I inherited a copy of Osamu Tezuka’s 700-page literary manga “Ayako” from a friend and for the most part, it’s been hidden in a dark basement for about half a year.
If you’re familiar with the fate of the book’s fictional heroine, you might find a sense of situational irony in that.
“Ayako”
By Osamu Tezuka.
699 pp. Tezuka Productions. $24.95
2010.
Ayako Tenge happened to be a girl locked in her family’s cellar for 23 years after she saw her older brother Jiro trying to cover evidence related to a murder. For years, her only sight of the outside world was the cellar’s skylight, showing her the changing of seasons or meals being lowered into her prison. For the most part, the cellar was all she knew. Like the book in my possession, she existed out of sight and was eventually forgotten by most who knew and looked after her (she was four when she disappeared).
But for better or worse, her family’s story was eventually told.
The Tenges were an old Japanese family who ruled the rural town of Yodoyama for more than 500 years. Its corrupt patriarch Sukuemon was a hateful old man whose land gave him wealth. To curry favor with his father, his oldest son Ichiro allowed his father to rape his wife Su’e in order to inherit a portion of the land. His middle son Jiro was a World War II prisoner of war, who was still employed to perform occassional counter intelligence work; he lost favor with his father because Sukuemon rather see his son dead than see someone who got captured return. His daughter Naoko was in love with “a Red” and a union worker fighting for equal rights, those very people who were trying to steal away Sukemon’s land and give it away. His youngest son Shiro was too smart for his own good and wouldn’t follow orders. The only child Sukuemon truly loved was Ayako, his youngest daughter, which he fathered through his son’s wife.
Ayako is one of the few Tenges you can’t hate in this manga because of her innocence, but through clandestine family meetings and unfortunate events involving the police, it was decided that Ayako would be tragically announced dead and kept alive in a cellar — plot points that also seemed to confine Ayako’s character development. This made “Ayako” a stagnant mostly plot heavy read full of murders, family secrets and incestuous relationships. As Ayako’s life stands still, you learn how the lives of her jailers evolve.
Because of the serialization with its original release, “Ayako” felt extra long and you spend most of the manga waiting for something to happen. The ending contains nice poetic justice though, if you can wait to get there.
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