Akame (赤目) is a short story composed by two parts and realized between June and December 1961. Anyway, the first publication in Japan arrived only in 1998, thanks to Shogakukan.
On the ground of reflections about nature and the history of peasants' revolts - themes so frequent and dear in Shirato's productions - he builds up a story which does not share the very same deep politicization and social analysis of
Kamui or
Ninja Bugeicho, but represents well a kind of summary of Shirato's poetics. Behind Matsuzo you can find Kamui's intimate struggle, Kagemaru's keen strategies, and Ozaru's and Sasuke's aversion for feudal lords, but in the end
Akame is and remains the narration of Matsuzo's own vicissitudes, so we are talking about an absolutely original manga. Strange but true: ninja are absent (or better, there are some ninja indeed, but they have an absolute minor role in the development of the plot). The core of the story is vengeance. Though this apparent simplicity, it's quite hard to sum up what happened in few lines, because the narrative tecnhique Shirato used is unsuspectedly intricate in building a spider web of events.
The cruel
daimyo Nobuhira kidnaps and kills Matsuzo's pregnant wife, Tae: in his mind, there's no difference between peasants and things. Both of them are just goods, toys in his hands, and he thinks he has the right to use them (and
abuse them). In front of his wife's corpse, Matsuzo swears he'll have his revenge together with Nobuhira's head, even if he is weak and alone.
One day he is found, ill, by a group of ninja. They take care of him and accept him among them when he asks them to join the clan. But Matsuzo is just a farmer: he hasn't the skills for being a ninja, so the others just banish him. Ninja world, with its cruel and strict rules, cannot forgive failures. Once again Matsuzo finds himself alone and weak. Nevertheless, his stubborness does not fail: so, if physical strenght cannot help him, he decides to profit by nothing less than Nature and Religion.
One can easily recognize Shirato's atheistic materialism considering how he explains the functioning of natural systems and the mental process of believing. Nature is described as a perfect machine which aims to mantain its balance no matter what (and it does mantain it!); religion is depicted as an intimate need of human soul which originates from fears and anguishes, so it could become a way of controlling other people's lives. Matsuzo knows well all of this, therefore he plays his game: passing himself off as a monk, he makes peasants believe that their problem's not their
daimyo cruelty, but their offensive behaviour towards the
akame-sama, that is to say the rabbits. Thanks to some fortuitous coincidences, 'akameism' catches on: none dares harm or kill any rabbit, so their number grows disproportionately. This creates a lack of balance, until even the number of their natural predators - lynx - grows in reaction. But lynx suddenly begin to attack people, and this apparently insignificant fact prepares the Great Ending.
As you may see, there is much to think about in only 183 pages: social injustice, human aberrations, obsession, revenge, historical and psychological analysis, scientific specifications, everything is condensed in a story which flows like water. Another thing one should consider is the reason why Shirato tells this story, a reason which deals with a careful critic of present days: therefore the author often inserts short comments in order to underline - always discretely, with no intention to teach anything to anyone - hints for reflections about how little times have changed.
Considering now the graphic, the plates are simply wonderful: narrative and visual rhythm are perfectly combined. The drawings create a powerful sense of dynamism, also thanks to the use of stroke, hatching, screens and black and white. Sometimes the illusion of movement is very strong, Shirato is a real master in creating it.
As for the italian edition, published by Hazard, I have to say that it is a very great work: the formal quality of the volume is very high, and the side informations about Shirato and his works are exhaustive and useful to know more about an author (unfortunately) still understimated here in the West.
