#chiyomi hashiguchi

[thefugitivesaint]

Nekojiru (Chiyomi Hashiguchi) (1967-1998), ''Nekojiru Dango'', 1994 Source

This is the last 4 pages of Chapter 9 of the manga comic named above.

[read-nekojiru]

Happy birthday (January 19th 1967) to Hashiguchi Chiyomi

[nnikkouren]

I Clean/Typeset Manga For Free!!!!

Hellooo!! I know this is a graphics page but I also do manga cleaning and typesetting! I clean simple and complex manga styles.

More info under the cut!!

As of writing this I do not have any experience working with a scan group or with a translator. I mostly clean Nekojiru panels for fun in my free time. (raws found here https://read-nekojiru.neocities.org/works)

I DO NOT PROVIDE RAWS. Please come to me with your own raws!!

Examples of my cleaning work: Before > After

Simple style

Title: Nekojiru Manju by Nekojiru / Chiyomi Hashiguchi

More complex style

Title: 36.8 ℃ no kyoukai by Achikochi Owari / Fukutsuu

If anyone would like me to clean the entirety of Nekojiru Manju or any other titles I'll be willing to do it. Please keep in mind that I am a student! So please keep in mind that schedules may need to be negotiated, my timezone is EST (GMT-5). Please contact me through Instagram @/oo211212 or my discord @/llunarsia if you're interested in working with me!! ☆

[kdnss77]

Cat soup/Nekojiru-sou (2001)

basic info: directed by Tetsuo Satou and loosely based on the manga from Nekojiru (Chiyomi Hashiguchi). creation of the storyboard is credited to Masaaki Yuasa (whom you can associate with such titles as Devilman Crybaby or The Tatami Galaxy). its a relatively short animation listed as an experimental, dark comedy.

overall ratings: imdb: 7.6/10 letterboxd: 4/5

plot summary: the short film features two siblings, Nyatta and Nyako, who set off for a journey - an unusual and pretty nihilistic in its latter tone - in the aim of regaining the older sister's missing part of a soul. having been taken away by a religious personification of death, Nyako is left only with a piece of her consciousness, becoming rather oblivious to the dangers and beauties of the surreal, yet crushingly symbolic world around her. Nyatta on the other hand, remaining in sort of a fever dream after (probably) drowning in a bathtub, leads their duo through all the odd obstacles god puts on their way, so as to save his sibling. towards the end of the animation, the protagonist seems to be coming to realization about the absence of both his parents and sister, them disappearing into nothingness as if turned off by a tv remote. the credits are accompanied by a looped, raw animation of his family, all cheerful, on a beach with a tune of music box in the background.

my thoughts: as i've already let it slip, Cat Soup is a rather nihilistic and hopeless take on the superficiality surrounding us - matters of life and death in particular. values, that by default are generally considered crucial to our being as humans. we're scared of dying. we're scared of pursuing our dreams in life, what makes us scared of living in a way too. on the contrary, we treasure moments we're able to experience throughout life. however, the short animation is conveying a simple message: none of that matters. neither life, nor death mean a single thing in this twisted pseudo-reality. taking for instance the scene, in which god comes out to the audience in the circus to perform a trick on a female assistant. first, he intends on cutting her into several pieces, what makes her technically dead (although i recall her still giggling). then, he just joins her specimen back together, as if magically bringing her back to life. where did the importance of those go? they're casually stripped from their dignity, making them look childishly easy to imitate. another point worth mentioning is the powerlessness mankind is left with when in god-human tally. so as to revive his unfinished meal, lord casually reverses the wheels of time and causes countless people to come back to life, natural disasters rewind its tremendous consequences, assassinations are being taken back. even our main characters are, comically, first immediately aging and subsequently returning to their primal, newborn forms. it seems like we're nothing but a worthless cob in god's almighty machine, him not caring less about humankind or its fate. i'd name it an another crucial example of how the anime trashes the sacred idea of godly creation and its turnabouts, such as death or destruction. adding to that, i must mention the sequence in which a fish, desperately trying to escape a near-death experience, is almost entirely sliced into pieces by a bunch of samurai. it ends up on a beach shore, exhausted but equally relieved, just for its eye to be eaten by a cat. i've interpreted it as an, once again - negatively - pointless strive towards surviving at all costs, yet achieving nothing in return and discovering our pain and labors have gone to absolute waste. there's no hopes or dreams, just misery. but is there? the looped raw that is shown parallel to credits tells rather otherwise. that nihilistic though might be the main message of the creation but shouldn't that encourage us to treasure those bright and jolly moments in our lives? before its all irreversibly gone, just as Nyatta's family, when he snaps our of his imaginations? i'd prefer to think so. that comes to the case of speculations on the subject of this characters odds. at the beginning of the movie, Nyatta is shown to stay under the water for an extended period of time, then exposed to a strange encounter with a religious entity taking away his sister. only after that he is, sort of, waken up by his father and seemingly returning to reality - but not really after all. could it be, that Nyatta drowned while playing in the bathtub and the further events are just a product of his mind? that would make a belief that before ultimate death fragments of the life you've had literally flash before your eyes sound pretty decent. perhaps that's what happened to the humanoid, little cat - the sudden disappearance of his sister and parents would determine his consciousness to finally withdraw, granting him peace. that's what seems logical to me, assuming there is an actual plot line. on the other hand, i would agree if someone would just call it an experimental work with a bit of black humor. what i've written above rather resembles an analysis, although i'm convinced one should just feel this movie. it's either purely symbolic or completely meaningless, nothing but a story about two cats, life and death and their endeavors brought to life by an unusual vision. your choice.

while researching the origins of the production, i stumbled upon some information on the original author of the manga - that is Nekojiru - and feel like her death might have influenced the final tone of the movie. not much is known about her life or the circumstances of the way her life had ended, apart from the fact it surely was a suicide. she also had a history of depression, which probably has originated in her youth, and experienced trouble maintaining social contacts/involving in social interactions. for that reason, in her early works, she started to depict herself as a cat surrounded by people. antisocial and alienated, misunderstood by the surroundings. just like her characters - also Nyako and Nyatta - living among humans but not being a part of their world. maybe that's what the creators of the short film had in mind, when crafting its depressing scenario (apparently, apart from the circus visit, none of the plot events are associated with Nekojiru's works).

my rating: 4.5/5

no favorite quote in this case, as there's no spoken dialog throughout the entire film. however, i'd name the ending and then the short scene in the credits my favored bits of the animation. the first one leaves you with a sense of emptiness, and the second one soothes this impression, leaving a viewer with a bitter-sweet feeling in the end.

the images were found by me on the internet, credit to their original uploaders.

[kinasin]

Nekojiru Gekijou Jirujiru Original

[my-brutal-heart]

[nekojirusoups]

[sewerhawk]

Chiyomi Hashiguchi

[what-would-the-community-think]

I re-watched Cat Soup a couple of weeks ago for the first time in many years, so I decided to dig out my old Nekojiru manga collection to prolong the nostalgia trip.. The creator/artist of the Nekojiru series’ - Hashiguchi Chiyomi committed suicide in the late 90′s, leaving behind a handful of unfinished/incomplete work that her partner worked hard to release on her behalf posthumously. The themes used in her work were often a mix of dark comedy, cruelty, violence, yet also very introspective of her, featuring many of her own personal observations, thoughts and feelings and my own personal favorite - some really unique dreams she experienced which she immediately wrote down after waking up and later depicted in her own artwork..

[pinkumiilku]

Nekojiru. Cat Soup.

At the time of her death, Nekojiru weighted around 38 kg. While a petite person in general, her well documented disgust towards most foods makes for an obvious eating disorder. Back then, I don’t know if it would have been a phenomenon particularly talked about, especially in Japan, where it’s so engraved into the culture to be so petite in the first place. I imagine they’d have a perspective pointing to vanity, rather than disgust and addiction. Nekojiru was in hospital multiple times. They say she overworked, and that she was diagnosed as manic depressive and schizophrenic. I’d say many of the artists featured in Garo Magazine would fit that description. But then, fellow Manga authors would say: “Don’t read into it too much, Garo is made to be bizzarre.”

Hajime Yamano, or actually Yasuo Hashiguchi married Chiyomi Hashiguchi (I couldn’t find a family name) sometime in the ‘80s.

She was younger by about ten years.

Editors will say she knocked at his door abruptly at 18 years old, wanting to work with him somehow. At the time, Yamano would have been making many “Devil” works, a kind of trend, a bit like “Eroguro”, focusing on the depraved, existential, sexual and erotic, as a featured artist in Garo Magazine. It felt forced, looking at his early work. I’d think Nekojiru must have seen something below the surface. According to fellow Garo artists themselves, Yamano’s art changed drastically after meeting his wife. In a way, there was a shift in focus, from disfigured genitals or hard drugs, to two cats in surreal, psychedelic landscapes, now focusing on his two daughters from new marriage, with his manga Soseji.

I wonder why he accepted somewhat of a stranger working alongside him at first.

Maybe he thought it was entertaining, or maybe it was their karma meeting together.

Nevertheless, they married. They liked each other, but were close in a way that is different. I always wondered why they chose to marry, though Nekojiru seemed a person who followed the rules meticulously for certain things, say manners or speech, but not at all for others, like looking people in the eye, I’d never expect her to get married.

Maybe to her, marriage was the “normal” thing to do.

There is so much focus on how stern, abrupt, rude and introverted she was. How cruel her cats were. Yamano wouldn’t comment much on it, beyond saying he’d have to keep her manners in check every so often.

Then again, close friends such Yoshiaki Yoshinaga would say he was a “scruffy” mother to her, and that he saw her as a daughter. This was mentioned once more at a broadcasted memorial for Nekojiru in November of 1998.

One night, Yamano called Yoshinaga asking if he could spend the night. Nekojiru, after several days of being awake, snapped. She threatened him with a knife. He asked if he needed to call authorities, but Yamano brushed it off. “If I don’t protect her, then who will?” This was mentioned then in Yoshinaga’s journal.

Nekojiru was also “paranoid”, and needed to carry a weapon with her at all times.

In the end, it’s easy to see how terrified she was of the world, feeling like an outsider in some kind of zoo. Some of her diary entries focus on details of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, active in the mid ‘90s. For any heartwarming moment, there will be something horrendous in the next panel. Many will say it was Nekojiru who couldn’t adapt to the world, and could not accept it. I’d argue the world didn’t adapt to Nekojiru.

There is an exception to that world of chaos however. In more personal travel Logs, or Jiru Jiru Diary entries, the one subject that shifts the attention from that cruelty is the depiction of her husband.

He has messy hair, and a scruffy beard, and is always smoking, yet looks kind, sometimes stern.

It’s clear that Nekojiru was in a perennial state of dissociation, and Yamano was her only grounding force. Maybe to her, this was love.

Allegedly, he became more of a womanizer, and this may have sped up the already clear intention on committing suicide.

They say she died alone, and left many suicide notes prior, where she “forgot she was alive”.

Everyday was most likely one of anxious agony for Yamano, but it seemed he had somehow resigned to this fact.

Editors will say that was the only way she could die, by deciding so herself.

“Forget I ever existed. Do not give me a grave.” are just snippets of her letter.

Yamano claims he has no idea why she did it, and struggled with a deep depression after the fact. A few months later, he’d officially taken over as Nekojiru-Y.

Pitch black eyes. Yamano drew them. Nekojiru drew them. Everyone could recognize the Nyakko and Nyatta siblings. They are unsettling. It’s hard to know where they’re looking. However, behind those eyes is another message as well. Thanatos.

“AbunaKawaii”, “dangerous cute”, another trend that took Tokyo by storm. It’s how they categorized Nekojiru’s work.

She hoped for something a bit more elaborate, or maybe she didn’t care at all. After all, it was her husband that pushed her to perform for Garo at first.

Who will die next in JiruJiru Diary? Who will be blown up? Who will be domestically abused? That’s most of what her audience thought.

But in the midst of that sort of childlike innocence, that of a child who doesn’t know better than to kill insects, there was a growing focus on God. These stories were less published, and Yamano suggested Chiyomi write her dreams in a journal, which he’d sometimes take inspiration from as Nekojiru-Y.

In the midst of all that brutality, we see a little cat who is alone, and is talking to God, walking down a river in India.

This is where the perception of Nekojiru takes a turn.

Chiyomi was always in another sort of dimension, which many would blame on schizophrenia, but Yamano would praise his wife as more enlightened than the Zen monk present at her funeral.

The funeral she didn’t want, followed by a tombstone with a single sanskrit character etched onto it. Aphex Twin’s Ambient Sounds Volume II played, as per her wish.

A documentary in 1999 would showcase their belongings, including Indian Hindu paintings of Gods, star shaped slinkies and pink trinkets. Nobody was allowed to touch Nekojiru’s specific set of belongings.

At the time, it wasn’t unusual for Yoshinaga, and his wife to binge on psychedelics while at the Hashiguchi residence. This may have inspired sets of LSD tablets with Nyakko and Nyatta floating around Tokyo at the time.

[dailynekojiru]

(Art by Nekojiru and colored by @/the-faktory)

My main blog is @lagomortis and this account was inspired by @/dailykimba and @/1coweveryday

Not the @dailynekojiru on twitter

This account is dedicated to manga artist Chiyomi Hashiguchi, pen name Nekojiru. She committed suicide in 1998, with her husband continuing the work under pen name Nekojiru-y.

Most people know of her characters from the 2001 film Nekojiru-sou. I primarily take inspiration from her works Nekojiru Udon and Nekogamisama, but all of her works are good reads. I also recommend the 1999 shorts Nekojiru Gekijou.

It is important to note that Nekojiru was not a good person, with many instances of abuse and racism. Some of these allegations include spousal and animal abuse.

Nekojiru’s work features a lot of gore and other disturbing imagery. Please use caution.

I tag any possible trigger warnings and if you want any others, feel free to ask!

I only speak a very basic level of Japanese (hiragana, katakana, simple kanji, etc.)

Basic DNI criteria, no transphobes, racists, pedophiles, etc.

Thank you for reading and enjoy!

[human-dlc]

Me thinking about the experimental 2001 Short film known as nekojiro-sō or cat soup directed by Tatsuo Satō (based of the original work called nekojiru udon written by Chiyomi Hashiguchi) and the film’s meloncholic tone along with it’s creative direction creating a truly unique experience in my eyes. The film mostly based on the fourth story in the manga called “soul”, the nineth chapter called “the great wizard”, and the thirteenth “stag beetle”. There is a miasmic sense of loneliness and longing that permeates the film calls back to the childish lack of understanding and empathy of children, much like the source, while juxtaposing it with the consuming darkness and horror of the real world

[osabishi-yama]

ねこぢるの死 (Death of Nekojiru)

Nekojiru (Hashiguchi Chiyomi)’s prized possessions.

[13mo]

Hey do you have any like big art inspirations?

yea !!! i love toriyamaakira ( dbz ), hashiguchichiyomi ( nekojiru ), and yoshitake yamane are all hugeeeee inspos that ive followed for a while & i just recently learned about yoshitomo nara who im rlly starting 2 love

[nekojirusoups]

get a gerl who cat pat both.

[de0996aaronsmith]

About the Creator: Chiyomi Hashiguchi (Nekojiru)

Chiyomi Hashiguchi was the original creator of Cat Soup... Well, sort of. She created comics about two cat siblings, Nyako and Nyatta, who go on misadventures, causing havoc and craziness in their life. Although, it should be noted that this is no Hello Kitty in terms of accessibility, the comic, like the film, mixes cute with the disturbing, often including violence and death. Humans live with other animals, it’s somewhat like an alternate reality Japan, with Japan’s modern day harsh realities and the mix of cartoon zaniness. Unfortunately, not much is known about her, and she was an incredibly private person. She passed way in 1998, but her husband, also under the pen name of Nekojiru, has continued to write using her characters, continuing on her legacy.

In 2001, her comics were adapted into an OVA, known to the English as Cat Soup. This was less of an adaption of her comics, and more of an interpretation, being inspired by the comics.