THE DEEP ONES: "The Human Chair" by Edogawa Ranpo

"The Human Chair" by Edogawa Ranpo

Discussion begins October 18, 2023.

Written in 1925. First English publication in Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1956).



BIBLIOGRAPHY

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?94783

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

Tales for a Rainy Night
Beyond the Curtain of Dark
My Favorite Horror Story

ONLINE VERSIONS

https://pseudopod.org/2021/08/21/pseudopod-771-the-human-chair/

ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS

No online audio versions found to date.

MISCELLANY

http://yabai.com/p/4505
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edogawa_Ranpo
https://matthewlegare.com/blog-post/7-edogawa-ranpo-recommendations/
https://tinyurl.com/muuvryek

Well, that was interesting! Perhaps not weird so much as uncomfortably creepy. I was happy enough to go along with the basic idea of the chair to a point where I actually felt a little let down by the ultimate discovery that the confession was merely a fiction meant for submission to whatever the the Japanese equivalent of 'Uncomfortably Creepy Tales" magazine would be. I was fascinated by the idea of some stunted, larcenous perv crawling around on all fours in the middle of the night before heading back to the erotically charged safety of his chair. "New Kind of Kick" by The Cramps comes to mind.

I was initially surprised to find that the author also wrote the novel Moju: The Blind Beast, which was the basis for the supremely twisted S&M horror film BLIND BEAST (1969), directed by Yasuzô Masumura. But after reading "The Human Chair", it all fits.

>2 gwendetenebre: That was pretty much my reaction. Rampo should have played it straight and given us a meeting between Yoshixo and a real Human Chair.

Besides the extreme violation of privacy, there is definitely a sexual fetish here.

I did, at first, feel sorry for the cabinet-maker as a skilled artisan who never gets to possess his own handiwork.

I first read this some time ago as a manga by Junji Ito, who apparently reworked the ending. I didn't know at the time that it was an existing story. I think I prefer Ito's version, but then, illustrations can do certain things that text can't. I'll have to look at it again to compare the two.

Fun note: I watched a horror movie yesterday called "Killer Sofa." It actually wasn't bad. The character of the recliner in question was really good for a piece of furniture. There was definitely some inspiration from the chair stories.

>3 RandyStafford: I have to third that. It's been a decade since I read the story, and it stuck with me that the ending was a bit of a let down.