nothno

I love Syaku. I read Kafka on the Shore a long time ago, and Syaku’s the closest BL mangaka to what I’ve distilled from Murakami from then. There’s a kind of eruditeness to Hare to Mononoke (and Syaku in general, when given time and breadth), interested in scraps of mythology but also countryside life; making sweet buns, observing rituals, observing mundanity. For Syakku, the co-habitation gives rise to aberrations: the cause of deviation from the known is the addition of the alien element, a lover so opposite. It’s a total shame that Hare is unlicensed in English because it is easily her cleverest, her most oblique. The basic premise of an immortal mononoke coming to ‘clear the impurities’ of a lonely young man slowly dries away into beautifully inked mountain scapes, black gakuran-motorcycle jacket duos, and a painfully aware narrative on loneliness.

It must be the knowing-not knowing what a person can mean or already means to another that drives Syaku’s work. The mysterious character, inexplicable but present, the imparting of brief verses, love and knowledge. Hare to Mononoke must be Syaku’s masterpiece; it’s so reticent, lurking dimly in the shadows. Syaku must be a reader; maybe Murakami isn’t right but rather Oe?