Manga / Ayako

"Our family tree is a cesspit!"

—Shiro Tenge

Ayako is a manga by Osamu Tezuka. Written in 1972-73, its English translation was published by Vertical Comics in 2013 in omnibus format.

Set shortly after Japan's surrender at the end of World War II and covering a period of around 30 years, the story revolves around the Tenge family, a rural family who have been powerful landowners in their community for many years. However, they are feeling the strain of the changes in post-war Japan in multiple ways, including losing land to tenant farmers due to agricultural policy reforms, the encroaching influence of Communist movements, and one son being a POW and thus a disgrace in his father's eyes. Even worse, the family is seething with interpersonal drama and horrible moral and ethical abuses. This morass of drama ends up falling squarely on Ayako, the youngest daughter, and destroys her life.

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Ayako provides examples of:

• Adaptational Alternate Ending: Tezuka rewrote the ending of the manga when it was republished as a tankobon, making it significantly darker and more ambiguous.
• Attempted Rape:
  • Sakuemon's physician sneaks into Ayako's cellar and, after unsuccessfully trying to get her to sign some documents giving him custody over her fortune, tries this. Ayako screams, and Shirou manages to chase him off with a scythe and some threats.
  • A gang member sneaks into Ayako's bedroom and tries to assault her but is chased off by Geta.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Tenges are deeply twisted. Sakuemon is an ultra-conservative jerk who tells Jiro he should have died for his emperor rather than be made a POW, holds kangaroo courts in his courtyard, and 'buys' his daughter-in-law's sexual favours by promising Ichiro his estates. Ichiro himself is a scheming asshole who is more than willing to use violence to keep people, especially women, in line. Jiro got involved with shady dealings while he was a POW, earns his fortune through criminal operations tied to The Korean War, and eventually becomes a mob boss. Naoko becomes a member of a communist cell. Shirou starts out morally upright but eventually enters an incestuous relationship with Ayako. Ayako is an innocent due to her age, but becomes the family scapegoat and is locked in a cellar for a huge chunk of her life.
• Bittersweet Ending: The revised ending. Shirou eradicates almost the whole family (including himself) by trapping them in a cave to starve to death, with Geta's son Hanao trapped with them, while Ayako manages to survive, since she's used to being kept in small spaces. It's strongly implied that, although she didn't do anything directly, this is finally her chance to get revenge on her family for their abuses of her. After she's rescued, Iba, the Tenge matriarch, lets her leave since she's still young and has a whole life ahead of her.
• Black Comedy Rape: Sakuemon's... arrangement with Ichiro and Su'e. He seems to get caught or near-caught every time he does it on page.
• The Bluebeard: Ichiro eventually kills Su'e. While trapped in the cave, he hallucinates her ghost has come to kill him.
• Boom, Headshot!: Jiro kills a gang member who's become a liability to their organization by shooting him in the head at point blank range.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Tragically between Ayako and Shirou. Ayako makes advances on Shirou; he resists at first, but gives in and then willingly continues the trysts.
• Bunker Woman: Ayako is locked in a cellar in an outbuilding on the Tenge estate for 20+ years to cover up Jiro's part in the killing of the head of a local Communist cell, as she and O-Ryo found Jiro burning his bloodstained shirt. Circumstances made it impossible to just kill her, so she was hidden away and declared deceased to keep the police from snooping too much.
• The Chessmaster: In Jiro's thoughts about each member of the family, he describes Sakuemon as, among others things, 'a Machiavellian'. Aside from his rape-plots this is mostly an Informed Ability though.
• Child by Rape:
  • Ayako is Sakuemon's child with Su'e through a twisted arrangement with Ichiro.
• The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much: The family physician willingly participates in the plot to declare Ayako deceased, as he stands to receive a piece of Sakuemon's inheritance.
• Corrupt the Cutie: Ayako's isolation has left her with an almost child-like mentality and no understanding of how adults interact with each other, so when she discovers a man she likes, her first impulse is to strip and try to have sex with him. Shirou and Hanao initially refuse her but give in; Jiro doesn't.
• Daddy's Girl: Sakuemon dotes on Ayako and is more loving and tender with her than with any of the others in the family.
• Darker and Edgier: This is a very dark and at times horrifying story, and is one of the most grim works in Tezuka's catalog.
• Dashed Plot Line: The story begins in the late 40s and ends in the early 70s.
• Dissonant Serenity: At the climax, when the Tenges and Ayako are unearthed after the cave-in, Ayako is strangely calm and even has a slight smile despite everyone else either being dead or at death's door. Justified as she's used to being in dark, confined spaces and everyone who's used and abused her is now dead.
• Disposable Woman: Jiro's associate, later girlfriend. When she announces that she's going to leave with the American officer she's been sleeping with, Jiro uses a bomb to kill her.
• Distinguishing Mark: Ayako has a mole on the side of her neck...just like Su'e, who acts the role of her big sister even though she's actually Ayako's mother by Sakuemon.
• Doorstopper: The omnibus printing of the English translation, counting the opening blurb and credits, is just over 700 pages.
• Driven to Suicide: Su'e tells Ayako that she attempted suicide three times.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The original ending, in which Ayako and Hanao get together, Ichiro goes insane and Jiro is arrested.
• Fan Disservice: It's rare that an instance of a woman being undressed is not anywhere from unsettling to downright creepy.
  • O-Ryo's breasts are exposed as she's being beaten at one point, and Jiro's lie about the blood on his shirt is that O-Ryo got horny and came on to him, and he took her virginity.
  • Su'e is shown in flagrante delicto with Sakuemon at multiple points, which is gross due to both the age difference between them and the exploitative circumstances of the relationship.
  • Ayako is shown nude multiple times, but almost always in disturbing circumstances, such as getting her first period, coming on to Shirou (which the omnibus edition's cover art is from), and when she strips and makes advances on Hanao.
• Fauxshadowing: In the later parts of the story, Jiro shows that his missing eye has been replaced with a small bomb which can explode in a 30 meter radius if his head touches the ground. However, it is never used once after it's been shown.
• First Period Panic: Not having been told what to expect as she grows up, Ayako flips out when she gets her first period.
• Ignored Epiphany: The Tenges get many blatant opportunities to redeem themselves but they never ever stray from their horrible path. Ultimately, their various refusals to act honorably end up getting most of them killed, with only Iba and Ayako left by the end of the story.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl:
  • O-Ryo is frequently drawn with her kimono hanging loosely off one shoulder.
  • Ayako's lack of education about proper sexual behavior and how to interact normally with other people, especially men, leads her to be extremely forward with men she likes.
• Interrupted Suicide: Naoko catches Su'e in the process of hanging herself and saves her before she can strangle.
• Kangaroo Court: Tezuka accuses the far east tribunal of this by having a young Shiro naively argue in a mock trial that mute dolls can be the defense lawyers as 'there is no point in the defendants having lawyers, since none of their motions pass.' They are emulating the far east tribunal.
• Kill the Cutie: Jiro eventually murders O-Ryo when it becomes clear that he can't trust her to keep her mouth shut about knowing his role in the killing of Naoko's boyfriend.
• Laughing Mad: When the Tenges are finally unearthed after the cave-in, just before he dies, Hanao snaps and starts laughing when he sees that the crack in the earth that was getting them air was very close to the surface, and if they'd ignored Jiro's advice and tried to dig there, they probably could've survived.
• Leave the Camera Running: One scene in a bedroom never changes the perspective for multiple pages.
• Manchild: Ayako is a Woman-Child, due to her long isolation from society and being coddled by her family. One prominent example is when she gets excited and plays on a playground, much to the confusion of some mothers with their kids watching. She is also in her mid-to-late 20s at this point.
• Meaningful Name: Su'e sounds remarkably similar to Li Zu'e, sister in law of the Chinese Emperor Wucheng, whom he raped and fathered an illegitimate daughter with. Of course, in Wucheng's case, he didn't stop at pretending his child died.
• Only Sane Man: Subverted twice:
  • Jiro seems to be this at first, as he is disgusted by the state of the family after he returns from the war, but he soon proves himself to be an A+ scumbag. He becomes involved in organized crime and has multiple people's blood on his hands either directly or indirectly by the time the story ends.
  • Shirou starts out having a very solid moral center and calls out the family on their actions multiple times, but ultimately gets dragged into the web of their corruption by allowing himself to get into an incestuous relationship with Ayako.
• Parental Incest: Only technically, not that it makes it much less disgusting. Sakuemon has an arrangement going on with his eldest son Ichiro and Su'e, Ichiro's wife and thus Sakuemon's daughter-in-law, that allows him to have sex with her.
• Pet the Dog: The one truly redeeming quality of the Tenges is that most of them are genuinely loving and affectionate towards Ayako and do what they can to make her miserable life in the cellar bearable.
• Phenotype Stereotype:
  • The one Korean guy in the series looks like a slant-eyed monster and is introduced speaking in Engrish.
  • The black American soldiers are drawn with huge lips, and their flirting with Japanese women is very inappropriate.
• Potty Failure: Ayako wets herself the first night in the cellar because there's no toilet.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Ichiro succeeds his late father, Sakuemon, as head of the Tenge family, and obtains most of his wealth. However, to obtain it he has to prostitute his wife to his father, and later murders her when she tries to divorce him, and it leaves him paranoid and miserable.
• Revenge: Naoko swears to get vengeance on everyone associated with her boyfriend's death. Near the end of the story, when Jiro confesses his role in the murder, she stabs him in the neck, although he's able to be saved by the family physician.
• Ripped from the Headlines: The manga deals with many important events in the history of post-WWII Japan, including the Shimoyama incident. This is also the reason for the aforementioned racism present in the work. Korean involvement in organized crime and rapes of local women by American soldiers (often black) were (and still are) a hot-button issue in the Japanese press at the time. While Tezuka was usually very progressive on racial issues, because of his experiences in WWII and the subsequent occupation, Japanese people being mistreated by foreigners on their own soil was a major Berserk Button for him.
• Security Blanket: Large boxes and trunks seem to be a comfort zone for Ayako after she's rescued, as she will hide herself in such whenever she feels too stressed. She even slips into a shipping crate and has herself delivered to Jiro's home so she can be with him.
• Sex–Face Turn: Jiro does this to the female associate who tries to kill him. However, their relationship eventually sours, and he kills her when she becomes too much of a liability.
• Sexual Extortion: Sakuemon did this to Ichiro to get Su'e under threat of his inheritance. He also tried the same scheme on Jiro but fails as Jiro wasn't as interested in an inheritance.
• Taking You with Me: Shirou, unbeknownst to Ichiro, slips an explosive into his clothes and sets it off after the family is lured into the cave. After the cave-in, he reveals what he did and says that he intends to die in this way to atone for his failures toward Ayako, making the rest of the family pay for their abuses of her in kind.
• Younger Than They Look: Su'e, due to the immense stress she carries from a life of abuse and her unhappy marriage; her stress has affected her physical appearance and added several years to her face.

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