GeGeGe no Kitarō

Episode 45

Is there anything worse than perverting a sacred place? That doesn't necessarily mean moving a graveyard to build a mall or widen a highway or spraying graffiti on a religious building; it could be something as small as driving by your childhood home and seeing that someone repainted it don't-shoot-me orange or finding that the tree you used to climb was cut down. There are degrees of sacredness, and those that have personal significance are no less important than the ones everyone knows. What changes with each case is the reason for the defilement – is it progress? Personal taste? Or is there something more sinister at play?

That's a point that this week's episode of GeGeGe no Kitarō takes its time getting to. When Kitaro is called (by Rat Man, much to his dismay) to look into a case of a mannen-dake, which is sort of the bamboo equivalent of the spirit-imbued household items from a few weeks ago, he's told that the yokai is menacing humans and inhibiting their plans to turn a large bamboo forest into a tourist attraction. The grove belongs to a man and his wife, and his father's old house sits in its center, now the son's property since Dad vanished two years ago. When they approach the dilapidated structure, things certainly seem to support their version of things: Dad's former study is basically knee-deep in bamboo leaves and “Humans go away” is painted in grim red letters on the wall. But then events reveal that the son is faking the haunting in order to prevent his wife from destroying his father's favorite place, and that the Mannen-dake himself has promised not to prey on any (more) humans if the development can be halted.

Hang on, though, because this too is a misdirect – actually the son murdered the father for the lucrative inheritance and then buried his body in the bamboo forest. He's staged the decision to develop and the “fake” haunting by the Mannen-dake in order to cover up the evidence of his crimes so that he and his wife can keep living off Dad's money while the corpse rots in the woods. It's a twisty tale of multiple layers of deceit, showing not only the son's avarice, but also his lack of respect for his father, his father's generosity, and the natural world Mannen-dake is a part of, to say nothing for the power of Mannen-dake himself. It's the defilement of a sacred space on several levels, cruel to the man he murdered, the yokai, and what has become a burial ground. It's also a pretty good use of repeated red herrings, in line with some of the tricks of late 19th century mystery writers, although I'm most strongly reminded of the Dorcas Dene mysteries by George R. Sims.

As far as Kitaro himself goes, this is a chance to see him even more ill at ease than he historically has been. He knows from the moment the Mannen-dake is mentioned that something's weird about this case, and seeing Rat Man seems to reaffirm that. But Rat Man's presence is Kitaro's own misdirection, because really, he's got nothing to do with the whole mess – the human culprit did this all on his own without any help from Rat Man's lack of conscience. That makes the statement that no matter what people think about yokai, they're more than capable of being the real monsters in the world. The yokai are just living by their own set of rules, although as we see at the end, they're more than willing to step up and carry out justice if human laws can't.

The sound of Kitaro's geta clip-clopping into the distance has never sounded more like a death knell.

Rating: B+

GeGeGe no Kitarō is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.