The Human Chair

[cyberghostface]

The story opens with a young writer entering a furniture store, asking for a chair that helps back pains. The store owner tells her that chairs are important, and begins to tell her a story that took place in the Taisho Era, about a chair that changed a person's destiny.

He brings her to a hidden room, showing her an old armchair that belonged to a writer named Togawa Yoshiko, a renowned author who was wife to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Yoshiko would receive letters from anonymous letters everyday. One day she receives an intriguing manuscript.




Yoshiko later finds out that the manuscript about the human chair received first place in a writing contest, although no one was able to find the author.




She asks her husband where he bought the chair, and he tells her it came from the Y Market Place.




She tells her husband about the fears of the chair, but he reassures her that it's just a thief and he will get whoever is there.w



She tells her husband the chair moved. Her servants inspect it and can find no hole of entrance, but she insists that it must be well-hidden. When she asks to remove the leather, the husband gets annoyed and proceeds to beat the chair with his stick. There is no response.

A few days letter, she receives another anonymous letter. The letter-writer says that he has been lonely without her sitting in the chair, and he was hurt by her beating the chair.




When her husband returns, he admonishes her for not keeping up with her writing and for blaming the chair.






When the police arrive she tells them there must be a man in the chair and they proceed to cut it open with a knife.




Back in the present, the shop owner tells the young writer that while the police believed her, the public became suspicious of Yoshiko. Eventually her career suffers and she becomes mentally unstable. She eventually disappears without a trace.











The next day, Yuzuho receives a knocking on her door for a delivery.

Comments

[torberg]

Wow. That...that's...that's just creepy.

[mishalak]

I think that I may have seen too much of Junji Ito, I no longer find it creepy, just confusing and frustrating. When her husband did not believe her why not just take maters into her own hands? I hate how little agency the victims have in his stories.

[zabilac]

Burn it! BURN IT!!!!!!!!!! Or at least call a good exorcist.

[equinox216]

"Of course, they had children in the fu*RNI*ture."
Fixed that for you.

[thosefew]

The thinking chair in Blue's Clues is the same. It's where they keep old hosts.

[aeka]

So the woman found "everlasting happiness" with the same predatory guy who killed her husband? I know this is horror, but I seriously cannot see past that disturbing message.

[whitesycamore]

He said they were happy, but personally, I'm not sure I'd trust the word of the WORST CHAIR SALESMAN EVER.

"oh dang, another customer runs screaming from my shop. I really must stop showing them all the interior of the dessicated-corpse-chair."

[espanolbot]

Considering the history of creepy men trapping women in this writer's works, like the dude in the brain centipede thing story... I don't think that the salesman's idea of happiness matches up with the standard idea of it.

Interesting, though incredibly morbid, family history or no, I don't think that anyone who talks about it with anywhere near that level of pride shouldn't be treated with any level of non-creepy. If that makes sense.

His decision to tell her about the creepy chair right before pulling the same move on her was kind of a stupid move on his part, as she can easy hire some guys to chuck the thing into a skip as soon as she gets to a phone and locks herself safely in her car or something until they come.

Or, I don't know, call the police.

[cyberghostface]

Well it's implied in the pages I cut out that the husband wasn't a real nice guy and would neglect her...not that it makes killing him alright, but...

[whitesycamore]

I wish I had one fifth of Junji Ito's imagination.

I think the only thing that lets this story down is the opening of the chair and the reveal of all the little food tins in there. Trying to rationalise an essentially implausible premise disrupts the creepy dream-logic of the scenario a bit.

[cythraul]

That makes it creepier to me. It establishes the immediacy of dude, some guy was living in your chair. It changes the man in the chair from some tragic soul imprisoned in a magic (metaphorical) tin to just some creepy guy.

[cypherfdp]

The servants pick the whole thing apart, but are unable to find anything, whereas the police just cut open the back with no problem? That very large person-shaped hole seems pretty easy to spot.

Also eww they died spooning. It seems really difficult to give birth in the back of a chair.

[espanolbot]

I don't think that they took it apart, they just looked for seams, when it might be that he somehow sealed it from the inside or something afterwards... somehow.

[cyberghostface]

The servants didn't pick it apart, they just examined it. The wife wanted to cut it open but the husband refused because it cost too much.

[silicondream]

...how did they reach, open and eat out of the cans when there was no room to move their arms around? And why isn't there a much bigger space at the bottom for poo? And shouldn't the story end with the lady just calling the police while the movers hang around to see what the deal is? I mean, unless Chair Guy's got an ejector seat in there, he can't exactly get away.

See, you don't have these problems in his supernatural stories.

So what's the sound effect on the last panel? I can't tell whether Chair Guy is screaming or laughing or orgasming or what.

[espanolbot]

Presumably they had some loose material in the back for them to move about better, as seen by the bulges. Dunno about the pooping situation though. Maybe he was counting on the woman having no sense of smell?

[espanolbot]

Kind of reminds me of a film I'd seen years ago when a man painted himself to look like a wall in a woman's house, broke most of the lights and whispered things at her with ventriloquism... it was a weird film.

As someone said above, the creepychair folk WOULD be kind of screwed if they decided to just burn the chair with them inside, or placed it against a wall of something.

[whitesycamore]

You can't just drop a synopsis on us like that without naming the film.

[icon_uk]

I remember that movie, though I likewise forget the name.

[md84]

Man what a letdown. When I saw the title "Human Chair", I envisioned a story about a chair made out of a human being that was somehow still alive in a state that makes the immortal blob guy in I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream seem lucky in comparison.

[biod]

Same here. Same story, except the chair was alive and could only come close to the woman he loved when she sat, to the tragedy and horror of all involved.

[janegray]

Soooo... If she knows that there is a creepy murderous stalker inside the chair, can't she just burn it/stab it/call the police? As others have mentioned, he is kind of stuck.

This isn't just lack of agency. This is holding completely still as you drown in a bathtub.

[md84]

It's almost like the opposite of his other works, where the protagonists actually have functional brains but the threat is so huge, terrifying, or just something so bizarre it's impossible to expect that they're doomed anyway.

[espanolbot]

Really this story is like if the caretaker in a Scooby Doo episode tells a story involving a caretaker that murders people in the back of mini-vans, only for said caretaker to be surprised when Mystery Inc., after finding him in their minivan, lock him in and call the cops after finding him inside hiding under some blankets with a butcher knife.

[sharky_chan]

As a long-time connoisseur of Scooby, I feel like you're missing some of the show's many subtleties. For example, sometimes it wouldn't be the creepy caretaker and instead is the kindly old man next door. WHO EVER EXPECTS THE KINDLY OLD MAN NEXT DOOR?!

[leoboiko]

This is a riff on “Ningen Isu”, one of the most famous stories of detective-fiction writer Edogawa Rampo (1894–1965). One of my favourite rock bands is also named after it.

[mrosa]

Darn it, you beat me to it!

For the curious, the short-story is available in English: Tuttle Publishing released it in the collection Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination.

[sharky_chan]

Heheh, the little tins of food stashed along the back of the chair make me laugh. Silly chair-person, you can't reach those from where you're sitting! Maybe they're to give it a "homey" feel? He is a designer, after all...

[mas]

When I saw the title I thought it had to do with that guy from The Tick.