POSTSCRIPT

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Do vampires dream? And if so, what manner of dreams do they have? This Vampire Hunter D novel was the product of just such speculation. If vampires dream, then theirs would be the dreams of the undead. But if their dreams were to be superimposed on those of the living, what shape would these new dreams take? Nobles who dance in the daylight? Humans who stride silently through a world of darkness? Whatever the case, it would certainly be something beyond human or Noble imagining. I’ll have to wait for the reaction from you, my readers, before I’ll know whether this volume conveyed that effectively or not.

Japan, the land of my birth, has developed a culture quite different from that of the English-speaking world. And after living nearly sixty years in such a place, I suppose that even when I use something like the European vampire theme in my work, it differs fundamentally from what might be created in your world. Perhaps that’s what makes the Vampire Hunter D series so enjoyable.

In the postscript to the previous volume I touched on England’s Hammer Films and their production Horror of Dracula. As I watched that movie in a theater in my hometown, I trembled in my seat and came under the thrall of the vampire as surely as one who’d felt its bite. In Japan, there are no legends of humanoid creatures that drink human blood. This is because blood here isn’t surrounded by the same air of sanctity. Therefore, vampires—as creatures that intermingle elements of life and death and ultimately achieve immortality through blood—were horribly attractive. Add to that the fact that their immortal existence carried an eternal curse, and you could essentially say they were made just for me. To wit, it wasn’t my blood but rather my very soul that was consumed by the film Horror of Dracula.

At the tender age of eleven, however, it wasn’t Christopher Lee’s Count Dracula I wanted to be, but rather Dr. Van Helsing, as portrayed by Peter Cushing. As a child, I didn’t wish to be a fiend, you see. And I can’t really blame myself for wanting to switch to the vampire-slaying side back then. After all, I was simply too terrified of Dracula to think of becoming like him. The reason I chose to make D a Hunter who destroys vampires even though he’s related to them probably had something to do with that trauma in my youth.

Unlike the various ghosts and spirits in Japan that can appear virtually anywhere and follow whomever they choose, and also quite different from the Count Dracula of legend who lived in the same land as the rest of the people, talked about the same things, was carried around in his coffin by a horse-drawn carriage, and had to slip into other people’s houses through doors or windows, the Dracula that Christopher Lee embodied seemed entirely too real to me as an eleven year old. The idea of him certainly remained with me. As a child, fearing a visit from the Count, I fashioned a cross from a pair of chopsticks and slept with it by my pillow.

Horror of Dracula was a huge hit in Japan, and it was adapted into comics, plays, and movies. I was surprised by a comic that used the story just as it was, but shifted the setting to Edo-era Japan. Although Dracula in this tale is a vampire who’s come over from a foreign country, the Dr. Van Helsing character is a young Japanese warrior schooled in Western matters, Harker is a friend from his school days, Mina and Arthur Holmwood are his parents—and his father is a samurai, of course. As you may know, Christianity was prohibited here during the Edo era, so the crosses normally used against Dracula are Japanese talismans instead, the wooden stakes are replaced with Japanese swords, and Dracula is turned to dust by the talismans and the rays of the sun. Now, doesn’t that comic—Ma no Hyakumonsen—sound like something you’d like to see?

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Hideyuki Kikuchi

March 17, 2006,

while watching The Revenge of Frankenstein