Nejishiki

Nejishiki (Japanese: ねじ式), also Screw Style or Screwceremony, is a Japanese surrealist manga written and illustrated by Yoshiharu Tsuge. Nejishiki follows the story of an unnamed boy who wanders around several unfamiliar places to find a doctor who can fix his pierced artery. The manga was first published in the manga anthology magazine Garo in 1968 amidst a growing avant-garde art movement and student political radicalism. Tsuge has provided various accounts of the story's development, but often refers to it as a dream. During his time working on the story he was also employed as an assistant to Shigeru Mizuki and adopted different philosophical and aesthetic influences from his work.

Upon its publication, the story was popular among the avant-garde art culture, but was parodied and criticised by others. The story was popular among Garo's audience, and came to retrospectively define popular associations of the magazine's aesthetics. The manga has had an enduring influence and been adapted into a video game and a live action film. Analyses of the story often focus on the manga's tableau imagery, discussing it as an allegory for the afterlife, and identifying motifs of war, personal psychology, and rural poverty.