Thoughts and quotes: Mushishi, Volume 7 by Yuki Urushibara

Mushishi, Volume 7
by Yuki Urushibara
Del Rey (2009), Paperback, 240 pages

LOST IN BLOSSOM

‘You silently withstand blizzard …
You silently overflow with beauty …
You silently …
steal life away to thrive yourself.’ (page 3)

Lost in Blossom tells about a woman alive for hundreds of years drinking a sap from a sakura (cherry tree). ‘There’s something living in this tree. It’s a mushi called Kodama, and it’s taken the form of froth.’ (page 16) The tree lives longer than the normal tree of its kind, and Kodama can also give people long life and beauty.

‘They say that a soul resides in ancient tree that have withstood the ages. And it is the soul that captures the heart of man.’ (page 47)

THE MIRROR IN THE MUCK

‘There’s a mushi called Mizukagami that lives in stagnant water.’ (page 59) When the image of an animal reflects on the surface of a lake that contains Mizukagami, it mimics the animal’s shape and step by step replaces the animal. But Mizukagami lacks of blood and flesh, so it disappears when its image reflects itself: a mirror, or the eyes of a human being.
A mushi version of The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

AT THE FOOT OF LIGHTNING

Shoraishi is a mushi living in the atmosphere, eating lighting; sometimes the larva of Shoraishi falls to earth and enters the human body through the belly button. This time Shoraishi has chosen a child whose mother doesn’t love him.
Mushi seems to intervene as a Trojan Horse in the life of mother and son. Mushi doesn’t change the relation itself, with Ginko’s help it shows a different point of view of the same problem. So Ginko asks to the mother: ‘You never … looked at his actions that way before, did you?’ (page 128)

THE RAGGED ROAD

‘It is the Ragged Road. It is the path that mushi travel to come above ground. It is the eye that links the worlds of the mushi to our world.’ (page 159)
Ragged roads are paths filled with trees and shrubs. When someone leaves you and there are trees or shrubs around, that one is watching you from the shadows of the leaves.

P.S.
Ginko should meet a mushi called David Bowie.