Parasite Man

This volume collects two chilling horror manga created by Goro Sugimoto (1924–1987), a legendary film collector who worked under the pen name Tsuyuki Saburou and maintained deep ties with Shigeru Mizuki. Both stories were originally published by Togetsu Shobou in the early 1960s. In "Kiseijin," Shigeru Mizuhara is a young reporter working for a third-rate weekly magazine. While daydreaming about the leisurely life of a twin, he encounters an old fortune-teller who invites him to peer into her crystal ball. Inside the glass, he sees a double image of himself, and the woman cryptically promises his wish will come true in an unexpected form. Shortly after, a mysterious ache develops in his leg. Returning home early from work, he discovers a human face growing on his left knee—a parasitic monster that entered his body through his nose while he gazed into the crystal ball. Feeding on his blood, the creature declares it will be reborn as his twin, leaving Shigeru's fate hanging in the balance. The second story, "Miira-jima," follows a male teacher tasked with chaperoning 150 elementary school students from Arakawa Ward for a summer part-time job organizing books at the Rockefeller Library. Growing suspicious of the foreign interviewer's strange behavior and the unusual methods used to transport the children separately, the teacher accompanies them by boat from Yokosuka to a remote island in the Seto Inland Sea. There, the children are forced to read books endlessly. Two weeks later, five children return home each day, but a maid reveals that five wooden crates arrive on the island the very next morning—each containing the mummified head of a child.