Terror in Tokyo! An Introduction to Horror Manga

My personal introduction to the world of Japanese horror manga (comics) occurred when I was just 9 years old. In 1977 I traveled to Japan with my mother to visit a cousin who was teaching English In Tokyo and while waiting for a train I spotted a stand selling Japanese manga. I couldn't read a word of Japanese, but I was completely enamored with the illustrations. I begged my mother to buy one of the phone book sized collections for me and thankfully she did. My favorite story in the whole collection was a creepy gothic style horror tale involving vampires. I studied every panel of the story until I had memorized them all and I created a story to go along with the images in my head.

Years later I would find out that my interpretation of the events in the manga was not that far off. Horror literature around the world often borrows from the same mythology and human beings from every corner of the globe are often frightened and disturbed by the same things. Japanese manga artists are naturally influenced by their own culture and mythology, but authors such as Edgar Allen Poe and Ray Bradbury are much beloved in Japan, as well as horror cinema from Britain, Europe and America. You'll find that all of these influences are visible in Japanese manga and even without a translation, horror fans can often find plenty of visual clues in the comic panels to further their enjoyment and understanding of the stories.

The popularity of Edgar Allen Poe is so prevalent in Japan that the Japanese horror & mystery author Edogawa Rampo (1894-1965) adapted his name as a pseudonym. Many of Edogawa Rampo's books are now availble in English and have been turned into films. I highly recommend his story collection Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination if you're in the mood for some good late-night reading.

Over the past 20-25 years Japanese manga has become increasingly popular with western audiences. Unfortunately we often only have access to the latest and 'hottest' popular material, but in recent years that has slowly started to change. Comic book publishers have started translating older 'groovy age' era horror and suspense manga such as Kazuo Umezu's The Drifting Classroom and Orochi: Blood, as well as Yoshihiro Tatsumi's The Push Man and Other Stories and Yuuho Ashibe's Bride of Deimos

Kazuo Umezu's The Drifting Classroom
One of the most fascinating things about the horror manga genre in Japan in my opinion is that female artists & writers have contributed to its creation and continued success as much as their male counterparts. Unlike western horror fiction and comics where women creators are few and far between, Japanese women have been producing creepy horror stories and manga in equal measure with their fellow male artists for decades.

Manga has a reputation for featuring big-eyed cute characters which it often does, but you'll find a wide variety of artistic styles and storytelling techniques in Japanese horror manga that might surprise even the most jaded comic book enthusiasts. I hope to introduce some of the lesser known sixties and seventies era horror manga artists who's work has yet to be translated into English to Groovy Age of Horror readers in the coming weeks.

In the meantime I highly recommend checking out the translated manga titles which I mentioned above if you want to get a taste for what Japanese artists and writers were creating during the 'groovy age.'