Suehiro Maruo and the aesthetics of the macabre . Part 2: Misfortunes of Virtue
“Whether you come from heaven or hell, what does it matter, O Beauty!”
Focusing again on “Midori”, the film could be basically described as a crossover of “Freaks”, old black & white cult film by Tod Browning and Marquis de Sade’s “Justine”, his famous heroine, protagonist of several of his books in which she experiments the ‘misfortunes of virtue’ in her own flesh, being humilliated and abused in similar ways than Midori. The particularity is that, just as Midori, Justine never succumbs to her vicious inmoral environment . Instead, she always kept the faith of having a normal life, thinking her luck could change, just as Midori’s wishes of going back to school. Of course, they also share the same desolating end.
The parallelisms with Sade’s work in particular goes beyond than the content, but also refers to the context of production. While Marquis de Sade wrote during the ‘age of enlightenment’ to expose the putrid moral and the depraved behavior of those selfcalled illustrated men, most of Maruo’s stories are set during the Showa period of Japan, also known as “period of radiant Japan”, reign of Showa Emperor Hirohito. This period comprehend almost 60 years, with Suehiro focusing specially in the immediate period post World War II and the bombs (it’s no coincidence that he was born in Nagasaki just ten years after the nuclear attack), during which Japan was occupied by foreign powers that tried -successfully- to “americanize” the country, or better said, “gringo-ized”. Those times full of misery and decadence; with two cities devastated by the bombs, famines and illness; where human lives have no value anymore. Adding insult to injury, the country that bombarded two entire cities and killed thousands of japanese people, now becomes their biggest ally. It’s quite understandable that such stories as Maruo’s ones can only be developed in such scenario and by someone who has experienced it all by himself.
Some works that showcase the important of context in Maruo’s art much better than “Midori” are the short story “Non-Resistance City” and probably his most famous manga, “The Laughing Vampire”. The first one is about a mother and her son who after the war are in extreme misery. The mother’s fidelity towards his husband killed in war will be putted on the line when a gringo midget (again a midget to represent occident) would pay anything to satisfy his 'carnal cravings’ (a.k.a to have sex with) using the woman. From the very title one can notice the not very subtle reference to the U.S occupation. The second one is again about a woman living in extreme misery, in a city where there’s more corpses than food. Under this circumstances, she had no other choose to survive than cannibalism; though she’s condemned to capital punishment because of it. But human flesh gave her supernatural powers, as she returns to live turned into a vampire. Of course, there’s a lot of death, sex, abortions, incest, insects and all those bizarre topics that can’t be missing in a Maruo’s manga.
After this exhaustive analysis, we could look back at “Midori” with a different approach, as it stops being just nonsensical torture. We can even interpretate it as an allegory of Japan situation after the World War II. With Midori being Japan, the freaks being Europe and the midget, who remarkably knows “occidental magic” -that consisted in causing deformation (as radiation would do)- as United States. We could see it from this angle but by doing so we would be going even against the artist will.
Because Suehiro Maruo himself defines his work as the artistic vision of a nightmare and emphasizes that looking for intricated meaningful messages or deep philosophical conclusions is a waste of time, because there’s nothing of that. Let the nightmares lasts only for the night. While some are just hard to watch, others are aesthetically appealing, simply beautiful pieces of macabre art. Beauty isn’t only in perfect harmony and proportion, yet can -and even should- be pure dissonance.
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