Volume 8

THE MILK OF THE VALLEY
Ginko is rescued by a man under the influence of mushi. The man works day and night without rest. The parents of the man had found a pond of milk when they were poor and without nothing to drink.
The mushi who transforms the blood in milk is called Chisio: it “forces the host in sleepless work gathering nourishment for it. And Chisio builds its own strenght.” (page 43)
The man: “My body … is what it became by drinking my mother’s blood.” (page 42)

THE BOTTOM OF WINTER
“On the mountain in late winter …
when are heard …
low-pitched, tiny, murmuring sounds …
quickly and all at once …
the mushi of spring awaken.” (page 49)

This time the mushi is called Oroshibue: “the whistling sound of a cold mountain wind in winter.” (page 218) Oroshibue helps the mountains with the winter’s migration.

Ginko notices that “the mountain is … closed off.” (page 60), it seems that the mountain is going to die. “The winter mushi can’t migrate?” (page 61)
But Ginko found that the Koki are healing from their wounds inside the bog, so the mountain wasn’t going to die.
Koki is nutrition for Oroshibue, so it steals from Ginko his Koki
and eventually “Winter fails. The mountain laugh. The fields are dressed in rich green.

THE HIDDEN CHANNEL
The title refers to those water channels that are hidden by the trees and greenery.
A girl and her friend are bound each other: they know their thoughts without talking.

Ginko: “There is a deep channel between you and that person.” (page 94)
“They say there are paths that nobody can see … (paths) between the minds of people.” (page 95)
“What causes this … are mushi that are working at our command. Kairogi (waterways) … that’s what they’re called.” (page 96)

SUNSHOWERS
A girl forecast the coming of the rain.
The girl: “I only came to foretell the coming of the rain. Do you think any human has the power to make it rain?” (page 143)
A mushi called Amefurashi: “ Normally they float in the sky. … But … as sunny days continue and the air begins to lose its moisture … they come close to the earth … and take the form of runaway water.” (page 169)
Ginko tells to the girl that the mushi Amefurashi is inside her: “stealing the moisture away from your body. They rise into the sky and gather the rain above you.” (page 170)

The girl: “Then I’ll find a spot on Earth … and plant some roots. … I’ll walk with the rain … and like the clouds … I’ll drift along.” (page 175)

THE MUD WEEDS
A brother kills his own brother, but mushi …

“They’re mushi that take the corpses of animals and breaks them down until they’re the consistency of mud.
When a living thing steps into the mud, it spreads the spores around.” (page 182)

Volume 9

THE FINAL BIT OF CRIMSON
A child takes the body of another child, when she is old remembers of the other child and wants to go ‘home’.

“Just about dusk … especially when there’s a sunset like today’s … She says ‘going home’ … and she tries to leave the house.” (page 10)

“Something gets sucked out of the world at sunset … and something else appears. There’s a creature called Omagadoki.
The people who get sucked in by it … see the form of a shadow with non one to cast it.
And if that shadow is stepped on or somehow comes underfoot … they are bodily sucked in by the Omagadoki, and are exchanged for someone else.” (page 26)

THE WHIRLWIND
Ginko is traveling on a ship when he hears a boy whistling: the boy is calling Torikaze to make wind and move the ship.
Torikaze means bird wind.

Ginko already knows this mushi called Torikaze, so he tells to the boy not to whistle a night.
Inadvertently the boy whistle during the night, so doing he recalls another mushi called Yobiko.
Yobiko: “They build nests by making holes in the rocks on the sea-shore. The wind blows through the holes making a whistling sound, and they gather at the sound.” (page 72)

Yobiko first causes the sinking of the ship; and after, at home, the boy is followed by Yobiko that makes holes everywhere.
Ginko intervenes and acts as the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
STARS IN THE JAR OF THE SKY
A child could be kidnapped, so her parents ask for help to Ginko. Ginko thinks that the child, although invisible, is living in the house.
The child, attracted by the stars sparkling in the well, has fell into it. “... crystal clear water … where an infinite number … of stars live.” (page 134)
“the source of life called the light flow … hits the well … and sparks are created.” (page 136)

The child falling in the wall has gone to the other side of the sky and can not come back.

ACQUAMARINE
A mushi called Uko lives in the body of a child. He has webbing on his hands.
Uko “infect the corpses of people who have drowned in the water. … they can revive the person.” (page 148)

“... the sea, the river … the rain and the clouds … are all the same?” (page 185)

The story tells about the liaison between mother and his child. An ancestral element, the water, explains the origin of life and the connections between living being.

The mother: “You’re here. I can find you everywhere.” (page 186)

THE BED OF GRASS
This story tells about Ginko as a boy.

“The master is the personification of the ‘nature’ of things.” (page 204)
Ginko can not become the master of nature, he can just live inside the nature.

“The entire world as a whole … is your home.” (page 204): Ginko is immersed in a bed of grass.

Volume 10

THE THREAD OF LIGHT
Ginko had saved a baby wrapping him with a special clothes. Because of that, the baby grew up strong and incapable to control himself. The clothes is made of a special thread: only mothers can see this special thread. It shows the bond between mothers and sons.

“That thread is what we mushishi call Yoshitsu.” (page 36) Yoshitsu means fairy-stuff.

The mother inadvertently picks up Yoshitsu from the baby, but suddenly the baby looses vitality. The father of the baby prefers to separate the baby from his mother.
So Ginko has to save the boy draining Yoshitsu from him, but the medicine doesn’t work.

The last chance is the mother of the boy: only the mother can see the thread, and free the boy from Yoshitsu.

THE ETERNAL TREE
A man ate a seed that looked like a plum. But it was a mushi called Satorigi (means: understanding tree). When the man finds a Japanese cedar cut down, he walks on the tree’s roots and seems his feet turned into the wood.

Satorigi shelters inside trees, when it senses the tree is in danger, Satorigi gives off a flower and after a fruit. Inside that fruit is stored all of the tree’s memory.

“... a tree stood on this land. And spread its branches high and wide. And without change, it quietly watched over … the ever changing creatures that were born and died beneath it.” (page 97)

THE SCENTED DARKNESS
“Night. Suddenly you’re hit by the smell of flowers … and it brings back the thread of a memory.” (page 99)

A man is victim of a Kairo, it’s a mushi “that puts out a smell like flowers to lure in bugs … it takes the creatures, it traps and put them into a strange loop of time.” (page 131)
The man repeats infinitely his life’s story.

The story suggests the idea of life as circle, or just acceptance of the temporary (Wabi).

DROPS OF BELLS
Ginko meets a girl who he thinks is a master of nature.

After some time Ginko meets a man: he is the girl’s brother. The man explains to Ginko: she “... had grass growing from her head from the day she was born.” (page 166)

In the mountains there are ‘fertile places’ called ‘light flow’. (page 175)
“in such places, the mountains need a ‘master’ to take care of things. … Those who have been chosen to be masters … are born with … grasses growing out of their bodies.” (page 175)

Ginko: “Now … I’d better be on my way.” (last page - ‘Curtain closes’)





( )

看蟲師第1集時，還覺得這系列設定挺新鮮的
然而邊際效用迅速地遞減
劇情重複性感覺頗高
雖然蟲不斷的在變，從第3集開始就感到無聊了

看英文版的話
由於蟲的名稱是英文拼寫，含意雖有寫在譯註
但閱讀的當下無法從名稱與現象產生連結
有點可惜 ( )

Very, /very/, _very_ beautiful! ( )

Every once in a while I come across a work that stays with me long after I first finish reading it and that I find myself revisiting time and again. Yuki Urushibara's ten-volume debut manga series Mushishi is one such work. Heavily influenced by traditional Japanese folklore but retaining modern sensibilities, Mushishi is a nuanced and layered manga which can either be simply enjoyed as a collection of atmospheric and subtly unsettling stories or more deeply appreciated for its complex underlying themes and philosophies. Mushishi quickly became and remains one of my favorite manga. The series has been received positively by fans and critics alike, earning Urushibara several awards and recognitions including a Japan Media Arts Award and a Kodansha Manga Award. Mushishi has also been the basis for multiple anime among other media adaptations. In English, the series was first published in print by Del Rey Manga and was later released digitally by Kodansha Comics.

The final volume of the English-langauge edition of Mushishi, first printed in 2010 and released digitally in 2014, is equivalent to the eighth, ninth, and tenth volumes of the series' original Japanese release published between 2007 and 2008. Keeping with the episodic nature of Mushishi, the volume collects fourteen stories that for the most part aren't directly tied to one another or to earlier chapters, but which share similar ideas and themes with the rest of the series. Family relationships are very important in Mushishi as a whole, but stories like "The Milk of the Valley," "The Hidden Channel," "Aquamarine," and "The Thread of Life" in particular explore the deep bonds between mothers, including surrogate mothers, and their children. Other stories, like "The Final Bit of Crimson," "Stars in the Jar of the Sky," and "The Scented Darkness," are about other realities and worlds, or at least about aspects of the natural world that aren't fully understood by humankind. On the other hand, "Sunshowers," "The Mud Weeds," "The Whirlwind," and "The Eternal Tree" are stories which show that when dealing with possession by or control of mushi, greater understanding can be both a curse and a blessing.

The remaining three stories collected in the volume, including the series' two-part finale, specifically involve Ginko (the manga's protagonist and linking character), his personal relationship to mushi (primordial creatures that are closest to the original form of life), and what are known as "masters" in the world of Mushishi. Each master is associated with a specific geographic area and are responsible for maintaining the connection and balance between the natural world and all of the beings found within it. They are described as the living embodiment of the promise and rule of life. Although each of the three stories are technically found in different volumes of the series, taken together they form a particularly interesting narrative and are very illuminating when it comes to Ginko's character. "The Bed of Grass" returns to Ginko's past, firmly establishing why he is who he is and revealing the origin of his deep connection to and somewhat unusual attitude towards mushi. That connection is extremely critical to and further developed in "The Bottom of Winter" and in the series' conclusion "Drops of Bells."

Ginko's devotion to life, whether it be human, mushi, or some other form, is perhaps the most prominent narrative driving force behind the entirety of Mushishi. At the same time, Ginko is also very aware that sometimes life cannot and should not always be preserved and that coexistence isn't always an option. The intent is to find an appropriate balance, but what that balance should be is often debatable and mistakes are made. Ginko frequently acts in a role akin to that of a master and on several occasions throughout the series even considers taking the responsibilities of master upon himself. The decisions that he makes as he considers all of this in the final volumes of Mushishi are especially poignant. Mushishi is a manga series about many things, but at its very heart it's an exploration of relationships, not only between humans and the natural world of which they are only one, inextricable part, but between people as individuals and as members of larger social groups. Mushi provide a seemingly supernatural element to the series, but ultimately the focus of Mushishi is on the very real, varied, and changing struggles of individuals living in an evolving world that they cannot completely control or understand.

Experiments in Manga ( )

Volume 8

THE MILK OF THE VALLEY
Ginko is rescued by a man under the influence of mushi. The man works day and night without rest. The parents of the man had found a pond of milk when they were poor and without nothing to drink.
The mushi who transforms the blood in milk is called Chisio: it “forces the host in sleepless work gathering nourishment for it. And Chisio builds its own strenght.” (page 43)
The man: “My body … is what it became by drinking my mother’s blood.” (page 42)

THE BOTTOM OF WINTER
“On the mountain in late winter …
when are heard …
low-pitched, tiny, murmuring sounds …
quickly and all at once …
the mushi of spring awaken.” (page 49)

This time the mushi is called Oroshibue: “the whistling sound of a cold mountain wind in winter.” (page 218) Oroshibue helps the mountains with the winter’s migration.

Ginko notices that “the mountain is … closed off.” (page 60), it seems that the mountain is going to die. “The winter mushi can’t migrate?” (page 61)
But Ginko found that the Koki are healing from their wounds inside the bog, so the mountain wasn’t going to die.
Koki is nutrition for Oroshibue, so it steals from Ginko his Koki
and eventually “Winter fails. The mountain laugh. The fields are dressed in rich green.

THE HIDDEN CHANNEL
The title refers to those water channels that are hidden by the trees and greenery.
A girl and her friend are bound each other: they know their thoughts without talking.

Ginko: “There is a deep channel between you and that person.” (page 94)
“They say there are paths that nobody can see … (paths) between the minds of people.” (page 95)
“What causes this … are mushi that are working at our command. Kairogi (waterways) … that’s what they’re called.” (page 96)

SUNSHOWERS
A girl forecast the coming of the rain.
The girl: “I only came to foretell the coming of the rain. Do you think any human has the power to make it rain?” (page 143)
A mushi called Amefurashi: “ Normally they float in the sky. … But … as sunny days continue and the air begins to lose its moisture … they come close to the earth … and take the form of runaway water.” (page 169)
Ginko tells to the girl that the mushi Amefurashi is inside her: “stealing the moisture away from your body. They rise into the sky and gather the rain above you.” (page 170)

The girl: “Then I’ll find a spot on Earth … and plant some roots. … I’ll walk with the rain … and like the clouds … I’ll drift along.” (page 175)

THE MUD WEEDS
A brother kills his own brother, but mushi …

“They’re mushi that take the corpses of animals and breaks them down until they’re the consistency of mud.
When a living thing steps into the mud, it spreads the spores around.” (page 182)

Volume 9

THE FINAL BIT OF CRIMSON
A child takes the body of another child, when she is old remembers of the other child and wants to go ‘home’.

“Just about dusk … especially when there’s a sunset like today’s … She says ‘going home’ … and she tries to leave the house.” (page 10)

“Something gets sucked out of the world at sunset … and something else appears. There’s a creature called Omagadoki.
The people who get sucked in by it … see the form of a shadow with non one to cast it.
And if that shadow is stepped on or somehow comes underfoot … they are bodily sucked in by the Omagadoki, and are exchanged for someone else.” (page 26)

THE WHIRLWIND
Ginko is traveling on a ship when he hears a boy whistling: the boy is calling Torikaze to make wind and move the ship.
Torikaze means bird wind.

Ginko already knows this mushi called Torikaze, so he tells to the boy not to whistle a night.
Inadvertently the boy whistle during the night, so doing he recalls another mushi called Yobiko.
Yobiko: “They build nests by making holes in the rocks on the sea-shore. The wind blows through the holes making a whistling sound, and they gather at the sound.” (page 72)

Yobiko first causes the sinking of the ship; and after, at home, the boy is followed by Yobiko that makes holes everywhere.
Ginko intervenes and acts as the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
STARS IN THE JAR OF THE SKY
A child could be kidnapped, so her parents ask for help to Ginko. Ginko thinks that the child, although invisible, is living in the house.
The child, attracted by the stars sparkling in the well, has fell into it. “... crystal clear water … where an infinite number … of stars live.” (page 134)
“the source of life called the light flow … hits the well … and sparks are created.” (page 136)

The child falling in the wall has gone to the other side of the sky and can not come back.

ACQUAMARINE
A mushi called Uko lives in the body of a child. He has webbing on his hands.
Uko “infect the corpses of people who have drowned in the water. … they can revive the person.” (page 148)

“... the sea, the river … the rain and the clouds … are all the same?” (page 185)

The story tells about the liaison between mother and his child. An ancestral element, the water, explains the origin of life and the connections between living being.

The mother: “You’re here. I can find you everywhere.” (page 186)

THE BED OF GRASS
This story tells about Ginko as a boy.

“The master is the personification of the ‘nature’ of things.” (page 204)
Ginko can not become the master of nature, he can just live inside the nature.

“The entire world as a whole … is your home.” (page 204): Ginko is immersed in a bed of grass.

Volume 10

THE THREAD OF LIGHT
Ginko had saved a baby wrapping him with a special clothes. Because of that, the baby grew up strong and incapable to control himself. The clothes is made of a special thread: only mothers can see this special thread. It shows the bond between mothers and sons.

“That thread is what we mushishi call Yoshitsu.” (page 36) Yoshitsu means fairy-stuff.

The mother inadvertently picks up Yoshitsu from the baby, but suddenly the baby looses vitality. The father of the baby prefers to separate the baby from his mother.
So Ginko has to save the boy draining Yoshitsu from him, but the medicine doesn’t work.

The last chance is the mother of the boy: only the mother can see the thread, and free the boy from Yoshitsu.

THE ETERNAL TREE
A man ate a seed that looked like a plum. But it was a mushi called Satorigi (means: understanding tree). When the man finds a Japanese cedar cut down, he walks on the tree’s roots and seems his feet turned into the wood.

Satorigi shelters inside trees, when it senses the tree is in danger, Satorigi gives off a flower and after a fruit. Inside that fruit is stored all of the tree’s memory.

“... a tree stood on this land. And spread its branches high and wide. And without change, it quietly watched over … the ever changing creatures that were born and died beneath it.” (page 97)

THE SCENTED DARKNESS
“Night. Suddenly you’re hit by the smell of flowers … and it brings back the thread of a memory.” (page 99)

A man is victim of a Kairo, it’s a mushi “that puts out a smell like flowers to lure in bugs … it takes the creatures, it traps and put them into a strange loop of time.” (page 131)
The man repeats infinitely his life’s story.

The story suggests the idea of life as circle, or just acceptance of the temporary (Wabi).

DROPS OF BELLS
Ginko meets a girl who he thinks is a master of nature.

After some time Ginko meets a man: he is the girl’s brother. The man explains to Ginko: she “... had grass growing from her head from the day she was born.” (page 166)

In the mountains there are ‘fertile places’ called ‘light flow’. (page 175)
“in such places, the mountains need a ‘master’ to take care of things. … Those who have been chosen to be masters … are born with … grasses growing out of their bodies.” (page 175)

Ginko: “Now … I’d better be on my way.” (last page - ‘Curtain closes’) ( )