Uzumaki: Spiral into Horror

Fiction | Graphic Novel/Book | Adult | Published in 2000

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-16

Chapters 17-19

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 13-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 13 Summary: “The House”

Days after the storm, Kurouzu-cho is in ruins. Many people are left homeless, including Kirie’s family who are forced to move into the old row houses. Kirie, Mitsuo, and their mother introduce themselves to their neighbor Mr. Wakabayashi. Mr. Wakabayashi advises against talking to the other tenants, as they are squatters who like to keep to themselves. That night, Mr. Goshima finds a spiral-shaped wart on his foot. Kirie and Mitsuo are kept awake by distant howling.

Kirie talks to Mr. Wakabayashi in the morning. He tells her that the squatters are a mother and son. The son is ill and cries in pain every night, explaining the howls. As they talk, the mother emerges from her apartment. Shrouded in robes, she hangs a kimono destroyed by hundreds of holes out to dry. As the mother does so, she loses her balance and falls. Kirie goes to help her and sees the mother’s hand is covered in thorny warts. Later that afternoon, more wailing is heard from the squatters’ place. Kirie realizes it is the mother crying and runs over to help her. When Kirie enters the apartment, the mother reveals that her son has died. Kirie calls an ambulance, and doctors diagnose the squatters with an unknown skin disease. Mr. Wakabayashi tries to gossip about the squatters with Kirie, but she refuses to speak ill of them.

A second storm is headed for Kurouzu-cho. The Goshimas hunker down in their apartment and realize they are beginning to sprout the same thorny warts found on the squatters. Mr. Wakabayashi watches the family through a small hole in the wall that he made to watch Kirie; he quickly realizes that he, too, has warts. Mitsuo screams upon seeing a nest of horns grow out of the wall. Suddenly, the wall caves in. A humanoid monster, consumed by twisted horns, crashes into the apartment. The horrified Goshimas realize it is Mr. Wakabayashi. He cries and lunges for Kirie—but before he can grab her, Mrs. Goshima throws a wooden beam into his neck, killing him. The second storm is sucked into Dragonfly Pond, and the Goshimas leave the row houses. Their warts vanish.

Chapter 14 Summary: “Butterflies”

A journalist named Ms. Maruyama drives to Kurouzu-cho with her team to report on the three storms that have destroyed the town and cut off all outside communication. A tornado strikes the car and carries it off road, dropping the crew in the middle of Kurouzu-cho. Maruyama escapes the destroyed car and discovers the rest of her team died. She walks through Kurouzu-cho’s wreckage and tries to find any sign of life. Soon, she finds three boys tied to stakes with their mouths wrapped shut. She rushes to free them.

After being freed, the boys collectively blow air out of their mouths, forming a twister that destroys a house. They then summon a series of twisters and direct them towards Maruyama, trying to kill her. She screams at them to stop, and her scream forms its own twister that carries the boys away. Kirie discovers Maruyama and explains that ever since the three storms, Dragonfly Pond has swirled in a continuous whirlpool—altering the town’s air pressure and causing twisters to form out of any sudden movements or raised voices.

Kirie brings Maruyama to the row houses, where the entire town now resides (as they are the only structures able to withstand the twisters). Maruyama asks the residents to help her leave, but they tell her she will not be able to; nobody has been able to leave. Still, the Goshimas decide to help.

When the Goshimas and Maruyama venture outside, they encounter two of the boys from earlier; the third member of their gang is dead. The two boys create another twister to try and kill Maruyama in revenge. The group returns to the row houses. The residents are angry with Maruyama for freeing the boys, as they were tied up to prevent further damage. The boys try to destroy the row houses, but their twisters cause no damage. The residents work together to create their own twisters, expecting to kill the boys. To their shock, the two are simply able to ride the twisters’ winds, “wheeling around like butterflies” (458).

Chapter 15 Summary: “Chaos”

Gangs of twister riders form in Kurouzu-cho. They terrorize town by summoning storms and destroying buildings. Kirie, Mitsuo, and Maruyama scavenge for food. They discover a group of snail people hiding under some rubble; they then return to the row houses where tensions are high because of the lack of food and space. One resident finds an old map of Kurouzu-cho in the wall, a large black spiral drawn in the middle of it.

A fight breaks out over who gets to keep the map, and Shuichi mutters that the town is going mad. A group of residents gang up on Shuichi and kick him out, tired of his ramblings. The Goshimas go outside to check on him and are locked out by the other residents. Maruyama tries to plan an escape route, but Mr. Goshima wants to stay and continue making ceramics.

Mitsuo suddenly smells a cooking meal and runs to follow it. Kirie and Maruyama chase after him, and the three stumble upon a twister gang roasting snail people over a large fire. They offer some of the meat and ask the three to join their gang. Mr. Goshima interrupts and tells the gang to leave. The gang summons a twister and sends Mr. Goshima flying into the air. Kirie creates her own twister and sends it against the gang, starting a battle between the two groups. Everybody is sent flying into the air.

Kirie and Maruyama realize their twister is about to be sucked in by Dragonfly Pond. Shuichi grabs Kirie’s hand, creating a chain linking him and the group; he then grabs onto a telephone pole for stability. The twister gang is sucked into Dragonfly Pond’s whirlpool and lost forever.

Chapter 16 Summary: “Erosion”

Volunteers travelling to Kurouzu-cho to help with disaster relief keep getting trapped in town. Whenever they try to escape, they end up back in Kurouzu-cho, “as if space is turned inside out” (494). Kirie tries to find her father, who has been missing since the twister battle, and stumbles upon a group of volunteers looking for shelter. She, Shuichi, and Maruyama offer to bring them to the row houses. As they walk, one of the volunteers complains that his back hurts; several of the newcomers are growing snail shells.

The group reaches the row houses, but the residents refuse to let new people in, triggering an argument. The row house residents create twisters and blow them at Kirie and her party to scare them off. The volunteers use scrap wood as a battering ram and break into one of the houses—only to discover that the residents’ bodies have twisted together in knots (due to the cramped space), creating one massive organism. The knotted monster begins gathering scrap wood in a panic, covering itself with whatever it can find. One of the volunteers realizes they can copy the monster and create their own shelter. Other volunteers argue with him, claiming they need to put their energy into escaping, not staying. As they debate, they see rescue ships approach Kurouzu-cho. Just as they begin to celebrate, the ships are sucked into a whirlpool and destroyed.

That night, Kirie, Shuichi, and Maruyama wander Kurouzu-cho with the volunteers in search of food. They discover a cooked snail person left behind by a twister gang. The volunteers ravenously eat the meat and convince Shuichi and Maruyama to join in. Reluctant, Kirie is the last to eat. The next morning, Kirie, Shuichi, and Maruyama bring back scraps of meat for Mitsuo and Mrs. Goshima. They find Mitsuo trapped under some wreckage, as the shack they built was destroyed by a twister. Mrs. Goshima is missing. As Mitsuo is freed, Maruyama discovers that he is growing a snail shell. Kirie resolves to escape Kurouzu-cho.

Chapters 13-16 Analysis

Building off of the previous chapters’ meditations on warped morality, Chapters 13-16 detail its final erosion. The spiral curse has infiltrated every aspect of the seaside town, and the very fibers of social relations have broken down. Even Kirie, the character who embodies the book’s moral compass, engages in actions that she herself condemned throughout the story (i.e., consuming snail person meat). Chapter 16’s title, “Erosion,” encompasses this section’s total erosion of morality, relationships, and society itself.

The introduction of Ms. Maruyama in Chapter 14 is a clever device to emphasize the extent to which society has broken down in Kurouzu-cho. Maruyama serves as an important point of juxtaposition against characters like Kirie (or the readers themselves) who have endured the spiral curse for so long that they now accept its effects as normal. Junji Ito uses Maruyama’s perspective as an outsider to emphasize how physically and morally destroyed Kurouzu-cho is. For example, the cruel depravity of the twister gangs comes across as especially disturbing because it is depicted through Maruyama’s point of view. Maruyama’s shock over the state of Kurouzu-cho juxtaposes against Kirie’s perspective. Kirie doesn’t react when Maruyama tells her of the boy gang and their twisters; she instead focuses on Maruyama’s behavior, telling the newcomer to “Please keep your voice down” in order to prevent new twisters (446). This exchange illustrates how Kirie has assimilated into Kurouzu-cho’s new norm of “chaos.”

Ito once again relies on absurdity to emphasize the chaos that has consumed Kurouzu-cho. The concept of twister gangs, people riding winds “like butterflies” (458), is a highly absurd concept seemingly implemented for horrific or comedic effect. But at their heart, the twister gangs are a metaphor, reflecting Kurouzu-cho’s new, volatile social order. They are destructive, predatory, and selfish. These characteristics are found in all social relations throughout Chapters 13-16, from the row house residents to scavengers out on the streets. In order to survive Kurouzu-cho’s anarchic society, one must assimilate or die. Kirie, her family, and her friends learn this lesson the hard way in Chapter 16, when they are confronted with the terrible choice of starving to death or eating a cooked snail person. The snail people embody the book’s body horror, moral conundrums, and karmic rewards. One of the most contentious debates in Kurouzu-cho is whether one still considers the snail people human. Prior to Chapter 16, the line between cruelty and compassion was clear: The cruel considered the snail people nonhuman, whereas the compassionate insisted they were human.

In Chapter 16, the line erodes. Kirie and her group—all of whom believe snail people are still human—eat their meat so as to not starve. Before Kirie decides to eat, there is a panel of the dead snail person with its broken shell and discarded meat (518). In the meat of the corpse, there is an impression of a human skull—an image reminiscent of the shrieking souls found in Mr. Goshima’s kiln back in Chapter 4. This linked imagery conflates the body with nature and indicates that snail people are still human, deep down. The skull implies that to murder and eat the snail people is to commit murder and cannibalism. Kirie’s act of self-betrayal, wherein she violates her own moral code, is perhaps the most horrific thing about Uzumaki: Kirie is forced to abandon herself and adapt to a new social order that she does not condone just to survive.