOW DEATH: 83 DAYS OF RADIATION SICKNESS (2008)

by NHK-TV "Tokaimura Criticality Accident" Crew

English Translation by Maho Harada

Published by Vertical Inc., New York

Review by William D. Tucker. 

September 30, 1999: Three workers at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, Japan are exposed to high amounts of neutron beams during a criticality accident.

This is a book about a man named Ouchi whose chromosomes were destroyed by a blast of neutron rays while working in unsafe conditions in a uranium processing facility in Tokaimura, which is north east of Tokyo. For 83 days, a crack team of doctors, nurses, and medical experts from several countries try to keep him alive. Because Ouchi's chromosomes have been destroyed, his body cannot generate new cells to replace the dead ones. His skin falls off. His mucus membranes disappear. He is in constant pain. He suffers massive internal hemorrhages and the medical staff have to constantly pump fluids and nutrients into his body to keep him alive. His organs fail, one by one, and their functions are taken over by various machines. As he literally melts before their eyes, Ouchi's doctors and nurses question whether or not what they are doing is the right thing to do. That is to say, are they actually helping him, or are they just endlessly prolonging his agony? 

This is a slim but tough book. It goes into gruesome but necessary detail about the deterioration of a human body afflicted by neutron beam radiation. It is told in a straightforward reportorial style that goes into thoroughgoing technical detail but not so much that the average reader cannot follow along. It also gives space to the emotional turmoil the medical staff underwent as they battled to keep Ouchi alive. 

In some ways, this is a book about the dangers of atomic radiation, but it is also a strange kind of existential novel where the main character's mental state is largely unknown at the height of his suffering, and therefore the crucial question of whether or not to go on living is displaced onto the nurses and doctors. Ouchi was under heavy sedation for much of his sickness to alleviate his agony and he was unable to communicate in any detail what his thoughts and feelings were. The book seems to suggest that had he been awake his suffering would've been monstrous. The medical staff did what they thought was best even in the face of a hopeless situation. Their mission, as they understood it, was to save a man's life and battle his sickness to the last. 

This book is derived from a television documentary originally broadcast by NHK in May 2001. I haven't been able to find any clips of it online, but I imagine it must be a harrowing viewing experience. I also wonder if there has been an effort to suppress it from being aired by powerful interests.

This was a very small scale accident compared to the ongoing nuclear disasters afflicting Japan this year, and so I would not compare Ouchi's situation with the present cataclysm. But considering the reports of clean-up workers being overworked and overexposed by their employers, and the seemingly endemic problems that the Japanese government and the nuclear industry overall have with getting their stories and their numbers straight, I think this book is valuable for zeroing in on the suffering of a single human being. Now multiply that suffering by a few million individuals. It's incomprehensible, but every individual person affected by the tsunami and the nuclear accidents this year is undergoing, to a greater or lesser degree, some ordeal, some kind of suffering. Workers in the clean-up effort are very much at risk for severe radiation poisoning and related illnesses.

Nuclear accidents are not new. There also seems to be a problem on the part of the authorities with facing these problems, or, at the very least, giving an honest account of them. I would like to believe that books and other media are a way of keeping governments and business interests honest, of exposing corruption, incompetence, and systemic failure, but I also know that a book like A Slow Death is not a bestseller. Not even close.

Nuclear power offers a potential way out of many of the energy crises facing humanity. There are also great dangers involved through incompetence, mismanagement, and corruption. Political and business leaders seem to be all too cozy with nuclear interests, and nuclear plant designs seem to get fast-tracked with a minimum of oversight on issues of safety, durability, and overall harmonious design of structures in relation to geographic location. And, to be fair to the Japanese government and business interests, I'm not sure what defense exists against a tsunami that sweeps away vast numbers of cars, trucks, houses, shipping containers, tanker ships, and the earth itself.

All that seems certain is that people are suffering now, and more will suffer in the future, no matter what books get written, no matter how insightful the analyses and conclusions are regarding the dire consequences of nuclear accidents and natural disasters, and the predictably mediocre efforts of governments and corporations to do PR damage control, juggle the numbers, and pass the buck to future generations.