Dororo: Part One
Nakamura Masaru
Translator's Foreword
Every adaptation of Tezuka Osamu’s 1967 manga Dororo
is wildly different from all the others. These novels are no exception. Of the
three novel adaptations, one is a historical fantasy, one is a cartoon-like, over-the-top
children’s story, and the last one—this one—is a dark, gritty science fiction
epic. It’s no exaggeration to say that they don’t resemble one another much at
all.
Oh, the basic details are always the same. The protagonist’s name is Hyakkimaru, and his body was stolen by demons at birth because of some terrible bargain struck between his father and an army of demons. Hyakkimaru is then raised by a doctor who teaches him to pass as human, and he meets up with a wandering thief named Dororo while hunting down the demons that took pieces of his body.
In most (though not all) adaptations, Hyakkimaru regains a body
part every time he kills a demon. In every version of the story, Hyakkimaru
struggles to become human as well as whole. Dororo is there to help him with
that. In this version, she is also struggling to become human, though her
humanity was stolen from her in an entirely different way.
Most of the novel’s characters are not good people. They’re
violent, they’re mean, they swear a lot (and it’s not just big talk). They abuse or
abandon their children and revel in corruption and greed. When we first meet
Dororo, she is looking for a likely mark to steal from in a crowd of people,
and she takes sincere delight in beating him to a pulp. The fact that she doesn’t
kill him is almost beside the point.
Hyakkimaru doesn’t fare much better. Raised in social isolation,
he has no way of understanding other people at all, and at first, everyone
tries to take advantage of him. The one time he does find good people to live
with, their peaceful life is shattered by the arrival of the Kaneyama Clan—survivors
of an old battle won by Daigo Kagemitsu. War is always around the corner in
this world, and the characters never have the luxury of forgetting that for
long.
Hyakkimaru’s perceived meanness and social brusqueness are
mainly caused by ignorance. Dororo’s are caused by a general distrust of the
world around her. Dororo is the complete opposite of Hyakkimaru: she grew up
right in the thick of the war, and has exhaustive knowledge of the world. They’re
unlikely friends, and for most of the novel it’s hard to describe them as friends
at all. They’re survivors drifting from village to village, looking for
monsters to kill—and many of those monsters take human shapes.
One advantage that this Hyakkimaru has over most of his brethren
in other adaptations is the ability to read minds to comprehend ordinary human
experience. It doesn’t always work—some people are closed off from him—but his
relationship with Jukai is strengthened by this ability, as are his relationships with Dororo and Mio. No other Hyakkimaru can experience Mio’s repeated
rapes as if they were his own experiences. No other Hyakkimaru possesses such a
visceral understanding of violence. Every Hyakkimaru is a product of his world,
and the world that this Hyakkimaru inhabits is as dark as it gets.
Dororo is much more of an enigma here. Both she and Hyakkimaru
are aged up significantly, since they’re both adults when they meet. Hyakkimaru
knows that Dororo is biologically female from the very start, though Dororo vehemently
opposes any female label. Hyakkimaru doesn’t argue and uses Dororo’s preferred
pronouns. Dororo knows that she’s female, but it’s safer to be male in their
world. Every adaptation of Dororo interrogates gender roles (and did so even
before transgenderism entered the public consciousness). Those looking for a
more obviously transgender Dororo might try the Toriumi Jinzō
novels, or the Tsuji Masaki children’s novel where Dororo is referred to as male
throughout. This Dororo understands femininity as weakness and nurtures a
certain amount of self-hatred because of this. She’s an ordinary woman who was
baptized by fire in an extraordinarily cruel world. Although she’s younger than
Hyakkimaru, her world-wisdom and guardedness make her seem older sometimes.
But Dororo is still the bright spot of Hyakkimaru’s life.
Their friendship, when it does develop, is an intense one; Hyakkimaru has never
had a friend, and Dororo hasn’t, either. There is no romantic attraction—why would
there be?—but Dororo is drawn to Hyakkimaru’s power, and Hyakkimaru is curious
about Dororo’s knowledge. He’d also rather not be alone in a world that he doesn’t
understand.
The first novel ends with Hyakkimaru’s quest incomplete, and
with a demon he thought he’d killed rising from the ashes. Daigo Kagemitsu
spends most of the novel as a distant warlord seen as the personification of
evil, but Hyakkimaru learns that Daigo is, in fact, his father—and that his
father is the one who sold his body parts to demons. His quest to become whole
immediately transforms into a revenge quest.
The novel and the movie are quite similar for the first ten chapters or so, but then the novel diverges significantly. Those who have only seen the movie are in for some surprises, including Mio's greatly expanded role and a completely different ending for Maimai Onba, the moth demon.
Textual Notes
For ease of
reading, I have made textual notes on cultural figures and practices that would
be common knowledge in Japan, but which Western readers likely have less
familiarity with. There are also some made-up terms and cultural practices in
the novel; I have made notes for these as well.
The names of people are given in the Japanese style, meaning
the surname comes first; Kagemitsu’s full name, for example, is given as Daigo
Kagemitsu and not Kagemitsu Daigo.
This novel was originally published in Japanese on December
30, 2006. I translated it during the COVID-19 pandemic, in early 2022. When I
began learning Japanese in 2018, I never thought I would be able to translate
the Dororo novels (or any novels, for that matter) for others to read.
Dororo was one of the first Japanese cultural properties that
I truly loved—it’s still my favorite manga, and when I was a new learner, it
was considerate enough to meet me at my level. The novels I’ve translated so
far have each presented a unique learning and research challenge, but I’m
always glad when I manage to finish another one. The sense of completion I feel
is like Hyakkimaru regaining a piece of himself and becoming a little more
whole.
The English tagline of the Dororo manga is, “No one
is born whole.”
Here’s to regaining as many pieces as possible.
Ainikki the Archivist
May 2022
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