Seeing Red: A Review of Hino Hideshi's The Red Snake
01/17/2005
Hino, Hideshi. The Red Snake. Trans. Clive Victor
France. Tokyo: Cocoro Books/DH Publishing, 2004.
Japanese horror comic master Hideshi Hino is the spearhead of a new wave of
horror that is making its way from the East to the West. A bold innovator in an
art medium known for slavish imitation, Hino burst upon the scene in 1967,
appearing in the underground comic press in Japan. His striking style and
stunning use of inky darkness set him apart from the pack.
Thirty-seven years and over 200 books later, he is showing no signs of slowing
down, as he prepares to assault the English-speaking world. Ten years ago,
Blast Books created a stir with the publication of two Hino classics in English,
Panorama of Hell and Hellbaby. Now, Cocoro Books is planning a Hino onslaught. They plan to
publish English versions of seven of his books this year, with over 100 titles
in the pipeline.
The first in the series, The Red Snake, is a young boy's nightmare about
his crazy family. Set in a huge, isolated house in dark, mysterious woods, the
story begins when the boy introduces the reader to each relative: his
bug-obsessed big sister; his father, a bug breeder and chicken rancher; his
grandmother, who believes she is a chicken; and his mother, who ministers
his grandfather's giant pustule. The main action occurs when the boy wanders
into a forbidden corridor, sealed by a magic mirror. The grandfather warns the
boy the mirror protects them from a place worse that hell, and that he should
not even think about peeking behind it. Unfortunately, the boy dreams about
going beyond the mirror and literally sees the gates of hell. This dream breaks
the magic seal protecting the house. That same night, a red snake bites his
sister As a result, she acquires a healthy appetite for blood, using the
father's chickens as a handy source. More red snakes appear at night, and as
they suck her blood, she relaxes in a warm, sleepy feeling. When the
grandfather catches the sister drinking blood from the neck of a freshly
decapitated hen, he realizes the seal has been broken, and all hell will be
loosed upon their house. In a brawl, his sister cuts off his grandfather's
foot. While the mother is taking care of the grandfather, his pustule erupts
with acid blood that hideously disfigures his mother's face. Then the mother
has a horrible mutant baby that tears its way out of her swollen stomach. This
drives the boy over the edge and he literally journeys through hell in a series
powerful images.
Here at the height of the rising action, the reader can see Hino's strengths and
weaknesses. He draws on common symbols that go back to the beginning of ghost
tales and horror literature: the mysterious house, the mirror, the magical seal,
insane characters, and snakes. The snake is one of the most heavily overloaded
symbols in literature. Dwelling underground, snakes are widely thought of as
messengers from the underworld. As such, they are construed as evil because of
their venomous bites, scaly bodies and alien-looking eyes. Asian lore is loaded
with supernatural snake stories, found in collections such as the Liaozhai and
many others. The problem with Hino's representation of the red snake is that he
does not add much detail to the huge tradition of the snake in horror. Granted,
his snakes are red, an unusual color, and they are vampires, living on the blood
of a young girl (snake fangs leave a signature double puncture wound, so the
snake seems to be a natural vampire-like animal). Yet where the snakes really
comes from and why they are evil is never explained.
But back to the story line: What follows is pustule-bursting, blood spraying,
face-eating horror in Hino's stark black and white. While his drawing technique
is only adequate, his ability to shock with simple images is amazing. He can
evoke mutated creatures or acid-eaten faces as few others. His style is
comparable to Weird Tales artist Lee Brown Coye, who drew crude but high
effective images of stark horror. Also, he has an ability to bring
credible-looking weird creatures to life without resorting to photo-realism.
Unfortunately, his style is also problematic in that booksellers like
amazon.com market his books as young adult comics because his characters looks
childish and comical. He draws faces with huge, round white eyes with tiny
irises, to give them that psychotic look. The upshot is that some of his
characters look more silly than scary, and readers may dismiss him as the
Japanese equivalent of DC horror comics of the 1960's. It's no accident that
many of his Japanese admirers say they first discovered him in grade school.
This is not to say that his work is comparable to Fear Street or
Casper the Friendly Ghost. On the contrary, it is a far cry from these, for
Hino deals with varying degrees of madness, maggots, corpses, blood drinking,
pollution, child abuse, spousal abuse and other unimaginably nasty situations.
Perhaps to his detriment (at least as far as marketing goes), when he deals
with sex, it is subtle and only suggestive. He doesn't seem to resort to
nudity, and nothing resembling a typical sex scene exists in his private hell.
Everything is hidden and perverse. As ghostly as his houses and families are,
he does not deal with the supernatural as such.
Like Poe, in Hino the real horrors are in the minds of his characters. He
portrays nightmares, illusions and insanity with convincing skill. He looks at
the real world with Hino-vision--penetrating to the gory, queasy substrata below
the happy exterior of hearth, home and family.