We had a fairly sizable earthquake in my neck of the woods yesterday – a 5.7, centered in Nara Prefecture. I barely felt it, but my phone screamed “Earthquake! Earthquake!” in English just as the shaking hit me. That’s unnerving in a way I can’t communicate in words. And a surprise, since in prior cases I only got an alarm (unnerving but in a different way). This also confirms a trend I’ve noticed that when a quake hits far away from me concerned F & F bombard me with emails checking to see if I’m all right – because despite my repeated efforts they still think Japan is the size of a thimble. And when one happens in my region, I don’t hear a peep from them.
That’s not the only personal connection I felt with this episode. Of course the 1923 Kanto earthquake is one of the defining moments in Japanese history and a frequent subject of fiction. There is indeed a widespread lore that a giant catfish thrashing underground causes earthquakes and that a keystone holding it in place can prevent them. The most famous is at Kashima Jingu in Ibaraki, the impossibly ancient shrine I visited when I lived in Tokyo. This theme was the center of Marukami Haruki’s Super-Frog Saves Tokyo – itself a plot point in Ikuhara Kunihiko’s Mawaru Penguindrum (he then revisited the 1923 quake in Sarazanmai, though it was a thinly-disguised stand-in for the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami).
So yeah, the Great Kanto Earthquake is ever-present in the Japanese consciousness. It’s clearly if not the seminal event of Mao, at least a very important one in the early part of the story. Nanoka is back in the present, and I’m now 100% convinced that those smoothies are some sort of hoodoo to contain her powers or something. And that Uozomi is a shinigami or at least non-human (which might make Nanoka’s grandfather an onmyouji or some such). She drafts Shiraha to help her do more research on the quake, and you have to feel bad for him – he’s totally smitten and he has zero chance.
Rats fleeing the shoutengai, vampire attacks – yeah, clearly in this mythology the 1923 event was not a natural occurrence. Hell, bystanders even reported seeing a giant cat. Back in the past Mao and Otoya discover a mysterious church on a hillside where a recent quake (though not the quake) caused a landslide. Inside is a very creepy nun and a ton of blood seeping through the floor, and it’s soon clear that this is all connected to the Byouki. Soon a bunch of other nuns show up and turn into flea ayakashi (yuck) who proceed to drain Mao’s blood. If Nanoka doesn’t show up when she does (she got a tip from the inoshishi youkai who told Mao about the “western building”) he might have been toast.
As it stands Mao is weakened and Otoya is deeply perturbed about his clothes being torn. But they’re alive and hole up in a small building which they seal with talismans to keep the fleas out. Mao imbibes some kodoku soup (yuck), which he needs to keep his 900 year-old body going. And then smears his blood on Nanoka’s face, telling her to act as a decoy and lure the flea sisters to the church at nightfall, by which time he’ll have recovered enough to deal with them. No one could ever say this guy isn’t a romantic.
Mao takes care of the fleas with the help of Genbu, a giant turtle-snake that’s the embodiment of the water element in Japanese folklore. But if indeed the Byouki is underneath the church somewhere he can’t reach it – all his sword can do is split the rock at the surface. This begs the question I posed last week – could Mao have inadvertently caused the Great Kanto Earthquake himself? In any event on arrival back at the shopping district, the locals are no longer ghostly apparitions but solid figures whose voices the trio can hear. The plot definitely thickens.
