Anime Book Club – Mononoke Week 1: Bakeneko

So, this series of posts has been a long time coming. I’ve wanted to do a deep-dive on Mononoke for several years but never felt equipped to take it on. Part of that is because I like the anime series so much and really, really want to do it justice in the way I talk about it. I have some baggage about this series that I’ve mentioned in the past and won’t go into detail about right now (the short version is that I got ridiculed for liking it because I couldn’t properly articulate why it wasn’t just something that “looked cool”), but ultimately it only drove me to attach to the series even more. I suppose maybe I’m just petty like that (or I just really, really like great anime!).

It’s a series of several stories that are all interesting to me, and some of them I believe speak to me on a personal level in a way that’s unlike so many other anime (even anime I like a lot!). Many people believe that the original story, which we’ll be covering this week, is the “best” one; I’d have a difficult time arguing that as it’s self-contained and arguably unlike pretty much anything else that came before it (it’s also absolutely the best of the three stories in the anthology series from which it originated). Despite that, though, the series as a whole sets a standard that I feel few can match, as I hope you’ll eventually agree!

I’m planning to eschew constructing any formal questions this time around; with Kino I felt like I was consistently posing leading questions and I’d rather hear people’s free-form reactions and see if a discussion forms organically that way. I will still be posting my reactions and interpretations as I go.

I’d also like to mention once again that this week’s story arc, Bakeneko 1, isn’t really available in a legal form unless you’d like to find a copy of the extremely out-of-print Geneon release (it’s not super expensive but probably more than most people would want to pay for a used DVD) or the Japanese Blu-Ray release of the series in its entirety which I don’t believe is subtitled (good luck). I’m not planning to tell you where to find the story arc, but I’ll mention that I’ve seen it online in the past and I assume it’s still floating around out there in case you’d like to watch it and can’t obtain it another way.

Act 1

Lady Mao is set to be married into the Shiono family; the marriage is not so much for her own good, but to help to eliminate her family’s many debts. A Medicine Seller arrives at her home on the wedding day to peddle his wares, though it’s possible he senses something amiss. Kayo, a servant, allows him inside and is more than excited to gossip, but it’s soon time for Mao to leave for her future husband’s home. As she crosses the threshold to the outside, Mao is struck down by some unknown force and breathes her last. The household is thrown into a panic and believes there to be an assassin on the loose, but the Medicine Seller recognizes this as the likely workings of some supernatural force.

The household regards the Medicine Seller with suspicion, but as terrifying hallucinations of sight and sound become more frequent and the violent death of a servant causes tensions to rise further he easily breaks out of his bonds and begins putting up wards to keep the demonic presence away. Unfortunately this is just a temporary measure. He carries a sword used to exorcise demons, but it can only be used once the type of demon is identified, the truth of why it appeared is discovered, and its reasoning for haunting this place is known. The family must reveal what they know in order for the Medicine Seller to help them.

Act 2

The Medicine Seller makes his way to the kitchen, Kayo and Odajima in tow, to retrieve salt for a salt barrier (and sake for the home’s mistress). He then sets up several “scales” that measure not weight, but the strength of the mononoke’s presence in the area. After that he gets down to business, grilling the residents about any reason why a vengeful spirit may have taken up residence there. Why are there no cats in the home to control the rat population? It appears that the family procured several cats in quick succession for the purposes of testing the sharpness of their swords, but could this alone account for the mononoke’s rage?

Lady Mizue awakens from her unconsciousness as the mononoke prowls outside the room, tilting the scales as it walks by. Its power begins to overwhelm the Medicine Seller’s defenses – first the salt barrier, and then eventually the seals begin to melt. Mizue crawls towards Mao’s deathbed and removes the cloth from her face, only to immediately start going mad from a vision of a woman she calls Tamaki. The group witnesses a vision from within the opened sliding screen of a woman in white sending a swarm of blood-red cats into the room, devouring all as they go. The members of the group still alive rush further back into the home, and the Medicine Seller becomes more intensely focused on his questioning, more so as a secret passageway is revealed, leading to a hidden inner room. This family’s secrets appear to be even more sinister than first suspected, and old Lord Yoshiyuki has a story to tell.

Final Act

Yoshiyuki tells the story of a night 25 years ago when he, as a younger man, came upon a country bride being transported to her new home. He kidnapped her, intending only to give her a fright, but because she never screamed nor fought him off it was almost as if she came with him willingly. By that point it would not have been a happy reunion if she were to return so he kept her locked away, providing her with the finest food to eat and beautiful clothing to wear. But having taken her in the prime of her life, he speculates, it must have been her grudge for a life not lived that possessed her pet kitten and caused it to transform into a mononoke. This appears to be an incomplete truth, as the sword cannot yet be unsheathed. As the Medicine Seller begins to physically collapse keeping the Bakeneko at bay, he sees pieces of a vision that paints a very different picture from what Yoshiyuki is claiming to be true. As the Bakeneko consumes and dismembers the other members of the family, Kayo, Odajima, and the Medicine Seller are shown the Bakeneko’s “Truth.”

In reality, Tamaki did not stay in the home willingly, nor was she treated well. The underground room where she was held captive had become a den for many cats, which were killed in front of her as she was kept in a cage. As Tamaki began to refuse food, she heard the faint sounds of a kitten who had been hiding, and she used her meager meals to nurse it to adulthood. As a final act of rebellion, the cat attempted to guard her from being raped by one of the master’s son’s. Tamaki was killed soon afterward, her body dumped down a well. Now in possession of the full story, the Medicine Seller uses his power to exorcise the mononoke, allowing Tamaki’s spirit and her cat their final rest. The survivors go their separate ways, but as the Medicine Seller leaves he wonders if he might have seen a woman in white and her black cat pass over the home’s threshold.

 

Thoughts and Reactions

This is a series that I’ve seen many times and I’m very familiar with each story arc, but every re-watch reminds me of or introduces me to many details that are otherwise foggy in my own memories. Unsurprisingly, the concept that kept jumping out at me during my viewing of this story was the relationship between women and cats (imagine that). As a cat-lover myself, one thing I’m constantly having to deal with is the idea that cats are an animal typically more associated with women (think witches and “crazy cat ladies”). When you get into the reasoning behind the existence of that idea, there’s not much of a positive association; there are people who consider cats selfish or fickle (compared to the simplistic loyalty of dogs), and these are traits that some people may apply in a blanket way to women. There are those that also consider cats representative of or connected to women’s sexuality. Cats are associated with witches and witchcraft, symbols of women’s empowerment (and therefore dangerous and transgressive). Considering the arc of this story in particular, it seems that the choice of a cat demon as a reflection of Tamaki’s sickening treatment, assault, and death is especially appropriate.

I understand that people in dire circumstances will usually put the well-being of their pets ahead of themselves. To have to choose between one or the other is an upsetting thought, but I feel as though there’s an element of human selflessness that reveals itself when providing care towards an entity that’s less capable of providing for itself (that’s kind of a cold, analytical way of saying that I find some beauty in people’s ability to put something else ahead of themselves). I found it especially heart-wrenching as Tamaki continued to take care of the kitten, watching it grow as she withered away to skin and bones; to reach a point where you give up on yourself to ensure the survival of your will through the entity you’re caring for definitely has an element of tragedy to it. Looking at that further, I feel like that concept applies to other women in this story as well. The women are used almost like currency as a way to seal alliances and conduct monetary transactions between families (Mao’s marriage, if you recall, is partly to help abolish her family’s debts). In the brief glimpses we get during the Bakeneko’s flashback, it seems as though at least one other woman marries into the family unwillingly, and perhaps investing in Mao to allow her to escape and join another (perhaps better) family is her way of continuing in this sad tradition. This is an idea that reappears multiple times throughout Mononoke, and while it would be tempting to say that it’s just an aspect of Japanese upper-class culture from that time period, I feel like it’s something that we still do today when we become obsessive about our children getting ahead in school, having the right friends, being in sports and other activities. We want for them to have a better life than our own, but we also may want to live vicariously through their experiences and in that way have a second chance to fix the mistakes and regrets in our own lives. The degree to which this is helpful or harmful depends on the people involved, and it’s complicated; sometimes a well-meaning action is tainted by the strength and nature of the emotions behind it.

I think that the concept of “thresholds” hangs heavily over this story. As it begins, there’s a sense of foreboding as the Medicine Seller enters the home; the scene pauses and there’s an uncomfortable sound as he steps through the doorway. Mao is killed just as she walks across the threshold to the outside world. The mononoke’s power doesn’t respect the salt barrier, nor the sliding doors and seals that seek to contain it. It’s a motif that’s repeated throughout the story – crossing the threshold spells doom and destruction. There’s a tradition in the West of the bride being carried across the threshold on her wedding night, and I wonder if that isn’t partly echoed here. I’m also reminded of the anime series Kurenai, which features a family so steeped in tradition that the family’s women are kept within an inner sanctum that has a threshold which they may never cross (and of course there’s a very symbolic shot near the end of the female lead walking across it without issue). I don’t know if it’s reaching to say that this idea in itself might be included as a nod towards the situation so many women in history have found themselves in – contained within the homes of their parents before then becoming contained in their husband’s home, only breathing the outside air as they’re sent from one to the other. Even this simple experience, this one chance, was something that was forcefully stolen from Tamaki. This idea of women being contained or trapped is a story element that repeats itself in later stories, I’m realizing.

I’m amazed at how well this story speaks to the general tendency for human beings to safeguard themselves and their own mental state by bending facts to absolve themselves from responsibility. Lord Yoshiyuki’s version of Tamaki’s kidnapping paints him as an arrogant younger version of himself, committing a prank that went too far. His story of how Tamaki, after being taken captive, came on to him and lived out the short remainder of her life cloistered and taken-care-of gives the story a tragic bent, and provides others with more room to forgive him for what he may have done. Generally dead women can’t speak, so had the Medicine Seller never arrived or no mononoke been brought into existence, this version of the “truth” may have stood unchallenged forever. I like how the episode uses a lot of visual symbolism to point out this duplicity, even prior to the Medicine Seller’s experience within the Bakeneko’s mind; there are some split-screen shots of the younger and elder Yoshiyuki – a young, virile samurai mirrored against the ugly old man spinning lies that he becomes. There are also similar scenes of a vibrant Tamaki receiving a black kitten as a gift, and then her haggard, starving body discovering the black kitten somehow spared from the cruel death of its brethren. The delicious gourmet meals, compared to the meager fare that was actually provided.

When I think about this story, the phrase “he-said, she-said” comes to mind. It’s a turn of phrase that’s unfortunately often used when discussing rape or sexual assault situations – it’s her word against his, a duality of stories in which the “truth” is derived from whose story is most convincing. Considering the power dynamics that are often present in those situations, as well as the reality that witness testimony is its own evidence, at least in practice it has often come down to how much social clout each person in the situation has. While things have improved somewhat over the years, it’s still common to hear things like “oh, she’s just trying to extort him for money” or “if she was really assaulted why did she wait 5/10/20 however many years to talk about it?” We idolize the wealthy and powerful and hold their words in high esteem, so when a common person speaks out against them, instinctually it’s easier to call it “sour grapes” rather than a legitimate accusation. Yoshiyuki is the head of a wealthy family; who would believe the word of a simple country girl over the word of a respected, powerful, wealthy man? Whether or not this is something he’s consciously aware of, I believe it’s definitely something that influences his behavior and his ability to lie about the crime he committed.

There’s a moment in the third act after Lord Yoshiyuki tells his version of the story that really sticks with me and speaks to this point. It’s assumed that, if the mononoke is somehow the product of Tamaki’s grudge, it must be due to her jealousy of other soon-to-be-married women leaving the household (something she was never able to do). A male character states that “A woman’s grudge is incorrigible indeed,” which causes Kayo (the best character) to roll her eyes with skepticism. It’s a generally accepted “truth” (heavily in quotes) that women, like cats, are fickle and emotional beings, so of course this entire mess must be the product of a woman’s misdirected rage. Later, following his vision of the actual facts in play, the Medicine Seller states that he’s seen the mononoke’s (and Tamaki’s) truth, and has “taken it to heart.” Speaking as someone who’s been through several situations in which my truth has been questioned, this moment is perhaps the most emotionally powerful of the entire episode. Speaking also as someone who’s seen the entire series before, I think it’s a good introduction to what I interpret the series as being about – learning women’s truths, believing them, and then using that to try to cleanse society of the injustice done to women day-in and day-out.

I love what the Medicine Seller says to Lord Yoshiyuki upon leaving the compound; it’s something to the effect of “this is your truth that you’ve been protecting.” Not the truth, but Yoshiyuki’s truth, one that he’s nurtured and allowed to blossom over the unmarked grave of his own guilt.

I can’t remember where, but I read something recently that interpreted the Medicine Seller in this story arc as being apprehensive and inexperienced compared to the persona he exhibits in Mononoke proper. I suppose any differences might actually boil down to the voice actor, writer, and director not quite having a handle on the character’s portrayal just yet, or having a different vision of him in this single story arc than later on in the series. What I will say is that I feel like the character is more involved in the story here; things come as more of a shock to him and he’s more emotional upon discovering the truth. I get the impression that the experience of being swallowed by the mononoke and seeing its story played out was deeply affecting to the character. In later story arcs the character seems more worldly, aloof, and willing to let the involved characters talk themselves into their own demise. The differences may be more evident later on, especially in the late reprise of this same story. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

That’s about all I have to say about this story arc. It’s probably the one I’ve watched the most out of all of them, and yet I still find it deeply affecting each and every time. I hope that if you get a chance to watch it, you’ll agree. Next week I’ll be continuing with the first two episodes of Mononoke proper, which is available on Crunchyroll. I hope you’ll check it out!