Momoko and Manga:

Seiichi Hayashi’s Maternal Roots

Ryan Holmberg

Seiichi Hayashi’s name is indelibly associated with Garo, the legendary monthly
comics magazine, which, in turn, is virtually synonymous with “alternative
manga.” From the magazine’s founding in 1964 to its temporary demise in
1997, whether crafting new narrative forms, incorporating visual ideas from
contemporary art and film, favoring fresh forms of graphic expression over
conventional technical skills, striking to the existential core of young adulthood
in developing Japan, or diving to the depths of vulgarity, Garo’s artists
repeatedly redefined what it meant to make comics.
Debuting in the magazine’s November 1967 issue at the age of twenty-
two, Hayashi was one of the first Garo artists to make experimentalism his
monthly métier. Older artists like founder Sanpei Shirato (b. 1932), Shigeru
Mizuki (b. 1922), and Yoshiharu Tsuge (b. 1937) had been publishing work
in Garo that might not have been initially welcomed in mainstream venues.
But their style was nonetheless firmly rooted in the graphic styles, storytelling
techniques, and literary sources of an earlier moment—the mid to late fifties,

Garo No. 72 (February 1970),

supplementary issue
on the artist.

when they themselves had emerged. Born in 1945 and thus by some years these
other artists’ junior, Hayashi helped take Garo in new directions, both inward—
with works engaging his personal life and the struggles of being a young
artist—and outward—with an oeuvre that transcended comics and mixed with
the wider world of Tokyo’s vibrant counterculture.
Hayashi’s activities in the late sixties and early seventies are
paradigmatic of the crossing of artistic media typical of those years. His manga
incorporate drawing styles and storytelling techniques derived from animation,
traditional Japanese art, American comics, French and Japanese nouvelle
vague film, yakuza movies, and popular music.1 The popularity of his Garo
Seiichi Hayashi (early 1970s), work brought him commissions for poster designs from underground theater
photographer unknown. troupes, set designs from experimental filmmakers, and cover designs for books,

xvi xvii
 Morio Agata, Red Colored Elegy,
7” single (Bellwood Records,
April 1972).

magazines, and music albums. His most famous manga, Red Colored Elegy
(Sekishoku erejii, 1970–71), which tells the story of a young man and woman
trying to keep their relationship together while juggling family problems and
the pressure of working as freelance animators, inspired first a hit single in 1972
by folk singer Morio Agata before being turned into a film in 1974 by the same.
Hayashi was not only a respected artist; he was also a small-time pop star.
Using know-how learned while working at To- ei Animation Studios from
1962 to 1965, Hayashi also made his own short animated films, screened at
art-film festivals at home and in Europe. In 1973, he directed his first and only
live-action film, Rubbing Our Cheeks Together in Dreams (Yume ni hohoyose ),
produced by the notorious Ko- ji Wakabayashi and screened at Sasori-za, the
famous independent ATG theater. Around 1970, he started making drawings,
prints, and paintings of impassioned sho- jo and willowy bijinga (traditional
beautiful women), collected in a handful of limited-edition books and exhibited
in prominent Tokyo galleries in the early and mid seventies. His character designs
and TV-commercial animation work for Lotte Koume (Little Plum) candy drops,
which debuted in 1974, won numerous domestic and international prizes. His
images of a young girl in kimono with puckered lips from the sourness remain
on the candy’s packaging to this day.
By this point, Hayashi’s career had moved away from the polymathic
Contemporary Poetry Journal (Gendai shi techo- , January 1970).
experimentalism of his twenties and into more regular illustration work. He

xviii xix
 Garo No. 51 (September 1968),
Garo No. 121 supplementary issue titled
(September 1973). “Strange Manga Masterworks.”

continued to receive awards into the eighties, including the Elba Prize at the about to turn a corner. His popularity within Tokyo’s cultural scene was at
Bologna International Children’s Book Fair in 1984 for his drawings for Miyako its height. The occasion for the essay was a collection of Hayashi’s manga
Moriyama’s Cat Photo Studio (Neko no shashinkan, 1983). His last major from Seirindo- , titled simply The Seiichi Hayashi Collection (Hayashi Seiichi
manga work, a reflection on art, aging, and sex titled The pH 4.5 Guppy Will sakuhinshu- ). Hayashi had recently abandoned “Gold Pollen,” a nebulous
Not Die (Ph 4.5 guppii wa shinanai), was serialized partially in Comic Baku and allegory about postwar Japanese identity, modeled on those he had published
Garo between 1987 and 1990, before being collected as a book from Seirindo- , in Garo in 1967–69. He continued to draw covers and comics for the magazine
Garo’s publisher, in 1991. That year, for Sho- gakukan’s men’s monthly Big Gold, on occasion, but “Gold Pollen” would be the last big thing he did for Garo
Hayashi began Yumemakura (Dream Pillow), a reflection on Japanese aesthetics until The pH 4.5 Guppy. Into the late eighties, he drew for a new alternative
using celluloid transparencies, later refurbished in CG and reissued as a color venue named Yako- (Night Wandering), founded by former Garo editor and
folio edition in 2007. He has remained involved in the world of alternative manga critic Shinzo- Takano in 1972. Amongst the scattered comics he wrote
manga as a judge for the yearly new-talent award for Ax, Garo’s successor. later in the seventies and early eighties was Melancholy Momoko (Yu- utsu na
Thus, when Hayashi wrote “Azami Light” in late 1972, his career was Momoko), a color serial about the everyday life of a young girl named after his

xx xxi
own mother, begun in 1976 for Paper Moon, a woman’s subculture magazine
edited by Shu- ji Terayama. But 1972 marked more or less the end of Hayashi’s
heyday as an experimental manga artist, and the retrospective tone of “Azami
Light”— a thoughtful autobiographical reflection for a twenty-seven-year-old—
suggests that Hayashi sensed change.

One cannot explain the genesis of Hayashi’s original contributions to the comics
medium without exploring the influences of the manga he read as a child and
adolescent, his training as a design professional in the early sixties, his three
years as an inbetweener and key-frame artist at To- ei, and his work for smaller
animation studios later in the decade. But as “Azami Light” suggests, perhaps
the single greatest influence on his work, as on his life, was his mother, Momoko
(1918–93). One often thinks of sho- jo manga of the fifties and sixties as being
singularly obsessed with the relationship between daughters and mothers. Yet
the extent to which the teaching and person of Momoko shaped Hayashi’s work
on both formal and thematic levels makes his oeuvre truly unique.
If there is no father in “Azami Light,” it is because he died when his son,
born March 7, 1945, was not yet one year old. The family had been stationed
in Yingkou, in Manchukuo, the puppet state controlled by the Japanese in
northeast China. At Hayashi’s birth, the empire was readying to fall. That week,
American bombers began flattening Japan’s cities. Okinawa was about to be
invaded. Land battles on the continent were going the way of the Chinese. In
August, the Soviet Union invaded from the north. Even after the war ended,
in some cases it took years for Japanese nationals to be repatriated from the
former colonies.2 Garo No. 98 (October 1971).

While waiting for permission to return to Japan from Dalian, Hayashi’s

father, an employee for a private company half-run by the colonial authorities,
died of malnutrition and severe cold. So did Hayashi’s only sister, his senior by the area where Nakano Sun Plaza now stands, that gigantic slab of a
four years. “I have scars from frostbite on one of my feet,” the artist explained building visible to the left as one exits north from Nakano Station. In the
in an interview in 1992. “Nutrition was bad, there was nothing to eat. Chiang fifties, this area was filled with wooden nagaya row houses; Hayashi and his
Kai-shek promised no retributions for past wrongs, but because the Japanese mother stayed in one of the last of these houses before his new job at To- ei
were sequestered in their own area, nonetheless . . . food didn’t get in. People enabled them, in 1962, to move to Shimo-ochiai, located between Shinjuku
just withered away. Northern Manchuria was not like mainland Japan. We’re and Ikebukuro.
talking nights tens of degrees below zero. People died.” 3 What remained of his Hayashi was an avid reader of manga, as “Azami Light” makes clear.
family (he and his mother) finally returned to Japan in 1947. Hayashi was two. But unlike most baby-boomer manga sho- nen, his artistic background was
Momoko was thirty. informed by a certain upper-class nurture that was at odds with the economic
Hayashi’s own personal memories begin in Japan in the late forties, difficulties of his own childhood. His father had been a graduate of the elite
while living with his mother first in Chiba, her family home, before settling in Kyoto University. His mother was the eldest daughter of a lawyer and former
Nakano, in western Tokyo. The latter is the setting of “Azami Light,” specifically head of the Nakano School (Rikugun Nakano Gakko- ), the primary intelligence

xxii xxiii
training academy for the Imperial Japanese Army. But with her parents
having died during the war, and no inherited property to fall back on, after
repatriation Hayashi’s mother found herself in a situation in stark contrast to
her own comfortable upbringing. In various texts, including a book-length
reminiscence of life with his mother, Momoko and Me (Momoko san to boku,
1994), Hayashi attributes her mental breakdown in the fifties in part to broken
class pride.4
Momoko was versed in the cultural trappings expected of a woman of
her class: calligraphy, painting, ikebana, and the various craft arts Japanese
group under the name shugei (handicraft)—origami and forms of paper and
cloth braiding and wrapping. She forced this culture upon her son in different
ways. “In elementary school, one had to eat the meals provided by school. Once
in a while, however, we were allowed to bring our own bento- lunch from home.
Momoko put her all into it. Against a backdrop of yellow egg, she’d arrange
pink denbu fish flakes like flowering cherry blossoms. I don’t think she ever
gave a thought to what my classmates would think. It probably never even
occurred to her that their eyes would make a beeline for my lunch, nor that it
would become the butt of their jokes. That’s why I hated bento- day. The night
before I’d beg her, over and over, please, anything but an artistic bento- .”5
She also steered him toward fine art. “Calligraphy, abacus, oil painting
. . . when I got bored with one thing, she’d look for the next. She tried hard
to find the bud of some talent in me from an early age.” Oil painting lessons
continued the longest. Every Saturday, Momoko took her son to a private
atelier in the Arai Yakushi neighborhood, north of Nakano. “And then during
Garo No. 100 (December 1971).
summer vacation, we’d pack up the oil paints and head for the sea. She forced
me to paint on the beach. It took some courage to stand like that before a
canvas with so many people around. I’d start painting, and people would come
and watch, making me completely nervous. I hated those hours. I think they are tradition-bound age, distraught because forced to survive in one less secure.
to blame for why I still dislike to draw from life outdoors.” 6 One might see these traits as “classical,” but they are also “popular” in the
This episode echoes that in “Azami Light” of the young Seiichi drawing sense that they derive from and symbolically embody notions of culture and
for the sake of guests at home. One might first read the latter anecdote as motherhood held by many Japanese.
testimony of a child’s precociousness. But it equally expresses a parent’s class, The notes below seek to draw out the connections between Hayashi’s
and the exertion of a traditional form of acculturation upon Hayashi at an famed Garo work and his relationship with his mother. They also aim
early age. One typically thinks of overt classicizing traits in Hayashi’s Garo to elucidate the wide-ranging references of his work, which are readily
manga and illustration work as directly linked to Japanese art history, and understood by most Japanese, though not by readers lacking familiarity with
sometimes they are. But it is important to remember the mediating influence of the country’s history and culture. Much more could be said about the works
his mother: inky brush strokes, reference to Edo prints, graphic flatness, origami from the vantages of cultural and political history. The goal here is to stay
cranes—stereotyped signs of “Japanese-ness”—often occur as a means to figure within the purview of “Azami Light.”
the emotional world of troubled women and grieving mothers raised in a more

xxiv xxv
 Hayashi has described “Dwelling in Flowers” as an “I-novel” (shisho- -
setsu), referring to that type of confessional semi-autobiographical literature,
told in the first person, typically by a male protagonist, that is regarded as
one of the distinctive genres of modern Japanese literature.8 In Momoko and
Me, Hayashi identified the specific setting of the manga as follows. It was the
spring of 1969 and he and his mother had just moved from their apartment in
Nakai, in western Tokyo, to a house in Fuchu- , a town west of the city. Hayashi
was engaged to be married, and had rented larger quarters with a view to
a future family. “But the marriage plans collapsed. Momoko forced her way
between my fiancée and I, breaking things apart. I had grown tired of Momoko.
I wanted to live alone. I wanted to live by myself and rethink my relationship
with her. I wanted space and time.” He moved his mother to nearby Den’en
Cho- fu, and himself (at the urging of critic Junzo- Ishiko) to Ju- niso- in west
Shinjuku, into the famous Hoshi Apartments, down the hall from Yoshiharu
Tsuge and his wife. Residence in Fuchu- had not lasted five months.9
While mothers appeared frequently in Hayashi’s previous work, with
coded reference to his own mother as early as 1968, the direct incorporation
of Momoko began right after this period, and in a quite literal fashion. In late
1969, Hayashi began painting stand-alone pictures. The first collection of this
work was published as Scarlet Crime Flowers (Ko- hanka, March 1970) with
Gento- sha, a small house run by Shinzo- Takano, editor at Garo. Most show
a young girl wearing colorful yukata (cotton summer kimono) in dramatic
poses; others are monochrome pen illustrations in a style similar to that of
Red Colored Elegy, on which he was working at the time. Many of the images
The Seiichi Hayashi Collection are accompanied by poetic inscriptions in cursive “grass script” (so- sho). These,
(Seirindo- , December 1972),
like the calligraphic title pages of many of his Garo manga, including “Red
slipcase cover.
Dragonfly,” were done by his mother. Furthermore, each copy of the book in its
first printing (a limited edition of 1,000) contained an origami crane folded by
Momoko and glued to the endpapers. Senbazuru—“one thousand cranes,”

Scarlet Crime Flowers (Gento- sha, March 1970),

Dwelling in Flowers was originally published as “Hana ni sumu” in The Seiichi origami crane by the artist's mother.

Hayashi Collection, released by Garo publisher Seirindo- in December 1972.

“Azami Light” was written as the afterword to the same book.
The manga was originally printed with a now defunct offset technique.
“I am not sure of the details,” wrote Hayashi in the early nineties, “but
apparently the method was used actively before the war for printing posters. At
the time, it was still eking by with jobs for labels on toilet-paper wrappers and
apple crates.”7

xxvi xxvii
a popular symbol of well-wishing—for her son, with whom she no longer lived.
Origami cranes appear a number of times in “Dwelling in Flowers.” On
one page, Momoko is shown folding them against a field of black. While living Red Dragonfly was originally published as “Akatonbo” in Garo no. 46 (June
in Nakai in the late sixties, Hayashi would often return home at night to find 1968). Hayashi would create a fair number of manga with overt classicizing
his mother sitting alone in darkness. “After a few times, I realized that Momoko traits over the years; this was the first. Of his manga, it is second in fame only
remained motionless as long as I was out. She’d leave the lights off, even to Red Colored Elegy.
after dark, and just sit there in the room doing nothing. Even while out I’d “Red Dragonfly” was partially inspired by Hayashi’s childhood
get worried, thinking of Momoko sitting there by herself . . . What did she experiences. In “Azami Light,” he describes a male caller’s night visit to his
think about? Her happy childhood? Her dream-filled college days? Was she home, and the distance that grew between him and his mother due to this
going over her life again and again, looking for yet another misfortune to shady liaison. In a small article on the subject of tears for the magazine COM in
affirm her unhappiness? . . . Finding no joy even in her son’s success, she just 1970, Hayashi was more specific about the autobiographical basis of the work.
sat there, folding koyori [braided paper] and cranes, not moving . . . Wherever “The first time I saw my mother cry, I must have been in either third or fourth
you thought Momoko might have been, there would inevitably be koyori and grade. I woke up in the middle of the night and found her staring at a single
origami cranes littered about. As the fallen leaves announce autumn, so they spot on the ceiling, her tears flowing. Literally flowing. They dropped silently
told of Momoko’s furtive existence.” 10 from her wide-open, bloodshot eyes. Tears slowly filled her eyes, and then
In 1976, as part of its Saturday one-hour drama programming, the listlessly flowed over, again filling up, a rhythm like pulsing blood. I thought
national public television station NHK aired a three-part “Gekiga Series,” it strange, watching, thinking that they were like living things. I felt that her
adapting the work of artists from Garo. “Dwelling in Flowers” was the title heart itself was weeping. Those tears, even before I had started watching, even
of one of the installments, though content-wise it derived from Red Colored after I stopped, slowly filled her eyes, listlessly flowed over, and disappeared.
Elegy, not the present manga. ‘Red Dragonfly,’ which I drew for Garo, was about that.”11
As with “Dwelling in Flowers,” in “Red Dragonfly” Hayashi translates
the personal into widely popular terms. Japanese readers recognize the title
immediately. It comes from a children’s song of the same name, based on a
poem by Rofu- Miki (1889–1964) from 1921, set to music by composer Ko- saku
Yamada (1886–1965) in 1927. Probably the most famous children’s song in
Japan, “Red Dragonfly” has a complicated history of reception. It describes
specifically the poet’s sadness as a young boy when his nanny left to marry
at the age of fifteen, never to return. Because the word used in the song for
nanny (neeya) can also be used for sister, many Japanese know “Red Dragonfly”
instead as a eulogy about sibling separation, imagined from the viewpoint of
a younger sibling, standing amongst hovering dragonflies against the autumn
sunset. The lyrics are as follows.

Red dragonfly of the dwindling dusk

When was it that I saw it alight?

The mulberry fruit from the mountain fields

Was it an illusion that a branch was caught in the carriage?

xxviii xxix
 My nanny of fifteen has gone off to be a bride Farewell farewell palm tree island
And no longer does she even hear from home Going home on the swaying boat
Ah, father, I hope you are well
Red dragonfly of the dwindling dusk Tonight again mother and I pray
Sits there still on the end of the clothes pole
“As a child,” Hayashi explains, “I didn’t realize what the song was really about.
As Japan’s modernization progressed, and increasing numbers of young people I simply liked the image of a mother and son living peacefully together in a
began moving to the cities to find work and a better life, the emotive rural mountain village. When I started writing the manga, I revisited ‘Village Autumn’
landscape of “Red Dragonfly” became more important than its specific theme and was surprised to find how similar it was to my own circumstances as a
of female rite of passage and nanny-child or sibling separation. Hayashi’s child.” To strengthen that personal connection, Hayashi placed an i’ei (death
manga seems to touch on both, evoking stereotypes of furusato (rural portrait) of a father on the wall in the panel showing mother and son eating,
hometown) with thatched roofs, bamboo groves, and floating dragonflies, while whereas in “Village Autumn” the father’s survival is still hoped for.
relating the sentiments of the song to his own mother’s life, whose arranged That the work is not purely autobiographical is clear from two things.
marriage carried her off to Manchuria. She never saw her parents again; they First, the single mother of “Red Dragonfly” is a war widow in the typical sense.
passed away before she returned to Japan in 1947. Momoko’s calligraphy on The i’ei depicts a man in military uniform. In contrast, Momoko’s husband,
the title page, and Hayashi’s use of ink-brush techniques learned as a child Hayashi’s father, was not a soldier, and died of health complications during
under his mother’s direction, establishes a connection between the manga and the hard period between surrender and repatriation. Second, Hayashi has no
his mother at a graphic level. furusato to speak of. He was born in colonial China and has no memory of the
While creating “Red Dragonfly,” there was a second song on Hayashi’s place. He was raised in urban Tokyo and has only the dimmest recollection
mind: “Village Autumn” (“Sato no aki”), written by Nobuo Saito- (1911–87 ) of being taken to his mother’s family home in Chiba, about which she spoke
and composed by Minoru Kainuma (1909–71) in 1945. Soon after the war, the very little.
Japanese Ministry of Welfare established Repatriation Support Bureaus (Hikiage Given its thematic concerns, it was appropriate that “Red Dragonfly”
engo- kyoku) throughout the country for returning soldiers and civilians was reprinted the following year in the conservative, middle-class women’s
stationed in the former colonies. Hayashi and his mother were processed at magazine Woman’s Self ( Josei jishin, May 26, 1969). There it was prefaced as
the one in Maizuru, near Kyoto. The Bureau also hosted a radio program that being “a much-discussed work dealing with women’s love and sex” and having
provided information to dispersed families about the whereabouts of recent “caused a stir amongst the Zengakuren [the politicized All-University Student
returnees. Its theme song was “Village Autumn,” about a boy with his mother in Association] and women’s college students.” This was the first of three Hayashi
the countryside waiting for father to return from the South Pacific. manga to appear in Woman’s Self, a testimony to the wide appeal of his manga
despite their unconventional formal qualities.
Quiet quiet village autumn
Through the back door at night I see nuts falling from the tree
Ah, just my mother and I alone
Chestnuts boiling on the hearth

Bright bright stars in the sky

Crying crying ducks I hear crossing the night
Ah, my father’s smiling face
I recall while eating chestnuts

xxx xxxi
 two Supermans in the DC style—forced to battle it out, despite being friends,
to decide who is the true defender of truth and justice. In “Oh, into the Dawn’s
Yamanba Lullaby was originally published as “Yamanba komoriuta” in Garo no. Light” (“Oo, akatsuki no hikari ni,” Garo, February 1968), a naïve Batman
50 (September 1968). With this work, Hayashi began experimenting with the cannot figure out why the world has turned against him.
aesthetics of Pop art and New Wave cinema. As was the case with many of his Hayashi had been picking up American comics at Iena, a bookstore
contemporaries, this involved a simultaneous plunge into the popular culture of in the Ginza specializing in imported Western-language publications and
the Edo period and that of postwar Americanization. The repeated appearance frequented by artists in various fields. Hayashi claims that what struck him
of origami cranes in the manga’s first pages suggests that this enterprise too was most about American comic books were their formal values: the universal
mediated by Hayashi’s relationship with his mother. rendering of mass through hatching and shading. But as his early Garo works
One would never guess from a work like “Red Dragonfly,” but Hayashi’s show, Hayashi was also interested in the symbolism of the superhero and its
entry into Garo was through a series of allegories dealing with the fate of bankruptcy against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. Thus it is on the side of
postwar Japan under the shadow of American power and culture. American oppression that Batman sits in “Yamanba Lullaby.” As the back of his chair says,
comic book superheroes appear in a couple, as they do in “Yamanba Lullaby.” His he is the “sponsor” of the Demon King’s persecution of Japanese youth. It is not
first submission to Garo, which was rejected, was about two supermen—that is, explained why Superman flies southward with an olive branch in his mouth at
the manga’s beginning, but it might be to go “wage peace” against Indochina.
He roars through the sky like the bombers taking off from American military
bases in Japan.
To match these overblown expressions of Americanism, references to
Japanese popular culture in “Yamanba Lullaby” are also campily exaggerated.
Hayashi had recently purchased a set of the first eighteen volumes of the
Ukiyoe Masterworks Collection (Ukiyoe meisaku senshu- , 1967–68), from
publisher Yamada Shoin. A large-format, color-plate, hardcover-slipcase series,
it was the era’s luxury library of Edo-period woodblock prints. For “Yamanba
Lullaby,” Hayashi turned primarily to the two volumes on Kitagawa Utamaro
(c. 1753–1806). The imagery of the mother copies generally from Utamaro’s
iconic bijinga prints, a major source of modern stereotypes of Edo visual style
and traditional Japanese feminine beauty. The reference to “facing mirrors”
(awase kagami ) at the beginning of “Yamanba Lullaby” possibly refers to
Utamaro’s Ohisa of Takashimaya with Facing Mirrors ( Awase kagami no
Takashimaya Ohisa), which shows the daughter of a famous Edo businessman
dexterously performing her toilet with a mirror in each hand. Utamaro often
exploited female vanity for male visual pleasure, here using the device of the
double mirrors to simultaneously show the woman’s face and silken nape.12 In
Hayashi’s case, the facing mirrors are presumably meant to evoke the pathos of
a middle-aged woman’s vanity confronted with fading beauty and rebellious
adolescent children.
“Oh, into the Dawn’s Light,”
Most important for the core theme of the manga is Utamaro’s famous
Garo No. 42 (February 1968). Yamanba and Kintaro- series, from the last years of the eighteenth century.

xxxii xxxiii
 Kintoki, one of the generals of the medieval warlord Minamoto no Yorimitsu
(948–1021). It is the odd Japanese person today who doesn’t know Kintaro- ’s
feats of incredible strength, so often have they been told in children's books.
In the Edo period, they were well known through puppet plays, kabuki
performances, and woodblock prints. He uproots a tree to build a bridge. He
wrestles a bear, an eagle, and a giant carp. He rides around on the back of a
bear while wielding a giant axe. His skin is typically red in color because he is
the son of an oni (demon).
This wild mountain child required an adequately uncivilized mother, so
Edo chroniclers put him at the breast of the Yamanba. In order to fit existing
legends of Yorimitsu’s meeting with the superchild Sakata Kintoki, the Yamanba
was placed specifically on Mt. Ashigara, the northernmost peak of the caldera
above the famous hot springs region of Hakone, whereas in folklore her
mountain residence had been unspecific.14 In Hayashi’s manga, rather than
being adopted by Yorimitsu to serve as his vassal, Kintaro- leaves Mt. Ashigara
on his own, in line with the lone wolf yakuza imagery (in the form of actor Ken
Takakura) that appears during his first battle with the Demon King’s minions.
Hayashi’s rewriting also reflects the common social phenomenon (mentioned
above) of children compelled to leave family and home in the countryside to
seek employment, and a more exciting life, in Tokyo.
While puppet and kabuki plays had established precedents for
interpreting the Yamanba as a caring mother, Utamaro further sensualized her
appearance with the languorous bodily contours, exposed flesh, and postcoital
Kitagawa Utamaro,
dishevelment common to his bijinga prints, which often depict prostitutes.
Ohisa of Takashimaya with
Facing Mirrors (c. 1795), Utamaro’s Yamanba and Kintaro- series ranges in subject from mother and son
polychrome woodblock print. playing games to Kintaro- having his hair cut and being fed, bathed, dressed,
and (most famously) breast-fed by his mother. It is the most intimate of these,
the bathing and suckling images, that are reproduced in the Yamada Shoin
Before Utamaro, the Yamanba (also pronounced Yamauba), whose name means volumes Hayashi owned. Hayashi describes Utamaro’s image of motherhood
“mountain hag,” was a figure of primarily negative associations. In folklore, she as “the most cosmopolitan,” versus the grotesqueries of the Noh and folklore
beckons weary travelers into her hut and tries to eat their newborns; she sneaks tradition. While he uses Utamaro’s imagery to classicize post-Taisho- stereotypes
into a farmhouse while the mother is away and devours one of her children. of the cloying Japanese mother, that older tradition’s image of the Yamanba
On the other hand, if appeased, she can bring fortune and fertility. In the as a bestial and hysteric anti-mother is nonetheless still alive in his manga.
medieval Noh play Yamanba, she functions as a Buddhist symbol of suffering Now the Yamanba’s barbarity is a function not of childlessness, but of being
and delusion, forced to wander the mountains perpetually through the cycles spurned and abandoned by one’s children in middle age—an appropriate
of rebirth for her attachments to past wrongdoing.13 reinterpretation for the demographic shifts and generational conflicts of the
While this image of the Yamanba as a child-devouring anti-mother postwar period. One can also imagine the tensions in Hayashi's personal life.
continued into the Edo period, she became more popularly known as the To dramatize this conflict, Hayashi has turned to other Edo culture,
mother of Kintaro- (Golden Boy), the legendary childhood name of Sakata specifically the physical and verbal stylizations of kabuki theater and kabuki

xxxiv xxxv
 prints. Most obvious is Kintaro- ’s declaration of “Shibaraku!”—“Hold it right
there!” If kabuki can be reduced to a single cliché, this is it. Dating back to
1697, “Shibaraku” is the name of a short piece historically staged either in
between longer productions or as part of the annual, all-star revue kaomise
performance. The play is named after its climax. Onstage, an upright but
somewhat hapless samurai is being assaulted by a band of villains. Offstage, a
voice thunders “Shibaraku!” Warrior Kamakura Gongoro- Kagemasa, the ultimate
in kabuki male bravado, throws back the curtains and stomps down the raised
hanamichi that cuts through the audience from the rear of the theater to
the stage. He wears ostentatious clothing and thick red-and-white-striped
makeup. With a few more stomps of his feet and swings of his sword, the bad
men are dispersed and the play ends. The reduced facial stylizations of Kintaro-
in the corresponding panels of “Yamanba Lullaby” are clearly derived from
Edo yakusha-e (actor prints) of the Katsukawa school of the late eighteenth
century, as is Kintaro- ’s grimacing standing pose on page 69.
It is not just Edo and contemporary Japanese culture that shaped
“Yamanba Lullaby.” Asked where the robot came from, Hayashi responded
that the strongest influence was The King and the Mockingbird (Le Roi et
l’oiseau, original version released in 1952), the legendary French animated
feature directed by Paul Grimault. This film was well known by animators at
To- ei, where Hayashi worked before becoming a manga artist. It has been cited
by Studio Ghibli cofounders Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata as one of their
greatest inspirations. When Grimault set out to complete the film in the mid
sixties, he explored hiring Japanese animators, approaching Sadao Tsukioka,
formerly Hayashi’s mentor at To- ei and at the time his boss at KnacK (Nakku), a
small animation studio. No deal was struck, but the prospect left an impression
upon Hayashi. The film’s story of a lowly chimney sweep and his beloved
shepherdess fleeing from an autocratic king wanting the maiden for himself
recalls Kintaro- ’s fight to protect his love from the Demon King Mao- . The king of
Le Roi et l'oiseau likewise drives a giant robot in pursuit of the girl, whom he is
determined to marry by force. While the head of Grimault’s robot is shaped like
a Roman gladiator’s helmet, Hayashi constructs his out of cylindrical barrels
and protrusions, reminiscent of the tin toy robots of his own childhood in the
late forties and fifties.

Kitagawa Utamaro, Yamanba and Kitaro- : Breast-feeding (c. 1795),

polychrome woodblock print.

xxxvi xxxvii
 whose life is dictated completely by sexual desire.” The manga was to conclude
with the protagonist alone in an urban wasteland, temporarily joining with
-
Gold Pollen was originally serialized as "Ogon kafun" in three chapters across others to fight against common enemies, but in the end isolated amidst rubble.
Garo nos. 98–100 (October–December 1971). It is an unfinished work. While “The end of ‘Flower Poem’ was always leftover,” Hayashi explained about “Gold
visually a departure for Hayashi in its Expressionist touches, it also marked a Pollen.” “This time I decided to approach it from a different angle.”15
return to the allegorical orientation of his manga of the mid to late sixties. The first character to appear in “Gold Pollen” is a horseman wearing
In an afterword to a collection of his manga from 1976, Hayashi linked a medieval European great helm. He is named Ikki Kita, a historical figure,
“Gold Pollen” to an earlier work titled “Flower Poem” (“Hana no uta,” Garo, the only one in the manga. Kita (1883–1937) was an author and activist
February–April 1969). It too is an allegory that the artist quit after three associated with the rise of Japanese fascism. He promoted colonial expansion
chapters. Graphically in the vein of the sunny Pop-neoclassical mix Hayashi had in the liberationist terms common to the thinking behind the Greater East Asia
been exploring since 1968, “Flower Poem” follows a man in his early twenties as Co-Prosperity Sphere. He espoused a form of state socialism, headed by the
he struggles with a corporate job, romance, and the pull of rural home. Said the emperor, under which Japan and East Asia would be united against Western
artist, “I wanted to tell, at an extremely abstract level, the story of a young man imperialism. Kita’s so-called “Sho- wa Restoration” helped inspire the notorious
February 26 incident in 1936, an attempted coup d’état organized by a cadre
of young army officers. They had aimed to assassinate the prime minister and
other top political figures, take control of the media, police, and the Imperial
Palace, and install the emperor as the sole political authority. While failing in
its primary goals, and though its leadership was tried and executed, the event
did have the affect, by way of appeasement, of granting greater power to the
military in political affairs, leading ultimately to the military government that
oversaw Japan’s entry into World War II.
During the violent conflicts between right and left, and the
impassioned debates about “direct action” versus parliamentary process in
the late sixties, Kita’s writings and the February 26 incident once again became
subjects of focused interest. Then there was Yukio Mishima’s suicide in 1970,
not a year before Hayashi began drawing “Gold Pollen.” Mishima had already
dramatized the February 26 coup d’état in his story “Patriotism” (“Yu- koku”)
from 1961, made into a film in 1966. He had written about Kita in both his
novels and nonfiction on multiple occasions mid-decade. In 1967, Mishima
enlisted in the Japanese Self-Defense Force and went through basic training.
The following year he formed the Shield Society, a private militia recruited
from rightwing college students. On November 25, 1970, Mishima and four
members of the Shield Society occupied SDF offices in central Tokyo. The
novelist called on the barracked soldiers to join him in a coup to restore the
emperor's authority, before committing seppuku. The Sea of Fertility (Ho- jo- no
umi ), the series of four novels Mishima had finished just prior to these events,
had likewise been inspired by acts of rightwing terrorism and ritual suicide in
“Flower Poem,”
the thirties, with direct reference to the figure and thought of Kita.
Garo No. 58 (April 1969). Books, manga, and movies on Kita and the February 26 incident were

xxxviii xxxix
quite common in the early seventies, as part of a wider fascination with prewar
radicalism. Many also turned to the life, thought, and persecution of Japanese
anarchists in the twenties, most famously the anti-statist and free love
-
advocate Sakae O sugi (1885 –1923), beaten to death by police for his political
associations. The films of Yoshishige Yoshida, particularly Eros Plus Massacre
-
(Erosu purasu gyakusatsu, 1969), about O sugi, and Coup d’État (Kaigenrei,
1973), about February 26, are probably the best known. In 1970, in the same
article in COM in which he had described his mother’s tears, Hayashi praised
the prison diaries of Daijiro- Furuta (1900–1925), an anarchist arrested and
-
executed as part of a plot to kill a military general in revenge for O sugi’s death.
In “Cleome” (“Suicho- ka”), published in Yako- in April 1972, Hayashi created a
melodramatic story about love and assassination reminiscent of Yoshida’s Eros
Plus Massacre. About “Gold Pollen” Hayashi says, “I was thinking of attempts at
a postwar restoration [sengo isshin ], like the student movement and Mishima’s
February 26. I thought it might be interesting to depict a revolution by the
gods.” His adoption of Expressionist brushwork and symbols like the horse rider
was likely an attempt to evoke the artistic tastes of liberals and anarchists of
that transitional era, the Taisho- period.
Meanwhile, the Kintaro- -Yamanba legend was still on Hayashi’s mind.
Once again, in “Gold Pollen” the protagonist is a preternaturally strong and
rambunctious boy born of the “mountain crone.” He is now named Hinomaru,
Nagasawa Rosetsu, Yamanba (1797),
after the national rising sun flag. It is worth noting that, around the time as reproduced in Nobuo Tsuji, Lineage
“Gold Pollen” was being drawn, Hayashi had a new run-in with the Yamanba of Eccentrics (Bijutsu shuppansha,
in art history. He had just published a review of Nobuo Tsuji’s classic Lineage March 1970).

of Eccentrics (Kiso- no keifu, 1970) in the August 1971 issue of Contemporary

Poetry Journal (Gendai shi techo- ). Originally serialized under the subtitle
“The Edo Avant-Garde” in the art magazine Bijutsu techo- between July and realistic.” He is referring to a painting from 1797 that shows the Yamanba in
December 1968, Tsuji’s text is known for excavating a number of overlooked her traditional harrowed version, with overgrown toenails, weathered face,
Edo painters and printmakers whose brash figures, virile brushwork, obsessive and an infant Kintaro- clinging to her tattered garb.16 Had Utamaro’s sensuous
subject matter, and/or rough-and-tumble lifestyles set them at odds with the “cosmopolitan” fantasy lost its charm?
Apollonian canon represented by the likes of, say, Utamaro and the Katsukawa Most of the other characters in “Gold Pollen” come from Buddhism.
school—Hayashi’s reference points in “Yamanba Lullaby.” In his review, Hayashi Asked why, Hayashi responded: “The gods of Western antiquity stink of
first spotlights late Edo printmaker Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s “leap to stardom at humanity, they are flawed. The Shinto- gods of Japan are the same. On the
age 30,” his dedication to art versus the whoring and drinking of his teacher other hand, the Buddhist deities that have been popularized in Japan do not
and colleagues, and his success as a “performing artist” in the sense that he have this human odor; they are lacking in any personal interest. So I thought
always gave the public what they wanted and double of what they expected. it might be interesting to draw them instead as humans.” Hayashi has cast
(Was the twenty-five-year-old star Hayashi thinking of himself?) Then he turns mainly the lower deities, Buddhism’s defenders and enemies, not the Buddhas
to another artist. “Of the various Yamanba I have seen, Nagasawa Rosetsu’s themselves—in other words, those that fight over mortal souls, rather than the
reverberates most strongly with the image inside my own head. It is the most sedentary embodiments of enlightenment.

xl xli
 First there are the Jaki, the goblin-like figures that pester Hinomaru. Their
name means “deceitful demon.” They are symbols of the delusion and wrongdoing
that make beings stray from the proper Buddhist path. In East Asian art history,
the Jaki are mainly known not as independent figures, but as the fat, ugly
creatures crushed beneath the feet of the Shitenno- , the Four Heavenly Kings who
protect the dharma, the Buddhist law. In Hayashi’s manga, young Hinomaru is not
only the brother of a Jaki; he sleeps with one too—which suggests young Japan’s
association with the powers of delusion rather than enlightenment. But unique
to Japanese tradition, there are the figures of Tento- ki (Celestial Lamp Demon) and
Ryu- to- ki (Dragon Lamp Demon), two Jaki who have repented after being trampled
by the Shitenno- and now carry lanterns to light the way of the Buddha. That
Hayashi appreciated the Jaki’s ambivalence is noted below.
Toward the end of the manga Indra (Taishakuten in Japanese) appears. In
the Mahayana tradition of East Asia, he commands the Four Heavenly Kings, those
responsible for protecting the dharma against Jaki-type threats. One of Indra’s Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Old Palace at So- ma (c. 1845–46),
avatars is the rooster, which in “Gold Pollen” is presumably also used because polychrome woodblock triptych.

of the bird’s associations with male arrogance and aggression. His counterpart,
the female Yakshi Goddess (Yasha joshin) with whom he sleeps in chapter three
of “Gold Pollen,” is traditionally another guardian figure. They are the buxom Returning to the Jaki: Hayashi had a soft spot for these beasts. One
nymphs found on temple and stupa gates and walls in India and Southeast Asia. appears in his work as early as “Giant Fish” (“Kyodai na sakana”), in the May
Hayashi may be thinking of her in relationship to Hariti (Kishimojin in Japanese), 1968 issue of Garo. While drawing “Gold Pollen,” he made a four-minute
a popular folk deity in Japan and patron of female fertility, childbirth, and animation titled “Song of Demon Love” (“Kiren-uta”), first screened at the
motherhood. Interestingly, given Hayashi’s fascination with the Yamanba, Hariti Tokyo Animation Festival 71. It also stars a Jaki, featured in some of the same
historically began in South Asia as a cannibalistic demon, only subsequently shadowy interior spaces rendered in “Gold Pollen.” The two are clearly sibling
being transformed into a guardian—similar to the Yamanba’s makeover in the works. Hayashi published a short blurb on “Song of Demon Love” in the
Edo period. As a Yakshi, it is her duty to fight against Jaki-related beings, like November 1971 issue of the magazine Film (Firumu). In its entirety: “I like Jakis.
Hinomaru, which she does in the manga in the form of a giant skeleton. If to live is to become polluted, then people can only live by negotiating sin.
This is not one of her typical forms within Hinduism or Buddhism. Life is the realm of sin and worldly desires. Until death, people bear the sin of
As evident from the drawing on page 126, Hayashi had been inspired by the living. If that’s the case, if that’s truly the case, someone once said, then one
famous triptych by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861), Old Palace at So- ma (So- ma should become a demon. Humans should pursue a philosophy of happiness
no furudairi, c. 1845–46), showing the wicked princess Takiyasha (whose name within this very consciousness of sin. One might call such a person unhappy,
contains within it the Japanese characters for yakshi), daughter of a failed but it also gives life to the idea of an inverse utopia. I have never shed tears
contender to the throne in Kyoto in the tenth century, calling forth a giant over my own sins, but I have cried many times over sins committed by heartless
skeleton to defend her against one of the emperor’s emissaries. It is possible others. Thus, I will become a demon god. The Jaki, used as assassins, in this
Hayashi additionally had in mind the finale of The Magic Boy (Sho- nen sarutobi world, the world of sin, see dreams of that other world. Shall we start counting
sasuke, 1959), an early animated feature from To- ei. Hayashi’s Hinomaru has his murders instead to put ourselves to sleep? ” 17
hair cropped in a fashion similar to the head of that film’s hero, the ninja Sarutobi Should “Dwelling in Flowers,” drawn the following year, also be read as
Sasuke. Furthermore, Sasuke’s archenemy is the sorceress Yasha Princess (Yasha a Jaki and Yamanba story?
hime), who takes the form of a skeleton in the movie’s climatic battle scene.

xlii xliii
1 See Ryan Holmberg, “A Drawing Romance: Red Colored Elegy,” Art on Paper
(November–December 2008).

2 Unless otherwise noted, information pertaining to Hayashi’s life and career

comes from personal interviews and email exchanges with the artist conducted
in 2012–13.

3 “Hayashi Seiichi intabyu- ,” Garo no. 330 (July 1992), page 15.

4 Hayashi, Momoko san to boku (Tokyo: Pharaoh kikaku, 1994), pages 152–7 and
passim; “Hayashi Seiichi intabyu- ,” page 17.

5 Hayashi, Momoko san to boku, page 60.

6 Hayashi, Momoko san to boku, page 62.

7 Hayashi, Momoko san to boku, page 114.

8 “Hayashi Seiichi intabyu- ,” page 17.

9 Hayashi, Momoko san to boku, pages 113–4.

10 Hayashi, Momoko san to boku, pages 109–10.

11 Hayashi, “Namida ni tsuite,” COM (August 1970), reprinted in Hayashi Seiichi

sakuhinshu- (Tokyo: Seirindo- , 1972), page 243.

12 On these themes in Utamaro’s work, see Julie Nelson Davis, Utamaro and the
Spectacle of Beauty (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008).

13 On the historical evolution of the Yamanba, see Noriko T. Reider, “Yamauba:

Representation of the Japanese Mountain Witch in the Muromachi and Edo
Periods,” International Journal of Asian Studies 2:2 (2005), pages 239–64.

14 On Kintaro- and the Yamanba, see also Torii Fumiko, Kintaro- no tanjo- (Tokyo:
Bensei shuppan, 2002).

15 Hayashi, “Jisaku kaisetsu,” in Suicho- ka: Hayashi Seiichi gekiga sakuhinshu- ,

vol. 2 ( Tokyo: Hokuto- shobo- , 1976), pages 184–5.

16 Hayashi, “Tooi ashita e no ehon,” Gendai shi techo- (August 1971), reprinted in
Hayashi Seiichi sakuhinshu- , page 247.

17 Hayashi, “Kiren-uta,” Firumu, supplemental issue (November 15, 1971), reprinted

in Hayashi Seiichi sakuhinshu- , page 250.

xliv xlv
Ryan Holmberg would like to acknowledge the help of the following individuals:
Seiichi Hayashi, Fusanosuke Natsume, Minoru Sasaki, Yukari Fujimoto,
Mitsuhiro Asakawa, Kentaro- Miwa, Masari Shimamura, Kenji Kajiya, Mari
Takamatsu, Robert Goree, Alicia Volk, Justin Jesty, Ory Bartal, Jilly Traganou,
Dan Nadel, Tomomi Sohn, Raymond Sohn, Priya Desai, and Prajna Desai.

A portion of the research for this book was supported by a Postdoctoral

Fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

xlvi
 seiichi hayashi
gold pollen and other stories
edited by ryan holmberg

picturebox, brooklyn