When Tanjiro Kamado first met Muzan Kibutsuji Demon Hunter, The show’s Big Bad probably wasn’t exactly what most viewers expected. For the legendary Demon King, who has lived for more than a millennium and set Tanjiro on the path to becoming a demon slayer by mercilessly slaughtering most of his family, Muzan looked… well, a bit like Michael Jackson from the “Smooth Criminal.” -Video from: White pants, white tie and slightly curly hair peeking out from under his white hat and stuff. But these clothes represent more than just a bold fashion choice. It’s another example of the Japanese horror tradition of fearing modern things and their corrupting influence.
Demon Hunter is set during the Taisho era (1912-1926), a period of steady modernization after the tumultuous years of the Meiji Restoration, when the shogunate was abolished, the emperor returned to power and Japan opened its borders to the world. During this time, foreign fashion became very popular in Tokyo and beyond, which Muzan fully embraces. Demon Hunter isn’t the first fiction to associate Western-style clothing with something terrifying and sinister. You can find similar themes in one of the earliest modern Japanese fantasy/horror works of the same genre Demon Hunter happens is found in it.
Published in 1908, just a few years before the Taisho era began, Ten Nights of Dreams is the work of Natsume Sōseki, one of the most popular writers in Japanese history. Every school in the country covers at least one of Sōseki’s works, and while the 1908 anthology rarely makes this list, there is not a living Japanese adult who does not know the name of its author.
The stories in Ten Nights of Dreams are all largely disjointed apart from taking place in dreams, but overall they seem to revolve around a central, dual theme: a fear of an unknown, modernized future and a longing for the tranquil but also almighty world of tradition and nature . In “The Seventh Night,” a dreaming character finds himself on a giant steamboat billowing black smoke into the sky. Most of the passengers are foreigners and the dreamer feels lost and alone among them as the ship heads west. The Sixth Night, on the other hand, is about how the dreamer cannot find beauty in wood from the Meiji period like that of the real artist Unkei’s (1150-1223) sculptures.
The main themes of the collection seem to converge in “The Tenth Night” via a dandy named Shōtarō, who wears what is known as a panama hat and is actually the only character who switches from one story to another, having been briefly mentioned in “The Eighth Night”. In the final story of the anthology, Shōtarō arrives in an idyllic meadow and ends up fighting a herd of pigs who try to lick him. Given that all of the previous stories read as if Sōseki were fleshing out his legitimate fears about his rapidly changing homeland, it’s tempting to interpret the story as further fears about how it will lead to focusing on a foreign culture (I said what I said). a kind of catastrophe and the twisting of nature into something sinister.
It’s a choice that’s reflected through Muzan’s storyline, although it’s not entirely clear what type of hat Muzan is wearing. Whether it’s a true Panama hat (or a narrow-brimmed fedora, or a trilby without the signature back crease), the choice evokes the same influences in Shōtarō’s stories. This is not to suggest that the author of Demon Hunter, Koyoharu Gotōge literally and figuratively demons modernization and technology – as he almost certainly used a tablet to draw his best-selling comic and communicates with a cell phone instead of a Kasugai crow. But given that Muzan’s hat is undeniably Western, it seems like the anime really took an effort to establish the Demon King as a malevolent force linked specifically to modernity. And it doesn’t end with his clothes.
It can’t have been a coincidence that Muzan and Tanjiro first met in Asakusa’s entertainment district, a symbol of western modernity bathed in artificial lights and electric trams criss-crossing the streets. Just before the two characters meet, Tanjiro even expresses how overwhelmed he is by all this technology and noise, and retreats to an udon stand to order some noodles with grated Japanese yam.
Everything about their encounter sets the two characters up as polar opposites. In a corner you have Muzan in his modern clothes and hat that allow him to blend into a world of technology and electricity where he can hide in plain sight. In the other corner is Tanjiro in his traditional Ichimatsu (plaid) pattern jacket, who struggles to fit in and finds solace in food that reminds him of his rural upbringing in the natural world of the Japanese mountains.
Whether it is a conscious allusion to Ten Nights of Dreams or not, it’s definitely an example of that Demon Hunter following the established patterns found in a lot modern Japanese fantasy and horror that itself seems to have taken more than a few cues from Natsume Sōseki.
In the 1927 novella Kappa by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, another famous Japanese author, the world of the eponymous Japanese water elves (Tradition/Nature) becomes a satirical dystopia in which worker kappa are ground up and consumed by their kin after their society has embraced modern ways of life. Gojira tells the story of an ancient beast (natural world) turned destructive by an encounter with nuclear bombs (modern/technology). More recently you have Ring, where the ghost child Sadako is often seen dripping wet, making her something akin to a deadly water spirit (corrupted nature) killing people via VHS tapes, the modern 1991 technology than the original ring Roman came out. The resentment
Demon Hunter seems to be in conversation with these stories as it depicts Muzan as an evil force invading modernity and corrupting nature. The best example of this is Muzan, who creates Rui, a spider demon, who in turn creates a whole family of grotesque spider demons. Traditionally, spiders are actually considered very benevolent creatures in Japanese Buddhism. In the short story The spider thread by Ryunosuke Akutagawa – published in 1918 in the middle of the Taisho era – a spider is sent to hell by the Buddha to help save a sinner. But Muzan, the walking symbol of modernity, took this gentle creature of nature and corrupted it into something terrible.
It is true that Muzan also appears as a woman in kimono in later episodes when he is holding court over other demons, most of whom also wear traditional Japanese clothing. This may have something to do with demons (or “oni”) themselves being part of traditional Japanese culture. Myths about oni date back to at least the 10th century, and over the past millennium the creatures have become a huge part of Japanese folklore, often playing the role of standard villains for brave heroes from legend or classic plays to pummel them. In the anime like dragon ball z, They’re even treated like comic relief. In short, they are not taken too seriously in their traditional state. Even in Demon Hunter, Before the introduction of muzan, demons were primarily depicted as snarling, almost mindless beasts. Dangerous, sure, but no more than, say, a hungry bear.
But then Demon Hunter dressed the most powerful oni out there in the official uniform of fantasy terror and corruption in his very first appearance. It showed that the Demon King is clever and able to hide in plain sight in the modern world, but also that he is more than just a monster. Rising above his traditional origins, he has become a more insidious, supernatural force to be reckoned with. And all these complex subjects were telegraphed through a simple, floppy white hat.