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Yumemakura Baku

(1951-    ) Writing name of Mineo Yoneyama, a fiercely prolific Japanese author whose work spans hundreds of volumes encompassing the depths of Pulp and the heights of literary awards. The concentration here is on his works as author, although much of his impact outside Japan is as the scriptwriter or original source for adaptations of his work into other media, including Manga, Cinema, and a theatrical collaboration with Yoshitaka Amano, as well as the Garō-den ["Legend of Hungry Wolves"] fighting games. Although the Checklist aims to include most of Yumemakura's works within the field of Fantastika, his output includes a strain of Hemingway-esque tales of sporting and exploration, such as his award-winning mountaineering fable Kamigami no Itadaki ["The Summit of the Gods"] (1997) and the period piece Ōedo Chokaku-den ["The Covert Anglers of Old Edo"] (2012), as well as several works at the crossroads between occultic Wuxia, simple martial-arts adventure and professional wrestling, beyond the scope of this encyclopedia. Many of his works are variants on the Shaggy God Story, resting on the supernatural and superstitious traditions of East Asia, local to Japan or drawn from farther afield through Chinese folklore or Indian mysticism.

His early fiction appeared in Fanzines, including Uchūjin (see Takumi Shibano) and Neo Null (see Yasutaka Tsutsui), from which his literary experiment in "typografiction", "Kaeru no Shi" ["A Frog's Death"] (1977 Uchūjin) was reprinted as his first professional sale in Kisō Tengai for August 1977. His first major success, however, stemmed from his admixture of occult horror with Buddhist legend in Genjū Shōnen Chimaera ["Illusory Beast Boy Chimaera"] (1982), the first of his Chimaera series, in which duelling martial artists act as vessels for Monsters (see Parasitism and Symbiosis). The Checklist below lists the original versions, not the post-2002 reprints and omnibus editions that have twice reformatted the series.

Beginning with Majūgari Inraku-hen (1984; trans Jonathan Lloyd-Davies with Thomas Gevantry as Desires of the Flesh 2013 ebook), the subsequent Psyche Diver series is even more of a bibliographer's nightmare, comprising at least three related serials, each nested within the others, numbered internally so as to suggest that the first three stand-alone volumes are, in fact one single novel, and with other volumes sometimes split, and sometimes not. Its name in Japanese was originally "Psycho Diver" – our usage here reflects the translators' decision on the short-lived English versions, made during the subsidized climate ushered in by the J-LOP initiative (see Light Novel). Its setting is similarly confused, a Far Future seemingly designed to allow for retellings of medieval legends with a fantastical spin, injecting sex-magic and high-tech McGuffins into old tales of samurai-era intrigue. A visceral, violent account of warring Pariah Elites, it also incorporates multiple elements of Buddhist iconography, alongside tall tales from Chinese history about the origins of Shapeshifters. Later volumes dwell at length on the eldritch and esoteric echoes of China in Japan, both through the ancient settlements and religious conversions brought about by colonists from the mainland, and the rich but confused cultural contacts of the early medieval period, when Japanese scholars travelled to distant China for technological exchange and religious instruction. Paramount among these is the real historical character Kūkai (774-835), a somewhat Promethean figure both in real-world Japanese Buddhism and in Yumemakura's subversion of it into the fantastic. Yumemakura would return to Kūkai as a bridge between China and Japan in his later Samon Kūkai Tō no Kuni nite Oni to Utagesu ["Samana Kūkai Feasts with Demons in the Land of the Tang"] (2004), in which the monk teams up with another real-life figure, the poet Bai Juyi (772-846) in order to investigate hauntings and murder in the Chinese capital, Chang'an. The story achieved wider recognition following its adaptation into the film Yao Mao Zhuan (2017 vt Legend of the Demon Cat), directed by Chen Kaige (see also History in SF).

Yumemakura's short story "Genshō to ifu Biwa-ki no tame ni toraruru koto" ["The Lute Called Genshō Stolen by a Demon"] (September 1986 All Yomimono) was based on a chapter from the medieval Konjaku Monogatari (c.1120; trans Marian B. Ury as Tales of Times Now Past 1985), a collection that also supplied the inspirations for Kaze no Tani no Nausicaä (1984), among others. It became the first instalment in Onmyōji, a long cycle of ghost stories, recasting the historical figure of Abe no Seimei (921-115) as a sorcerous detective in medieval Kyōto, luxuriating in the period's faith in magic and the afterlife, and delving deeply into Abe's commentaries on geomancy, exorcism and feng shui; less fantasy than a serious treatment of the period's belief system as a form of Pseudoscience. A world away stylistically from the violent martial-arts novels that Yumemakura was also writing at the time, the series has enjoyed multiple revivals, thanks in part to an award-winning Manga adaptation by Reiko Okano, two TV serials and two feature films. The ambient Brian Eno album Onmyōji (cd 2000) evokes the spirit of the manga, as divined by a composer working primarily on visual inspiration.

His success with Onmyōji was matched with the cycle of stories beginning with "Jōgen no Tsuki o Taberu Shishi" ["The Lion that Eats the Crescent Moon"] (1986 S-F Magazine; fixup 1989), which won the Seiun Award in its novel incarnation, rich in resonances of Japanese literary history, particularly the Buddhist fantasies of Kenji Miyazawa. Beginning as an account of fossil hunters in north Japan, and the Amnesia of a wounded veteran, it comes to represent a series of overlapping manifestations of the Multiverse each impinging upon our world, prefiguring similar efforts by Haruki Murakami substantially more remarked upon in the literary mainstream. Yumemakura, however, was as much a celebrity figure in his own way, with his broad knowledge of world affairs and his appeal to diverse audiences securing him several 1990s ventures as a television presenter and travel writer. His journeys and his fiction would eventually dovetail in Hitsuji no Uchū ["A Cosmos of Sheep"] (1998), a series of whimsical dialogues for children on the universe and the building blocks of existence, framed as the conversations of an aging European physicist and a shepherd boy from Xinjiang in western China.

Billed in Japan as a single multi-part novel, and hence listed below as a single work in six parts rather than a six-part series, Ōedo Kyōryū-den ["Dinosaur Legends of Old Edo"] (2015) playfully unites Yumemakura's low- and high-brow interests by resituating the chaos and destruction of Gojira (1954) and sundry other monster movies to 18th-century Tokyo. The tale takes on a note of Alternate History, as factions within the samurai government manoeuvre to harness the power of these newly discovered "dragons" for political and military ends. [JonC]

Mineo Yoneyama

born Odawara, Japan: 1 January 1951

works (selected)

series

Chimaera

Psyche Diver

Taitei no Ken (Sword of the Emperor/Sword of Alexander)

Onmyōji (Master of Yin and Yang)

individual titles

nonfiction

links

Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011-current) edited by John Clute and David Langford.
Accessed 01:55 am on 13 April 2026.
<https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/yumemakura_baku>