About this book
No rope appears in this night parade. No chains, no shackles. One hundred invented yōkai — born from the rules of three eras of Japanese life, from the framed family precepts and the neighborhood circular board to magnetic ticket gates and pagers, to the red notification badge and the endless scroll — and each one binds with its own body: three brush-tongues, scales of paper tags, a spine of abacus beads, long black hair, root, membrane, tentacle.
At the center is Suzune, the girl with a small red bell at her throat. On the first plate, the Precept-Tongue Crone has already wound its tongues around her shoulders — and she hasn't even noticed yet. Plate by plate her expression changes: not yet noticing, glaring back, calmly reading the direction of the coil, disgusted yet blushing only at the cheeks. The bindings are rarely cruel — they hold her the way rules hold everyone: to correct her, to keep her, to not let the evening end.
At plate ninety-nine, the bindings loosen in the morning light of an out-of-signal window. But on the hundredth plate waits Karamiyo, the Entangled World — one great yōkai wearing every tongue, wing, root and strand of the three eras at once. Whether what comes undone at the end is the binding or the woman herself, only the one who turns the last page will know.
All one hundred yōkai are the artist's original creations; the binding is always the yōkai's own living body — never ropes, never gear
For personal enjoyment only.
Sample plates
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