The Mystery of the Tibetan Sutras

Or, The Making of The Stiff

Shitai (The Stiff) as originally published in Shonen Sunday Afternoon Jump. © 2003 Masakazu Umezu/S.A.J. Publishing.

The life of a manga editor takes one to many strange places, but few were stranger than the trip to Tibet and India made by our senior editorial staff in Summer 1997. As usual when traveling, it was our intention to do research and take photographs for later reference by some of our manga artists, who were then working on Tibetan serials. (You may remember Panchen Lama no Megumi Mai or Yuke! Yak Herder.) If it was not for the knowledge of Tibet that we gained during that week's stay, we might not have been open to future Tibetan manga, and the world might have missed an even more fascinating and peculiar story.

It began in August 1997 when M___ I___, an assistant to a well-known manga artist, and a group of Japanese archaeologists from Todai University (who have asked not to be named), set out from the city of Lhasa to visit a Tibetan shrine which had recently been opened to foreign professors by the Chinese government (which has kindly provided us with the timber and printing presses for many of our popular manga series). The shrine was well out of the way in the Sino-Nepalese mountain chain. Starting from Lhasa on September 28, 1997, they travelled up the Pujtun Valley through Ran-Bashahr, crossing the Lakhrum Pass (16,000 feet). After two days of rough travel, including crossing rope bridges from which they could view seemingly bottomless chasms and valleys of loose scree, they reached the shrine. It was then that the researchers realized how lucky they were, because the Chinese government's finds were still continuing, and on the very day of their arrival a sealed stairway was opened into a previously inaccessible underground chamber.

After allowing several hours for fresh air to circulate into the chamber (as the surrounding air was already rarefied due to the altitude), the archaeologists of both countries entered. To their great surprise they found that the room was filled with Buddhist religious texts, sutras, dating back to the introduction of Buddhism in Tibet in the 7th century. It soon became evident that a large portion of the texts was a single long story with no author, a cautionary tale possibly related to the teachings of the Indian tantric master Padmasambhava, whom in legend fought the priests of Tibet's original religion, Bon, and drove away the indigenous evil spirits of the Tibetan wasteland. Due to the fragile nature of the aged sutras, a hasty decision was made to preserve them with photographs, many of which were taken by M___ I___ himself. The Chinese government later questioned the archaeologists about their findings, but permitted the professors to take their photos and sketches back to Tokyo, where they have become part of Todai University's Buddhism Collection.

At the same time, however, the original film of the images remained in M___ I___'s camera. After hearing his tale, I arranged for the entirety of the Tibetan story to be translated from his photos. I was surprised to discover that this disturbing story was strangely compelling. Moreover, the fact that it was a Tibetan religious text gave it an educational value. I immediately had the idea to make it into a manga, and contacted Masakazu Umezu, the popular sh™nen manga artist. After hearing the story, Umezu shared my enthusiasm and agreed to adapt it into manga-not an impossible task, since the original sutra was accompanied by pictures. Serialization, under the title Shitai ("Corpse"), began in March 1998 in the weekly Shonen Sunday Afternoon Jump.

Of course, some changes were made to make the story more palatable to boys' manga readers, such as setting the story in the modern day, pacing the narrative with scenes of violence, and satisfying Umezu's "fan service interests." A full recitation of Shitai's curiosities is unnecessary. However, modern manga are a group effort, and the sum of these influences has created a story which, in Japan, has already appealed to thousands of readers. We hope that it finds a new audience in English translation.