Kabuki (graphic novel)

AUTHOR: Mack, David

ARTIST: David Mack (illustrator); Rick Mays (illustrator); Joe Martin (letterer)

PUBLISHER: Caliber Press; Image Comics; Marvel ICON Comics

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1995-2007

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1995-2009

Publication History

David Mack wrote the first volume of Kabuki at the age of twenty-one, while still in college. He submitted the work as his senior writing thesis. He attended a university, not a specialized art school, because the art schools to which he applied could not offer free full tuition. According to Mack, this was a blessing, because his well-rounded university education gave him a solid and broad foundation as a writer and illustrator.

The first volume of Kabuki was inspired by many of Mack’s favorite subjects at university, including the Japanese language, theater, and world religions. Although Kabuki’s main character lives a radically different life than its author, Mack explores some deeply personal issues in the series, notably, the death of his mother, Ida Mack, to whom he dedicates many of the novels. The series changed publishers several times. The first four volumes of the series were published together by Caliber Press, under the name Fear the Reaper. Image Press published subsequent volumes, except the last volume in the series, which was published by Marvel Comics, under the Icon label.

Plot

Although heavily influenced by Japanese culture and manga, Kabuki is written and drawn by a Western writer and is arguably meant for a Western audience. The Japanese influence is obvious from the title of the series; the character of Kabuki is named after the term that refers to Japanese popular theater, while Kabuki’s agency, the Noh, is named after the term that refers to Japanese classical theater.

In Volume 1: Circle of Blood, the curtain opens to a grim vision of modern-day Kyoto, where criminal gangs, or yakuza, struggle for power. The government keeps the crime lords in check through a group of seven female assassins called the Noh. The assassins wear masks and red visors that provide information on their surroundings and vital statistics about their targets. Their tight, bulletproof outfits are reminiscent of superhero costumes. They each play specific roles in fighting crime.

Kabuki, the most prominent Noh operative, regularly makes appearances on Noh TV as “Little Sister,” reporting on sundry news stories as well as delivering threats to various criminals. Her viewers, and even some of her targets, believe that she is merely a trick, perhaps computer-generated, designed by the government to intimidate and control the Japanese populace. However, Kabuki and her cohorts are very real and manage to wipe out many of the crime syndicates in Japan.

Mack devotes almost more attention to the backstory than to the events that happen in the “real time” of the narrative. Kabuki, whose real name is Ukiko, comes from a troubled family, a “circle of blood” that contains both the protagonist and the villain of the novels.

Ukiko’s mother, Tsukiko, is of Ainu origin. The Ainu are the indigenous peoples of Japan who were conquered during feudal times and have been the victims of discrimination ever since. During World War II (1939-1945), Tsukiko is taken from her family and enlisted as a “comfort woman” for the Japanese army. Comfort women were normally sent to “comfort stations,” where they were often raped by soldiers. However, Tsukiko is spared this indignity, thanks to a wise yet eccentric general. He instructs Tsukiko and the other comfort women in his regiment to perform elaborate Kabuki dramas, and forbids his soldiers from doing anything to the women other than watching them. The soldiers fear him too much to disobey, with the exception of his son, Ryuichi Kai, who molests Tsukiko. As the general’s son becomes increasingly contemptuous of the women, the general becomes increasingly entranced by them, especially Tsukiko, his favorite.

After the war, the general rises to power in the government, at the same time that Ryuichi Kai rises to power in the underworld. The general adopts Tsukiko as his ward and eventually becomes engaged to her. Ryuichi Kai is incensed that his father would risk his social position by marrying an Ainu woman. On the eve of Tsukiko’s marriage, an unidentified assailant gouges out her eyes and carves the word “Kabuki” on her back. Tsukiko goes into a coma before she is able to tell the general who attacked her. She is left pregnant and dies while giving birth to Ukiko. Since the general never touched Tsukiko, he has little doubt about who the father is. Thus, Ukiko/Kabuki is the daughter of her own archenemy.

Ryuichi Kai does not learn of Ukiko’s existence until she is nine years old. When he does, he finds her and cuts the characters for “Kabuki” on her face. Ukiko is brought to the hospital and dies. While she flatlines, she is transported to a zone between living and dying, where she meets with her mother, who tells her to return to life and be like an avenging ghost, in imitation of one of Tsukiko’s roles in the Kabuki plays. Ukiko is brought back to life, ignited with determination to carry out her mother’s wishes. The general educates Ukiko in the best schools, grooming her for an elite position in an agency he has created–the Noh. Versions of this backstory are repeated many times throughout the series, as Kabuki grasps for an identity that does not involve blood, literally and figuratively.

In the present time of the story, Kabuki’s nemesis, Ryuichi Kai, manages to infiltrate the Noh and becomes one of their prominent leaders, disguised with an oni mask, a traditional mask worn by the demon characters of Kabuki theater. Using the code name “the Devil,” Kai sends the Noh agents to kill prominent members of rival gangs, thus destroying his competition. Eventually, he forms an unholy alliance with the government and even wins over his father.

When Ukiko discovers the deception, she massacres Kai and his entire syndicate against the orders of the Noh. When the Noh directors hold a disciplinary hearing with her, she kills all of them, except the general, who shoots himself. Ukiko is injured by the security guards and flees to her mother’s grave.

In Masks of Noh, Mack shines the spotlight on the other Noh operatives, who are on a mission to assassinate Ukiko, before she can defame them all. However, before the Noh reach her, Ukiko is spirited away by Control Corps, an agency designed to rehabilitate and reprogram “defective” agents.

When the story returns to Ukiko, she is being interrogated by a psychiatrist at Control Corps, who seems at least as interested in extracting information from her as she is in “helping” her. Ukiko is an inmate of what resembles a prison psych ward, where agents gone wrong wander about the halls, drugged and rambling. Ukiko refuses to speak without her mask; deprived of her protective persona, she feels too vulnerable. She is put in solitary confinement for several weeks, during which time a mysterious inmate named “Akemi” communicates with her by means of notes folded into origami pieces and makes plans for them both to escape.

Eventually, the Noh break into Control Corps. One of the agents poses as Ukiko’s doctor in order to kill her, but Ukiko is not fooled. Ukiko murders her would-be assassin and escapes Control Corps with the help of Akemi, with whom she begins to have a physical relationship. Akemi temporarily joins the Noh, impersonating the dead Noh agent, and claims that she has killed Ukiko.

With the Noh no longer after her, Ukiko moves to California and reinvents herself as a children’s entertainer and children’s book writer. Occasionally she wears a mask, but it is of a much different variety than her previous one: She now plays an animal in a children’s play.

Volumes

•Kabuki: Circle of Blood (1995). Includes Fear the Reaper, issues 1-4, and Circle of Blood, issues 1-6. Featuring the rise of the Kai syndicate and its demise at the hand of Ukiko/Kabuki.

•Kabuki: Dreams (2002). Collects Volume 2, issues 1-4. Kabuki has a near-death experience and meets with her dead mother.

•Kabuki: Masks of Noh (1998). Collects Volume 3, issues 1-4. Account of the Noh operatives’ mission to find Kabuki and kill her.

•Kabuki: Skin Deep (1998). Collects Volume 4, issues 1-3. Ukiko wakes up in Control Corps to find her mask and Kabuki identity ripped away from her.

•Kabuki: Metamorphosis (2000). Collects Volume 5, issues 1-9. Features the infiltration of Control Corps by the Noh and depicts Kabuki’s escape with the help of Akemi.

•Kabuki: Scarab (2002). Collects Volume 6, issues 1-8. Provides background to the character of Keiko (Scarab), recounting key events of her childhood and adolescence.

•Kabuki: The Alchemy (2009). Collects Volume 7, issues 1-9, during which Kabuki lives in hiding from the Noh and reinvents herself as a writer of children’s books.

Characters

•Ukiko Kai, a.k.a. Kabuki, the protagonist, is a muscular and alluring assassin who plays the role of Kabuki in the elite Noh agency. She wears a mask that is featureless except for a small tear below the right eye. Her costume is decorated with a red sun, the emblem of the imperial flag. Her weapons of choice are sickles, farm tools of the Ainu. The mask and costume give her a stunning, picture-perfect presence, but under her mask, her face is plain and severely scarred. She is intelligent, calculating, and a fierce fighter. She is prone to moodiness and melancholy, and she frequently broods about her past.

•Ryuichi Kai, the antagonist and Ukiko’s father, is a crime lord and the leader of the Kai syndicate. He is stubborn, and when he does not get his way, he is unmerciful. He is clever and cunning, especially in his infiltration of the Noh. As cultured as he is vicious, he loves to play piano and read philosophy books.

•The General is Ukiko’s grandfather and Ryuichi Kai’s father. Unlike his son, he is deeply respectful of the women in his life. When he was younger, he was wise and refined and a brilliant strategist. As he gets older, he begins to lose his wits and is often seen playing chess with a mannequin he believes to be his dead bride.

•Tsukiko, Ukiko’s mother, is an Ainu who comes from Hokkaido in northern Japan. As a child, she worked on a farm. When she was ten years old, the Japanese army took her from her family and enlisted her as a “comfort woman.” The general, however, has different plans for her and makes her a Kabuki actor.

•Keiko, a.k.a. Scarab, is a Noh assassin who wears a mask that has a red circle on the forehead, similar to the red sun on the costume that Kabuki wears and alluding to the “circle of blood” theme that runs throughout the series. Her role in the Noh is to clean up messes left by other Noh operatives, thus filling a niche similar to that of the scarab beetle. As a teenager, she lived on the streets, where she engaged in petty crime, including theft and vandalism. Unlike Ukiko, she is vibrant and gregarious.

•Siamese, two Noh assassins, are twins who were once literally joined at the hip. After they were separated, they were both given robotic arms, with long swords as “fingernails.” The two are different in character: one is quiet and the other talkative. The characters reference the Asian cyberpunk genre, from which Mack certainly took inspiration.

•Akemi is a mysterious and beautiful inmate at Control Corps. Akemi’s character has an allegorical significance, which is why Mack named her “Akemi,” in imitation of how the Japanese pronounce the word “alchemy.” She is a veterinarian with a penchant for making origami animals. At the end of the series, she changes her gender and becomes a mailman. Her identity is intentionally ambiguous. Mack makes it unclear whether she is a real person or an aspect of Kabuki’s personality that helps her transform and overcome the ghosts of her past.

Artistic Style

Kabuki contains some of the most exquisite and innovative artwork in the graphic novel genre. Mack showed promise in the first volume of the series (Circle of Blood), with its skilled and realistic black-and-white drawings. However, in the later volumes, Mack developed and perfected a unique style. Although manga certainly influenced the plot and characters, Mack’s style is distinctly, if not stubbornly, non-manga. The pictures are vividly colored and richly textured, with detailed backgrounds that reflect the characters’ thoughts, feelings, and personal histories. Just as Mack frequently repeats scenes and events, he also repeats images, weaving them into new contexts as the story unfolds. He experiments extensively with panels, superimposing them, arranging them asymmetrically on the page, or dispensing with them altogether. Mack uses a variety of media, including collage, photographs, and even bamboo cuttings from Japanese fans. He also employs playful storytelling devices that link the illustrations thematically. For example, the last issue of Metamorphosis is structured like an alphabet book.

The women of the Noh are all voluptuous and extravagantly provocative in their poses and gestures. Nudity is abundant, to the point that some of the issues border on pornography. However, although the art is certainly drawn for men, the female characters maintain their positions as subjects, with Mack evoking their complex inner lives through moody landscapes and whimsical metaphorical symbols scribbled all over the page. Literally and figuratively, Mack is not an artist who stays inside the lines.

Not all issues are drawn by Mack. Each chapter of Masks of the Noh is drawn by a different artist, as a way of showing a distinction among the different characters. Rick Mays illustrates the chapter that focuses on Scarab and Volume 6: Scarab, as a way of maintaining character continuity. Mays’s manga-informed style is engaging and lively, but it pales in comparison to Mack’s highly original illustrations.

Themes

Identity construction and deconstruction represent the primary theme of the series. In the beginning, Ukiko/Kabuki plays a role given to her by others. From beyond the grave, Tsukiko bids Ukiko to act as an avenging ghost. The general facilitates this objective through giving Ukiko the position of Kabuki in the Noh agency.

Ukiko’s identity is constructed not only by the people who care about her, but also by one who despises her, namely, Ryuichi Kai, who gives her the name Kabuki by inscribing it on her face. Not only does he manage to infiltrate the Noh, he also meddles with the identity of his daughter.

Ukiko embraces her Kabuki role as if it were a security blanket. The mask and bulletproof costume command attention and authority and give her a sense of safety. With the mask on, Kabuki feels more like herself than without it; she has so embodied her constructed identity that it has become more “real” than the one with which she was born. Most important, the mask hides her scars, the horrors of her past that are literally written on her face.

When Ukiko is kidnapped by Control Corps, she loses her mask, and with it, her sense of self. Slowly, Ukiko creates a new identity for herself with the help of her friend Akemi. This can happen, however, only through accepting what she sees as her imperfections, such as the scars on her face, which are a constant reminder of the brutality of her kin.

The Alchemy, the last volume of the series, takes a different thematic direction, exploring the creative process and the roots of genius. Ukiko is no longer tormented about her identity or lack thereof: She is thoroughly engrossed in her work. She even transforms into it; in one drawing, Mack draws her metamorphosing into one of the creatures that she draws in her picture books. No longer is Ukiko the recipient or victim of an identity imposed on her by outside forces; she has become the author of her own story.

Impact

Kabuki was one of the most critically acclaimed graphic novel series of the 1990’s and helped put Mack on Wizard magazine’s top-ten writers list. Mack has been accused of exoticism and voyeurism, and some criticize him for reducing sophisticated Japanese literature into stereotypes and stock plots. However, he did help introduce Japanese theater to a wide audience in the West.

Certainly the most influential aspect of the series is the artwork. Mack pushed the boundaries of the graphic novel medium, just as he pushed the boundaries of the printed page. Many critics hail Mack’s work as fine art, worthy of being hung on gallery walls. Thus, Mack raised the bar for many illustrators to come. The series’ strong female characters and their psychological depth make Kabuki at least as popular among women as among men, which is itself an achievement for a genre whose readership is often predominantly male.

Further Reading

Moore, Alan, J. H. Williams, and Mick Gray. Promethea (2000-2005).

Koike, Kazuo, and Kazuo Kamimura. Lady Snowblood (2005- ).

Shirow, Masamune. Ghost in the Shell (1996).

Bibliography

Bowers, Faubion. Japanese Theatre. New York: Hermitage House, 1952.

Casey, Jim, and Stefan Hall. “The Exotic Other Scripted: Identity and Metamorphosis in David Mack’s Kabuki.” ImageText: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies 3, no. 1 (2006).

Soh, Chunghee Sarah. “Prostitutes Versus Sex Slaves: The Politics of Representing the ‘Comfort Women’.” In Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War II, edited by Margaret Stetz and Bonnie Oh. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2001.