Where is Monster Park?

I enjoy staying home. Apart from visiting bookstores, theatres, and occasionally my favourite Irish pub, I rarely go out. During the pandemic though, for reasons I couldn’t quite understand, I found myself wandering aimlessly almost every day. The deserted streets had a surreal allure, reminiscent of Chirico’s paintings.

I stumbled upon junaida’s picture book purely by chance. After the pandemic, I found this Kyoto-born artist’s work in a small, unassuming independent bookstore in Kichijoji, Tokyo. The black cover featured vividly coloured monsters with bizarre eyes, marching forward, with a neat title written across: “Monster Park”. It evoked a sense of both tranquility and celebration.

The story is about a moveable monster park that has roamed the Earth since ancient times. One night, the park’s gate was left open by accident, and the monsters began to wander into a small town, scaring the residents into hiding. No one knew these monsters’ destination, but whenever people looked out their windows, they saw the monsters parading through the night streets, like a festival procession.

Despite being called monsters, these creatures were not frightening upon closer inspection. In fact, they were quite endearing. They resembled creatures that have evolved incorrectly, forming a society of monsters: there were cape-wearing birds with the webbed feet of frogs, octopuses with eight eyes, elderly elephants reduced to skeletons, and sorrowful fly agarics crying red tears. Perhaps, these creatures were once ordinary animals, but for some reason – be it imminent death or isolation from peers – they ended up in Monster Park, evolving over time into their current forms.

Another storyline follows three children who have been barred from going out because of the nocturnal monsters. Bored, they resorted to everyday objects to entertain themselves, imagining cardboard boxes as adventure buses and bathtubs as spaceships and submarines. There seemed to be no grown-ups in this story. Each day, the children weaved fantasies out of the ordinary – such as imagining the caress of sunshine and breeze on their skin – in the company of their tuxedo cat.

In their imaginary underwater world, the children encountered lost monsters. To help them return home, the kids remodeled their submarine to accommodate the monsters and set off for Monster Park. junaida did not illustrate this journey; we only see the children sleeping, surrounded by circus toys reminiscent of Monster Park.

In the morning, the children stood on the empty streets, the monsters having departed. The final drawing shows Monster Park moving slowly through the forest towards distant mountains. Is this the scene after the children had sent the monsters home? I can’t help but imagine that after returning the monsters, the children were invited into Monster Park, where they enjoyed a strange yet delightful afternoon tea at a round wooden table lined with a white cloth.

The metaphor for the pandemic is hard to miss, but reading the story that way feels dull. I would rather believe it all truly happened.

Closing the picture book, I took a sip of Guinness. At that moment, I was in an Irish pub called The World End, in Ueno. Post-pandemic, the city streets were once again crowded with people hurrying to their destinations. I imagined that somewhere out there, in an unseen distant place, Monster Park was clumsily making its way forward, with the sound of metal clinking.