Part One: Ghost Ship
Author’s Bio
“Ever since visiting the birthplace of the vampire in Transylvania,” Hideyuki Kikuchi recalls, with a gleam in his eye, “the experience has been stoking a desire to write my own vampire novel.”
Fans won’t be able to tear their eyes away from Yashakiden, one of Kikuchi’s defining works. In 1985, the highly-anticipated Makaikou was published to great acclaim, propelling Kikuchi into bestselling author status like a rocket. Today, his reputation as a versatile “writer-of-all-trades” remains unquestioned among the Japanese reading population.
Hideyuki Kikuchi was born in 1949 in Choshi, Chiba Prefecture. While studying law at Aoyama University, he participated in the college’s “mystery and detective novel” club. After graduation, he published stories in doujinshi magazines and translated science fiction while working as a magazine reporter.
His debut as a novelist came in 1982 with the publication of Demon City Shinjuku.
Yashakiden: The Demon Princess Vol. 1
Yashakiden:The Demon Princess vol.1 - Yashakiden 1 (c) Hideyuki Kikuchi 1997. Originally published in Japan in 2007 by SHODENSHA Publishing Co.,LTD. English translation copyright (c) 2009 by DIGITAL MANGA, Inc. All other material (c) 2009 by DIGITAL MANGA, Inc. All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the copyright holders. Any likeness of characters, places, and situations featured in this publication to actual persons (living or deceased), events, places, and situations are purely coincidental. All characters depicted in sexually explicit scenes in this publication are at least the age of consent or older. The DMP logo is (tm) of DIGITAL MANGA, Inc.
Written by Hideyuki Kikuchi
Illustrated by Jun Suemi
English Translation by Eugene Woodbury.
English Edition Published by:
DIGITAL MANGA PUBLISHING
A division of DIGITAL MANGA, Inc.
1487 W 178th Street, Suite 300
Gardena, CA 90248
USA
www.dmpbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available Upon Request
First Edition: December 2009
ISBN-13: 978-1-56970-145-4
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in Canada
Author’s Note
I’m excited to present this novel to the world. Creating a heroic, vampire-themed, supernatural conflict has long been a dream of mine. In these pages, Demon City Shinjuku confronts its greatest enemy. I can’t say this is the sole reason, but Yashakiden has grown into an epic fantasy series of over a thousand pages.
Ideas bubbled up in my head, and I couldn’t bring myself to discard any of them. I sense that what’s coming next will exceed anything I imagined. My allegiances to the subject matter have changed along the way. I’m fond of my vampires, breathing new life into them as the haunted air of Demon City Shinjuku becomes its own worst enemy.
This story is why this city exists.
Hideyuki Kikuchi