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Kingaku kara no omoi - 金額からの思い

Thoughts on Japan from the National Institute of Japanese Studies. University of Sheffield

Bloodsuckers of the World, Unite? Part Two

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January 29, 2010

Last week I mentioned that the recent boom in vampire-related fiction and drama reached Japan last summer with the broadcast of a prime-time drama series, Koishite Akuma, although it was far more rooted in the conventions of Japanese dorama than in any of the recent western productions. To illustrate this, let’s take a look at the plots of Koishite Akuma and its closest equivalent, Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight.

In Twilight, lonely teenager Bella Swann moves to north-west of the US, and at her new school in a small town encounters Edward Cullen. She is struck by his attractiveness, and also by his aloofness – unlike most of her other new school-mates, he seems to want to have nothing to do with her. One thing leads to another, and Bella learns that Edward is, in fact, a vampire, but one who finds himself almost unbearably drawn to her, wanting to devour her and drink her blood. Despite this obstacle, the two fall passionately in love, and must overcome various dangers – disapproval from other vampires and werewolves – in order to remain together, which, in the end, of course, they do. In other words, the story is essentially Romeo and Juliet but with a happy ending.

In Koishite Akuma aloof teenage-seeming vampire Kuromiya Luka is brought to Yokohama to find his first victim, and is lodged while there with a small family consisting of a father, played by dorama stalwart Itō Shirō 伊藤四郎, his adult, widowed daughter, and her young son, all of whom have been mesmerised into believing that Luka is a distant relative. Enrolled at the local high-school, his mentor expects that Luka will swiftly bite one of his classmates, cement his immortality, and return to the vampires’ ‘beautiful, quiet, world’. Instead, Luka finds himself fascinated by his teacher, the beautiful and vivacious Natsukawa Makoto (played by Katō Rosa 加藤ロサ). Thus already difference between the two stories emerge: in Meyer’s work, despite the fact that Edward has been around since the 1900s, he appears to be a teenager, and so there are no obstacles – in human society at least – in him pursuing a relationship with Bella. In Koishite Akuma, Luka appears to be 16, while Makoto is 25, and their pupil-teacher relationship means that any romance between them will inevitably be scandalous, and bring them as individuals into conflict with the expectations of the group and society at large.

Eventually, in a somewhat unlikely plot twist, Luka finds that Makoto was, in fact, his high-school sweetheart before he died and became a vampire, and that she is his ‘fated woman’ (unmei no onna 運命の女) - the only one for whom his fangs will grow (much light relief is obtained by the fact that they tend to emerge involuntarily, and Luka has to frantically conceal their presence). If he does not bite her, he will die at the next full moon. Makoto, too, discovers his identity, and her unresolved feelings for him cause her to first become engaged to her current boyfriend, the school’s handsome vice-principal, and then to break it off. Scandal ensues and, in an attempt to force Luka to action, his vampire mentor, Katō, reveals Luka’s vampiric nature to both the people of his host family’s neighbourhood, and his schoolmates; he is forced to flee his family’s house when a mob attempts to storm it, although his adopted family remain firmly on his side. There follows a confrontation between Luka, Makoto and his class at the school, where he admits to his vampiric identity and original motivation for coming there, and apologises, and she confesses her love for him as her high school sweetheart. The class accept him and wish him well, and Luka and Makoto depart to watch the sunrise on his final day. He remains steadfast to the end in his refusal to bite her, and with a chaste kiss dissolves to dust. Over the closing credits, Makoto is shown having been accepted back into the bosom of her class, and it is suggested Luka and she continue to remain together in some ‘higher’ world.

You may have been able to work out from the above that Koishite Akuma formulaically follows the conventions of the standard deru kui plotline – of relations between an individual and a group – which I discussed in my earlier column on Japanese dorama. There are two groups of which Luka unwillingly finds himself a member: his class at school, and the family with whom he is forced to lodge. As the series progresses, he is drawn further and further into relations with both – through taking part in drama club activities; being an object of longing for most of the girls in class; through the warm, uncritical affection of his adoptive family, who also take Makoto to their hearts, and so forth. He thus gradually becomes aware of the ties of obligation that link him to the humans around him. At the same time, through the difficulties they have in adopting him, the groups change too, with the class learning some tolerance for an outsider, and the family drawn closer together by the presence of an elder brother/surrogate son in their midst.

Next week, I’ll consider what lessons may be drawn from the differences between the two programmes, and what they have to tell us about the media in Japan.

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