Mononoke 2: Medieval Abortions

A most well decorated chamber of death if I say so myself.

It seems that my wait for the conclusion was much shorter than anticipated. Suffice to say it was a rather surprising conclusion. I suspected that abortions were the source of the haunting, but I doubt many of us had this in mind…

First off that was a real nice recap in 48 seconds I wish they did this across the whole industry instead of having recap episodes.

So the blond gal’s name was Shino and she did in fact know the assassin personally. How personally is still subject to debate thought. She may have been a prostitute since Naosuke the Assassin called her as such. However she may have been a servant as well. Given that Shino claims to have been rejected by the master’s parents it sounds plausible. Nevertheless, I suspect that she was a prostitute since “master” is also brothel talk for customer. Since it is clear that her erstwhile lover did send Naosuke to kill, I really think that Shino was in fact a courtesan.

Let me guess Naosuke tried to kill her to get a refund.

Really surprising that you were once a Rick James look-alike.

The Madame of the Inn was talking from experience on how naive Shino was. It’s no big secret that back in the day marriage was for producing heirs and men of the age went to the brothel to experience something short of actual love. At least that is what the Japanese literature professor told me when I pointed out how worthless and faithless Japanese men were in this age. This was probably true for the merchant, landowning, and warrior classes, but not the peasants were usually too busy trying to eke out a living. Now the fact that Tokuji was party to all this was surprising. He seemed a bit too dull and easily surprised to be dangerous. So I miss judged him by quite a bit. Then again if he had absolutely nothing to do with it, then he probably would have been more of a bystander anyways as the zashiki-warashi did cling to him as well.

The Madame did make the room as an offering to the dead children that she helped abort and those she deliberately aborted. Her sincerity about it is, however, rather suspect. Even if she did keep the room empty as intended for the most part she never expresses much else in terms of regret. Her younger self though much better looking, definitely oozed of creepiness. Now I am not sure how they performed abortions back in the day, but dang… Doing it the way butchers use a chopping block or a smith uses an anvil,which was unexpected. I thought there was a more painless way to do it, in contrast to a forced miscarriage. I know that there was something like crude surgical techniques brought over by some of the few Europeans, but it was not much better since whiskey = anesthesia.

I must say though the way the staff pulled it off did not reduce any of the ensuing shock. While, they could have gone with a more gory representation I think that the absence of realism hammered home the point that this was dirty business. Had they gone with a realism route, I think I would have been much more distracted by the gore to really think about how merciless she was. She seemed to take some sort of sadistic glee when she did this. Maybe it was a coping mechanism, but still the way she tore up those rags, sent shivers down my spine.

On the one hand the Madame was right in that none of the courtesans could afford to be pregnant; hence it was just business and nothing personal. While normally I would denounce the common sex worker of medieval Japan (Japanese Lit had too many emo stories about loser two timing males), here I felt a bit sorry for them. I support a woman’s right to choose even if it means raising a kid in poverty. I may not like it, but it’s not my place to tell a woman that she cannot decide when she is ready for motherhood. I just don’t want to have to witness it and to a lesser extent subsidize it. It’s real hard to over look that fact that they did not use contraception and that they chose to stay in the brothel rather than run away. They have sex for a living; pregnancy should always be in the back of their minds. Part of me hopes that in the past that if they even allowed for brothel births that they would at least send the children to an orphanage, but I know that deep down this was the way they handled business. It was the most expedient way to solve the problem and more importantly the cheapest.

Sure you had no choice I man after all just look at these kids…

I am all for kids of color but this is ridiculous, its as if Skittles could have kids.

I find it hard to ignore the fact that the courtesans seemed to be having fun while mating, but they should have been aware of the cost. I would not rule out the possibility of any one of the Madame’s old workers having gone through this more than once, so how can they even laugh? Its down right wrong and I find it contemptible that they could be having fun while all this was going on. They had to have known they should have known, you can’t ignore the fact that there is a whole room dedicated to the sole purpose of ending pregnancy. Sure they may have been sold into slavery, but heck it is the obligation of every slave and prisoner of war to try and escape.

As for the regret I found the whole kid being grateful to be touching. However, in the end it made me feel like an ungrateful lout for having put my mum through so much growing up. The Madame may have felt regret for what she did because at some point she could no longer take it and tried to run a more honest business. She had the anger and bitterness, but I wonder if it did stem ultimately from hatred of herself. Given the brutal methods used I wonder how she could even look at herself in the morning, then again there were hardly any mirrors at all in the inn.

What now? Let me tell you what now. I’m gonna call a couple of hard-pipe-hittin’ niggas to go to work on the homes here with a pair o’ pliers and a blow torch. You hear me talking hillbilly boy? I aight through wit chu! Not by damn sight! I’m gonna get medieval on your ass!

That’s medieval no tools, just your bare hands…

While this arc was not the three episode roller coaster that was Bake-Neko it wasn’t that bad. While the brothel may have been obvious the details were rather shocking even if done in a manner that without context seems benign. Overall it was far better than many starting arcs of most series this season. Hopefully more people will give this series a chance despite the radically different art style. The short story format is rather nice compared to having pointless fillers like some series without much bloodshed (Read: School Days).