There are many literary and artistic works that show their lives or feature them as protagonists. In addition to "The Sojourner", there are also French novelist Eric Fay's work "Nagasaki" and the Korean suspense film "Parasite". "wait.

Text by Jiang Haoqian

Japanese WOWOW TV announced in October 2021 that it would remake the work "The Sojourner" by the cartoonist Daisuke Imai, which attracted people's attention to the homeless "leeches" people. Leeches are not only vagrants, but they also copy the keys to their owners' homes, figure out the owner's daily routine, and then live there. They are unidentified people wandering on the edge of the city, animals living in the steel jungle.

There are many literary and artistic works that show their lives or feature them as protagonists. In addition to "The Sojourner", there are also French novelist Eric Fay's work "Nagasaki" and the Korean suspense film "" Parasite 》etc. Although leeches, like any human group, have huge individual differences, fragility, loneliness and danger are always three key words that cannot be avoided. The Sojourner Incident is not only a source of conversation after dinner, but also contains resources for peering into and reflecting on one aspect of society.

The History of Leech

"The Sojourner" is a work by the Japanese cartoonist Daisuke Imai. The original work was serialized from May 2011 to May 2013. The heroine of the story is 21-year-old Sakura Yoko, who has just been a "leech" for two months. In the comics, the word "leech" first appeared when it was written on Ye Zi's arm: "Are you HIRU too, Sakura?" HIRU is written as ヒル in kana, which means leech.

"Nagasaki: The Invisible Sojourner"

At that time, Sakura was still confused. She didn't know what the word meant, let alone how someone could know her real name in a strange city. The details here reveal the main thread of the entire work: the growth history of Leech, or in other words, how the heroine's identity changes from daughter-student-citizen to an unknown wandering sojourner.

The basic motivation for her to become a leech comes from her family environment. She grew up in a traditional patriarchal family with stereotypes . Her father was domineering and cold-blooded. In Zi Zi's own words, he was the "Devil King". Not only did he beat Zi Zi at every turn, but he also told her to pay off her childcare expenses after working. The starting point of her leech journey was once again being violently treated by her father.

Sakura's mother is cowardly and forbearing, shedding tears all day long; her younger brother has completely adapted to the abnormal family environment, trying to please his father in exchange for appreciation and safety. After finally making the decision to run away from home, Sakura originally made an appointment to take the night bus with her boyfriend, but accidentally overslept, so she had to walk back to her boyfriend's house, clean up the housework and make dinner for him, but she happened to catch her boyfriend cheating on her. the scene. After her boyfriend left, she turned on the TV and saw on the news that the bus she missed had been involved in a car accident and everyone had died. Since she had left her ID card on the bus, she was identified as the deceased.

Having already died socially, she only thought this was "a comedy", so she decided to go to another city five hours' drive away from her hometown. In this way, a green leech was born.

Her first two months were going well. Japanese people have the habit of leaving spare keys at the entrance, so Sakura would stand guard outside the apartment building. When she saw someone coming out, she would follow them in, check and observe the owner's identity and family environment, and if appropriate, match them with a key and give them a key. Develop one of your own spare homes. Civil servants, white-collar workers and other office workers with regular schedules are her favorite prey. In this way, she has occupied seven rooms, enough to organize her day's life in turn.

Compared with homeless people in parks and subways, she has many places to shelter from wind and rain; compared with people in shelters, she does not have to be subject to prison-like round-the-clock control and has negative freedom under limited conditions. From the outside, apart from the loneliness of not talking to anyone for more than two months, and having to be alert to the risk of her master returning early, she seems to have started running her own little sojourn.

In the words of fellow leech and former classmate Makoto Tsukinuma who originally wrote HIRU on her arm: "Wandering around a house where the owner is not around, living off other people's things... You Sakura are a leech now." At the same time, Tsukinuma also warned her: "If you continue like this, you will be killed...and no one will protect you."

Sure enough, Sakura soon fell into a series of life and death dangers. The night after she first met Tsukinuma, she was lured into a school by another "leech" and almost died, thanks to Tsukinuma's appearance. He saved her and cut off one of the ears of the person who wanted to kill Sakura. Seeing this scene had a major impact on Sakura and gave her the idea of ​​returning home. This may be the closest she gets to returning to society. An opportunity.

She looked out the window and saw her family eating at the dining table. The domestic kitten Ah Chun rushed towards her. Her room remained as it was. It seemed that her family was still looking forward to her return. She couldn't help but think, "Will my father become a simple and paranoid grandpa like this..." But even in the home where she thought she was safe, the shadow of the leech still lingered. A leech hiding behind her would hear the sound. Sakura's father came to check and tied him up. However, Sakura had already realized that she was a leech and drove him away with a blade, and then returned to the life of a leech.

In order to adapt to the precarious and dangerous environment. , Sakura herself has become a dangerous person who disregards public order and good morals. In the process, she and Tsukinuma gradually established a friendship similar to that common in shonen comics, and they relied on Tsukinuma to survive from the first volume. After learning the unspoken rules of the leech subculture, and saying "I will protect the moon marsh" at the end of the fifth volume, Sakura got over the shock and pain of transformation and established a determination that she had never experienced in her previous studies and work life. Identity and support network.

In this sense, although "The Sojourner" depicts a lot of jungle life that is separated from social regulations and shelters, there is always a hidden thread: the leech world is a world of rules and friendship. Especially compared to Sakura's original so-called normal social relationship, Tsukinuma's friendship with her in times of adversity is much more sincere and profound.

Therefore, for Sakura, leech life is, on the one hand, a negative habit after being thrown into it. process, but another more important aspect is that she can take the initiative to transform herself and form a meaningful new world view. In addition to her friendship with Tsukinuma, there is another thing that reflects this. She took the initiative to find a police officer. He also stole his key and entered his apartment.

What's even more ironic is that the police officer's key chain has a cartoon image of "Douxin" holding ten hands. Year) is a lower-level official responsible for urban security work, equivalent to the police in modern society. His signature weapon is the "jishou"4, which is suitable for capturing criminals. It looks like the iron ruler used by ancient Chinese policemen. It is suspected that Sakura is a leech. When the police officer followed her, he happened to see her dropping his key chain downstairs of the police officer's apartment. This incident confirmed the police officer's suspicion and showed her rejection of the law-based society represented by the police officer. "Stills

If "The Sojourner" presents a romanticized picture of the sojourner's adventure, highlighting the inherent fragility of human beings and the danger of violence in civil society, it is based on the novella by French novelist Eric Fay. The graphic novel "Nagasaki: The Invisible Sojourner" adapted from the novel "Nagasaki" is a narrative poem that is much calmer on the surface, but at the same time it is like a string that is tightened from beginning to end, and has never been truly understood. freed.

The Woman Who Lived in the Closet for a Year

"Nagasaki" is a novella based on real events. It won the 2010 French Academy Novel Grand Prix. The novel begins: "This story is a true story. It did not happen in Nagasaki, but in Japan. This social news has been reported by many Japanese newspapers, including " Asahi Shimbun " in May 2008 ." Later, French freelance painter Agnès Austache created the graphic novel "Nagasaki: The Invisible Sojourner" based on this work.

Sojourners are a real social phenomenon. In 2020, 29-year-old Japanese professional wrestling commentator Sakurada Aimi discovered strange signs, such as a sharp increase in electricity bills. When he returned home, he found that the remote control originally plugged into the wall had run to the ground, and there were strange footprints on the bathroom floor.Police later found food packaging bags on the bathroom ceiling, which meant someone should have entered and exited the apartment through this area. In addition, many such cases have been reported in the United States. The length of sojourns ranges from two days to half a year. Sometimes they are pure strangers, but there are also acquaintances such as the ex-boyfriend of the homeowner.

Contrary to "The Invisible Sojourner", which often saw blood and blood, there was never a single violent scene in "Nagasaki: The Invisible Sojourner", not even a dispute. The owner of the house is a middle-aged man in his fifties who lives alone and works in the Meteorological Bureau. After suspecting an intruder, he installed a camera in his home and has been checking what's going on at home every day since then. A few days later, he finally saw the sojourner and called the police.

He only learned about the sojourner's situation when he went to the police station to take notes afterwards. The first and only time the two met was in court three months later, but the two never exchanged a word. He never mentioned her name, only referring to her as "the defendant" or "the woman who lives in my house." She also did not apologize in court. She only wrote a letter after she was released from prison and entrusted the housing agency to forward it to The owner has moved out. Complete book.

Behind the plain and watery surface, we can get a glimpse into the hearts of the sojourners and the social conditions they reflect. The owner of the house is Shimura Kobo, 56 years old. His job is to predict the weather conditions in the sea near Nagasaki. His daily life is extremely regular, which is also an important reason for attracting sojourners. The starting point of his suspicion was a box of juice in the refrigerator: He put a ruler in the box. Before going to work, there was still 15 centimeters, but after returning home, only 8 centimeters were left! After

spent a few sleepless nights, he decided to install cameras in every room of his home, "to keep an eye on the 'bento' in which I, Shimura, live from a distance." The bento is a wonderful metaphor. For decades, his life has remained almost the same. He walks into the entrance hall, enters the kitchen, eats, enters the bathroom, takes a shower, enters the bedroom, and sleeps. He clearly remembers the type and quantity of food in the refrigerator, as well as the location and orientation of the items on the table. His cautious and regular life not only allowed him to successfully catch the sojourner after discovering clues of "theft" many times, but also provided the sojourner with the conditions to stay in the guest bedroom closet for up to a year.

The last time someone lived in the guest bedroom was when Shimura's sister and brother-in-law came a year ago. From then on, he rarely even had visitors to his home. After get off work, he never went to Izakaya to socialize with his colleagues, and there was no wife at home who could cook and open the door to welcome him. Occasionally, he "unconsciously begins to erupt" in his sleep, imagining beautiful scenes like Ukiyo-e paintings, but he himself remains expressionless, even though he is riding on an Oriental mermaid wearing a kimono.

The sojourner is an unknown person. We only know that her last name is as "extremely mediocre" as Shimura. Compared with Sakura, who threw her shoes around as soon as she entered the house, lay down on the owner's bed, took a shower, and cooked, the 58-year-old nameless sojourner was much more careful. She is a long-term unemployed woman who has worked as a handyman in various jobs. After losing her job, she lived on welfare benefits. After the relief fund was stopped, she immediately quit the rented house, left the original neighborhood, and started a new life in a new environment where no one knew her.

Like Shimura, she will remember the appearance of the refrigerator and dining table, try not to touch the owner's food, and make a living by digging through the food thrown away in the trash can at the back door of the convenience store. She discovered that the food was "just expired." It wasn't until after living there for a few months, when it rained heavily that she couldn't go out, that she would take some fruits and vegetables from the refrigerator to eat. Unfortunately, she was eventually found by the police in the corner of the guest bedroom closet, looking like "a petrified little beast that didn't even dare to make a sound."

In the gouache strokes and trivial daily narratives, we see a decriminalized picture of sojourners. The sojourner does not feel that he has committed a crime, he just feels: "My fault, the only mistake, is to go to a place that I have no right to be in."

Shimura has no hatred for the sojourner from beginning to end, tormenting his It’s the feeling of “I can’t feel like I’m in my own home anymore.”He did not denounce or complain in court, but just silently put a for-sale sign on the "bento" where he had lived for decades. Even the police and the judge seemed to think this was a boring case and just wanted to end it as soon as possible so as not to delay other more important matters. When the police introduced the case to Shimura, their tone was "like a weather report." The judge sentenced the sojourner to the minimum sentence. After deducting the four months in custody, she served only one month before being released.

After eliminating the dazzling halo of crime and justice, we see the naked life in the city. "Bare life" is a concept proposed by contemporary Italian political thinker Agamben , which refers to a purely biological existence that is deprived of all political and social relations. In this sense, we might as well say that "leeches" and "little beasts" are both naked lives.

is just that the "little beast" in "Nagasaki" has been deprived even more completely. The reason why she moved away from her original neighborhood was not only because she had no money to renew her lease, but also because she no longer had the face to face the neighbors she met even occasionally on the street. Therefore, she took the initiative to choose a more complete life of seclusion and privacy. All the social relationships this kind of life can carry are nothing more than a tacit understanding with the owner of the house and a attachment to the house itself. She made no new friends, encountered no danger worth mentioning, let alone violence. But as she wrote to Shimura after her release from prison: "At my age, there are no positions waiting for me. ... Meaning does not exist. The concept of meaning was invented by people. , is to let a palm soothe the worries in the heart."

Stills from the Korean movie "Parasite"

The end of the letter reveals a corner of the nameless sojourner's past life. She was orphaned since she was a child. She participated in anti-government activities in the 1970s. After being arrested, she changed her name and surname, but she was never able to integrate into society. But these faded fragments of the grand narrative do not elevate the story, or even make it more plausible, because Shimura has many parallel thoughts with her.

After drinking with a young colleague for the first time, his thought was "My heart is not interested in anything." Lying on the bed, he only felt: "The privations and hardships of this existence are obvious. There is no ambition born from it, and there is no hope. This woman really deserves to be cursed. Because of her, the thick fog has dissipated." If he hates He passed her, not because she usurped his property or rights, but because she made him think that he might be stabbed to death at any time within a year, making him realize that the only woman who had ever lived in his family was an invisible woman. of sojourners.

In short, she forces him to look at himself and draw bleak conclusions. This may be said to be a kind of empathy based on a common situation, but the expression of this empathy is not warm comradeship, but cold disdain.

A complete VUCA life

The life of a sojourner is unstable and lonely. It can be said to be a complete VUCA life. VUCA is the abbreviation for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. It was first proposed by the U.S. Army Academy. Its original intention was to describe the situation in the multilateral world after the end of the Cold War. Later it was extended to companies, organizations, individuals and even the overall situation of society.

Sojourn life is often not only a stress response under the pressure of life, but also an active choice with awakening significance. Makoto Tsukinuma once said: "The so-called 'society' is just words on paper. Abandoning these things means returning to the wild." In the context of "The Sojourner", such reflection represents the blood Lessons. For sojourners, it is a blessing not to be eliminated by the social order represented by the police and the law, and they cannot expect any support except themselves and a very small number of "partners". Tsukinuma Makoto points out another side of the sojourner's VUCA life: danger.

The danger cuts both ways. One direction is the systematic rejection of sojourners by society. In most cases, living in sojourn does not constitute physical harm, and it does not even cause much property damage.The nameless sojourner in "Nagasaki" drank 7 centimeters of juice and several boxes of yogurt, ate a fish, consumed some tap water when bathing, and cleaned the bathroom afterward to avoid being discovered. In her own words, "He Shimura and I coexist peacefully, just as people live with a mouse for a period of time: out of curiosity or out of pity."

The violent incidents in "The Sojourner" all occurred in the Sojourner Either to seize territory that does not belong to any of them, or someone outside the sojourner group hired murderers. In other words, not too far removed from gangster logic.

Living in sojourn is not a resistance in any sense, just as lying down is not a resistance to 996. But despite this, a social order based on ownership will not actively tolerate any sojourners. Arrest, court appearance, imprisonment, and return to the same or even more complete VUCA life, these are all the connections that sojourners can have with society. The mice can hide in the cupboard for a while before people open it, and that's it.

The sojourner can also be dangerous to the sojourner. This danger may be potential, such as Shimura's bouts of fear while lying in bed, but it may also be real, such as the killing party at the end of the 2019 Korean movie "Parasite." The first half of the film tells the story of the impoverished Kim family, four siblings, and their adventures as they sneak into the wealthy President Park's home and successfully live a sojourn life. But with the sudden return of the former housekeeper who was squeezed out by the Jin family, the family of four is in danger of being accused. With their strength in numbers, the Kim family finally subdued the housekeeper and the housekeeper's husband, who was also hiding in the basement of the mansion to hide from debts. After witnessing his wife's murder, the irrational housekeeper husband stabbed the Jin family's sister to death, and was later killed by the Jin family's father. At this time, witnessing the Park family's son's birthday party joyful in the courtyard, he remembered that President Park thought he had the "smell of people riding the subway" and killed President Park again.

Sojourners do not set out to become criminals. Instead, they just want to enjoy the life of a rich man. The Jin brothers and sisters successively became tutors for the Pu family's youngest daughter, the Jin family's father became the driver, and finally the Jin family's mother was brought in to be the new housekeeper. Taking advantage of the opportunity of President Park and his wife to go out, the family of four can have a carnival in the living room and clean the room before the owner comes back - this is their huge luxury. It is only the risk of exposure and the host's unintentional insults that turn the carnival into a shura.

Like other disadvantaged groups, such as the poor, homeless, and ethnic minorities, who are burdened with stereotypes of danger, crime, low ability, and immorality, sojourners are also the targets of dehumanizing rhetoric. The word "leech" used throughout "The Sojourner" is a clear reflection of this. In fact, "trespasser" is the Chinese name given by the importer, and the original Japanese name is ヒル, which means leech.

Compared with leeches, pests that humans can quickly eliminate, the metaphors of "little beasts" and "rats" in "Nagasaki" emphasize that the sojourners are among "real people", including house owners, police, judges and their representatives. The powerlessness in front of the "big self" of society. The "cockroaches" mentioned many times in "Parasite" have another meaning: although sojourners or poor people can't cause any harm to the rich, the thought or sight of them will still make the rich annoyed. . Of course, judging from the ending of the film, this view is obviously miscalculated.

Sojourner is more than just social news or gossip. Everyone is in a VUCA situation to one degree or another. As German sociologist Ulrich Beck said in his famous book "Risk Society": "Risks are increasing exponentially, and opportunities to avoid risks are disappearing... If everything becomes a risk, to some extent Nothing is dangerous anymore. If there is no escape, people finally stop worrying about it. Risk moves back and forth between hysteria and indifference.”

As complete abandoners, sojourners may be the universal danger to society. Projection or logical conclusion.