Moryo no Hako
6.6 /10 1 Votes
Genre Horror, Mystery Duration | 6.4/10 IMDb Director Ryosuke Nakamura | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Release date December 22, 2007 Writer Natsuhiko Kyogoku (novel), Masato Harada (screenplay) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Moryo no Hako (, "The Moryos Box") is a Japanese novel by Natsuhiko Kyogoku. It is the second novel in the Kyogokudo series that began with Summer of the Ubume. The novel has been turned into a live action feature film, a manga, and an anime TV series.
Contents
A series of murders of beautiful girls occur in Tokyo not long after the end of the war. Also the daughter of a retired actress, Yuzuki Yoko, has gone missing. In the meantime, a religious cult that claims to shut away misfortunes in a box has been gaining popularity, displaying an eerie aspect. Yoko's daughter is alleged to have been run over by a train, and taken into a research institute situated in a gigantic box-shaped building. A private detective Enokizu (Abe Hiroshi), a writer Sekiguchi (Shiina Kippei), a journalist Atsuko and a police detective Kiba each pursues their own case, and Chuzenji (Tsutsumi Shinichi), an owner of a secondhand bookshop, "Kyogoku Do" suspects that all cases are linked to the box-shaped research institute.
Story
The story takes place between August and October, 1952. It primarily follows crime fiction writer Tatsumi Sekiguchi and news magazine editor Morihiko Toriguchi as they investigate, with the help of onmyoji Akihiko Chuzenji, a series of unusual crimes that take place in Musashino and Mitaka.
Kanako Yuzuki and Yoriko Kusumoto are friends and middle school students. Kanako and Yoriko plan to go to Lake Sagami over summer break. On the night they leave, Kanako is hit by the train on which Tokyo police detective Shutaro Kiba is traveling. After the hospital stabilizes Kanako, Yoko Yuzuki, Kanakos older sister, has Kanako transferred to Koshiro Mimasakas research hospital. Several days later, the discovery of a severed arm and two boxed, severed legs is what catches the attention of Toriguchi, who travels by automobile with Atsuko Chuzenji and Sekiguchi to investigate.
Yoriko tells Kiba that Kanako was pushed by a man wearing gloves. Shortly afterward, Kanako is apparently abducted from the hospital; Mimasakas assistant, Taro Suzaki, is murdered; and Kanakos guardian, Noritada Amemiya, also disappears. Witnesses report seeing a gloved man in the area where three other girls are soon abducted. Residents of the surrounding area later discover the girls boxed, severed limbs.
Noriyuki Masuoka, the lawyer for Kanakos grandfather, hires private investigator Reijiro Enokizu to find Kanako. Masuoka explains that Yoko is Kanakos mother, not her sister. Kanako is unaware of her true parentage, but she is the only heir to the fortune of Yoko Shibata, who appointed Amemiya as her guardian.
Toriguchi obtains a list, labeled "Onbako-sama", of believers in a local cult led by Hyoei Terada, a self-proclaimed onmyoji. Toriguchi believes Terada is involved with the dismemberment case, because all the dismemberment victims are daughters of Teradas followers. Sekiguchi notices that both Yorikos mother and fiction writer Shunko Kubo are on the Onbako-sama list. As a fellow writer for the same publisher, Sekiguchi already knows Kubo, who always wears gloves. After Enokizu and Sekiguchi meet with Yoriko, she meets Kubo, who takes her to an abandoned temple filled with boxes. Later, Yorikos severed arms are found.
From reading Kubos latest fiction work, Chuzenji deduces that Kubo is the perpetrator of the dismemberment case. Chuzenji, Sekiguchi, and Enokizu confront Terada and demonstrate that all of Teradas practices are fake. Terada confesses his swindle to the police and reveals that Kubo is his son. Meanwhile, Tokyo police detective Bunzo Aoki goes to the abandoned temple that Kubo is using, but Kubo escapes. Later, Kubos severed limbs are found.
Chuzenji tells Sekiguchi, Toriguchi, and Enokizu that he knew Mimasaka during the war. Mimasakas research involved replacing biological human body parts with mechanical ones. Meanwhile, Kiba accuses Mimasaka of dismembering girls to further his research and demands to know what he has done with Kanako. Sekiguchi, Toriguchi, and Enokizu pick up Yoko and arrive at Mimasakas facility. Yoko tells them Mimasaka is her father. Chuzenji soon arrives with Masuoka, Aoki, and police constable Fukumoto.
Chuzenji recounts the series of events, beginning with Yoriko pushing Kanako onto the train tracks. Suzaki had been blackmailing Yoko, because he knew that Kanako was not Yoko Shibatas legitimate heir. Since Mimasaka could keep only Kanakos head alive mechanically, Suzaki could easily stage her kidnapping and demand a ransom from Shibata. The first severed limbs found, before Kanakos abduction, were Kanakos. After Suzaki took Kanakos head, Amemiya killed Suzaki and ran away with Kanakos head. Kubo met Amemiya on a train and saw Kanakos head alive inside a box. Kubo himself then tried to keep the heads of other girls alive in a box. Kubo wrote about it all in his fiction. Before he killed Yoriko, she told him about Mimasaka. When he went to Mimasaka, Mimasaka performed the same procedure on Kubo.
Aoki tries to arrest Mimasaka for what he did to Kubo, but Mimasaka grabs the box with Kubos head and tries to escape with Yoko. Kubo bites Mimasaka in the neck and kills him, so Yoko kills Kubo. Kiba arrests Yoko for the murder of Kubo.
Publication
The original novel was first published in 1995, and has been reprinted in several bunko editions.
Film
The novel was turned into a 2007 live action movie, directed by Masato Harada and starring Shinichi Tsutsumi, Hiroshi Abe, Kippei Shiina, Hiroyuki Miyasako, and Rena Tanaka.
Shooting started in 2005 and completed in May 2007. The significant events of the novel are unchanged, but the remainder of the content is a bold alteration. To simulate 1952 Tokyo, exteriors were shot in Shanghai.
Mitsuki Tanimura won Best Supporting Actress at the 2008 Osaka Film Festival for her portrayal of Yoriko Kusumoto.
The DVD was released 25 June 2008.
Animated TV series
The anime adaption began airing on 7 October 2008. Produced by Madhouse, it features character designs by Clamp and scripts by Sadayuki Murai. It was the series directorial debut of Ryosuke Nakamura.
The series follows the novel, but some of the minor characters are slightly changed, and the series includes some original material. The original material includes:
The anime distributor VAP released the Blu-ray disc of the television series on 22 May 2009 with an original 16-minute extra exclusive to the Blu-ray. "The Case Files of Atsuko Chuzenji: The Case of the Spirits in the Boxes" (, "Chuzenji Atsuko no Jikenbo: Hako no Yurei no Koto") reveals the investigative notes that Atsuko wrote in episode 6 about the brutal dismembering incidents in the main story.
Characters
Principal characters
Significant characters
Yuzuki family and associates
Kusumoto family and associates
Police
Other characters
Episode List
- ^ There are no official English titles.
Manga
The manga adaptation features art by Aki Shimizu and a script by Natsuhiko Kyogoku himself, and began serialization in 2007. It is five volumes long.
References
Moryo no Hako WikipediaMoryo no Hako IMDb Moryo no Hako themoviedb.org