Black Cat, Hideshi Hino, Humanity & Horror in a Feline

This tongue-in-cheek semi-autobiography follows the the absurdly gruesome adventures of a lonely boy and his singularly crazed family. His escape from the madness that surrounds him is his collection of pickled animal and human body parts, to which he adds as one family member after another meet with a grotesque and sometimes terrifyingly funny death. 

Book Review by Mike Philbin

Of the six Hino Horror titles I have read to date, Black Cat is my very favourite. It’s unsurprisingly about a Black Cat who lives in a drainpipe on a rubbish tip with his three kitten brothers. Their mother hasn’t returned and is unlikely to. So, one day our little black hero goes off in search of a decent meal or a friendly human that will give him a home. He’s a lovely Black Cat, too – smooth black fur and a gorgeous outlook on life. It’s such a shame that black cats are considered unlucky creatures in Japan.

Hideshi Hino’s Black Cat, A Synopsis

The book is laid out in three episodes that illustrate Black Cat’s study of the human race.

Part One: The Ventriloquist

This is basically the story of the ventriloquist dummy dominating its master. We’ve all seen this sort of narrative before, it has resonance through fairy-tales with ‘the goose that lays the golden egg’ as well as popular culture in the Chucky films and Magic starring Anthony Hopkins. It’s Pinnochio gone bad, with the puppet softly transforming into a real boy as the success of the duo starts to dominate the puppet’s psyche and spells the end for his drunken clown partner.

Part Two, The Black Dog

This is a story about a boy who loses his dad and takes revenge on the school bullies by setting his black dog on them. He pushes the dead bodies of the bullies into a nearby hole and the hole starts to fill up. His life takes a turn for the worst when his mum remarries this awful bloke who pays for the wife as if she were a cheap trinket in a corner shop. Will the new dad stand in the way of the boy and his black dog? Who is the real master in this house?

Part Three, The Unhappy Couple

In this childish and vicious episode, a nasty old couple argue all the time. There is indeed a fine line between love and hate. But the fact that these old gets stay together says something deeper about the human puzzle.

All three tales are about survival in the face of cruel domination, regular themes in Hino’s work, illustrating man’s blatant disregard for the feelings and wishes of his fellow man. As long as I get mine, who gives a shit about you and yours.

Hideshi Hino, Black Cat and Religious Speculation

I wonder where Religion comes into Hino’s mentality, or if not something as strictly regimented as religion then spirituality at least. Does Hino believe we are just an assemblage of atoms and molecules that are in this transitory phase of human existence to return to fertiliser after our demise or is there a hidden non-corpse-bound spiritual realm that Hino has yet to fully explore in his works? And if so would it be bound by the same humanistic silhouettes and desperate purges of the world of his books.

Hideshi Hino’s Black Cat, The Open Critic Verdict

Hino is a star of Japanese manga not because he is so brutal with his characters and his graphic depictions of violence among men but because of narrators like Black Cat who clearly enjoy and are enthralled by the vagaries of human existence. With all six books so far, Hino is really asking who are we, the human race? Why are WE so special?

External Links

• Hideshi Hino, Author Website 
• Interview with Hideshi Hino at The Comic Journal
• Hideshi Hino, Wikipedia Entry
• Mike Philbin, Reviewer/Writer/Artist

Hideshi Hino Reviews at The Open Critic

• Hideshi Hino: Horror, Pathos and the Master of Manga 
• The Red Snake
• The Bug Boy
• Oninbo and the Bugs From Hell
• Oninbo and the Bugs From Hell Two
• Living Corpse
• Black Cat

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