Shiki – the many faces of human nature

The village was surrounded by death. Houses and fields spread out from the river, sealed into the tip of a spear by a forest of conifers. This forest wrapped the village in ‘death’. It laid out the village boundary, and also its isolating barrier. Its trees were grown for the dead. The village used them to produce the wooden grave markers and wooden coffins that fed its economy. Right from the start, the village had been born to produce ritual objects for the dead.

And within that forest of firs was a country of the dead, their grave markers the firs themselves. The people of that village still buried their dead. Each villager had a burial plot on a small fragment of land, and there their remains would be interned. There would be no gravestone. To mark the abode of the deceased, a wooden grave marker would be erected. And after the thirty-third anniversary of their memorial service, that grave marker would be taken down and a fir planted in its place. A fir planted, and then forgotten. By then, the dead would already have returned to being a part of the mountain, bereft of connections with the living.

There is a bridge that spans the distance between that world and this one. And the opposite side, the shore of this world, surrounded on three sides by death, was already isolated from the rest of this world.

The people there served death; they prayed for the sake of the dead.

From the time it was born, the village had existed for that purpose.

ーadapted from Seishin’s essay at the start of the novel.

At the start of summer, a strange malaise descended on this village. Its inhabitants started disappearing, into the ground, and into thin air. The shiki had come…

…it’s us…or them.

Shiki is a show that really split the fandom. To anyone familiar with the horror genre, it was obvious early on that we were dealing with what the West knows as ‘vampires’. And viewers quickly lined themselves up on the two sides, throwing themselves behind the humans, or barracking for the shiki, seeing things in black-and-white. Discussions towards the later part of the series, in particular, began to be characterised by viewers on the human side widely condemning the shiki and cursing certain characters for the decisions they’d made.

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to present my argument well enough, but I felt that this tendency was incredibly detrimental to the story and the themes that Ono Fuyumi created. It may have been brought about by misplaced expectations about what Shiki was supposed to be about. I, for one, was incredibly surprised to find out, a few weeks after it ended, that some viewers thought that this was an “otaku” anime purely because it was about vampires. Apparently, all vampire anime can only be for “otaku”…just as all sci-fi is for geeks? And in a vampire story, there’s always a clear dichotomy between good an evil, even if there are vampires on both sides (e.g. Blood+; Trinity Blood).

Humans are amazing…be it in good or bad ways.

In my view, there is no clear dichotomy in Shiki. Rather than just black-and-white, there are numerous shades of grey. There were those who reveled in control, killing or violence, and those that refused to take part. Some succumbed to threats and taunts, whilst others just followed the crowd without thinking for themselves. A few sought ways to coexist, though most succumbed to particularist ideologies and became used to the killing. But each of these actions or reactions had one thing in common: they were, at their heart, human. They were decisions that humans might make under those circumstances, based on their experiences, based on their dreams and desires. That’s what human nature is – something brought about by the mutual constitution of the individual and his/her environment.

Some might argue that the show was not particularly adapt at bringing all these layers out. There were so many characters that I seriously doubt anyone remembered more than a few names (besides the mains) – e.g. how many people can name the Kanemasa doctor? However, the writers provided some guideposts by contrasting characters with each other. The most obvious pair was Tatsumi and Natsuno: one who would use the vilest methods to see how far Sunako could struggle, against another who simply hated those methods. And although some viewers thought Natsuno made a stupid choice, given his options, I can only express respect because he stayed true to his own values.

I just hate the way you do things.

Unfortunately, the focus on the Natsuno-Tatsumi struggle meant that the contrast between Toshio and Seishin, along with the conflict within Seishin himself, which I felt was one of the main ideas in the series, faded too far into the background. As a result, too many viewers were more interested in taking sides (mostly the human side) than in examining the underlying philosophical debates about what kinds of lives are worth living. It was interesting that a number of people claimed that Seishin could simply have ignored his duty and walked away from the position as village monk, whilst also arguing that Sunako and her family should have stayed hidden as vampires should if they wish to avoid persecution. They recognise the constraints that were placed on Sunako, but ignore those that box Seishin in. This probably doesn’t seem like a fair comparison, but my point really is: what presuppositions about society have we applied to these characters, and where have they come from? Most importantly, are they actually the same conclusions about society that these characters have come to? Can they not fight in ways different from those that we would choose if placed in a similar situation? Given that we haven’t experienced what they have, do we have the right to criticise and condemn them? Personally, I’m not so sure of that.

On the technical side, there were also a few major flaws with the anime. First, the fact that the two BD/DVD only episodes were released months after the end of the series diluted their impact somewhat. I’d have preferred to have watched them along with the rest of the series as it was airing. Then again, I’m not so sure that the contents of 20.5 could have made it past the censors. It should also be noted that they didn’t animate what was probably the most harrowing encounter – yes, even more harrowing that Toshio’s experimentation in episode 14 – Kaori’s encounter with her father.

Nevertheless, Shiki forced me to contemplate several philosophical ideas that I hadn’t really thought about before. It made me seriously consider what prejudices people bring to issues of life and death, and of freedom and persecution. I still don’t know what I’d have done if I’d been in the same situation as any of those characters, but I really appreciated the opportunity of empathising with them.