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."

[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.

[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.

[whitesycamore]

I enjoy the lack of agency because to me it feels similar to a nightmare.

The horrible plot is inevitably going to unfold, and you're helpless to do anything but follow it to the end.

[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.

[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.

[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]

I find "tragic soul imprisoned in a magic (metaphorical) tin" way creepier than "just some creepy guy."

Comes down to personal taste, I guess. For some reason, despite being an atheist now, I find the supernatural much more unnerving than the mundane.

Satanic forces and witchcraft rank highest on my list of scary things; that's probably why I feel compelled to watch every single film about demonic possession/exorcism ever made.

And there are some bad ones.

[icon_uk]

True, though I don't usually want to follow my nightmares, and I have a hard time investing in other peoples, especially other people who behave in a rather stupid or ineffectual fashion for no other reason than the plot demands it. (cf many, MANY slasher flicks where I often end up wishing the bad guy well in improving humanity by removing the cast of characters from the genepool)

And I'm sure I've seen/read this basic concept in something else? A Poe short story perhaps?

[whitesycamore]

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

[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.

[whitesycamore]

It only works for me if it's a certain type of surreal horror that feels like something I would dream. This does.

I will freely admit that I get a peculiar sense of enjoyment out of most of my nightmares. However, most of the time when I dream I'm semi-conscious of the fact that it's only a dream. Which I'm quite thankful for, because I often suffer from sleep paralysis on waking (complete with crazy hypnopompic hallucinations), and I imagine it would be terrifying if I didn't realise what was happening.

[md84]

Wouldn't a chair like that be some kind of health hazard? Last time I checked dead flesh isn't exactly sanitary.

[icon_uk]

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

[icon_uk]

The chair salesman is a bit like the guy in the Bart the Fink episode of the Simpsons where a Sydney Greenstreet analogue is the Representative of a Cayman Islands bank...

Representative: "I'm sorry, I cannot divulge information about that customer's secret, illegal account."
[The representative hangs up the phone, then does a double take as he realizes what he just did.]
Representative: "Oh crap, I shouldn't have said he was a customer. Oh crap, I shouldn't have said it was a secret. Oh, crap! I certainly shouldn't have said it was illegal! [sighs resignedly] Oh, it's too hot today."

[espanolbot]

I looked it up, and it's called When A Stranger Calls Back, and it's on Youtube. :)

[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.

[icon_uk]

I have had a couple of very vivid instances of that, though not for many years now, I'm relieved to say.

[icon_uk]

Or Harry Matthews the cushion, who suffered that rather ignominious transformation at the claws of Etrigan's dad, Belial.