The Monstrous Human: Violence, Eroticism, And Transgression In the Work of Kazuichi Hanawa

KAZUICHI HANAWA AND THE LEGACY OF DOING TIME

Internationally known for his manga Doing Time (刑務所の中, Keimusho no Naka), in which he recounts the period he spent in prison after being convicted for illegal possession of firearms, Kazuichi Hanawa (花輪和一) built a career marked by dark and unsettling narratives. In his work, everyday life is permeated by extreme experiences and by a raw observation of the human condition, within a world dominated by violence, madness, and perversity. Doing Time was serialized in AX between 1998 and 2000 and translated into English as a single volume by Fanfare/Ponent Mon in 2004. In 2002, the manga was adapted into a film of the same title, directed by Yoichi Sai. Although Doing Time was critically acclaimed and received several awards, Kazuichi Hanawa’s oeuvre cannot be reduced to this work alone. The mangaka became widely recognized for his engagement with the grotesque and the erotic, particularly through his graphic portrayal of the Edo period as a space of moral decay and explicit horror, positioning him among the major figures of the ero-guro tradition.

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EARLY LIFE AND CAREER

Kazuichi Hanawa was born in Yorii, Saitama Prefecture. From 1970 onward, he worked as an illustrator and, after encountering the work of Yoshiharu Tsuge, decided to devote himself to manga. His debut as a cartoonist came in 1971 with the short story Kan no Mushi (かんのむし), which depicts a boy sent by his mother to a sadistic acupuncturist. The story was published in Garo, a magazine with which Kazuichi Hanawa maintained a close and continuous relationship throughout much of his career.

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Fig.4  "Bloody Ukiyo-e In 1866 & 1988 (The New Atrocities In Blood)"

FROM UNDERGROUND MANGA TO A WIDER AUDIENCE

Between 1992 and 1994, Kazuichi Hanawa produced the series Tensui (天水) for the magazine Afternoon, whose circulation was significantly larger than that of Garo and other underground publications. Through this collaboration, as well as contributions to popular magazines such as Manga Action and Super Action, Kazuichi Hanawa reached a broader readership. Since 1998, he has worked regularly with AX, regarded as the successor to Garo. During the 1990s and 2000s, he also published short stories in horror magazines aimed at young women, such as Suspense & Horror and Horror M, the latter being the magazine in which he serialized Fujōbutsu Reidōjo and its sequel.

Fig.5   "Bloody Ukiyo-e In 1866 & 1988 (The New Atrocities In Blood)"

Fig.6  "Bloody Ukiyo-e In 1866 & 1988 (The New Atrocities In Blood)"

ERO-GURO, BUDDHISM, AND HISTORICAL IMAGINATION

In 2014, Kazuichi Hanawa published the horror short-story collection Juso (Curse), which was selected by the jury of the Japan Media Arts Festival in 2015. Frequently regarded as an heir to Yoshiharu Tsuge, Kazuichi Hanawa initially devoted himself to the ero-guro style, producing erotic-grotesque narratives such as Red Night, which portrays a samurai driven to suicide by his wife after abandoning his desire for revenge, and Niku Yashiki (肉屋敷). Many of these stories function as parodies of militarism and of traditional Japanese cultural values. From the early 1980s onward, his manga increasingly incorporated Buddhist spiritual influences and became predominantly set in Japan’s Edo and Meiji periods.

Fig.7  "Bloody Ukiyo-e In 1866 & 1988 (The New Atrocities In Blood)"

BLOODY UKIYO-E: HISTORY, VIOLENCE, AND THE GROTESQUE

Well before Doing Time, one of the first works to introduce Kazuichi Hanawa’s name to Western audiences was Bloody Ukiyo-e in 1866 & 1988, created in collaboration with Suehiro Maruo. Published in a bilingual format, the book is a reinterpretation of the famous series Twenty-Eight Famous Murders with Verse (Eimei nijūhasshūku), produced between 1866 and 1867 by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi and Utagawa Yoshiiku.

Coniniue reading in Premium and discover more about Hanawa's collaboration Suehiro Maruo, his use of language, symbols and cultural transgression, the transgressive aesthetics in Hanawa's most striking stories, ancient Edo culture as a mirror of the present + A SPECIAL BONUS: three early manga stories by Kazuichi Hanawa.

Click HERE for the freaks, ocular fixation and the erotic grotesque in the work of Suehiro Maruo

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