Mōryō no Hako

Mōryō no Hako (魍魎の匣, "The Mōryō's Box") is a Japanese novel by Natsuhiko Kyogoku. It is the second novel in the Kyōgokudō series that began with Summer of the Ubume. The novel has been turned into a live action feature film, a manga, and an anime TV series.

Story

The story takes place between August and October, 1952. It primarily follows crime fiction writer Tatsumi Sekiguchi and news magazine editor Morihiko Toriguchi as they investigate, with the help of onmyōji Akihiko Chūzenji, a series of unusual crimes that take place in Musashino and Mitaka.

Kanako Yuzuki and Yoriko Kusumoto are friends and middle school students. Kanako and Yoriko plan to go to Lake Sagami over summer break. On the night they leave, Kanako is hit by the train on which Tokyo police detective Shutarō Kiba is traveling. After the hospital stabilizes Kanako, Yōko Yuzuki, Kanako's older sister, has Kanako transferred to Kōshirō Mimasaka's research hospital. Several days later, the discovery of a severed arm and two boxed, severed legs is what catches the attention of Toriguchi, who travels by automobile with Atsuko Chūzenji and Sekiguchi to investigate.

Yoriko tells Kiba that Kanako was pushed by a man wearing gloves. Shortly afterward, Kanako is apparently abducted from the hospital; Mimasaka's assistant, Tarō Suzaki, is murdered; and Kanako's guardian, Noritada Amemiya, also disappears. Witnesses report seeing a gloved man in the area where three other girls are soon abducted. Residents of the surrounding area later discover the girls' boxed, severed limbs.

Noriyuki Masuoka, the lawyer for Kanako's grandfather, hires private investigator Reijirō Enokizu to find Kanako. Masuoka explains that Yōko is Kanako's mother, not her sister. Kanako is unaware of her true parentage, but she is the only heir to the fortune of Yōkō Shibata, who appointed Amemiya as her guardian.

Toriguchi obtains a list, labeled "Onbako-sama", of believers in a local cult led by Hyōei Terada, a self-proclaimed onmyōji. Toriguchi believes Terada is involved with the dismemberment case, because all the dismemberment victims are daughters of Terada's followers. Sekiguchi notices that both Yoriko's mother and fiction writer Shunkō Kubo are on the Onbako-sama list. As a fellow writer for the same publisher, Sekiguchi already knows Kubo, who always wears gloves. After Enokizu and Sekiguchi meet with Yoriko, she meets Kubo, who takes her to an abandoned temple filled with boxes. Later, Yoriko's severed arms are found.

From reading Kubo's latest fiction work, Chūzenji deduces that Kubo is the perpetrator of the dismemberment case. Chūzenji, Sekiguchi, and Enokizu confront Terada and demonstrate that all of Terada's practices are fake. Terada confesses his swindle to the police and reveals that Kubo is his son. Meanwhile, Tokyo police detective Bunzō Aoki goes to the abandoned temple that Kubo is using, but Kubo escapes. Later, Kubo's severed limbs are found.

Chūzenji tells Sekiguchi, Toriguchi, and Enokizu that he knew Mimasaka during the war. Mimasaka's research involved replacing biological human body parts with mechanical ones. Meanwhile, Kiba accuses Mimasaka of dismembering girls to further his research and demands to know what he has done with Kanako. Sekiguchi, Toriguchi, and Enokizu pick up Yōko and arrive at Mimasaka's facility. Yōko tells them Mimasaka is her father. Chūzenji soon arrives with Masuoka, Aoki, and police constable Fukumoto.

Chūzenji recounts the series of events, beginning with Yoriko pushing Kanako onto the train tracks. Suzaki had been blackmailing Yōko, because he knew that Kanako was not Yōkō Shibata's legitimate heir. Since Mimasaka could keep only Kanako's head alive mechanically, Suzaki could easily stage her kidnapping and demand a ransom from Shibata. The first severed limbs found, before Kanako's abduction, were Kanako's. After Suzaki took Kanako's head, Amemiya killed Suzaki and ran away with Kanako's head. Kubo met Amemiya on a train and saw Kanako's head alive inside a box. Kubo himself then tried to keep the heads of other girls alive in a box. Kubo wrote about it all in his fiction. Before he killed Yoriko, she told him about Mimasaka. When he went to Mimasaka, Mimasaka performed the same procedure on Kubo.

Aoki tries to arrest Mimasaka for what he did to Kubo, but Mimasaka grabs the box with Kubo's head and tries to escape with Yōko. Kubo bites Mimasaka in the neck and kills him, so Yōko kills Kubo. Kiba arrests Yōko for the murder of Kubo.

Publication

The original novel was first published in 1995, and has been reprinted in several bunko editions.

Adaptations

Film

The novel was turned into a 2007 live action movie, directed by Masato Harada and starring Shinichi Tsutsumi, Hiroshi Abe, Kippei Shiina, Hiroyuki Miyasako, and Rena Tanaka.

Shooting started in 2005 and completed in May 2007. The significant events of the novel are unchanged, but the remainder of the content is a bold alteration. To simulate 1952 Tokyo, exteriors were shot in Shanghai.

Mitsuki Tanimura won Best Supporting Actress at the 2008 Osaka Film Festival for her portrayal of Yoriko Kusumoto.

The DVD was released 25 June 2008.

Animated TV series

The anime adaption began airing on 7 October 2008. Produced by Madhouse, it features character designs by Clamp and scripts by Sadayuki Murai. It was the series directorial debut of Ryosuke Nakamura.

The series follows the novel, but some of the minor characters are slightly changed, and the series includes some original material. The original material includes:

• The sequences in which Sekiguchi reads his own work and the fiction of Kubo
• The clairvoyance experiments in episode 5
• Additional wartime experimentation ascribed to the research unit where ChÅ«zenji and Mimasaka were staffed, apparently based on Unit 731 and Number Nine Research Laboratory

The anime distributor VAP released the Blu-ray disc of the television series on 22 May 2009 with an original 16-minute extra exclusive to the Blu-ray. "The Case Files of Atsuko Chūzenji: The Case of the Spirits in the Boxes" (中禅寺敦子の事件簿: 箱の幽霊の事, "Chūzenji Atsuko no Jikenbo: Hako no Yūrei no Koto") reveals the investigative notes that Atsuko wrote in episode 6 about the brutal dismembering incidents in the main story.

Characters

Principal characters

Akihiko Chūzenji (中禅寺 秋彦, Chuuzenji Akihiko)

Onmyōji and book store owner, also known as Kyōgokudō (京極堂, Kyougokudou)

Tatsumi Sekiguchi (関口 巽, Sekiguchi Tatsumi)

Crime fiction writer

Morihiko Toriguchi (鳥口 守彦, Toriguchi Morihiko)

Magazine news editor

Shutarō Kiba (木場 修太郎, Kiba Shutarou)

Tokyo police detective

Reijirō Enokizu (榎木津 礼二郎, Enokizu Reijirou))

Private investigator with the Rose Cross Detective Agency

Significant characters

Kōshirō Mimasaka (美馬坂 幸四郎, Mimasaka Koushirou)

Medical researcher

Tarō Suzaki (須崎 太郎, Suzaki Tarou)

Mimasaka's assistant

Shunkō Kubo (久保 竣公, Kubo Shunkou)

Gothic fiction writer, the mysterious gloved man

Hyōei Terada (寺ç"° 兵衛, Terada Hyouei)

Cult leader and fake onmyōji

Yuzuki family and associates

Kanako Yuzuki (柚木 加菜子, Yuzuki Kanako)

Middle school student

Yōko Yuzuki (柚木 陽子, Yuzuki Youko)

Kanako's "older sister" (actually mother), formerly a film actress with the stage name Kinuko Minami (美波 絹子, Minami Kinuko)

Noriyuki Masuoka (増岡 則之, Masuoka Noriyuki)

Lawyer for Shibata Financial and private lawyer for Kanako's grandfather, Yōkō Shibata (柴ç"° 耀弘, Shibata Youkou)

Noritada Amemiya (雨宮 典匡, Amemiya Noritada)

Kanako's guardian, appointed by Yōkō Shibata

Kusumoto family and associates

Yoriko Kusumoto (楠本 頼子, Kusumoto Yoriko)

Middle school student and Kanako's friend

Kimie Kusumoto (楠本 君枝, Kusumoto Kimie)

Yoriko's mother

Sasagawa (笹川, Sasagawa)

Kimie's male friend

Police

Aoki Bunzō (é'木 æ–‡è"µ, Bunzou Aoki)

Tokyo police detective

Ishii (石井, Ishii)

Kanagawa police administrator, inspector rank

Fukumoto (福本, Fukumoto)

Musashino policeman, constable rank

Other characters

Atsuko Chūzenji (中禅寺 敦子, Chuuzenji Atsuko)

Akihiko's younger sister, a reporter for Toriguchi's magazine

Chizuko Chūzenji (中禅寺 千鶴子, Chuuzenji Chizuko)

Akihiko's wife

Yukie Sekiguchi (関口 雪絵, Sekiguchi Yukie)

Tatsumi's wife

Episode List

Notes

1. ^ There are no official English titles.

Manga

The manga adaptation features art by Aki Shimizu and a script by Natsuhiko Kyogoku himself, and began serialization in 2007. It is five volumes long.

References

1. ^ "Mōryō no Hako (2007)". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2014-05-10. 
2. ^ "Mōryō no Hako Video Anime Scheduled". Anime News Network. Retrieved 2014-05-10. 
3. ^ "魍魎の匣BD-BOX発売" [Mōryō no Hako BD-Box Release] (in Japanese). anime ! anime !. Retrieved 2014-05-10. 
4. ^ ^{a b} 魍魎の匣 [Mōryō no Hako] (in Japanese). Nippon Television. Retrieved 2014-05-06. 

External links

• Movie official website
• Anime official website
• The Shadow Spirit (English title) at the Internet Movie Database
• Mōryō no Hako (anime) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia