In an earlier article on The Taste of Canned Sardines, screenwriter Wilfrid Lupano talked to us about the division of labor between screenwriters and artists when creating comics, especially in the extreme case of wordless comics like Taste of Canned Sardines.
△ Click to taste the taste of "Canned Sardines"
In "The Leader of Cairo + Three Graduates of the Cave Bear School", there is a fairy tale text by Kenji Miyazawa, and it seems that the manga adaptation on this basis is easier.
On the contrary, in the face of the two original works of the Japanese national writer Zhu Yu, the manga artist Hiroshi Masomura must not dare to relax. 10 years after the release of the comic adaptation of Galactic Railway Night, he continued to adapt two fairy tales, "The Captain of Cairo" and "Spiders, Slugs and Tanuki", into comics.
△ Hiroshi Masomura's life photos, picture from the Internet
In the process of adapting Spiders, Slugs and Tanuki, how should the spider be depicted, and is it a spider that exists in nature? These questions made Hiroshi Masomura hesitate. In the spirit of truth-seeking and respect for Kenji Miyazawa, he wrote down the creative process of the role of spider and attached it to the afterword to "The Leader of Cairo + Three Graduates of Dongxiong School". Based on the few clues in the text, Hiroshi Masomura wrote this Leeuwenhoek "detective report" about spiders.
One of the protagonists in "Three Graduates of Cave Bear School" is Spider. But how do you draw this spider? Kenji Miyazawa left the following clues:
I first called the Kenji Miyazawa Memorial Hall and asked Miss U, who often helped me check the information, and got the answer that the specific species of spider was unknown. She replied to me, "But... Ask the Ihatob Center, there should be all the research literature in the computer. For example, you can ask Mr. Nishiki..."
"Mr. Nishiki!" The name shocked me. This gentleman, "Kinzaburō", was the one who discovered "spider flying", and he once said that "spiders ride on the wind in the autumn atmosphere and fly and move in the atmosphere." In the art club of high school, there was a senior named Nishiki who was two levels higher than me. Yes, it turns out that Mr. Kinzaburo is The father of Kinjun.
△ Some spiders have the ability to fly, these spiders spit out a very fine spider silk to the sky, relying on the help of atmospheric electric fields to push them away, so as to fly by electricity, the picture comes from the network
Next to Yonezawa City, where I live, Akayu Town is where Nishikijun lives. I vaguely remember hearing that "Jinjun's father was a very great research expert who studied spiders." I inexplicably felt that "Jinjun is very strange, so his father must also be a strange person."
△ Yonezawa City is located in the southern part of the northeastern part of Honshu Island, and the image comes from the Internet
"Well, then you can only contact Mr. Kinzaburo through the senior of the art club."
I thought so in my head, but I asked the people at the Ihatob Center again about the spider literature, and the answer was that there was no such literature. I also consulted the spider column of the Kenji Miyazawa Dictionary of Words, and there is no record of this type of spider. So, that night, I had to call the senior of the high school, only to learn that Mr. Kinzaburo was no longer in this world.
"Ah, that's right." It was a pity that the lifeline was broken, and since that was the case, I had to find the spider's books and illustrations myself. I ran all over Kanda's bookstore, looking for spiders. Mitsubudo, Shusen Grand Bookstore, Shinjuku Kii Kuniya. It turned out that my idea was too simple.
Spiders are not popular. In the case of butterflies and beetles, there are various books and special illustrations, but spiders cannot find special atlases. Looking at the thick picture book, the spider part is only a few pages, and finally, for a few pages, I bought three major picture books to come back, but none of them are detailed enough, and the types of spiders are too many.
△ A famous influencer on youtube, Lucas the Little Spider is considered to be the cutest spider image in the world (apologize for causing discomfort
Broad six-eyed ghost spider, white-fronted high-legged spider, pleasing golden spider, ring-footed worm, sticky bride, cloud-spotted mound spider, close relatives mound spider, jumping spider, three-legged flower spider, feminine spider, spring word cloud spider, twill cat spider, fat garden spider, greenhouse spider, to name a few. Let's take a look at the spider characteristics suggested by Kenji Miyazawa:
(1) Red long-legged spider
(2) Spider character mapping for the chest: Nampe
(3) Male spider webs
(4) Tie a net on an acorn tree and hide behind the leaves
(1) "Red Long-legged Spider" appears frequently in the work. Is this "red" a spider's leg? Or the whole body of the spider?
I consulted three atlases, and among the web-bound spiders, no male or female spider is a red-legged species. However, according to the photographs in the catalogue, the legs and body of the male rhabdomy golden spider are orange-yellow. If you look at it this way, the male of the rod-like bride also has a slight orange body. This is a problem, these two kinds of spiders, male and female size difference is very large.
Looking at the photos of the bride with the rod, the male spider is only 1/3 of the female, and the horizontal striped golden spider is the same, the female spider is 20 mm to 25 mm long, while the male spider is only 5 mm to 6 mm.
Kenji Miyazawa didn't mention such a size difference at all, which caught my attention. And according to the literature, the males of the brides of the rod do not have a web at all, but use the web of the female spider knot. This is also the complete opposite of the content of the work (3) "The male spider knots the web, the female spider arrives".
This form of web mating between male and female spiders is not well documented because the literature is not detailed, and it is estimated that other species such as the pleasing golden spider are probably the same.
So, I started to pay attention to the fat garden spider. The body is red, the female is 17 mm to 22 mm long, and the male is 10 mm to 12 mm long. According to the "Ormith Science Learning Atlas" published by Xueyan Publishing House, "The fat garden spider mostly forms a vertical circular web in the low place of the trees on the grassland, and puts a few plant leaves on one side to build a secret home." The abdomen is colored , and the juveniles are yellow , which turns red when adults"
The fact that the torso is red and a few plant leaves are placed to build a secret home coincides with (4) "netting acorn trees and hiding behind leaves", but the point of "low trees on the prairie" is puzzling. The stage of the work is a tall tree like "an acorn tree by the forest", and on this tall tree, it should be a bride with a rod and a pleasing golden spider.
I began to feel uneasy.
Hey, hey. Wouldn't it be that Kenji Miyazawa wrote a spider that can't have all the conditions, that is, the kind of "inaccurate spider"? Or although I saw the red-bellied rod bride, I didn't know that the male was extremely small, nor did I know that the male went to the female knot's net, and took the rod bride and the golden spider as the prototype of creation?
As if I were trying to find the weakness of a perfect hero who was invincible in the world, a wave of pleasure surged in my heart.
My intuition is that Kenji Miyazawa is using the Golden Spider and the Bride of the Stick as the prototype of "spanning males and females". In the prototype of this work, Spiders and Slugs and Tanuki Cats, he describes spiders this way: on the chest is "written in spider text なんぺ". This creates a distinct pattern for the spider. From this, I thought of painting なんぺ on the chest of the "Great Pleasant Eye Golden Spider".
However, could it be that the erudite Kenji Miyazawa created the work without carefully investigating the spiders? With this question in mind, I asked the editorial board to ask the spider expert.
What kind of spider is the spider that appears in "Three Graduates of cave bear school"? Kenji Miyazawa describes it as a "red long-legged spider", and even though the scope is delineated according to the spider characteristics (1) to (4) at the beginning, it is still uncertain whether "red" refers to the legs of the spider or to the abdomen.
In addition, (2) the spider text refers to the pattern on the chest of the spider. I initially thought it was a bride or a pleasing golden spider, but according to the literature, the habits of these species are all male-female knotted nets, contradicting (3). It can also be considered an obese garden spider, but from the point of view of (4) "inhabiting a tall oak tree", it seems that this is not right. Are there any spiders with male webs that attract females? And does Iwate have this spider to live and inhabit?
I wrote to the newsroom about these questions, and within a few days, I received a fax response. It was as if I were in prison expecting a letter from afar, sneaking a glance at it, and couldn't help but exclaim, "Ah, great." The letter reads:
A brief reply is provided. Regarding the "red long-legged spider", we consulted Mr. Susanjizumi, president of the Japanese Spider Society, and got the following reply: The spider depicted in this work does not exist. In particular, there are no spiders with male webs that welcome the arrival of females.
△ The Japanese Society of Spiders
It lives in the Iwate Prefecture area, where it is netted in acorn trees and hides behind branches or leaves. Those that meet these characteristics can be considered cross garden spiders and granite garden spiders. The appearance of the "red long legs" is closer to that of the cross garden spider. It is estimated that the spiders in the works are based on these species. The pattern on the chest probably refers to the pattern of the abdomen, right?
Oh, that's right. "The spider depicted in this work does not exist"!
The premonition of "maybe" in my mind was confirmed, and Kenji Miyazawa regarded the spider that did not actually exist as a prototype. But more precisely, I was amazed that Kenji Miyazawa's characteristic powers of observation did not sparkle.
For example, depicting the tanuki cat that appears, Kenji Miyazawa's observation radiates a unique light. For the tanuki cat's dark face, it is manifested as "never washing the face", and for the pattern of the spider's abdomen, he calls it "spider writing" and records it as なんぺ. However, for spiders, it is expressed in violation of spider habits such as "males tie webs to welcome the arrival of females".
△ The Tanuki cat in the Japanese language is neither a red panda nor a raccoon, nor a cat; it is a canine raccoon, because the face has a black patch, so Kenji Miyazawa said that these tanuki cats "never wash their faces"
Didn't Kenji Miyazawa know that spiders don't take these actions? When I thought about this question, I thought that there was another place that puzzled me. That's the difference in the length of a spider's male and female. Whether it is the bride of the stick or the cross-garden spider suggested by Mr. Xuanzhi, the male is only 1/2 the size of the female.
There is a scene of a male spider dragging a "beautiful female spider" with spider silk, and if it is a person like Kenji Miyazawa who is keenly observant, this kind of scene, no matter how big or small the difference is, is also very incredible. I think the depiction of male spiders pulling huge female spiders from trees is a humorous depiction.
I thought it might be that Kenji Miyazawa didn't know about the habits of male spiders coming into female spider webs, but Kenji Miyazawa must not be such a simple person, and we can't conclude that he "doesn't know.". In this way, there are other aspects that deserve our attention.
This level is the title, "Three Graduates of Dongxiong School." Although the story is about spiders, tanuki cats, and slugs, it is not three, but three (people). That is to say, in the sense of the fable, it is indeed the pattern of "males knotted and females came".
Kenji Miyazawa has always been considered to be observant, especially when it comes to spiders. Although I captured the "six eyes" this time, I still can't deny the lack of a staring atmosphere of observation.
△ Hiroshi Masuda's final depiction of the spider image
I thanked Mr. Xuanzhi for his detailed and careful advice, and at the same time began to depict the cross garden spider. Although mr. Wang's instructions are very detailed, there is still a confusing expression in the work: "It is a beautiful female spider." ”
I couldn't help but get stuck by this very casual word. That's when I was talking to an editor who was well versed in Kenji Miyazawa about the mystery of spider species from this period.
"Hey, isn't this a wonderful bride?" Editor Y burst out a sentence. When I first read this, my heart was uneasy, and the name of the spider that appeared in the depths of my soul was also it.
This made me feel deeply that she was still a wonderful bride. This beautiful pattern of yellow and black of the bride with a rod does not look consistent with the "red long-legged spider", but in fact, if you look at the picture of the time of the imminent laying of eggs, you will find that the spider's abdomen is red. It was this red-bellied spider that made me understand the profound meaning of "beautiful female spider".
When you think of the significance of women to Kenji Miyazawa, or the life of his lifelong celibacy, you will feel that the prototype of the male spider pulled into his web, even if it is a cross garden spider, in essence, it seems to be a "stick bride". Thoughts touched Kenji Miyazawa's calm and penetrating gaze.
Ten years later, when I decided to create another manga for Kenji Miyazawa's work, the first work I chose was "The Head of Cairo Regiment". The more I learned about Kenji Miyazawa's career, the more I felt that the first sentence of the work was meaningful.
"For a while, thirty rain frogs worked happily together."
This sentence contains Kenji Miyazawa's vision of an "ideal labor scene". Work is about being with others and working happily. It was his dream. However, people in reality, after graduating from the "Cave Bear School", began to compete with others, and finally became people like the successful Cairo regiment leader, with many rain frog employees.
Instead of competing with others, we work happily together. Kenji Miyazawa dreamed of this in his later years, running for lime fertilizer.
At the bedside where Kenji Miyazawa fell asleep after his work, the snail's horn whispered to the author, "Don't hate these poor and good-tempered people." ”
Hasn't such a night ever been?
△ Click to get Hiroshi Masomura's detective notes