Kaii to Otome to Kamikakushi - Vol. 6 Ch. 58 - Pure Land of Mice - Part 2

[MangaDex]

 

[ssecf]

Thanks for the chapters.

 

[LupusZero]

Holy shit that's one way to make an entrance.

I like the setup for this arc tho, the idea that the clerk from chapter 1 will be leading character is pretty interesting and the whole premise of a place that accomodates the vagrants of society is neat.

 

[jojo1]

I wonder what's the story this time.

 

[RedMarks]

Mysterious hopeless society!?

 

[Tds-PdV]

I’m guessing this is a gathering that transcends time, the student movement protest is something from late ‘60s.

 

[sssr]

I wonder what's the story this time.

Nezumi no Jodo (Pure Land / Paradise for Mice) is an old Japanese folk tale where an old man (sometimes a dumpling seller, sometimes he just happened to have dumplings on him) gave small dumplings to a mouse, who in gratitude then invites him to the underground mice paradise, where all the mice live in abundance and happiness and share it with the old man. It's a Buddhist tale teaching the fundamentals of, well, Pure Land Buddhism, with the moral of the story being that humans need to look under the surface (literally in the story) and see that the struggles of everyday life is pointless. It's similar in idea to Jesus's "Consider the lilies" sermon in Luke 12:27. This tale is associated with the Boddhisattva (or Buddha, or deity, depending on sect) Daikoku-ten/Mahakala. If you play FGO, Nezumi-jodo is Daikokuten's Noble Phantasm.

However, this chapter and its story most likely references John Calhoun's infamous 1968 rat utopia experiment, which is often translated into Japanese as nezumi-jodo as well. In this experiment, Calhoun created a "perfect" (by human standards) environment for rats to thrive in and started raising several generations of rats in it, terminating the experiment in 1973. Calhoun's team discovered that the rat population actually collapsed after a while because once all competitive factors had been removed from the environment they simply stopped breeding. Or rather, a population of satisfied rats stopped competing for mates and over time newer generations adopted the same non-breeding lifestyle.

 

[Babymech2]

...and then Bruce Alexander solved the problem of the rat Utopia by giving them all heroin.

 

[BrownStorm]

Thanks for the eggs

 

[CKN]

The author is clearly a vtuber lover. From a hololive yubi yubi toy to a salary man cheering on pikamee to come back lmao

 

[r31ya]

also to note,
Japan student protest seems to refer to student protest that happen in the late 60s.
that helmet is based on what the student wear during the protest

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968–1969_Japanese_university_protests

it was historical moment that often being referred to in anime-manga especially older creator.
---
so time might move differently in Rat Paradise
anyhow, very interesting setting

 

[Bohrain]

This is where I belong to.

 

[Dranzer86]

Nezumi no Jodo (Pure Land / Paradise for Mice) is an old Japanese folk tale where an old man (sometimes a dumpling seller, sometimes he just happened to have dumplings on him) gave small dumplings to a mouse, who in gratitude then invites him to the underground mice paradise, where all the mice live in abundance and happiness and share it with the old man. It's a Buddhist tale teaching the fundamentals of, well, Pure Land Buddhism, with the moral of the story being that humans need to look under the surface (literally in the story) and see that the struggles of everyday life is pointless. It's similar in idea to Jesus's "Consider the lilies" sermon in Luke 12:27. This tale is associated with the Boddhisattva (or Buddha, or deity, depending on sect) Daikoku-ten/Mahakala. If you play FGO, Nezumi-jodo is Daikokuten's Noble Phantasm.

However, this chapter and its story most likely references John Calhoun's infamous 1968 rat utopia experiment, which is often translated into Japanese as nezumi-jodo as well. In this experiment, Calhoun created a "perfect" (by human standards) environment for rats to thrive in and started raising several generations of rats in it, terminating the experiment in 1973. Calhoun's team discovered that the rat population actually collapsed after a while because once all competitive factors had been removed from the environment they simply stopped breeding. Or rather, a population of satisfied rats stopped competing for mates and over time newer generations adopted the same non-breeding lifestyle.

That was most informative thank you ☺️👍

 

[sssr]

...and then Bruce Alexander solved the problem of the rat Utopia by giving them all heroin.

This is also my headcanon.

 

[basil_basalt]

Nezumi no Jodo (Pure Land / Paradise for Mice) is an old Japanese folk tale where an old man (sometimes a dumpling seller, sometimes he just happened to have dumplings on him) gave small dumplings to a mouse, who in gratitude then invites him to the underground mice paradise, where all the mice live in abundance and happiness and share it with the old man. It's a Buddhist tale teaching the fundamentals of, well, Pure Land Buddhism, with the moral of the story being that humans need to look under the surface (literally in the story) and see that the struggles of everyday life is pointless. It's similar in idea to Jesus's "Consider the lilies" sermon in Luke 12:27. This tale is associated with the Boddhisattva (or Buddha, or deity, depending on sect) Daikoku-ten/Mahakala. If you play FGO, Nezumi-jodo is Daikokuten's Noble Phantasm.

However, this chapter and its story most likely references John Calhoun's infamous 1968 rat utopia experiment, which is often translated into Japanese as nezumi-jodo as well. In this experiment, Calhoun created a "perfect" (by human standards) environment for rats to thrive in and started raising several generations of rats in it, terminating the experiment in 1973. Calhoun's team discovered that the rat population actually collapsed after a while because once all competitive factors had been removed from the environment they simply stopped breeding. Or rather, a population of satisfied rats stopped competing for mates and over time newer generations adopted the same non-breeding lifestyle.

The science history institute has a fascinating article on the subject: https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/mouse-heaven-or-mouse-hell/

I'd heard all kinds of explanations for what happened in the mouse study. People have been projecting their political beliefs onto the study since the 60s, and it turns out that we should be cautious when doing so, because the results of the experiments are more complicated than they appear at first blush. Here are some of the things from the article that I found surprising:

The mice didn't simply "stop breeding," overcrowding lead to high levels of stress, and a big part of the fall in the mouse birth rate was due to neglect and infant mortality - so we can't easily draw an analogy between the mouse colonies and falling birthrates in the human developed world, where these are not major factors in the decline.

One interesting thing stands out: so-called "alpha" mice at the top of the hierarchy normally fight other mice for mates, and the losers, what they called "dropout" mice, will normally escape in the wild to do their own thing elsewhere - in the study however, they had nowhere else to run to, and their constant attacks on the alpha mice and their mates weakened them beyond the point where they had energy to reproduce.

The original study also described groups of these dropout mice just brawling viciously amongst themselves for apparently no reason (I want to describe it as mouse fight club, but that would be an act of projection!).

Seen in this light, the deviant asexual mice, who gave up on reproducing and spent their time grooming, were engaging in behavior that would have allowed them to avoid getting killed in the dropout mice brawls. It might have been the "smart" move on an individual level.

 

[Doomroar]

Nezumi no Jodo (Pure Land / Paradise for Mice) is an old Japanese folk tale where an old man (sometimes a dumpling seller, sometimes he just happened to have dumplings on him) gave small dumplings to a mouse, who in gratitude then invites him to the underground mice paradise, where all the mice live in abundance and happiness and share it with the old man. It's a Buddhist tale teaching the fundamentals of, well, Pure Land Buddhism, with the moral of the story being that humans need to look under the surface (literally in the story) and see that the struggles of everyday life is pointless. It's similar in idea to Jesus's "Consider the lilies" sermon in Luke 12:27. This tale is associated with the Boddhisattva (or Buddha, or deity, depending on sect) Daikoku-ten/Mahakala. If you play FGO, Nezumi-jodo is Daikokuten's Noble Phantasm.

However, this chapter and its story most likely references John Calhoun's infamous 1968 rat utopia experiment, which is often translated into Japanese as nezumi-jodo as well. In this experiment, Calhoun created a "perfect" (by human standards) environment for rats to thrive in and started raising several generations of rats in it, terminating the experiment in 1973. Calhoun's team discovered that the rat population actually collapsed after a while because once all competitive factors had been removed from the environment they simply stopped breeding. Or rather, a population of satisfied rats stopped competing for mates and over time newer generations adopted the same non-breeding lifestyle.

So what you are telling me is that those lucky rats finally became happy and stopped being horny

The science history institute has a fascinating article on the subject: https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/mouse-heaven-or-mouse-hell/

I'd heard all kinds of explanations for what happened in the mouse study. People have been projecting their political beliefs onto the study since the 60s, and it turns out that we should be cautious when doing so, because the results of the experiments are more complicated than they appear at first blush. Here are some of the things from the article that I found surprising:

The mice didn't simply "stop breeding," overcrowding lead to high levels of stress, and a big part of the fall in the mouse birth rate was due to neglect and infant mortality - so we can't easily draw an analogy between the mouse colonies and falling birthrates in the human developed world, where these are not major factors in the decline.

One interesting thing stands out: so-called "alpha" mice at the top of the hierarchy normally fight other mice for mates, and the losers, what they called "dropout" mice, will normally escape in the wild to do their own thing elsewhere - in the study however, they had nowhere else to run to, and their constant attacks on the alpha mice and their mates weakened them beyond the point where they had energy to reproduce.

The original study also described groups of these dropout mice just brawling viciously amongst themselves for apparently no reason (I want to describe it as mouse fight club, but that would be an act of projection!).

Seen in this light, the deviant asexual mice, who gave up on reproducing and spent their time grooming, were engaging in behavior that would have allowed them to avoid getting killed in the dropout mice brawls. It might have been the "smart" move on an individual level.

Well that lasted 2 minutes, they were both horny and unhappy, turns out hell is other mice

 

[Ultimatecalibur]

So what you are telling me is that those lucky rats finally became happy and stopped being horny

sssr got it a bit wrong. It was pretty much the exact opposite issue. The utopia generated high social stress which led to unsatisfied and unhappy rats/mice that stopped breeding (with up to 96% of the females who did breed to neglecting their own offspring). In fact in several iterations of the experiment there were groups of hyper horny homosexual rats/mice while other male mice became grooming obsessed NEETs/Incels.

 

[Rebootedc]

Woohoo! A new arc arrives!!

 

[sssr]

sssr got it a bit wrong. It was pretty much the exact opposite issue. The utopia generated high social stress which led to unsatisfied and unhappy rats/mice that stopped breeding (with up to 96% of the females who did breed to neglecting their own offspring). In fact in several iterations of the experiment there were groups of hyper horny homosexual rats/mice while other male mice became grooming obsessed NEETs/Incels.

Thanks for the correction. It's been a while and I misremembered the real conclusion of the rat utopia experiments. I was presenting the (incorrect) conclusion Calhoun's team came up with before the repeat experiments resolved a more accurate understanding of the population collapse because I have a suspicion that's where the manga is taking us. All the anomalies are harmful, so I suspect that this one will take us in that direction.

 

[popo53414]