#in terms of Limbus Reading: if you want short ones and not big ones like C&P or Moby Dick

[cyborg-squid]

I just read Hell Screen in preparation for Ryoshu's Canto:

1) Wow, it is really good, I can see why the foreword said "If only one work of his [Ryonosuke Akutagawa] were to survive, this should be it." Nice and compact length too.

2) It's also this amazing exercise in narration; not exactly an 'unreliable' narrator, but a very clearly biased one. I concert with this narration style is the fact that no character besides Yoshihide (and the monkey named after him) has a name, it's all Yoshihide's Daughter, His Lordship, His Ladyship, His Reverence, Assorted Apprentices, etc... It really reinforces the fact that this story is all about Yoshihide and, the unnamed narrator would have you believe, illustrates Yoshihide's own arrogance and self-centered nature...

...which we see isn't entirely true, the narrator is forced to relent that Yoshihide very much cares for his daughter, and vice-versa. He repeatedly asks for her return from His Lordship's manor, and is refused, and his acceptance of the Hell Screen commission is likely to try and earn her back through his work.

So it's in that light that Yoshihide's actions are cast in a very different light, the servant narrator would have us believe in the unimpeachability of His Lordship's character, but the reader can catch on real early that, oh, this lord really wants Yoshihide's daughter, and Yoshihide wanting her back isn't a father's protectiveness, it's him wanting to get her out of a very bad situation, and is willing to do anything to accomplish that.

And even then, despite chaining that one apprentice and attacking another with an owl, it's not even Yoshihide that crosses the final line; he initially only requests to see a carriage set aflame, it is His Lordship who adds in a woman to be burnt, and derives such a perverse pleasure in having and seeing the daughter (who struggled against his advances) burned alive. It's fascinating, His Lordship is described as panting like a beast and frothing at the mouth watching this, the 'beast' comparison being levied against Yoshihide earlier in the story for his red lips and giving him the 'Monkeyhide' nickname. And then the monkey itself, given the name Yoshihide, ends up being more human than His Lordship and even the original Yoshihide; the reader sees the moneky's human mannerisms in his tugging trousers to get attention and kowtowing in thanks, and his ultimate humanity comes at the end when the monkey Yoshihide is able to do what the human one is not: to die alongside his daughter, to at least be with her. And yeah, one can't really fault Yoshihide the man for not being able to do anything in the face of such a sight, but the monkey is able to something, even if said thing is to just die alongside her.

3) A wikipedia summary or the like really doesn't do this story justice, I went in expecting Yoshihide to be the 'Mad Artist' type, and for some shades of Pickman's Model-esque 'horrible scene actually witnessed', but Yoshihide isn't nearly as mad as I first thought and is really quite interesting; very fitting then that he is the only character with a name. So I'm really excited to see what Limbus Company will do with him+her!

#in terms of Limbus Reading: if you want short ones and not big ones like C&P or Moby Dick #this and The Stranger are great choices #limbus company #my posts #hell screen