Eldritch Fappenings
This review deals with a work of erotic art and writing.
As part of this review, selected images with depictions of nudity will be displayed.
As such, please be advised before reading further.
My proper introduction to the Japanese-language Cthulhu Mythos came courtesy of Edward Lipsett and Kurodahan Press (2002-2025). For over twenty years, Kurodahan worked to translate into English works that would otherwise never have been available to monolingual anglophones like myself. Thanks to their efforts I was able to read Asamatsu Ken (朝松健) and Rampo Edogawa (江戸川 乱歩) and many others I hadn’t heard of; and I gained an appreciation for the work of the people translating those stories back into English. Now that Kurodahan Press is no more and their titles out of print, I regret I didn’t have the money to buy everything they put out, or the time to read it all.
In Kurodahan’s Night Voices, Night Journeys (2005) the first volume of Lairs of the Hidden Gods stories (an anthology series of Japanese Cthulhu Mythos tales), there is an essay titled “Lovecraftian Landscapes: Four Decades of H.P. Lovecraft and Manga” by Yonezawa Yoshihiro (米澤嘉博) trans. Ryan Morris, where he described an early Lovecraft translation:
It was entitled The Fishmen of Innsmouth (illustrated by Shōgo Matsumiya) and appeared as part of the feature article, The Greatest Horror Stories from Around the World, Illustrated in issue Three of Ugoku Kao(Moving Face), the “tabloid strictly for men,” originally published as an offshoot of the very popular 1950s erotic entertainment magazine Hyaku-man in no Yoru (One Million Nights of One Million People). The subtitle read “Horrors! My face—it’s become… a frog!” The story featured pictures of half-naked women with such outrageous captions as “The Khanakai tribe made sacrifices of young virgins. THe bosoms of these fast-maturing tropically-raised maidens, with their black skin, breasts like ripe peaches, dark eyes that could seduce any man, lips with scents like durian, and gently curving waists hidden only by grass skirts, were but decorations on the altar: offerings to the Demon God.” The illustrations were fine black-and-white ink pieces that had all the mood of a Western horror novel, and although the FIshmen looked more like frogs, they were certainly grotquese. These drawings were perhaps made more accessible thanks to their being in the similar Vein as the “Lost world” monster stories of Oguri Mushitaro and Kayama Shigeru. It was only a four-page illustrated story, but it is most likely the first ever domestic H.P. Lovecraft visual work. (294)
Dr. Justin Mullis asked if I had a copy; I did not, but was able to procure a copy of Moving Faces, vol. 1, no. 3 (Mar 1959) [うごく顔 第1巻第3号（1959年3月）]. I then asked a friend, Dr. Dierk Guenther in Japan (who helped out before on “Medusa’s Curse” (1995) by Sakura Mizuki (桜 水樹氏)), to translate it into English.
The result is everything that Yonezawa Yoshihiro described in his essay and more. An abbreviated, localized, sexploitation version of Lovecraft’s “The Shadow over Innsmouth” crammed into four pages for a Japanese men’s magazine. Given when and where it was published, the work also reflects something of the language and attitudes of the postwar period in Japan; reader discretion advised. No translator is credited for the original translation/abridgement. Dierk Guenther’s comments on the translation will be marked by dagger symbols (†) and included at the end of the translated text.
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A famous story of monsters
The Fishmen of Innsmouth
“Ah, my face, it looks like a frog …”
Author: Lovecraft
Matsumiya Shōgō/Art
[New translation and notes: Dierk Guenther]
(1) “The cheapest way to Arkham town? That would be the bus in the direction of Innsmouth.”
I was celebrating my coming of age with a tour of New England, visiting historic sites as well as researching the distribution patterns of flora and fauna. It was from an agent at the train station of Newburyport that I heard for the first time the name of the town of Innsmouth.
“You seem not to be aware of this. The town can’t be found on maps or tourism brochures. In 1927 the town was hit by a mysterious infectious disease and violent riots that reduced the town’s population. Now the town is dead, and only a few, very peculiar people are living there.”
My interest was immediately raised, and I took the bus to Innsmouth, being the only person on board. The bus driver had uncanny features, looking like half-fish, half-frog.
(2) Soon, the bus arrived in a bleak town. Many houses lined up that were reminders that in earlier times, the town must have been very beautiful and flourishing. Not one single person could be seen. The half frog, half fish bus driver didn’t say one word, and with a gloomy feeling, I looked out of the window at the “town of death”. It was a dark town that felt nauseous with an overall stench of decaying fish.
Soon, an awkwardly constructed stone building, a medieval-style church, could be seen. The entry in the building’s basement was open, revealing a rectangle of blackness inside. And then I saw a priest, who was wrapped in a peculiar vestment. He wore a frightening golden tiara-like crown.
(3) I checked myself in at the hotel Gilman House, of which I had heard from the agent in Newburyport, left my luggage there, and went into town. All the ghost-like people whom I met occasionally, who seemed to come out of nowhere, looked like half-frog, half-fish, and were unsettling. And then, by coincidence, I met a white-haired elderly person. His name was Zadok Allan, and he was 96 years old. He appeared frightened and had the peculiar habit of sometimes looking behind himself.
Luring the old man by offering him whiskey, we went to a part of the beach with no one around and here I spoke with Zadok.
The area was wrapped in an atmosphere of death and destruction and the unbearable stench of raw fish filled the air.
“Can you tell me why the blooming Innsmouth became like this?”
“That was a truly horrible thing.”
Around the time these events unfolded, there was a friend of the old man by the name of Matt Eliot, who on an island chain in the South Pacific traded with the natives living there†. Among these natives was the tribe of the Kanakys, who paid respect to evil gods that lived under the sea.
(4) On the island where the Kanakys lived there was a peculiar ruin. On its wall were engraved terrifying images of fish and frogs and random monstrous creatures. The Kanakys claimed that when the island rose out of the sea, evil gods lived in this building. Thanks to the evil gods, the Kanakys could catch a lot of fish and other creatures from the depths of the sea. In return, the Kanakys offered young virgins as living sacrifice to the evil gods.
The islanders held twice a year a big festival, on the evening before the May Festival and on All Saints’ Day. Young women of dark skin and firm, full breasts stirred the hearts of men like a vaguely ominous bell. Their lips tasted of the aroma of the durian fruit. They were tropical-bred and quick to become passionate. Wearing at their curved hips a ceremonial waist loincloth, they were taken to an altar as a human sacrifice to the dark gods.
Although they did not say “I am sad. Although I dreamt of living together with you. What fate, being given to the depth of the sea,” the young women cried in their hearts.
Especially, the hearts of the young men who led their lovers to the altar were filled with anguish. The altar was set up on a canoe, and together with the sacrificial victims, it was thrown into the sea. How the gods then disposed of the sacrifices I cannot say.
And then at one point, the evil gods came on land. They told the Kanakys: “If you mix your blood with ours, then at first children that resemble humans will be born, but the children will be like the evil gods and can also live in the depths of the sea.”
(5) This appealed to the islanders. They thought if they could live on the sea floor they would be free like the fish, and so began to mate with the evil gods. It is possible that the evil gods were an amphibious species who in old times had vanished from the land. These evil gods were beyond death, and even their descendants continued to live on.
When Elliott arrived on the island, strangely, the Kanakys had vanished. Captain Obed said: “With no natives around, we can’t do any profitable business. Well, as there seems to be no other way, can we attract the evil gods from the sea?”
Elliott served under the captain, and he was opposed to this idea. However, the captain stubbornly refused to listen. In those days, Innsmouth was a town that survived on the seafaring trade. Especially if Obed’s ship (or: business) would hit a slump, it was absolutely obvious that the town would fall into decline.
“To make matters worse, one can’t even catch fish in the town. Look, those Kanakys got their blessings from these evil gods, aren’t they? They could catch fish in unlimited quantities. If we make money, the city’s economy will improve. The problem is what to do about those human sacrifices these evil gods like so much. Well, we can handle this flexibly.”
Even the sailors knew the stories about the monsters, and they were not pleased to get close to such things, but for the sake of money, they shut their eyes to it.
(6) There is a reef off the coast of Innsmouth. And on this reef a weird disturbance occurred. On the eve before the May Festival and on the All Souls’ festival, Obed and his men conducted a strange festival. It was the festival held by the Kanakys. By the way, only on these evenings young women vanished without a trace. However, in the town, fish could be caught in extraordinary quantities. It was around this time that the monsters who had come to the land in the year of the Kanakys appeared in Innsmouth. And they demanded from the townspeople what they had also demanded from the Kanakys. Thus, by the time of the Civil War the children who had been born were beginning to come of age. They were half frog, half fishmen.
(7) But, riots and a plague brought in from China†† turned Innsmouth into a town of death, concluded old man Zadok, laughing like a drooling lunatic†††.
This evening, there was not one single guest in the Gilman House. In my room, which stank of mould, and under the dim, gloomy glow of an electric bulb, I read a book. Due to being beset by an eerie feeling, I couldn’t sleep at all. I couldn’t keep from staring at the door latch, and just in case anything might happen, I slept in my clothes and shoes so that I could easily escape from the room. In the darkness, I heard a strange noise. It was without a doubt the sound of someone opening carefully and with great caution the lock of my room’s front door with a key. Because I had already felt a vague sense of uneasiness beforehand, even while I realized that a terrible danger was approaching, I managed not to be frightened. (Still, I had to get into safety.) Using a quickly made improvised rope, I climbed down from my room in the Gilman House into the inner yard. The moonlight radiated eerily. Then the entry of the house opened, and from the inside appeared gradually strange forms in the darkness, holding up lanterns, speaking in frightening, rattling voices, uttering words that were clearly not English.
Seeing these forms, my whole body shivered. Their staggering gait was so repulsive that it turned my stomach.
The most disgusting one among them was the form of a monster that wore a crown. And then I saw them clearly: The half-frog, half-fishmen! The shadow of Innsmouth! I fled along the decayed railway tracks, bathed in yellow phantom moonlight. When I returned to Arkham I rested at a count’s house. There I saw an eerie pattern. I learned that, seemingly, my grandmother and others had died in Innsmouth. Did this mean that I had half frog, half fishmen blood in my veins? One morning, I looked in the mirror and the face that I saw there was unmistakably the creepy face of an Innsmouth half-frog, half-fishman.
† The original Japanese translator uses doujin, which is an outdated and offensive term for indigenous people.
†† The original translator uses a very derogatory term for China. The text was translated in an era before Japan and China took up diplomatic relations, so the term for China may still have been common in Japan in 1959.
††† The original translator used an extremely offensive term for “mad person” that is nowadays regarded as insulting and dehumanizing.
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Without attempting to directly translate any of Lovecraft’s prose, the uncredited Japanese translator still tried to present something of Lovecraft’s style in a Japanese context—while waxing eloquent on the young Polynesian women that Lovecraft essentially glossed over in the original. The abridged text is an artifact of both when and where it was published; other stories in the same feature include “The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs, “The Upper Berth” by F. Marion Crawford, and “The Strange Adventure of a Private Secretary” by Algernon Blackwood, so Lovecraft and Innsmouth were in good company, especially considering that neither would be commonly known in Japan.
The illustrations by Shōgō Matsumiya also deserve mention: these are actually very good, equal to or better than most of the pulp illustrations that Lovecraft received in English-language periodicals in the United States, United Kingdom, or Canada during this period. While some are clearly there mainly for titillation, the figure-work is solid for the limited space, and those island ruins are especially evocative.
It is interesting to contrast “The Fishmen of Innsmouth” with another Lovecraft story that appeared in a risque men’s magazine at this time, “The Rats in the Walls” (1956). At a time when English-language periodicals were trying to gently censor Lovecraft, the Japanese periodical that aimed for shock and sensationalism leaned the other way.
Thanks again to Dierk Guenther for the translation and notes.
Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.
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Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein 