The Drifting Classroom

AUTHOR: Umezu, Kazuo

ARTIST: Kazuo Umezu (illustrator); Kelle Han (letterer); Izumi Evers (cover artist)

PUBLISHER: Shogakukan (Japanese); VIZ Media (English)

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION:Hyoryu kyoshitsu, 1972-1974

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1998 (English translation, 2006-2008)

Publication History

Kazuo Umezu’s horror manga The Drifting Classroom was originally published serially in Japan under its Japanese title, Hyoryu kyoshitsu. The series appeared in Shonen Sunday magazine from 1972 to 1974. Yuji Oniki’s English translation was released by VIZ Media from 2006 to 2008, appearing as eleven bound volumes, each containing between three and five chapters of the manga. VIZ Media’s English translation maintains the original Japanese right-to-left reading format, meaning Umezu’s original artwork is preserved and not “reversed” as is the case with many American manga publications.

Plot

After arguing with his mother, protagonist Sho Takamatsu goes to school for the day. Yamato Elementary and everyone inside are transported into the future, appearing in a postapocalyptic wasteland. Only one student, Shinichi Yamada, is saved from this fate, as he forgot his lunch money and left school to get it prior to the event. Order at the school deteriorates rapidly in the wasteland; one student falls from the roof and dies, and teachers panic and use violence against students to silence them. A teacher named Mr. Wakahara goes insane and murders his colleagues, while Sekiya, the school lunch man, kidnaps a student and assaults several more.

Initially the children believe they have been teleported to another geographic location on Earth, but after discovering a memorial for Yamato Elementary’s dead, they realize that they have been transported forward in time. The space-time barrier is permeable, and Sho is able to communicate backward through time with his mother, Emiko, who hides helpful survival tools in obscure places for Sho to “rediscover” in the future.

Once the majority of the adults are dead, Yamato Elementary descends into chaos reminiscent of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954). Sho leads his classmates against the mutinous efforts of bullies such as “Princess,” who wants to become dictator of Yamato Elementary. At the same time, Sho must attend to basic survival needs, such as finding food. This leads the students to declare their school a “nation” led by elected representatives, with Sho as their president.

In addition to these human conflicts, the children of Yamato Elementary combat the strange forces inhabiting the future world. A giant insect attacks the school whenever Nakata, one of the students, eats. When the children return from an expedition to kill the monster, they find the school infested with the monster’s babies, who swarm over the students, stripping flesh from bone instantaneously. The creatures disappear when Nakata kills himself to save his friends.

Soon afterward, an outbreak of bubonic plague hits the school. Infected, Sho and his friends go into exile to find a solution to the epidemic. Rogue students run amok in their absence and murder anyone they suspect of being infected. Sho and his friends retake the school by scaring their enemies with a mummy found in a vault. After being cured by a supply of streptomycin Emiko hid in the mummy, the children burn piles of bodies to destroy any traces of the plague.

Discovering a crack in the swimming pool, which is their primary water supply, Sho and his friends venture into the desert to find a new source. Sakiko stays behind and encourages her fellow students to pray for rain. The rain song works, but the desert is hit with a flash flood and becomes a muddy bog. Sakiko nearly dies while saving the school’s plants, which begin to bear fruit.

The fruit trees become infected with a fungus that alters students who eat the fruit into scaled monsters. The transformed students worship a one-eyed deity, which visits the school and takes its devotees away. Sekiya uses this event as an opportunity to seize control of the school, enslaving the students and forcing them to dig a well. One of the students claims he saw Sho sneaking into the school with a stick of dynamite prior to the school’s temporal displacement, suggesting he is to blame for the students’ predicament.

While digging Sekiya’s well the children find a tunnel leading underground to a subway system inhabited by mutants similar in appearance to the one-eyed deity. The mutants project a film that explains how the world became a desert as a result of overpopulation and pollution. They chase the children, who escape and find a freshwater spring that turns out to be volcanic. They run from rivers of lava to warn the school of the danger. Sho and his friends surface to find the mutants attacking the school, and Sekiya sends several children to defend the building while he escapes in a van. The mutants depart, and Sho blacks out.

Sho awakens and argues with Otomo, who believes the situation is hopeless, especially now that giant flesh-eating starfish are attacking the school. Sho and Otomo get into a knife fight, which culminates in their decision to divide the school into two halves.

Walking through the desert, the children find a derelict amusement park populated by robotic dinosaurs and cavemen, who try to kill the children. A talking computer explains how Yamato Elementary was teleported into the future: A dynamite explosion acted as a catalyst, propelling the school through a weak spot in the space-time barrier. Otomo confesses he tried to blow up the school. The children hold hands in a circle as Otomo lights his last stick of dynamite, each focusing on his or her desire to return home. In the present, Emiko goes on national television and encourages the Japanese population to join the children in this ritual.

Meanwhile, Sakiko flees from the group of survivors after realizing she does not want to return home, as she enjoys being a mother to Yu; however, Yu wants to return to his parents. The children reconvene to send Yu back to the past, hoping to utilize the force of the nearby volcano as a catalyst in place of Otomo’s dynamite. Sekiya arrives seeking to kill them and is strangled by a disembodied arm. Yu returns to the present and gives Emiko Sho’s notebook, which contains the details of the children’s experiences in the wasteland. Emiko receives a phone call from an American scientist who wants to help send Sho supplies in the future. The manga ends with Emiko seeing Sho and his friends running through the stars.

Volumes

• The Drifting Classroom, Volume 1 (2006). Collects chapters 1-4. The school is teleported into the future and the protagonists are introduced.

• The Drifting Classroom, Volume 2 (2006). Collects chapters 5-9. The situation escalates at Yamato Elementary as the adults at the school go insane, turning against the children and one another.

• The Drifting Classroom, Volume 3 (2006). Collects chapters 10-13. The children venture outside of the school grounds in search of life, and “Princess” stages a coup to take control of the school.

• The Drifting Classroom, Volume 4 (2007). Collects chapters 14-17. The children hold a tense democratic election and attempt to fend off an insectile invader.

• The Drifting Classroom, Volume 5 (2007). Collects chapters 18-22. The children attempt to escape the insect monster’s babies and find a way to stop Nakata from materializing his nightmares.

• The Drifting Classroom, Volume 6 (2007). Collects chapters 23-25. The children struggle against the bubonic plague sweeping the halls of Yamato Elementary.

• The Drifting Classroom, Volume 7 (2007). Collects chapters 26-28. The school floods, and Sho and his friends wade through the desert, which turns to mud.

• The Drifting Classroom, Volume 8 (2007). Collects chapters 29-33. Sekiya enslaves the schoolchildren, and Sho and his friends explore the frightening world of the mutant-infested subway system.

• The Drifting Classroom, Volume 9 (2007). Collects chapters 34-36. Sho’s and Otomo’s groups come into conflict.

• The Drifting Classroom, Volume 10 (2008). Collects chapters 37-40. The children battle robotic dinosaurs, cavemen, and each other in a derelict amusement park.

• The Drifting Classroom, Volume 11 (2008). Collects chapters 41-43. Sekiya is finally defeated, and the children attempt to return to their original time.

Characters

• Sho Takamatsu, the protagonist, is a short sixth-grade boy with tousled hair and a furrowed brow. At first, he is a spoiled child with little sense of responsibility, but he later becomes one of the most mature characters in the series. A natural leader, he is rational and compassionate, and he is eventually voted president of the nation of Yamato Elementary.

• Yuichi, a.k.a. Yu, is a young child clad in overalls, often seen riding a tricycle. Although he is young, he is extremely brave and loyal to Sho. He returns to the present at the end of the manga.

• Emiko Takamatsu is Sho’s mother. After Sho is transported into the distant future, she becomes his primary lifeline.

• Shinichi Yamada is one of Sho’s friends and the only student to avoid transportation into the future. He has black hair with long bangs and is one of the few people in the present who believes the children of Yamato Elementary are still alive.

• SakikoKawada is a female student with a ponytail who is in love with Sho. Her younger brother is killed early in the story after running out into the desert. She becomes a surrogate mother to many students at Yamato Elementary, particularly Yu.

• Mr. Wakahara is a teacher at Yamato Elementary. He has wavy hair and wears a suit. He goes insane and murders all of the teachers and almost kills Sho.

• Kyusaku Sekiya is the man who delivers school lunches. He was popular with the students before the school was transported, but he becomes violent and sadistic. He dies after a disembodied arm rips through the fabric of space-time and strangles him.

• Ikegaki is one of Sho’s classmates. He has prominent front teeth and a bowl-cut hairstyle. Ikegaki is one of Sho’s strongest and bravest allies and minister of defense at Yamato Elementary. He dies fighting the insect monster.

• Ayumi Nishi is a fifth-grade student with long blond hair and crutches. She has “prophetic” dreams that enable her to see into the past, allowing Sho to communicate with his mother. She is instrumental in returning Yu to the present.

• Otomo is a black-haired boy with a cowlick and one of Sho’s classmates. Sho names Otomo the minister of health and welfare. He is pessimistic and easily angered. He confesses to setting off the explosion at the school.

Artistic Style

All of the drawings in The Drifting Classroom are black and white. The panels are strictly ordered, rectangular, and sized according to the importance of the events they contain. Umezu uses full-page spreads to emphasize important plot points and frequently uses a “zoom lens” effect in his drawings, gradually focusing on particular details or panning away from scenes for dramatic effect. VIZ Media’s translation of The Drifting Classroom is formatted so that the traditional right-to-left reading pattern characteristic of manga is maintained.

Umezu’s artwork is characterized by liberal use of black ink. He uses aggressive shading and precise black lines to create an oppressive atmosphere appropriate to the horror genre. Backgrounds are highly detailed and drawn in a realistic mode that contrasts with his often-stylized characters. The incongruity between The Drifting Classroom’s cartoonish protagonists and the realistic environments they inhabit highlights the frighteningly alien atmosphere of the children’s new world. Often, backgrounds are simply repeating patterns designed to evoke emotional responses; for example, concentric circles and small black bubbles in the background indicate fear, delusion, and madness.

Umezu draws the characters of The Drifting Classroom in an exaggerated manner, especially in terms of their facial features and emotions. Some characters, such as Mr. Wakahara, are drawn realistically, while others, such as the goofy Hatsuta, barely look human. Umezu amplifies the facial expressions of his characters to highlight the terror of their situation. Sho almost always has a wide-open mouth and eyes, making him look simultaneously angry and frightened. A particularly unique effect is Umezu’s representation of wild eyes; at times, his characters seem to have four pupils, indicating their rapid eye movement. Heavy black lines around the eyes of the characters represent insanity or stress.

Although Umezu’s characters are not always physically realistic, his embellished features differentiate the characters from one another and allow them to embody a wide variety of emotions. In many cases, realistic representation indicates a character’s lack of innocence; adult characters generally look more realistic than children, whose faces are drawn with minimal lines and white space.

Themes

The Drifting Classroom is a horror manga written to evoke feelings of dread. Umezu uses dark environments and monstrous creatures to establish a frightening atmosphere. Perhaps the most horrifying aspects of The Drifting Classroom are the ways in which the human characters treat each another and how quickly civility devolves into anarchy. Umezu plays with group dynamics and mob psychology to show that the students of Yamato Elementary pose a greater threat to one another than carnivorous starfish, giant insects, or the bubonic plague ever could. Some members of the group consider their own lives more important than the lives of their companions and kill others to survive. As president of Yamato Elementary, Sho negotiates a variety of problematic situations between students at the school to ensure the survival of as many of his classmates as possible. He vacillates between his sense of responsibility for his classmates and his disgust over the frequently deplorable nature of human beings.

There is an environmentalist undercurrent in The Drifting Classroom, as the students are transported into a barren future in which the world has been stripped of all of its natural resources and beauty. They quickly learn that resources at the school are finite: If a student breaks a window, for example, it cannot be replaced. This notion of nonrenewable resources, combined with the mutants’ bleak retelling of the fall of humanity, encourages readers to consider the ecological problems facing the modern world. Tying into The Drifting Classroom’s environmentalist theme is its focus on the relationship between the past and the present. The children live in a barren wasteland because of the events of the past, which destroyed the future that they are forced to inhabit. Sho directly influences events in the future by calling to his mother in the present. At the end of the manga, when Yu is sent back to his original time, he promises to change people’s ideas about the environment so Sho and his friends can live in a brighter future.

Impact

Much of Umezu’s cultural impact in Japan is the result of his prolific output and creative approach to his art. Umezu has produced a tremendous number of manga in a variety of genres throughout his lifetime, including comedies, surrealist adventures, and ghost stories. The Drifting Classroom remains Umezu’s most famous and widely read foray into horror manga because of its gripping and often bizarre storyline and its grim insights into the human condition. Several Japanese horror-manga writers cite Umezu as an influence, including Junji Ito and Toru Yamazaki. In Japan, Umezu is as much of a household name for the horror genre as writers such as Stephen King and Edgar Allan Poe are in the West. The Drifting Classroom received favorable reviews in Western periodicals and is commonly cited as a masterwork of horror manga.

Films

The Drifting Classroom. Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi. Bandai Entertainment, 1987. This live-action film adaptation was written by Kazuo Umezu, Izo Hashimoto, Yoji Ogura, and Mitsutoshi Ishigami and stars Yasufumi Hayashi as Sho and Aiko Asano as Ayumi. The film adaptation is set at an international school in Kobe, Japan, and the characters are teenagers rather than elementary school students.

Television Series

Long Love Letter. Directed by Mizuta Narahide. Fuji Television Network, 2002. This eleven-episode live-action television drama series stars Takayuki Yamada as Sho and Tomohisa Yamashita as Otomo. The series focuses on a romantic relationship between two of the teachers at the school. Long Love Letter has a more optimistic plot than The Drifting Classroom and features an older cast of characters.

Further Reading

Ito, Junji. Uzumaki (2001-2002).

Ohba, Tsugumi, and Takeshi Obata. Death Note (2003-2006).

Yamazaki, Toru. Octopus Girl (2006).

Bibliography

“The Drifting Classroom.” Review of The Drifting Classroom, by Kazuo Umezu. Publishers Weekly 253, no. 25 (2006): 46.

Kawamoto, Saburo. “The Nightmarish Imagination.” In The Drifting Classroom, Volume 11. San Francisco, Calif.: VIZ Media, 2008.

Macias, Patrick. “About the Artist: Kazuo Umezu.” In The Drifting Classroom,Volume 1. San Francisco, Calif.: VIZ Media, 2006.