When it comes to books that act as ephemera for the Tokyo Grand Guignol’s plays, most collectors would seek out items like the retrospective 2-MINUS magazine Ameya Style or the volumes of Theater Book and June that featured contemporary articles about the TGG’s plays. The information included in these books is incredibly valuable as many production stills, descriptions and even whole screenplays were printed in these publications. That isn’t to downplay the importance of other adjacent books though, such as the Suehiro Maruo magazine Only You, which features a digest version of Galatia Teito Monogatari’s screenplay. There are even more magazines that have since been shrouded in obscurity, two of which acted as the direct source of several of the most iconic images affiliated with the Tokyo Grand Guignol.
The above image is from the October 25th, 1985 volume of Emma magazine. My knowledge of these publications is pretty much nonexistent outside of the fact that on the auctions I found this (and the next featured book) on, both volumes were listed as “photo magazines” or something like that. They definitely contain pictures, that’s for certain. Either way, this photo was a specially shot production still derived loosely from a scene in the TGG’s first play, Mercuro (1984). Despite the close association, this photo is usually given with the play, there was no scene in the original screenplay where Ameya emerges from Kyusaku Shimada’s torso. It was said on the Twitter account TGG_Lab that this scene was based on a variation of the play that was performed at an event hosted by Peyote Workshop known as End of the Century Live, said version of Mercuro being a loose descendent of the iconic televised performance of the play that was shown on Tokumitsu Kazuo's TV Forum. Both renditions were heavily abridged variants of Mercuro’s most iconic special effects scenes, with the televised version specifically being a crossing of the openings of act one and act two. One thing of note is that near the end of the article on the side, a special teaser is given for the upcoming December 1985 debut of Litchi Hikari Club.
The next photo spread is of a similarly iconic production still, this one being a direct capture of (what was likely) the opening of the first act of Litchi Hikari Club. In said opening scene, an execution is conducted to the tune of the S.P.K. song Culturcide wherein the light club hang a student who crossed their strict rules. This student is apparently different from the one who is blinded by a spotlight later on in the same act. This photo is from the April 11th, 1986 volume of Focus, a magazine that happens to contain a fairly interesting coincidence. In my prior essay regarding the parallels between Litchi Hikari Club and the futurist movement, I mention how Ameya at one point cited an airplane accident as a direct influence for Litchi’s story. According to his recollections, the accident occurred not long after the televised performance of Mercuro, which was in 1985. While I originally had a hunch while writing the essay, I’m fairly certain the airline accident he’s referring to was the Japan Air Lines Flight 123 crash on the 12th of August, 1985. The time frame matches Ameya’s descriptions, and to this day it’s still recalled as being one of the deadliest airline accidents in history. In the same volume of Focus that this image came from, an article is featured a few pages earlier that concerns the accident.
A description of Litchi's opening can be read in this excerpt from a lengthy Twitter thread by user Shoru Toji where she gives an in-depth description of the play's 1986 rerun and the subculture around it:
I saw Litchi Hikari Club on March 27th, 1986, the first day of its rerun, at a live house called Super Loft KINDO. It was a renovated iron factory in the Tokyo Metropolitan area. The place was previously destroyed by Hanatarash with a live set where he went through the space with a bulldozer. If I recall correctly, the hall was illuminated by fluorescent lights from a high ceiling with exposed steel frames. The walls were painted black. The curtain separating the audience seating from the stage was a set of white sheets, like the kind you’d find in a hospital. There was no announcement when the play was ready to begin. Instead, the fluorescent lights suddenly went out, and a set of speakers in the ceiling emitted hissing noises. The stage was dimmed to the opening queue of Culturcide from the Seppuku Dekompositiones EP, and I thought to myself “This is SPK!”. And with the sounds of synchronized stomping and a ringing flute, the curtains were drawn back to show the scene of a line of students marching through the darkness in single file with lights hoisted over their shoulders. The way the lights aligned in their rows reminded me of spotlights.
They marched all about the stage, going right, left, forward and to the back, all at once in an orderly manner. They were taking orders from a man standing on a podium. That man was Tsunekawa in the role of Zera. He stood with an overhead spot bathing him in red light. He pointed in many directions, with the students loyally following each command he made. Eventually, the left side of the stage began to loudly rattle with the starting of a U-shaped quarry conveyor belt. Another student is carted into the stage from the belt, screaming “Please, don’t do it! Please, forgive me!” as he’s suspended upside down from the belt. The light club place their lights in the back of the stage and hang their first victim at the front with a chain.
