MIKAMI MEDITATIONS PT. 2

 This post could have been a "near-myth" post, but as I get closer to finishing my reading of Takashi Shiina's GHOST SWEEPER MIKAMI, I want to keep all the SWEEPER stuff in one bundle.

In the first part, I provided an overview of early installments of the 1992-99 manga series with respect to the imaginary psychology of the principal characters: ghost sweeper/exorcist Reiko Mikami, her lustful assistant Tadao Yokoshima, and her other assistant, mild-mannered female ghost Okinu (who reincarnates into a mortal body late in the series). In MEDITATIONS 1, I questioned whether or not there was a thymotic romance between Mikami and Yokoshima in the series as a whole. I strongly suspected Shiina had that intention, though, based on a page I reprinted from a 1993 sequence entitled "Dad's Here." In it, Yokoshima-- who's never received the slightest encouragement for his erotic approaches from Mikami-- welcomes his father Daishuu to Tokyo, though the older man is more than a little extreme in his behavior toward his son.

Daishuu, though still married to Yokoshima's mother, remains the sort of smooth heartbreaker Yokoshima would like to be. Then by a sequence of events, Daishuu goes on a date with Mikami, which ties Yokoshima up in knots. He dreams that the ten-years-older Mikami has married Daishuu and becomes his mother.

 

  For her part, Mikami never shows even a slight interest in Daishuu, not least because he's married, though Daishuu almost certainly wants to seduce the ghost sweeper to become a mistress. "Dad's Home" ends with a meaningless comic brawl between father and son.

  While "Dad's Home" had no direct impact on the series' direction, clearly Shiina had it in mind when, about two years from the series' conclusion, he created a bookend-story called "Mom's Home," in which Yokoshima's mother Yuriko visits him, declaring that she intends to divorce her husband and have Yokoshima live with her. Yuriko even acts just as rashly as her husband did on his earlier visit.

      

Upon meeting Mikami and Okinu, Yuriko describes her reasons for wanting to divorce Daishuu for cheating (though he will turn out to be innocent of this particular charge). She also makes Mikami very uncomfortable when she describes how she Yuriko married Daishuu after having been forced to beat him up several times for inappropriate behavior.

 

However, Yuriko has another similarity to Mikami: she's a high-roller businesswoman, and she plans to leave Japan with her son. Privately she tells Yokoshima that if either Mikami or Okinu will speak up to keep the young man in Japan, she'll let him stay-- though Yokoshima can't simply ask the women to intercede. So just as Yuriko plans to fly out, Yokoshima uses a magical device to impersonate Mikami-- only to get exposed when the real Mikami shows up.  

   
 

Yuriko, however, is less concerned with her son's mendacity than with Mikami overstepping her bounds, punishing her former employee, when it's obviously the mother's right to punish the errant child (which she does, even while talking to Mikami). Only one thing can save Yokoshima: a full confession of Mikami's feelings for him.

 

  Well, that and one other thing-- the timely arrival of Daishuu, who brings proof that he didn't cheat on Yuriko. Immediately Yuriko drops the whole matter and leaves with her husband. Mikami's confession of her feelings is rendered incomplete, allowing things to go back to the status quo. And for good measure, it's suggested that Yuriko may have manipulated things to make sure her boy got hooked up with a proper mate-- a mate just like the girl who married dear old Dad.