The Existential Horror of Chi no Wadachi
The manga Chi no Wadachi, variously translated Blood on the Tracks and A Trail of Blood, made quite the sensation on first release. Mangaka Oshimi Shuzo was already known for his works The Flowers of Evil and Inside Mari, among others. His fans were excited for this new work, advertised as a thriller, and soon enough, its sensational story drew in new readers. YouTubers were making videos about it with titles like “This Is the Most Fucked Up Manga You’ll Ever Read!” But over time, the hype faded. Whatever the readers were looking for, they didn’t end up getting it. Some dropped it in disgust, and others simply forgot about it. Today, Chi no Wadachi is rarely discussed, at least in English-speaking circles, and those who do read it often walk away unhappy with it.
The root of the problem is a misunderstanding as to what the story is about. Looking up a summary, one is likely to read that Chi no Wadachi follows a “normal boy” who is “overprotected” but otherwise has a “normal relationship with his mother,” until one day an incident occurs. This may give the reader an idea of what they’re getting in for, but it’s not a particularly accurate description of the premise. The over-the-top reactions of readers who were seeking an “extreme” manga didn’t set the right tone either, as Chi no Wadachi was never a standard shock value horror story. Others were looking for an abuse narrative, which the manga certainly delivers on, but many of them came away disappointed as well, since Chi no Wadachi complicates its victim/victimizer dynamic and offers no easy answers.
I’m one of the people who read the entire manga, and then read it again and again and again. My appreciation for its artistry has made me determined to write about it. That’s difficult to do, since the story is intensely personal. Oshimi put his heart and soul into it, and he demands an equal level of commitment from the reader. It’s understandable that not everyone is willing to make that commitment, but I still want to try to articulate Oshimi’s achievement. The more misunderstood a story is, the more I want to stand up for it.
This essay is going to outline the manga’s many nuances, as well as the themes which undergird them. I’m sure I won’t be able to cover everything, but I hope to at least highlight details which I have not seen discussed elsewhere.
Supporting Characters
Most reactions to Chi no Wadachi focus on the central relationship between mother and son. This is natural, given that Seiichi is the main character and Seiko’s instability and violence are the most attention-grabbing aspects of the story. However, they are not the only characters, and the wider context is important to keep in mind when analyzing their relationship.
After Seiko’s attempted murder of Shigeru, Seiichi begins to experience mental health problems, exacerbated by his mother’s unstable, violent behavior. One has to ask why no one intervened to help him. At school and with his extended family, he is bullied and neglected in turn. When he begins to show signs of serious mental disturbance, he is either ignored or punished. Later in the manga, it becomes clear that alienation from society is one of Seiko’s major motivations and that Seiichi has also internalized feelings of antipathy towards others. Though the everyday cruelty of the background characters is not as sensational as Seiko’s actions, it is still important in establishing the themes of the series. Seiko and Seiichi inhabit their own psychic space, but they do not exist in a bubble.
Osabe Ichiiro
Even more than Seiichi’s teachers, his father Ichiiro had a responsibility to keep him safe and to pay attention to Seiko’s mental state; however, he did neither. The manga portrays him as a man who would prefer to pretend that everything is okay rather than face difficult truths. Even when it should be plain as day that something is seriously wrong with both his wife and son, he ignores them, only growing angry enough to say something when his wife refuses to make him dinner.
Later in the manga, when he can no longer deny the truth, Ichiiro takes responsibility, apologizing to his son and blaming himself for everything. He goes so far as to say that he’s the one who drove Seiko into a corner and forced her to do what she did. Based on this, one might think that Ichiiro did something horrible to Seiko in the past, but the truth is more complicated than that. Ichiiro was nothing more than a disappointment to her.
When Seiko was young, she was full of hopes and dreams. She wanted to become an actress, and she liked Ichiiro because he supported her and was pursuing dreams of his own, writing poetry and avoiding the pressures of adulthood. However, he ended up failing and capitulating to expectation, taking up his family’s offer to move back home and join the family company. Seiko agreed to go with him and get married, which was the death knell of her own dreams. Whether or not this is fair, it seems she blamed him for killing the only part of her which ever had any life to it.
Since their marriage was, from the beginning, a form of giving up, the two of them quickly settled into a stultifying dynamic. He avoided her, leaving her at home to take care of the domestic duties, which was clearly not good for her mental health. It’s also important to note that Seiko didn’t have a healthy family to rely on, so the couple became dependent on her husband’s family.
Seiichi grows up semi-conscious of these dynamics. Only when questioned by a detective does he verbalize the fact that his father’s family discriminated against himself and his mother. They were always outsiders, treated like there was something wrong with them. And his father went along with this, never sticking up for them and always leaving them behind.
Auntie and Shigeru
The most notable characters in the Osabe extended family are Auntie and Shigeru, who serve as a mirror to Seiko and Seiichi. Seiko met Auntie after she agreed to marry Ichiiro. Though they pretend to get along, smiling equally forced smiles, there was enmity between them from the start. Auntie sees through Seiko’s facade of normality, calling her distant, saying that she looks like she hates everyone, even herself; she’s a constant reminder to Seiko of her outsider status. Worse, Auntie was the one who convinced her that a child would fix everything, trapping her even further. Shigeru, Seiichi’s cousin, grows up hearing gossip about his weird aunt. A normally developing teenager, he looks down on Seiichi as a mama’s boy.
It’s important to pay careful attention to how Oshimi sets up the dynamics between these characters in the early chapters, as they are crucial to understanding the story as a whole. Seiichi accepts mistreatment from his extended family, only ever speaking up to defend his “mommy.” Though they don’t seem to like each other much, the aunts end up setting up playdates every week over the summer, making one wonder if Auntie and Shige are just as isolated as Seiko and Seiichi; there are hints that Auntie is also somewhat of a strange person. Seiko and Seiichi agree to the hangouts as if they have no choice in the matter and no opinions on it either, but we later learn that neither wanted to to do so. They live in denial of their own agency and feelings, which is most apparent in their relationship with Ichiiro’s family. They ignore every slight against them, seeming to not even be aware of their own resentment.
For some reason, the family decides to hike a mountain on the hottest day of the year. They give Shigeru a walking stick but not Seiichi, acting like he’s not even there. After Shigeru almost pushes Seiichi off the side of the mountain as a “joke,” the family laughs at Seiko for her “overprotectiveness,” but in this case, she’s right to be concerned. In Auntie’s drive to prove that there’s something wrong with Seiko, she’s gone in the complete opposite direction and begun to deny that their kids could ever be in danger.
At the edge of the cliff, Shigeru confronts Seiichi, demanding that he speak his mind. From the later chapters, we know that Seiichi was angry to the point of murderous rage at this point, though he keeps it from his face; maybe he isn’t even aware of it himself. But mommy appears, manifesting Seiichi’s feelings for him—as always, jumping in before he can take any action himself.
It’s an obvious point that Seiko pushed Shigeru off the cliff as revenge against Auntie and Ichiiro’s family. She’s also rebelling against the family system and society itself. Later, she tells the police that she did it because she saw Shigeru’s face as Seiichi’s. We know that she did try to kill Seiichi when he was a toddler, so she may have been remembering that moment. Another reading is that she saw Shigeru as a representation of Seiichi’s rebellious side, his desire for independence, which she then tried to destroy.
After the murder attempt, Oshimi juxtaposes Shigeru and Seiichi in new ways. For instance, Shigeru wakes up from his coma at the exact same time that Seiichi falls completely under his mother’s sway. When Shigeru first accuses Seiko of pushing him off the cliff, Oshimi draws him with Seiichi’s face. Shigeru’s damaged body and mind are a representation of the part of Seiichi which Seiko has squashed. Seiichi makes this connection himself after his mother’s arrest when he realizes she once threw him away too.
However, his identification with Shigeru is not necessarily a good thing, as Seiichi eventually comes to believe that his mother was right to try to kill him. On that snowy night when Shigeru comes to visit him, he enters psychosis and begins to see himself as Shigeru literally; in an attempt to make up for his own survival, he kills his cousin.
After his death, Shigeru doesn’t exit the story but sticks around as a ghost haunting Seiichi. This brings us to another role that Auntie and Shigeru play in the story: they are reminders of Seiko and Seiichi’s guilt. As Auntie said, they’re murderers, the both of them. It’s only after Seiko falls down the stairs that Shigeru stops haunting Seiichi and departs for the next world with his mother. Perhaps the implication is that Auntie pushed Seiko, but that is left ambiguous.
Seiko’s Family
Also important to discuss is Seiko’s family of origin. Their absence in the first half of the story was conspicuous; it seems Seiichi has no memories of his maternal grandparents.
Seiko, like her son, grew up in a family of secrets. She spent the first years of her life with her own grandparents, but eventually she moved and only later found out this was because her mother harbored hatred for her grandfather. Her father was cheating, causing her parents to fight, and they took their anger out on her. She was told that she was worthless and unwanted. Worse, she also knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her parents were capable of loving, since they showered affection on her younger sister, Etsuko.
A minor character with no speaking lines, Etsuko is the key to understanding Seiko’s character. She witnessed her parents’ treatment of her sister, who was sickly and needed careful attention. Seiko came to associate weakness with love; like many mothers, she found it easiest to care for Seiichi when he was a helpless baby, before he developed an independent will. When he begins to try to separate from her, her nurturing, smothering side gives way to her rejecting, terrorizing side. Both sides of her are a reflection of her own mother.
Seiko’s first murder attempt was preceded by her sister’s death. After the funeral, her mother heaped blame on her, saying that she had sucked up everyone’s happiness. This is obviously cruel and unfair, but Seiko was unable to disagree; her sister’s death forced her to realize her complete alienation from the world. She never escaped from her childhood feelings of hatred and estrangement towards others—they sank so deeply into her being that she was unable to feel anything about her own sister’s death. Shortly afterwards, in a kind of fugue state, she decided to kill herself, something she had been considering for a very long time. And since she saw her son as an extension of herself, he needed to die too.
Seiichi did not remember this event as he grew, but nonetheless was influenced by it. At times, he asserts his independence in small ways, pulling away from his “mommy” when she tries to hold him. But even the attempted murder of Shigeru doesn’t separate him from her—in fact, the trauma of the experience makes him more emotionally fragile and in need of her affection. It’s only the character Fukiishi who threatens to break up the equilibrium of their relationship.
Fukiishi
Interestingly, Oshimi chooses to parallel Fukiishi and Seiko. Both find Seiichi “cute” and have enmeshed relationships with him. Seiko sees Fukiishi as a threat, and the girl, much more openly rebellious than Seiichi, takes a stand against her tyranny. Though Seiichi’s relationship with Fukiishi isn’t necessarily healthy at the start, it is still a good thing that he has someone who knows that his mother is scaring him and supports him gaining independence from her. The form of independence she promotes, one in which Seiichi should symbolically kill his mother and cut all ties with her, does not end up working out for him, however.
Because Seiichi ultimately finishes what his mother started, he is separated from Fukiishi for life. She then becomes a stand-in for everything he lost, the normal life he could have had.
Seiichi’s Story
As I hinted at in the introduction, it is inaccurate to say that Seiichi was a “normal boy” with a “normal relationship” to his mother before the incident at the cliff. The opening chapters, while subtle, absolutely do not portray a healthy mother-son relationship. Their conversations are stilted, routine; there’s an air of tension or repression around the family; Seiko’s motherly affection is cloying, possessive, and sinister. The dead cat is introduced right at the start, hinting at the secrets later to be revealed.
As readers know, the story soon spirals out of control. From the attempted murder of her nephew on, Seiko is in active psychosis. Her behavior is erratic, confused, and contradictory. She clings to her son, and Seiichi moves to protect her without even seeming conscious of there being another option. They enter into a cyclical pattern of codependence and rejection, unable to live with or without one another.
Around the halfway point of the story, Seiichi is told by the detective investigating his mother that he is his own person, separate from her. He tries his best to believe this, repeating it to himself—but is it actually true? They are physically different beings, but psychologically, Seiichi has never been his own person. He’s not only dependent on his mother, but he cannot even conceive of who he is without her. As the manga makes abundantly clear, he has internalized his mother, frequently conversing with his introjected version of her. Thus, the story is not only about his relationship with his flesh-and-blood mother, but also his relationship with the mother in his head.
Seiichi is the point-of-view character and not always a reliable narrator. During his psychotic break, it’s revealed that his perception of Seiko is off; he has replaced his real mother with his vision of her, seeing her as significantly younger than she is. In fact, he sees her as the age she was when she tried to murder him, implying that their development has been stunted since that time.
Since Seiko is the parent, she is obviously the responsible party in the relationship. Still, it would be a mistake to focus on her alone as the cause of what happens in the story. It is in fact the nexus between Seiko and Seiichi, their enmeshed psychology, which drives the events of the story.
As the story develops, Seiichi vacillates between blaming his mother and blaming himself for their circumstances. Blaming his mother makes him feel pathetic and blaming himself gets him into a dangerous state of mind. In Chi no Wadachi, assigning blame doesn’t resolve anything but only perpetuates the dysfunctional cycle that the characters are stuck in. The overriding sense that someone must be to blame points to one of the series’s main themes: existential guilt.
Seiko had a child in the hope that it would give her a reason to live and make up for her past, but when it didn’t work, the child ended up trapping her, forcing her to live. He became a permanent reminder of her failure, a mistake she had to atone for; by giving birth to Seiichi, she forced him to share the pain of existence. When Seiichi realizes that she feels trapped by him, he decides that it’s his fault she ended up so unhappy. He tries to apologize for his birth, and she uses this as an excuse to throw him away once again. Understandably hurt, Seiichi then wishes he wasn’t her child, but this is functionally the same as wishing that he’d never been born.
The more that Seiichi struggles to free himself from his mother, the more he has in common with her, picking up on her misery, apathy, and misanthropy. As Seiko is estranged from her family, he becomes estranged from her. They both experience the utter alienation and stigmatization of being from a dysfunctional family. What’s more, they are both murderers, in intent if not in reality. They are trapped in a hell of their own making, unable to come to life but unable to die.
At multiple points in the story, minor characters tell Seiichi that family is eternal, that it’s all you have in the end. While my kneejerk reaction is to disagree, I believe that this sentiment is exactly what Chi no Wadachi seeks to explore. If it’s true, then no wonder Seiichi’s life is nightmarish. Since Seiko is mentally unwell and violent, estrangement is his best option, but it also leaves him unable to resolve his issues, leading to his prison sentence and eating up decades of his life. His torment is painful to read about, but it is ultimately necessary for the story. Through his suffering, Seiichi learns to relate to his mother. As I will argue in the next section, understanding Seiko is crucial for Seiichi’s development and for the manga’s themes.
Seiko’s Story
Seiko is abusive, insane, and incestuously attached to her son. Her crimes are innumerable; just when you think she can’t get any worse, she does. She’s a violation, a perversion of the figure of the mother. What’s more, no one in their right mind would want to relate to her. She’s a miserable person with no positive character traits. It’s therefore understandable that most readers come out of the manga calling her a monster. However, leaving it at that does not get to the heart of what the story is trying to say.
On first read, it may seem that Seiko is “just crazy,” an inexplicable character with no rhyme or reason, but in hindsight, it’s clear that Oshimi put a lot of effort into crafting her psychology. Seiko is a person who never developed a sense of self. When recounting her past to Seiichi, she always says she “thinks” she felt this or that; she never truly came to life, so she’s not sure of anything she does. The only thing she was ever emotionally invested in was acting because, as she says, it allowed her to be someone else. This aspect of her character is very important, both in establishing her unfulfilled dreams and in characterizing her as a person who’s always playing a part. She never comes on stage as herself, since she feels she doesn’t have a self. Instead, she cycles through various characters she has internalized: the loving mother, the devoted wife, the tragic heroine. This is what makes her so hard to pin down; it’s impossible to say whether her behavior is a reflection of who she is or how she feels.
Seiko is also a deeply ambiguous character. She contradicts herself so much that just trying to describe her creates cognitive dissonance. Worse, it’s difficult to say if she’s as crazy as she seems or if she’s just pretending. She seems to be aware of her actions, she seems to be consciously manipulative, and yet it feels wrong to claim that she’s completely in control of herself.
Seiko has one trait which surfaces time and time again, making it easier to be sure that it’s a reflection of her true desires: she wants to start over. When she decides to “quit being a mother,” she comes to court with a new hairstyle, as if trying to physically demonstrate that she’s entering a new chapter in life. Her murder attempts are motivated by her desire to escape, first by suicide and later by destroying her family. Unfortunately for her, it’s not so easy to escape. She can’t quit being related to her family anymore than Seiichi can.
While Seiko’s actions are extreme, I don’t think that Chi no Wadachi is only relevant to extremely dysfunctional families. It’s important to understand Seiko’s monstrousness rather than try to separate oneself from it because she is meant to represent something universal; she reflects the world around her rather than being alien to it.
Seiko rejects society because it has rejected her. She rebels against the rules which are meant to hold people together, undermining the social order. This makes her both destructive and subversive. This isn’t easy to admit, but there is something relatable about her deviance. The family system, and society more broadly, inflict a variety of mundane miseries on its members: we are all beholden to others in ways that are beyond our control; we all experience subtle forms of disrespect and mistreatment from those who are supposed to care about us; we all watch as uncomfortable truths are papered over by social niceties. Seiko, as someone who was never integrated into society in the first place, can never quite make herself accept that these things are the price of community. She tries to follow the rules, she tries to be normal, but that is exactly what ends up driving her insane. She was only ever pretending, never acting from the heart, which gave her an eerie quality that made others reject her.
Luckily, most people are not as disconnected from the world around them as Seiko is. Despite that, the reader is meant to learn to identify with her, just as Seiichi does. This process of identification acts as an exorcism, freeing Seiko from her demons and thereby releasing the reader from the antisocial tendencies fostered by the everyday workings of society.
The Ending
Chi no Wadachi, a manga known for its extreme violence and perversity, climaxes with a quiet conversation in which Seiko recounts her past to Seiichi. Some readers may find this anticlimactic, but it is perfectly suited to the characters. They’ve always occupied another world, one which others will not understand. On this one night, their world is calm. Seiichi, who now shares not only his mother’s misery but also her guilt, can finally see what his mother saw at the edge of the cliff. In that place of total isolation, the act of murder is something both beautiful and sad.
As they open up, Seiko and Seiichi admit the damage that has been done to them and the damage they have done to others. They are both murderers, and they also hold responsibility for what they have allowed to happen to their own souls. One of the main themes of Chi no Wadachi is that self-destructiveness and destructiveness directed at others are related; as much as they may have felt otherwise, Seiko and Seiichi were still part of the world, and so the way they treated themselves made a difference. If Seiko had respected herself more, all of her suffering might have been avoided, and if Seiichi hadn’t made the mistake of regretting his own birth, he wouldn’t have become a murderer. But for all the wasted years, the two still gained something from the trail of blood that they walked.
Facing the truth allows new sides of them to come out. Seiichi at last sees his mother as she is and is able to forgive her, and he learns that a part of Seiko always did care about the dead cat, which symbolizes both her deadness of spirit and the harm she has caused. Together, they bring the cat back to life.
This long conversation is immensely healing for Seiichi. For Seiko, it is too late. There may be some relief in being able to die with less regret, but dying is all she wants to do once she has finally confessed her sins. Seiichi tries to demand that his mother keep living, but their tortured double bind has finally come to an end. In the process of looking after her as she dies, he is able to let her go. He experiences a reversal, feeling himself to be the parent and Seiko to be the child. This helps him to resolve his relationship with the mother in his head. He has a final conversation with her on the night Seiko dies, in which he acknowledges his love for her and opens himself up to her love for him. Shigeru has already left him, and so once he comes to terms with his inner mother, he is no longer haunted. A whole person, he is able to move forward in life.
This ending resolves the two threads running through the story. Seiichi learns to understand his mother, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling intense relief at her passing. The manga was always about people who exist outside society, who don’t feel the way that “normal” people do. For Seiichi, the death of his mother is a blessing that finally frees him from her influence. Rather than see her face, he can look at the beauty of the real world.
Conclusion
Writing about Chi no Wadachi makes me uneasy. I worry that my engagement with Seiko as a character will be taken as apologetics for her. I have no intention of justifying her actions or painting her as the victim. Seiichi is the main character, and his story operates as a kind of parable for what it’s like to be born to an unhappy parent, a parent who isn’t sure they want to be alive and resents their own child for existing. Seiko claimed that she wanted to give Seiichi all the love in the world so that he would never have to suffer as she did, but she didn’t know how to love. In practice, she ended up expecting him to alleviate her misery, feel sorry for her, and take her side against the rest of the world.
Though it may seem like a form of giving in to her influence, it was actually liberating for Seiichi to forgive her. Hating her was only keeping him trapped under her sway, still anchored to his image of her. That is why I think it’s important for the reader to forgive her, too.
For readers who have good parents, Seiko may be completely alien as a character. For readers who have bad parents, she may be upsetting. Whatever the case, the twisted incestuous relationship she has with Seiichi is enough to turn anyone off. Chi no Wadachi overwhelms the reader with its depiction of trauma and its psychosexual themes. It is certainly trying to provoke a reaction, to shake people up. But as I hope I’ve explained in this piece, the end goal was never to heap hatred and blame on Seiko. To quote from Oshimi himself (translated by Google and edited by me):
When the first volume was released, I used the buzzword “Toxic Parent,” but actually, while I was drawing it, I thought to myself, “I don’t know if Seiichi’s mom is a toxic parent or not.” It would be easier for both Seiichi and myself if we could dismiss her as a toxic parent or villain, but there are aspects of her that cannot be easily categorized.
It’s my hope that people will continue to read Chi no Wadachi and that all its depth, nuance, and artistic power will come to be fully appreciated. A first step in the process would be for people to engage more with the story from a neutral, amoral, non-judgmental standpoint. Rather than harangue Seiko, as if that will make up for past traumas, the manga invites readers to question what she might have to tell us about ourselves and the world around us.
Thank you for reading!
Wow, that was beautifully explained. You didn't pick a side and argue whatever; you dissected the whole story and meaning behind everything. I really enjoyed your constant emphasis on Seiko's and Seichii's relationship throughout the whole story. However, what do you mean when you say "In that place of total isolation, the act of murder is something both beautiful and sad." Why is it both beautiful and sad for them? Many thanks once again, my favorite interpretation of the story