Introduction To Japanese Horror Film

J APANE S E
HORROR
F I L M
I NT R ODUCT I ON T O
Colette Balmain
J APANE S E
HORROR F I L M
I NT R ODUCT I ON T O
This book is a major historical and cultural overview of an increasingly popular
genre. Starting with the cultural phenomenon of Godzilla, it explores the
evolution of Japanese horror from the 1950s through to contemporary classics
of Japanese horror cinema such as Ringu and Ju-On: The Grudge. Divided
thematically, the book examines key motifs such as the vengeful virgin, the
demonic child, the doomed lovers and the supernatural serial killer, situating
them within traditional Japanese mythology and folk-tales. The book also
considers the aesthetics of the Japanese horror film, and the mechanisms
through which horror is expressed at a visceral level through the use of setting,
lighting, music and mise-en-scne. It concludes by considering the impact of
Japanese horror on contemporary American cinema by examining the remakes
of Ringu, Dark Water and Ju-On: The Grudge.
Key Features
Covers classics of Japanese horror film such as Pitfall, Tales of Ugetsu,
Kwaidan, Onibaba, Hellish Love and Empire of Desire alongside less well-
known cult films such as Pulse, St Johns Wort, Infection and Living Hell: A
Japanese Chainsaw Massacre
Includes analysis of the relationship between cultural mythology and the
horror film
Explores the evolution of the erotic ghost story in the 1960s and 1970s
Examines the contemporary relationship between Japanese horror film and
American horror
Contains 9 film stills
Colette Balmain is Senior Lecturer in Film at Buckinghamshire New University.
She is the author of numerous articles on both European horror film and the
East Asian horror film.
Cover image: Ai No Borei Argos Films/Oshima
Productions / The Kobal Collection
Cover design: www.riverdesign.co.uk
Edinburgh University Press
22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF
ISBN 978 0 7486 2475 1
www.eup.ed.ac.uk
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Colette Balmain
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Introduction to Japanese Horror Film
This book is dedicated to my parents
David and Peggy Balmain
Introduction to
Japanese Horror Film
Colette Balmain
Edinburgh University Press
Colette Balmain, 2008
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
Typeset in Monotype Ehrhardt
by Koinonia, Manchester, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI-Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wilts
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 2474 4 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 2475 1 (paperback)
The right of Colette Balmain
to be identied as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Published with the support of the Edinburgh University
Scholarly Publishing Initiatives Fund.
Contents
List of Figures viii
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xii
A Note on Language xiii
Introduction 1
Analyses of Japanese Cinema 3
Genre 4
Theorising Horror 6
Origins/Themes/Conventions 8
Part 1: Origins
1 Laying the Foundations 11
The Studio System 12
From Stage to Screen 15
Transformations 20
Japanese Cinema as National Cinema 25
Global Flows 29
2 Horror after Hiroshima 30
Post-Occupation Cinema 30
From the Ashes 32
Ghostly Returns 43
Deadly Obligations 48
Pre-Modern Monsters 49
vi contents
3 Edo Gothic: Deceitful Samurai and Wronged Women 50
The Background 53
Deceitful Samurai 54
The Sacred Maternal 61
Wronged Women 64
Conventions of Edo Gothic 68
4 Ghosts of Desire: Kaidan pinku eiga 70
Vengeful Cat Women 72
Tragic Lovers (Kitagawa Utamaro) and The Virgin Bride 79
The Cuckolded Husband 82
Suicide Ghosts 86
Ghosts of Desire 89
Part 2: Genre
5 The Rape-Revenge Film: From Violation to Vengeance 93
Victimisation 95
Violation 98
Anti-Modernity and the National Body 106
Vengeance 107
Sex and Violation 111
6 Zombies, Cannibals and the Living Dead 113
Resurrection 115
Invasion 117
Commodication 119
Feminisation 121
Consumers 127
7 Haunted Houses and Family Melodramas 128
Monstrous Mothers 129
The Vengeful Foetus 137
Domestic Violence and the Monstrous Father 143
Domestic Disruptions 147
8 Serial Killers and Slashers Japanese-Style 149
Serial Killers: Between Fiction and Fact 150
The Collector 153
The Slasher Film: Japanese-Style 158
A Japanese Chainsaw Massacre? 162
Japanese Monsters from the Underground 165
contents vii
9 Techno-Horror and Urban Alienation 168
Repression 169
Eruptions 170
Isolation 175
Disconnection 180
Annihilation 183
Dystopias 187
Conclusion 188
Select Filmography 191
Bibliography 195
Index 207
List of Figures
2.1 Godzillas rampage, Godzilla 40
2.2 The rst meeting between Genjuro and Lady Wakasa,
Tales of Ugetsu 45
4.1 Victim as violator: Yone (Nobuko Otawa) in Kuroneko 76
4.2 The Monstrous Mother: Shige (Kiwako Taichi), Kuroneko 78
5.1 Asami, the epitome of idealised womanhood, Audition 109
7.1 Mother and child, Dark Water 141
7.2 Takeo corners Rika: domestic violence in Ju-On: The Grudge 146
9.1 Sole survivors: Ryosuke and Michi, Pulse 184
9.2 Spaces within spaces, Pulse 185
In America and Europe most horror movies tell the story of the extermin-
ation of evil spirits. Japanese horror movies end with a suggestion that
the spirit still remains at large. Thats because the Japanese dont regard
spirits only as enemies, but as beings that co-exist with this world of ours.
(Suzuki 2005)
W
ith the exhaustion of American horror cinema, as evidenced by the
recent trend towards remakes of classic 1970 lms such as The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre (Nispel: 2003), The Amityville Horror (Douglas: 2003) and
The Hills have Eyes (Aja: 2006), it is not surprising that both American studios
and Western audiences have been looking elsewhere for inspiration. There can
be little doubt that Nakatas Ring (1998) has had much to do with the recent
inter national interest not just in Japanese horror cinema, but East Asian cinema
more generally.
Following the success of Nakatas Ring, Shimizus Ju-On: The Grudge
(2003) and the American remakes, Th announced in 2004 the establishment
of J-Horror Theatre, a series of six horror lms from noted Japanese directors.
The fact that Lion Gate Films obtained worldwide distribution rights to the
lms (with the exception of Japan) testies to the increasing popularity of the
Japanese horror lm. The proliferation of remakes of Japanese lms continues,
with the most recent, Pulse (Sonzero: 2006), based upon Kiyoshi Kurosawas
extraordinary technological horror of the same name (2001).
However, the centrality of isolation, alienation and emptiness that denes
Japanese horror cinema cannot be simply explained by a nebulous reference to a
sense of loss of history and nostalgia for the past which lies at the heart of post-
modern theories of identity, such as that espoused by Jameson (1991). This is
too simple a comparison. Concerns around the loss of connection are much
more pivotal in a society based upon a long tradition of obligations amongst
Preface
x introduction to japanese horror film
individuals and communities (known as the ie system). Further, as Suzuki
points out, the Japanese have a belief in the materiality of ghosts that is very
diferent to Western conceptions, including the notion of co-existence of the
world of the living (kono-yo) and the world of the dead (ano-yo).
Similarly, Battle Royale (Fukasaku: 2000), which has been taken up as a
meta-discourse about disafected youth, is on another level a commentary
about the consequences of individualism (Westernisation) for the Japanese
community. And if Battle Royale and Suicide Circle (Sono: 2002) are about
youth violence, they need to be understood in terms of the emergence of the
Otaku sub-culture amongst Japanese adolescents in the 1990s. It is the con-
ict between obligations towards the outside world (giri) and towards oneself
(ninj), specic to Japan, that leads to violence and apocalyptic destruction
rather than a simple clash between the value systems of adults and adolescents.
The fetishisation of the schoolgirl in Japanese horror cinema, in lms such
as Stacy (Tomomatsu: 2001) and Eko Eko Azarak: Wizard of Darkness (Sato:
1995), also has its roots in the sub-cultural formations. Both lms explore the
obsession with kawaii (a term used to refer to cute schoolgirls) and Aidoru
(young pop idol schoolgirls, who were at the height of their popularity in the
1990s). However, whilst Misa, in Eko Eko Azarak, remains the virginal shj,
the zombie schoolgirls, or Stacies, in Stacy, articulate the politics of the kogal (a
sub-cultural formation of young Japanese teenagers, noted for their linguistic
and aesthetic challenge to prevailing norms), and in so doing ofer a very dif-
ferent female subjectivity to that found in traditional Japanese lms and anime.
In the same vein, although the female avenger of lms such as Ishiis Freeze Me
(2000) and Miikes Audition (1999) bear some similarities to female avengers
in other rape-revenge lms, they need to be contextualised in relation to the
violated bodies of female victims of Japanese sadomasochistic pornography
and, from the 1960s onwards, pink cinema (called pinku eiga, a type of soft-core
pornography notable for its low budget, short running time usually one hour
or less and radical politics).
The emergence of the erotic ghost story, a sub-genre specic to Japan, is also
made possible by the newly burgeoning Japanese pink lm industry. And it is
signicant that many third-generation Japanese directors, including Nakata,
gained their training within the pink lm industry. Therefore an understand-
ing of the intersection between the pink lm industry and Japanese horror is
important to any history of Japanese horror lm.
Although most contemporary Japanese horror is modelled along the lines
of the social problem lm or shakiamono, Japan has a long history of period
(jidaigeki) lms which have provided the background for tales of ghostly
happenings, forbidden desires and capitalist greed. The emergence of Edo
Gothic in the 1950s and 1960s has much in common with the gothic horror
lms being produced by Hammer in the United Kingdom and Roger Cor-
preface xi
mans Edgar Allen Poe adaptations in the United States. However, Edo Goth-
ic, underpinned by Buddhist beliefs, does not provide the spectator with an
Absolute Other, whose destruction reafrms the protagonists (and viewers)
sense of self. This is the case in lms such as Nakagawas Ghost Story of Yotsuya
(1959) and Moris Ghosts of Kaqami-Ga-Fuchi (1959), in which the boundar-
ies between good and evil are blurred and the protagonists actions, however
terrible, pave the way for an emptying of self and salvation through sufering.
Nakagawas Hell (1960), a Grand Guignol exercise in visceral gore and trans-
gression, almost bankrupted the director, but at the same time has provided the
template for many contemporary Japanese horror lms.
While the remakes of Japanese horror lms often fall far short of the originals,
with perhaps the exception of Shimizus The Grudge (2004), their success in
terms of box-ofce receipts means that there can be little doubt that Japanese
ghosts and monsters will be around to terrify us for some time to come.
I
would like to thank Sarah Edwards at Edinburgh University Press for her
patience and expertise. Special thanks go to all my students over the past
few years; without their discussion and enthusiasm for Japanese horror, this
book could not have been written. I would also like to thank my colleagues, in
particular Dr Lois Drawmer and Dr Alison Tedman. The book would not have
been possible without the support of my family, especially my sister, Louise
Balmain.
Acknowledgements
I
t is traditional in Japan to put family name rst and forename last. I have used
the Westernised form, forename before family name, instead for directors
and actors/actresses. This is because the book is written for general audiences,
as well as specic audiences. Japanese words are italicised throughout and I
have used a macron or long sign over vowels in Japanese words, such as Shjo,
which stresses the sustained vowel sound. I have put the name of the actors/
actresses next to their character names, where information was available.
A Note on Language
Introduction
T
he key dening feature of Japanese culture, according to Donald Richie
in his writings on Japanese cinema, is the ability of Japan to assimilate
and transform other cultures. So just as Japan has integrated components
from China, India and other pan-Asian countries into its culture and socio-
political structure, this can also explain Japans relationship with the West.
However, even a brief discussion of this relationship makes it clear that this is
an over-simplication and that in fact culture, ideas and ideology ow in both
directions.
In 1853, after a long period of isolation, Japan opened up its borders to trade
with the West. At the World Exhibitions, held every few years in major Western
cities, Japanese arts and crafts were introduced to Europeans and Americans.
This inaugurated a Japan boom, an enthusiasm for all things Japan that
came to be known as Japonaiserie (Avella 2004: 6). In 1872, Phillippe Burty, a
French art critic and collector, rst used the term Japonisme to describe the
elements of Japanese art that i nuenced, and were integrated into, Western
art (Avella 2004: 6). Of particular interest were woodblock prints, known as
ukiyo-e (pictures of the oating world), which ofered images of traditional
Japan, including geishas and teahouses, alongside pictures of spirits, ghosts
and monsters, whose inspiration was taken from Japans rich mythology.
Avella points out that the distinctive features of ukiyo-e included solid areas
of color; strong contour lines; decorative shapes; and little, if any, chiaroscuro
(shading or modeling). The result of this was a conception of space and mass
that emphasised two-dimensional qualities, which disregarded the mathe-
matical perspective that was faithfully adhered to in Western aesthetic systems
(2004: 6). The use of perspective in these prints would often dispense with the
idea of the spectatorial gaze, by cropping the image, using the pro minence of
empty space and adopting unusual angles and viewpoints, in which gures
are seen from behind, in shadow, or partially obscured (Avella 2004: 10).
2 i ntroduction to japanese horror fi lm
These qualities were not conned to ukiyo-e, but were a central component of
Japanese art and architecture generally. Japoniste elements began to appear in
Western painting and graphic design, in the work of such luminaries as Degas,
Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec. The name used to refer to these cultural
crossings is Japonisme. Thus the impact of Japanese culture on the West is
nothing new, but what is new is the emphasis on the popular video games,
manga, anime, toys and lm, associated with what has been termed Japans soft
or pink power. In his highly inuential article, Japans Gross National Cool,
Douglas McGray writes:
Japan is reinventing superpower again. Instead of collapsing beneath
its widely reported political and economic misfortunes, Japans global
cultural inuence has quietly grown. From pop music to consumer
electronics, architecture to fashion, and animation to cuisine, Japan looks
more like a cultural superpower today than it did in the 1980s, when it
was an economic one. (2002)
Not only have children across the world (in more than 65 countries) grown
up with Pokmon and Hello Kitty, but also 60 per cent of all animated cartoons
generate from Japan. The popularity of Pokmon was such that it made the cover
of Time magazine on 22 November 1999. In addition, the inuence of anime
and manga can be seen in many best-selling video games for the Playstation 2
and Nintendo 64 consoles such as Biohazard (known in the West as Resident
Evil ), Final Fantasy and Silent Hill. The impact of this on the Japanese economy
has been profound, with Japanese cultural exports tripling between 1993 and
2003, bringing in $12.5 billion. Yano argues that Japans pink globalization,
led by the monstrous gure of Godzilla who has been transformed into the cute
(kawii) and less threatening gure of Hello Kitty, suggest[s] a broadening
of Japanese popular culture global ows (2006: 154).
All this paved the way for the success of Japanese horror cinema in the West,
which broke out of its cult status with the critical and commercial success of
Hideo Nakatas Ring in 1998. Taking approximately $13 million at the Japanese
box-ofce, Ring is the most successful horror lm in terms of box-ofce receipts
in Japan. The American remake opened in the United States on 20

October
2002 and rose to number one at the box-ofce. Ring took $15,015,393 in its
opening weekend. Eventually, the lm took $129,094,024 in the United States
alone, and $249 million globally. In Japan, Ring grossed over $2 million in its
rst week, taking over $14 million in Japan alone and making more money
than the Japanese version. The success of the remake of Ring inspired similar,
sometimes not altogether successful, remakes of lms such as Nakatas later
Dark Water (Salles: 2005), Shimizus Ju-On: The Grudge (Shimizu: 2004) and,
most recently, Kurosawas Pulse (Sonzero: 2006).
i ntroduction 3
ANALYSES OF JAPANESE CINEMA
In Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema, Yoshimoto critiques Western
and Eurocentric approaches to the study of Japanese cinema. He identies
two dominant trends: rstly, the focus on universal themes the humanist
approach which negates cultural specicity; and secondly, the concentration
on the diferences between Japanese and Western cinemas the Orientalist
approach which ends up conrming Western stereotypes around Japans
exoticism and irreducible diference. Specically in terms of both Japanese
and Western analysis of the lms of Kurosawa, Yoshimoto notes a certain type
of anxiety, an apprehension about the validity of the conceptual frameworks
because his lms problematise Japans self image and the Wests image of
Japan (2005: 2). In terms of cross-cultural studies, Yoshimoto contends that
the inherent problem with this type of analysis is that it can work to reinforc[e]
the identity of the West as something transparent, natural and self-evident
(2005: 27). Similarly, Dennison and Lim, writing about world cinema, argue
that to see world cinema as the opposite or antithesis of US or Hollywood
cinema is to disregard the diversity and complexity within both cinema in the
US as well as cinema from the rest of the World (2006: 7). In Orientalism or
Occidentalism? Dynamics of Appropriation in Akira Kurasawa, Hutchinson
explains:
Criticism of Japanese cinema has often been dominated by an Orientalist
construction of Japaneseness as Other to a homogeneous West and has
tended to focus on how Japanese or Western a given lm or director
is. (2006: 173)
Hutchinson continues, The Japanese cinema is set up as conned, limited
and in need of techniques and ideas from the West, achieving success when
it assimilates or incorporates Western cinema. This model is then applied to
individual directors, including Kurosawa (2006: 174). She argues that the
processes of self-appropriation of Orientalist stereotypes (Occidentalism),
as in the case of Kurosawa, can provide a mechanism of counter-discursive
opposition. She writes, The lm as discursive act implies power is invested in
the adaptation in its political, counter-discursive, aspect (2006: 181).
In his analysis of the relationship between modernity and early Japanese
cinema, through the works of Junichir Tanizaki (18861965), LaMarre
writes: What is ominous about lm is its potential to be produced everywhere
and nowhere, and to be distributed globally (2005: 113). LaMarre argues that
the phantasms generated by cinema mean that racial origin is at once marked
and unmarked, located and dislocated, everything and nowhere (2005: 113).
In his analysis of Tanizakis The Tumor with a Human Face, LaMarre points
out how, for Tanizaki, the repulsiveness of the Japanese face [on the cinematic
screen] is linked to the possibility of seeing one as a dark, colonial other (2005:
112). These fears around the erasure of racial and cultural diference, via the
situating of the West as the ideal/idealised image through which the Other
identies itself in the global marketplace, are also articulated in Iwabuchis
work on self-orientalism and cultural odour (1994; 2002) (see Chapter 1).
GENRE
Writing about the history of critical approaches to horror cinema, Jancovich
argues that it has been dominated by two main questions:
First, there is the question of what one might mean by terms such as
horror, and this usually becomes a question of how one denes the
horror genre and so identies its essential features. This rst question
also presupposes a second and more fundamental question: what is a lm
genre, or more properly what should be meant by the term genre when
it is used in lm studies. (2002: 1)
Genre theory seeks to identify patterns of similarity and diference across
lms through which genre as a discrete area of study is constructed and audiences
are targeted. Although genre predates cinema, the industrial mechanics of the
studio system in Hollywood meant that the separation of lms into types
enabled the maximisation of economic potential and protability. In Reusable
Packaging: Generic Products and the Recycling Process, Altman argues that
there has been a tendency to see genres as both stable and permanent, parti-
cularly in approaches which stress the mythic quality of genre. By doing so,
Altman writes that two generations of genre critics have done violence to the
historical dimensions of genre (1998: 2). He argues, Instead of imaging this
process in terms of static classication, we might want to see it as a regular
alternative between an expansive principle the creation of a new cycle and
a principle of contraction the consolidation of a genre (1998: 18).
This is also true of the horror lm. In The American Nightmare: Horror in
the 70s, Wood identies a basic formula, shared by all horror lms, in which
normality is threatened by the monster (2002: 31). It is in fact, according
to Wood, the relationship between normality and the monster that consti-
tutes the essential subject of the horror lm (2002: 31). In The Philosophy
of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart, Carroll foregrounds the importance of
the process of repulsion in the specic form of art-horror, pointing out that
this repulsion must be pleasurable, as evidenced by the genres popularity
(2002: 33). The epistemological desire to know, although fundamental to other
i ntroduction 5
genres, is central to horror because the monster at the heart of the narrative
is in principle unknowable and outside the bounds of knowledge (2002: 35).
For Carroll, therefore, the paradox of horror lies in the twin processes of
repulsion and attraction. Similarly, Creed, in The Monstrous-Feminine: Film,
Feminism and Psychoanalysis, using Kristevas theory of the abject, argues that
the monstrous in horror articulates a morbid desire to see as much as possible of
the unimaginable and horries because the threat of the monster is connected
to fear of losing oneself and ones boundaries (1993: 29).
In his Introduction to the BFI Companion to Horror, Newman traces the
origin of horror to the gothic novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Like Altman, Newman argues that, while lms such as the Universal Cycle
of Horror Films in the 1930s are easily identiable as such, the further away
from such default horrors we travel, the more blurred distinctions become,
and horror becomes less like a discrete genre than an efect which can be
deployed within any number of narrative settings or narrative patterns (1996:
11). Newman continues, the horror lm proper did not exist until the genre
started concreting in its foundations by imitating itself. In these terms it is
The Mummy (1932), a variation on the earlier Dracula (1931), that is the rst
horror lm (1996: 13). However Newman does point to the hybrid nature of
horror lm, and its overlapping with the genres such as science ction and
the crime thriller as articulated in the manner in which scenes are explicitly
designed to provoke horror (Newman 1996: 15).
In the simply titled Horror Films, Frank points to horrors similarity to night-
mares as constitutive of horror as genre (1977: 16). For Wells in The Horror
Genre: From Beelzebub to Blair Witch, the prevalence of images of death in
horror lm, and the representation of the undead literally embod[ies] states
of otherness which are intrinsically related to humanity but are ultimately
a parallel and threatening expression of it (2000: 10). Other critics, such as
Grant in Sensuous Elaboration: Reason and the Visible in the Science Fiction
Film, seek to understand horror in terms of its opposition to other genres,
specically science ction. He writes, the appeal of science ction is primarily
cognitive, while horror, as the genres name suggests, is essentially emotional
(Grant 2004: 17). In response to hybrid science ction/horror lms in the late
1970s and early 1980s such as Cronenbergs Videodrome and Ridley Scotts
Alien, in Horrality: The Textuality of Contemporary Horror Films, Brophy
introduced the term body horror as that which constituted the dominant
theme in the horror cinema:
The contemporary horror lm tends to play not so much on the broad fear of
Death, but more precisely on the fear of ones own body, of how one controls
and relates to it conveying to the viewer a graphic sense of physicality,
accentuating the very presence of the body on the screen. (1986: 8)
THEORISING HORROR
In Horror Film and Psychoanalysis: Freuds Worst Nightmare, Schneider empha-
sises the manner in which psychoanalysis has proved to be one of the most
popular ways of interpreting horror. As he argues, since the late 1970s there
has been a tremendous diversity of psychoanalytic approaches (2004: 2).
Insightfully, Schneider points to a number of theorists, including Creed, who
see the horror lm as a repository of male castration anxieties and (patriarchal)
fears around female sexuality. Other theorists, such as Neale, in Genre, focus
on the male monster, although female sexuality is to blame for the psycho-
sexual pathology of the male killer. Womens sexuality, Neale argues, renders
them desirable but also threatening to men, thereby constituting the main
problem of horror, and that which is seen as really monstrous (1980: 61).
Utilising the theory of the male gaze, as laid down by Mulvey in Visual
Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) and the later Afterthoughts on Visual
Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1981), feminist interpretations of the genre
such as those espoused by Clover (1992), Creed (1993) and Williams (1984)
focus on the gendered assumptions behind representations of the monstrous
in horror lm, using theories of absence and lack derived from Freud and
Lacan. Schneider writes:
According to this paradigm, the threat of castration (absence and lack)
posed by images of the female form in Hollywood cinema is contained
through a sexualised objectication of that form, whether fetishistic-
scopophilic (woman displayed as erotic spectacle, rendered unthreatening
by the controlling male look) or sadistic-voyeuristic (woman investigated,
demystied, and eventually controlled through punishment) in nature.
(Schneider 2004: 5)
This type of approach to horror lm can be reductive, especially if it is utilised
unproblematically in the study of non-Western forms of horror, as Totaro
points out in her article The Final Girl: A Few Thoughts on Feminism and
Horror, in which she writes, American horror, like its popular culture in
general, is generally prudish and too deeply entrenched in a Puritan past to
really engage in sexuality, which is so important to the horror lm (2002).
As the theoretical approaches to horror lm criticism, as we have seen,
operate almost exclusively using the form of American horror cinema as
the paradigmatic example, it becomes difcult to adapt these wholesale to
Japanese cinema without erasing historical, cultural and racial diference. In
the Preface to McRoys Japanese Horror Cinema, Sharratt points out that, in
the projection of nihilism, Japanese horror represents a view that is a rejection
of social transformation long embodied in the western horror lm (2005: xiii).
i ntroduction 7
In addition, McRoy foregrounds the complexity of the socio-political context
which provides the background to modern Japanese horror cinema, referring
to:
a myriad of complex political, social and ecological issues, including
but by no means limited to apprehensions over the impact of western
cultural and military imperialism, and the struggle to establish a coherent
and distinctly Japanese national identity. (2005: 1)
In Nightmare Japan: Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema, McRoy contextu-
alises Japanese horror cinema as a sub-genre of New Asian Horror (2008: 3).
He argues that As a substantial component of Japanese popular culture, horror
lms allow artists an avenue through which they may apply visual and narrative
metaphors in order to engage aesthetically with a rapidly transforming social
and cultural landscape (2008: 4). However, the emphasis on directorial visions
and extreme cinema means that, while McRoys book covers some of the same
ground as this book, it does so in a substantially diferent manner.
Not only traditional theatrical forms such as N and Kabuki, but also belief
in the supernatural, as embedded in both Buddhism and Shint alongside
a rich tradition in cultural mythology, have inuenced the development of
Japanese horror lm. Perhaps most crucial are Japans experiences during the
Second World War and the subsequent Allied Occupation, the trauma of which
underlies many, if not all, Japanese horror lms from the 1950s onwards, as
demonstrated through the prevalence of the discourse of hibakusha (female
victims of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) as one of the dening
features of modern Japanese horror cinema. In Shocking Representation,
Lowenstein argues that to speak of historical trauma, is to recognise events
as wounds. He continues, Auschwitz. Hiroshima. Vietnam. These are names
associated with specic places and occurrences, but they are also wounds in the
fabric of culture and history that bleed through conventional connes of time
and space (Lowenstein 2005: 1). It is necessary therefore to locate cinematic
texts historically and culturally rather than using a grand narrative that can
erase diferences. This historical trauma as Lowenstein points out can help
to think through theoretical impasses in lm theory (2005: 2).
Finally, Kawais discussion of Japanese fairy tales in The Japanese Psyche:
Major Motifs in the Fairy Tales of Japan is particularly insightful and can help
explain the specic cultural context and intertexts of horror cinema. Kawai
argues that, While fairy tales have a universal nature, they concurrently
manifest culture-bound characteristics (1996: 3). The same is true of horror
cinema.
ORIGINS/THEMES/CONVENTIONS
This book focuses on the origins, themes and conventions of Japanese horror
cinema from 1950 to date. It is divided into two broad sections, the rst of
which considers the origin of contemporary Japanese horror lm during
and in the aftermath of the Second World War. The forced modernisation
of Japan, while largely an economic success, had a profound social efect on
Japans sense of nationhood and identity as diferent from the West. Japans
incomplete modernity is often embodied within the gure of the pre-modern
monster, a revenant of traditional Japanese culture and mythology, in the horror
lm, which threatens apocalypse and disaster. In addition, the imposition of
democratic values on what was still a largely feudal state, with the emperor at
the centre, caused social and cultural anxieties around the demise of tradition,
as embedded in the ie system of obligations and duties that determined
relationships. Untrammelled individualism is often the cause of horror, as in
Tales of Ugetsu (Mizoguchi: 1953) and The Ghost Story of Yotsuya (Nakagawa:
1959). In addition, unrestrained appetites, linked with commodication and
materialism, also lead to death, as in The Empire of Passion (shima: 1978).
The gure of the salaryman, along with that of the absent father, embody
anxieties negotiated in lms such as The Discarnates (Obayashi: 1988) and
Vengeance is Mine (Imamura: 1979). Internet and mobile technologies wall
in individuals, isolating them and killing them, as can be seen in lms like
Suicide Circle (Sono: 2002). The increase in domestic violence as a result of the
recession provides the major theme in contemporary lms, including Ju-On:
The Grudge. Absent mothers, bad fathers, and abused children seem to be all
too present in Japanese horror lms such as Ring and Carved: A Slit-Mouthed
Woman (Shiraishi: 2007).
In addition, as much of Japanese horror, especially in the 1970s and 1980s,
was concerned with sexual violence, issues around gender representation and
the theme of rape as a major trope in Japanese culture are explored in some
detail. In order to do so, the book focuses on the manner in which cultural
mythology and folktales, including traditional archetypes such as the tragic
lovers, the wronged woman and the vengeful ghost, have provided a
mechanism through which to negotiate transformations in the social and
political structure of Japan from the early 1950s to date.
Part 1
Origins
1
Laying the Foundations
First the enthusiastic acceptance of a new idea, then a period of reaction
against it, and nally the complete assimilation and transformation of
the idea to Japanese patterns. (Anderson and Richie 1982: 34)
I
n their analysis of Japanese culture, Anderson and Richie delimit three
stages by which ideas become incorporated into the Japanese worldview:
acceptance, assimilation and transformation. However, as we have seen, this
is a two-way process, as shown by the inuence of Japanese decorative art and
aesthetics, or Japonisme, on the West in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. At the same time, there can be little doubt that Western ideas and
beliefs, as well as cultural forms, have had an impact on Japan, especially during
the Allied Occupation that followed Japans defeat in the Second World War. It
would seem that the pendulum has swung back again, with the popularity of
the super-at aesthetics of artists such as Murakami, who designed the cover
for Kanye Wests recent number one single Stronger (2007), video games such
as Silent Hill and Resident Evil (originally titled Biohazard for its Japanese
release in 1996), anime and manga not forgetting, of course, Japanese horror
cinema.
Without doubt, the growth of the studio system in Japan in the early
twentieth century owed as much to the model of Hollywood cinema as it did to
the emphasis on genre, especially during and after the Allied Occupation. State
Shint, which placed the emperor at the centre of a complex system of obliga-
tions and duties, based upon Confucian concepts of loyalty, was abolished.
In its place Western democratic values and structures were imposed by the
Allied powers, transforming Japans political infrastructure beyond recog-
nition. These profound socio-political changes impacted on material social
relations, and were expressed in the cultural landscape as a tension between
the pre-modern and the modern, communalism and individualism, Japanese
12 i noduion o jns oo fi lm
tradition and Western democracy. This conict not only is a dominant theme
of Japanese horror cinema in the 1950s, but also is perhaps the very condition
of its emergence. At the same time, Japanese horror cinema is inuenced as
much by Japanese traditional theatrical forms, including N and Kabuki, as
it is by the West. This chapter explores the relationship between Japanese
cinema, traditional aesthetic and theatrical forms, and the West in the rst part
of the twentieth century until the early 1950s and provides the foundation for
subsequent chapters.
THE STUDIO SYSTEM
The silent Japanese lm industry was closely connected with the
theatre industry, and drew on the theatrical repertoire for its narratives
and performance styles. Popular stage hits, as well as popular novels, were
adapted to screen, and exhibited in theatres alongside the live perfor-
mances of a star dramatic narrator and musicians. Japanese adaptations
of European and American stories were also made, but shifted to Japanese
locations and peopled by Japanese characters. (Freiberg 2000)
Following the success of magic lantern shows in the late 1890s (mainly imported
from France), the rst cinematograph was introduced into Japan in 1897, and
in 1899 a screening of the rst Japanese lm was shown at the Kabuki-za (a
Kabuki theatre in Ginza, Tokyo). Kabuki, one of the foremost traditional
Japanese theatrical forms, would provide rich material for the burgeoning art
of the visual image and would become the template for many Japanese horror
lms since. Surprisingly, although Kabuki was originally the theatre of the
ordinary people and working classes unlike N, which was aimed at the
ruling classes the rst lm screened at Kabuki-za was shown solely to royalty
and the upper classes.
The development of the studio system in the 1920s and 1930s, analogous in
many ways to that associated with early Hollywood, would enable lms to be
seen by a much wider demographic group as well as maximising protability. As
Chaudhuri writes, The base for Japans prolic production until the 1970s was
its studio system, run along similar lines (oligopoly and vertical integration)
to the Hollywood studio system (2005: 102). However, while most Hollywood
directors had little or no power in terms of choice of material, with the selection
of their crew, including the cinematographer, being made from the contract
employees of the studio, in Japan the director system meant that directors were
able to gather around them teams of people whom they trusted and would
be associated with for most, if not all of their careers. Ozu is a case in point,
with Yuharu Atsuta (cinematographer), Yoshisaburo Senoo (sound engineer),
lyi ng foundions 13
Tatsuo Hamada (art direction) and Yoshiyasu Hamamura (editor), remaining
an integral part of Ozus team for nearly ten years. As Knowles writes, The
studio system, moreover, emphasized the ultimate authority of the director, as
opposed to Hollywoods more producer-oriented system (2002).
The oldest lm company, Nikkatsu, was founded in 1912, and divided
production between its Kyoto and Tokyo studios. The Kyoto studio concen-
trated on traditional period dramas, jidaigeki, while the Tokyo studio focused
on contemporary dramas, or gendaigeki, set after 1868. These days Nikkatsu
is remembered more for its roman porno (romantic pornography) of the 1960s
and 1970s. Nikkatsu would eventually close its doors for good in 1988.
In 1920, Shchiku was founded. Originally a theatre playhouse, the
Kabuki-za, established by Takejiro Otani, it would become one of the most
protable studios, associated with directors such as Yasujiro Ozu and Akira
Kurosawa, and more recently Miike, of Audition and Ichi the Killer. In
opposition to traditional historical dramas, Shchiku saw the evolution of
shingeki, a radical movement in the theatrical arts and cinema inuenced by
Europe and the West. Shchiku released a prospectus, which clearly indicated
the aim of utilising the latest and most ourishing of the Occidental cinema
(cited in Anderson and Richie 1982: 41). Shchiku was also the rst to use
actresses, rather than onnagata (male actors dressed as women). In the 1930s,
after the coming of sound, Shchiku would come to be most associated with
shomingeki, issue-led dramas about the lower middle classes, while Nikkatsu
developed socially informed dramas in modern settings (McDonald 2006: 5).
By the late 1920s, Shchiku and Nikkatsu had a stranglehold on the
exhibition of lms in Japan, owning over three-quarters of theatres. This
allowed the Big Two to compete efectively with Hollywood, often screening
domestic products alongside Hollywood lms. At the same time, linguistic and
cultural barriers meant that Hollywood lms were less easily consumed by
Japan than in the West (Freiberg 2000). But in 1923 the Great Kant earth-
quake devastated Tokyo and much of the surrounding area, almost calling a
total halt to domestic lm production and boosting sales of imported lm.
The strength of the Japanese studio system is clearly demonstrated by the fact
that, within a year, domestic lms accounted once more for most of the lms
screened (Wyver 1989: 151).
In 1936, the business tycoon and owner of Hankuo Railway, Ichizo
Kobayashi, founded Th. Kobayashi bought two other lm companies, and
built a large production studio in Kinuta. Abandoning the star system, which
was the driving factor in Japanese cinema at the time, Kobayashi established
a producer-based approach to cinematic production. Examples of popular
genres at Th were vaudeville-style comedy and musical genres (McDonald
2006: 5). Before the Second World War, Th was the largest producer of
propaganda pictures. After the Second World War Th would give birth to
14 i nodui on o jns oo fi lm
the most perennial of all movie monsters in Godzilla, who rst emerged from
the watery depths in Hondas groundbreaking Godzilla in 1954, marking the
beginning of the popular kaijueiga (monster) genre.
Ten years later, the Japanese government created Daiei Studio by
co nsolidating the production studios of Shinko, Daito and Nikkatsu, with
Nikkatsu remaining as an independent distribution company. In 1947,
Daiei nanced a separate cinematic production company called Shinth.
Due to the success of Three Hundred and Sixty Nights (Ichikawa: 1948) a
melodrama about a love triangle between two girls and a boy Shinth was
able to distribute its lms itself and eventually gained independence from
Th. Shinth would be known for popular genre lms including action
lms and thrillers. Due to competition from foreign lms and from television,
Daiei went bankrupt in 1971, only to emerge as Kadokawa Pictures in 2002,
renamed Kadokawa Herald Pictures when it merged with Herald Pictures in
March 2006.
Tei, founded in 1956, remains one of Japans most important studios, as
evidenced in the statistics for 2005, which show that Tei produced nine out of
the ten best-selling lms in Japan. Noted worldwide for its animation division,
Tei is the home of Hayao Miyazaki, director of such international hits as
Spirited Away (2001) and Howls Moving Castle (2004).
Davis argues that independent lms have overtaken studio-produced
lms, writing that 234 out of 287 total lms released in 2003 were techni-
cally independents (2006: 194). But the distinction between independent and
studio lms is not as easily identiable as in the US, as Domenig points out:
The term independent, i.e. independent of the big studios, has become
almost meaningless nowadays, at least on the production level. The
studios Shochiku, Toei and Toho make very few in-house productions
and participate in barely a dozen lms as co-producers annually. (2004)
A brief discussion of the Japanese New Wave helps to illuminate the
relationship between studios and independent productions. Earlier attempts
at independent lm in the 1920s and in the late 1940s were doomed to failure,
as they were unable to compete efectively with studio-produced lms. In
fact, independent lm was totally squeezed out of the market in 1959 at the
apex of the studio system, when there was not one independent production
(Domenig 2004). However, Shchiku was the main nancier of the Art
Theatre Guild (ATG) (Nihon ato shiata undo no kai). Even the Japanese New
Wave (Nuberu bagu), unlike its counterpart the French New Wave or Nouvelle
Vague, originated within rather than outside the studio system. While ATGs
primary purpose was the exhibition of foreign lms, it also allowed directors
considerably more freedom than under the studio system. shimas animated
lying foundi ons 15
manga, Band of Ninja (1967), which innovatively used manga panels instead
of lm stills, was one of the rst lms to be distributed and exhibited through
ATG. And in the 1960s, independent pink cinema (pinku eiga) outperformed
studio productions struggling to compete with television and foreign cinema.
Pink cinema would prove to be the saviour of the main studios, including
Nikkatsu, as independent eroductions were transformed into sexploitation
cinema.
Just as the studio system inuenced the production of lms, it was tradi-
tional Japanese art forms, and in particular theatre, that would inuence the
shape and form of these lms.
FROM STAGE TO SCREEN
Performers and directors moved back and forth between the two enter-
tainment media, popular plays were adapted to screen, theatrical genres
and performance styles were employed in the cinema, and the two largest
lm companies of the late 1930s, Shochiku and Toho, were part of giant
entertainment complexes with major theatre interests, companies that
derived their prots from live theatre as well as movies. (Freiberg 2000)
Early Japanese cinema had a tendency towards the theatrical, utilising tradi-
tional Japanese dramatic forms including Kabuki, N and Bunraku (puppet
theatre), elements of which persist through to contemporary Japanese cinema,
including the horror genre. All three dramatic arts were derived from travelling
storytellers who used a biwa (a type of short-necked lute) to accompany the
relating of their stories. The biwa would later be replaced by the shamisen (a
three-stringed instrument like a guitar), and would form a central part of the
performance in Kabuki theatre. Both Kabuki and Bunraku can be traced to
the Tokugawa Period (16001867). From 1734 onwards, Bunrakus life-size
puppets have required three men (although recently women have been allowed
to train and work in Bunraku) to operate them: one puppeteer who controls the
movements of the legs, the other the left arm and any props needed, and nally
the master puppeteer who controls the puppets facial expressions and right
arm movement. The master puppeteer is the only one visible, as the other two
wear black and have hoods covering their faces.
Japans most famous playwright, Chikamatsu (16531724), has often been
compared to Shakespeare. Chikamatsus plays were either historical dramas
relating the tragedy of following societys rigid rules (jidaigeki), or plays about
contemporary situations (gendaimono) in which choosing personal happiness
over lial and feudal loyalty often led to suicide. Tragic lovers, doomed to
be together only in death, were a dominant trope in Chikamatsus work, and
tales of these inuenced Japanese horror cinema, particularly in the 1950s and
1960s.
Chikamatsu was a prolic playwright who wrote 130 plays, mainly for Kabuki
but in the latter 20 years of his life for Bunraku. Two of Chikamatsus most
famous plays are The Love Suicides at Sonezaki (1703) and The Love Suicides
at Amijima (1721), both Bunraku plays. Shinodams Double Suicide (1969) is
based upon the latter Chikamatsu play, and merges elements of Bunraku with
live action. Similarly, Kitanos Dolls (2002) begins with a scene from a tradi-
tional Bunraku puppet play, which mirrors the themes of love and sacrice,
integral to the work of Chikamatsu, updated to a modern society in which three
intertwining narratives play out. The lm ends with the double suicide (often a
central trope of doomed love in Chikamatsus plays) of the main characters, a
pair of leased beggars joined together with a thick red rope, whose love places
them outside the regulatory boundaries of Japanese society.
Like Bunraku, Kabuki is a formative inuence on both early and contem-
porary Japanese cinema. One of the most famous Kabuki plays, which has been
adapted for the screen no less than thirty times, is The Ghost Story of Yotsuya,
rst performed in 1826. The rst lm adaptation was by Makino in 1912, but
the most famous is the 1959 Nakagawa version. Interestingly enough, a temple
priestess invented Kabuki, and yet it quickly became a patriarchal (male-
centred) art form, with all the female parts being played by men (onnagata)
after the reigning Shogun put a stop to women being entertainers.
Kabuki and Bunraku share obvious similarities: the use of richly decorated
costumes, the shamisen providing mournful and emotive music to accompany
the unfolding events, and highly decorative make-up used to signify both
character type and internal emotion. However, the component elements of
Kabuki would have more of an impact on the newly minted art form of the
moving image. In particular, the use of a revolving stage (kabuki no butai)
allowed the seamless and uninterrupted ow of the story with no need for
halting the narrative in order to change the scenery. In The Ghost Cat of Otama
Pond (Ishikawa: 1960) the camera is used to mimic the revolving stage, joining
together present and past in one owing circular motion from right to left. The
stage itself in Kabuki was particularly suited to ghost stories, with a number
of trapdoors (seri) beneath the stage allowing ghostly apparitions to emerge
at will. Further, the Kabuki stage has a passageway (hanamichi) coming out
into the auditorium at right angles, dissolving the spatial distance between the
actors and the spectators. The hanamichi allowed actors spectacular exits, and
they would stop at a certain point down the passageway (known as shichisan),
using exaggerated poses and expressions to draw the attention of the spectators
to themselves. Depending on the play, the hanamichi could signify a body of
water, a corridor, a road: in short, any type of passage between one place and
the next.
lying foundi ons 17
In many ways Kabuki provided the raw elements of cinema with these
exaggerated poses, comparable to the freeze frame and stop-motion cinema-
tography. Another integral element of Kabuki is the use of sound. As already
mentioned, Kabuki utilises the shamisen to provide musical accompaniment
(shamisenongaku), played by musicians on a raised platform at the back of the
stage. The use of make-up and costume, again as in Bunraku, completes what
are known as the four elements of Kabuki. There are more than fty types
of make-up used to signify character and emotion in Kabuki. Colours are
central to the meaning-making system, with red signifying youth and justice,
whilst blue, black and brown are used for monsters and wicked people. The
nal element of Kabuki is the stunning costumes rich, highly decorated
kimonos, noted for their beauty and complexity. However, in contemporary
Japan, Kabuki is seen by some critics as an outmoded form, as a consequence
of its highly formal language.
Whilst both Kabuki and Bunraku are popular theatrical forms, N is
associated with the upper classes and has its origins in the fourteenth century.
N is highly stylised, combines music, poetry, drama and dance, and is particu-
larly noted for its use of masks. Like Greek plays, N utilises the mechanics of
a chorus (jiutai) to narrate the background to the story and at times to express
the emotions and feelings of the characters on stage. Music in N is called
nogaku and consists of traditional Japanese musical instruments such as the
tsuzumi drum and hayashi ute. Unlike Kabuki, N used to be performed on
an outside stage with a roof supported by four pillars; however, during the
Meiji Era (18681912), indoor stages were created which attempted to recreate
the ambience of the outdoors.
There are ve main types of N play, each distinguished by type of character:
gods; warriors; beautiful women; mad women or contemporary and other
types of gures; and nally ghosts and demons. Traditionally, a N perfor-
mance would consist of a highly ritualised set piece called Okina-Sanbaso,
followed by a play of each type in order, and would take place over the whole
day. Central to N is transformation from human to ghost or other super-
natural entity with the duplicity of being articulated through the use of highly
stylised masks. The only character not to wear a mask in N is the secondary
character known as the waki because, unlike the central character, the shite, the
waki is the only character to be human. In many cases, the waki would take the
form of a wandering priest whose journeys would bring him into contact with
these strange supernatural beings. Often in early Japanese horror, the gure
of the waki, or wandering priest would function in a highly symbolic manner,
appearing to warn the main character(s) of the appearance of a ghost and/or
curses. A variation on the waki can be found in Tales of Ugetsu, The Ghost Cat
of Otama Pond and Kurosawas Sweet Home (1989).
As in Kabuki, men played female roles in N until very recently. Focusing on
emotion rather than plot, N would mainly recreate scenes from well-known
traditional literary works, such as The Tale of the Heike (Heike monogatari).
The Tale of the Heike is an example of what is called in Japan gunki monogatari
(military tales in which the core themes were loyalty, sacrice and honour).
Some N plays took the form of historical dramas, with a dead character
returning to the scene of a terrible defeat, re-enacting the scene through dance
and/or song. In the award-winning Kwaidan (Kobayashi: 1964), an anthology
of four stories based upon traditional ghost stories, we can see the inuence of
N. In Mimi-nashi-Hoichi (Hoichi the Earless), the third segment of the
lm, a blind man, famed for playing the biwa, is entreated by a retainer to visit
his lord to play the story of the Battle of Dan-no-ura (the last battle between
the Heike and the Genji, in which the Heike perished). What Hoichi does not
realise is that the lord and his entourage are in fact ghosts of Heike. On an open
platform, such as would be used in the Edo Period to stage N plays, Hoichi
plays the biwa night after night, retelling in song the dreadful tale of the defeat
as the ghosts of the Heike watch and the drama of their loss unfolds, through
both song and image. The dead are not necessarily gures of horror, as we will
see in the following chapters, but tragic sufering entities unable to come to
terms with their defeat or the untimely manner of their deaths.
N is marked by restrained understatement and abstraction as compared
to Kabuki. Dance and poetry, in conjunction with masks, are used to express
emotion rather than narrative or dialogue. Plot is not as important in N as
it is in Bunraku or Kabuki. Just as with Bunraku and Kabuki, the inuence
of N could be found in both early Japanese cinema and the horror genre,
in particular. Kuroneko (1968) and Onibaba (1964), both directed by Shind,
contain visual references to N. In Kuroneko, as Shige (Kiwako Taichi) attacks
her male victims, the lm cuts away to her mother-in-law, Yone (Nobuko
Otowa), performing a N dance in the background. In Onibaba, a woman
(Nobuko Otowa) and her daughter-in-law ( Jitsuko Yoshimura) nd themselves
forced to kill and steal from warriors returning from the war in order to feed
themselves in the absence of any patriarchal gure to take care of the household.
The daughter-in-law nds herself attracted to a deserter, Hachi (Kei Sato),
and starts a passionate afair with him, much to the older womans horror. One
day, the jealous older woman steals a demonic mask from a passing Samurai
in order to frighten her daughter-in-law and put a stop to her passionate afair
with Hachi. Her plan works to begin with, but slowly the mask takes over the
woman; try as she might, she is unable to remove it. In the tradition of N, the
mask is an external expression of the internal self, as outer appearance is in fact
inner subjectivity. Onibaba falls into the fourth category of N play, which deals
with mad women and other miscellaneous characters. As in N, the dialogue
is sparse in Onibaba; instead the lm relies on performance as spectacle to
motivate the story of jealousy, lust, passion and revenge. Hand stresses the
lying foundi ons 19
centrality of traditional theatrical forms to Japanese horror cinema:
An argument can be advanced that the Japanese horror lm draws on
the storylines, structures, performance practices and iconography of
traditional theatre as much on the traditions and mechanisms of western
horror. (2005: 22)
The inuences of theatre on cinema were many. First and foremost was the
gure of the benshi, adopted from Bunraku. Rather than onscreen intertitles,
Japanese lms utilised a narrator or benshi, who from an of-stage position
would relate the story of the lm, acting out all the diferent character roles.
This allowed the assertion of the spectacular form of the cinematic image.
Freiberg comments:
By relieving the lm text of the need to narrate a story, he enabled
Japanese lm-makers to concentrate on extra-narrative embellishments
of the visual text, on surface play, and thus transgress the norms of
Hollywood-style narrative efciency (continuity editing, crisply cut to
tell a story, shot-reverse-shot dialogue exchanges, eyeline matching, use
of 90 degree shooting space). (2000)
By February 1927, there were 7,500 benshi (Freiberg 2000). Benshi became
stars, with fan followings, and could command a great deal of money for their
performance. In many cases people went to the cinema, not to see the lm, but
to listen to the benshis interpretation of the lm. The benshi became so powerful
that Japan was later than other countries in introducing sound to lm. Silent
lm also used male actors in female parts (onnagata), as did Kabuki and N,
although this practice had been abandoned by 1923. McDonald argues that
the three characteristics of early Japanese cinema were the use of onnagata, the
benshi as narrator and nally the centre-front long take which followed strict
continuity guidelines (2006: 2).
In addition, one of the most overt connections between theatre and early
cinema was, following the practice of Kabuki theatre, the division of cinema
into two main genres: the jidaigeki and the gendaimono. These two genres were
diferent not only in terms of time period, but also in terms of location. The
jidaigeki were set in Kyoto, Japans former capital, with its temples, castles and
decorative gardens, whilst the gendaimono were set in the urban megalopolis of
Tokyo with its high rises, neon lights, ofce blocks and restaurants. In addition
to this, it was common for lms to use theatrical actors: Kabuki-trained
actors for the period lms and Shimpa (New-Wave Meiji-Era theatre, largely
melodramatic)-trained actors for contemporary lms. (Freiberg 2000). Stars
of Kabuki and Shimpa became the rst stars of the silver screen.
Hollywood cinema and the coming of sound would irrevocably change the
style and form of Japanese cinema; the benshi became redundant and the use of
single xed shots was supplanted by the mobile camera, tracking shots, quick
editing and cross-cutting, while the close-up was added to the Japanese lmic
vocabulary. The rst Japanese lm to show the inuence of American cinema
directly was the realist melodrama, Souls on the Road (Murata), in 1921. Souls
on the Road introduced the close-up to Japanese cinema, bringing with it a
sense of intimacy and humanism that was new to audiences, used to the static
shots and presentational perspective of the xed camera along the imaginary
fourth wall. Freiberg writes:
In the late 1920s, fast cutting, dramatic angles and moving camera were
increasingly employed in jidai-geki, and swordplay scenes became
much more exciting, in part through studying the action and shooting
style of the Hollywood western. But the stories were taken from the
Japanese theatre late kabuki plays about the escapades of disreputable
ronin and yakuza and popular sentimental plays about wandering outlaws
(the sub-genre known as matatabi-mono); and the swaggering gait, wild
grimaces and macho posturing of the heroes in scenes of confrontation
followed by the aragoto style of Kabuki performers. (2000)
TRANSFORMATIONS
Narrative as such is not foreign to Japanese tradition; it is, on the contrary,
omnipresent, but its modes are radically diferent from ours in kabuki
and the doll theatre the primary narrative dimension is isolated, set apart
from the rest of the theatrical substance, designated as one function amongst
others. In the West on the other hand, since the eighteenth century, our
major narrative arts the novel, the theatre and more recently the cinema
have tended towards a kind of narrative saturation; every element is aimed
at conveying, at expressing, a narrative essence. (Burch 1979: 78)
Burch argues for the specicity of Japanese cinema in terms of its approach
to narrative. Indeed, the use of the benshi in early Japanese cinema meant that,
as in Bunraku, narrative was separate to spectacle, rather than an integral
component of it. Famous benshi were well known for embellishing narratives
and thus transforming their meanings. In these terms, early Japanese cinema,
before sound, was presentational rather than representational. It was, however,
the outbreak of the Second World War which would ultimately have the
biggest impact on the direction that Japanese cinema would take in the 1940s
and 1950s.
lyi ng foundi ons 21
In 1939, in response to the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France
declared war on Germany, marking the beginning of the Second World War.
The war was subsequently fought on two fronts: in Europe and in Asia. On 4
December 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The following day the United
States declared on war on Japan. It would take two atomic bombs, the rst on
Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, and the second on Nagasaki just three days later,
to bring an end to the war in the Pacic. The Allied Forces insisted on uncon-
ditional surrender from the Japanese, the worst possible result for a nation that
favoured honourable death over defeat. Between 1945 and 1952, the former
colonial power of Japan became itself a colonised power, occupied by the Allied
Forces. The trauma of defeat left scars on Japans national psyche which have
never fully gone away, and many horror lms from the 1950s onwards would use
the scarred face of the archetypical Japanese wronged woman, Oiwa, to signal
metonymically the continuing impact of the Second World War on Japan.
The occupation of Japan would have a signicant impact on the direction
of Japanese cinema. Traditional Japanese lms dealing with issues of honour,
feudal loyalty and community were largely banned in favour of a more
democratic product modelled on the lines of Hollywood cinema. Often this
would be expressed as a conict between the pre-modern and the modern, the
Japanese ie system and the democratic values of the West. The domestic drama
was perhaps the most open to Hollywood inuence, as it was the least tradi-
tional of Japanese lm genres (Freiberg 2000). In addition to this, audiences
would have been widely exposed to American lms as they premiered on
double bills with Japanese lms. As in Hollywood, lm was carefully policed by
a set of regulations, which were introduced in Japan in 1917. These regulations
were put in place to ensure that no lm would in any way at all undermine the
emperor; contain obscene references; focus on inappropriate sexual relation-
ships between people; and show criminal violence. In 1925, responsibility for
ensuring the propriety of Japanese lm and its adherence to the regulations
was placed under the control of the Ministry of the Interior.
Censorship in Japan, as elsewhere, had an impact on Japanese cinema, with
Article 175 of the Penal Code becoming law in 1907. Article 175 regulated the
sale, distribution and possession of obscene images, with a ne or up to two
years in prison for breaking the law. The law was vague as to what constituted
obscenity, with denitions changing over time. For example, in 1920 obscenity
was considered to be anything that went against national policy. Yet by the
1960s, obscenity was xated on female genital hair which, as Allison points
out, is a paradox in a society predicated on masculine potency and female
violation, and given the ubiquity of sadomasochistic imagery: Imagining a
woman tied up, held down, or forcibly penetrated is acceptable, in other words,
whereas revealing the reality of her pubic hair is not (Allison 1998: 195).
The lms of the Japanese New Wave would challenge traditional
interpretations of obscenity, as did pink cinema: for example, in the furore
over the explicit scenes of sex and violence in shimas Empire of the Senses
(1976), based upon the true story of Sada Abe (which took place in 1936),
whose sadomasochistic relationship with her married lover, Kichizo Ishida,
concluded in his death and castration during sex. Sada was eventually arrested
after being found to be carrying Ishidas penis in her kimono sash. shima was
charged with obscenity. In particular, the close-up shots of male and female
genitalia were considered to be particularly repugnant to the Japanese sensi-
bility. Even in the pink lm, with its soft-core pornographic visuals, genitalia
could not be viewed and female pubic hair was always airbrushed out of any
sex sequences. In 1982, the charges against shima were dismissed and the
ruling allowed the more explicit representation of sex and sexuality in Japanese
cinema.
However, censorship represented the incorporation and transformation of
Western values, rather than an inherent sense of decorum vis--vis the sexua-
lised body. Shints carnivalesque approach to sexuality can be clearly seen in
the myth of the Sun Goddess Amaterasus concealment. In the myth Amaterasu
is persuaded out of the cave where she is hiding from her brother, Susanoo,
by the laughter of the Gods when they catch sight of Goddess Amenouzumes
genitalia (Kawai 1996: 501). With the arrival of Admiral Perry in 1853,
Japans borders opened up to the West, and the concern was that such images
would give an impression of Japan as morally lax and primitive. It was this
that directly led to the regulation of sexuality and images associated with sex.
Allison writes:
To counteract this negative image of its culture not based on Japanese
categories of morality or social mores but Eurocentric ones stemming
from Judeo-Christian ideology, the Japanese government imposed regula-
tions on such customary practices as mixed bathing In order to gain
face as a modern nation, in other words, Japan inscribed shame where
it had not been located before: onto body parts and bodily functions
regarded as natural by Japanese traditions. (1998: 197)
As already mentioned, female pubic hair became in modern Japan a particular
source of anxiety, constructed as obscene in that the sight of a stray pubic
hair was considered enough to provoke sexual excitement (Allison 1998: 200).
Allison argues that this (patriarchal) anxiety over female pubic hair can be
explained in terms of gender relationships in Japan, which seek to infantilise
women and codify male dominance over the female as object.
In Japan in the 1920s, as elsewhere, there were concerns over the tension
between cinema as entertainment and cinema as education and purveyor of
public morality. In Japan, there were two main categories that caused anxiety:
lying foundi ons 23
ko-an (issues relating to public security) and fuzoko (issues relating to public
morality) (Freiberg 2000). The left-wing tendencies of some lms in the 1920s
were of particular concern to censors. The Prokino (Proletarian Film League
of Japan) movement, founded in 1929 and inuenced in particular by Soviet
Film, aimed to produce lms (documentaries mainly, but also ction lms)
that examined the realistic lives of working-class people and documented
historical events of importance. The Prokino was outlawed in 1933, but these
leftist tendencies would re-emerge in the New Wave cinema of the 1960s, and
many of the horror lms of the decade, such as Pitfall (Teshigahara: 1962) and
Kwaidan, would utilise codes and conventions of horror in order to criticise
modernity and capitalism obliquely.
In the 1930s fear of a foreign invasion and corruption by Western consum-
erist society shifted the direction of lm production towards national propa-
ganda emphasising traditional Japanese values of self-sacrice. This, however,
would shift in the aftermath of the Second World War and the subsequent
Allied Occupation. Alongside political and economic reform, the Allied
Occupation regulated the output of Japanese cinema, making it unlawful to
produce lms that in any way valorised the old feudal system and gloried
military history. The Civil Censorship Division, formed by the Supreme
Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), listed types of lm that could be
made in order to ensure that Japan will never in the future disturb the peace
of the world. These regulations restricted:
anything infused with militarism, revenge, nationalism, or antifor-
eignism; distortion of history; approval of racial or religious discrimi-
nation; favouring or approving feudal loyalty or treating human life
lightly; direct or indirect approval of suicide; approval or oppression
or degradation of wives; admiration of cruelty or unjust violence; anti-
democratic opinion; exploitation of children; and any opposition to the
Potsdam Declaration or any SCAP order. (cited in Tucker 1973: 334)
Instead, Western values of democratic freedom and individual expression were
imposed on Japanese cinema.

As Standish explains, The CIE [Civil Infor-
mation and Education Service] sought to encourage the development of ideals
associated with American democracy while preventing the media from
disseminating anything considered unsuitable or dangerous to the Occupation
Government (2005: 155).
In particular, Kabuki narratives, with their emphasis on feudal loyalty
and themes of revenge and self-sacrice, came in for criticism. According to
Standish, one of the main perceived obstacles to the so-called democratisation
of Japan was identied by ofcials as an inherent conict between Japanese
Neo-Confucian-derived concepts of loyalty and revenge on the one hand, and
the Western-derived concepts of the rule of law based upon universal concepts
of good and bad (2005: 157). Consequently, jidaigeki lms, with their sword-
ghting sequences (kengeki), were prohibited. Traditional Japanese drama,
Kabuki and Bunraku, with their feudal settings and codes of loyalty towards
ones superiors, were also banned. However, plays and lms managed to
circum vent these restrictions and continued to relate traditional stories. One
way of doing this was to change the historical period by situating the action
in the Meiji Period. Another way was to copy foreign sources. Remakes of
Frank Capras lms were particularly popular, as Anderson and Richie explain:
Kiyohiko Ushiharas A Popular Man in Town (Machi no ninkimono) took
direct inspiration from Meet John Doe, and Naruses The Descendents of Taro
Urashima (Urashima taro no koei) was indebted to Mr. Smith goes to Washington
(1982: 175).
At the same time, the Occupation saw the liberalisation of traditional
Japanese values towards sexuality, which, as we have seen, were paradoxically
constructed in relation to the West. Both Anderson and Richie (1982: 176) and
Standish (2005: 1625) point out that the cinematic kiss was one result of new,
more liberal values during the Occupation. Previously, even in Japanese lms
with romantic overtones, couples were never seen kissing. On May 1946, two
lms opened simultaneously: Yasakis Twenty-Year-Old-Youth and Chibas A
Certain Nights Kiss, both of which featured (heterosexual) kissing, giving birth
to the seppun eiga (kissing lm). Standish suggests that lms of the 1940s and
1950s denied questions of sexual and gender diference through the exclusion
of woman in narratives. The promotion of romance by the Occupation Forces,
as symbolised by the cinematic kiss, was to a certain extent an attempt by the
American censors to make the private public, thereby making the Japanese less
inscrutable a stereotype that still has currency today and therefore less
able to remain secretive in the eyes of the West. In these terms, in keeping
with democratic ideologies of capitalism and the mechanics of the system
of exchange, the scripts of masculinity and femininity that are at the heart of
Western social and capitalist exchange had to be relearned (Standish 2005:
164). The myth of romance, as embodied by the cinematic kiss, became a
mechanism through which dominant (heterosexual) constructions of sexuality
are dened, negotiated, learnt and perpetuated and as such, romance was
actively re-inscribed within the traditions of Japanese post-war popular culture
(Standish 2005: 165). This myth of romance, used as a way of re-establishing
traditional values, can be seen in foundational horror lms such as Godzilla
and Tales of Ugetsu. It is hardly surpising that, when the Japanese New Wave
came to challenge traditional values in the 1960s, the discourse of romantic
love, which underpinned much of Japanese cinema, was replaced with the
materiality of the sexualised and/or violated body.
American fears of the possibility of communist tendencies taking hold in
lyi ng foundi ons 25
Japan as a result of the new democratic processes led to the reinstatement of
the Emperor; thus the main symbol of the imperial system was left unchanged
and unchallenged, albeit with little real political power. For the occupiers, the
emperor seemed to be the lesser of two evils. Richie points out how this enabled
a return to traditional Japanese values:
Directors and Screenmakers were thus, as the Occupation deepened,
no longer so interested in subjects which advertised the rosy future and
their countrys changed ways. The Japanese no longer needed to regard
themselves as model citizens of the future. It was now possible to return
to being Japanese in the traditional sense. (2001: 115)
It is no surprise, therefore, that in the 1950s, the emergence of both the ghost
story and the monster movie in Japan would focus on the conict between the
pre-modern and the modern. Cazdyn denes the conict in terms of a need to
nd a middle ground between the demands of the collective and those of the
individual:
It can now be framed between the individual and the collective, between
the need to diferentiate individual wants and desires (to appeal to the
ideals of democracy as well as cultivate a domestic consumer market) while
restricting these needs and desires to the requirements of the collective
(in order to idealize sacrice and legitimate exploitation). (2003: 27)
There can be little doubt that Hollywood cinema inuenced Japanese lm,
especially in terms of the move towards more realistic slice-of-life dramas
and away from the xed patterns and immobile camera of period dramas
derived from Kabuki. However, directors such as Ozu would return to tradi-
tional aesthetics as a point of resistance against the Westernisation of narrative
forms.
JAPANESE CINEMA AS NATIONAL CINEMA
Although Japanese cinema was clearly inuenced by the West, it managed to
retain the traditional elements of a presentational aesthetic, both in the theatre
and in lm. And while the dominance of Hollywood cinema on a global scale
is often taken as read, in fact, in the mid-1950s, Japan was the most prolic
lm producer in the world, reaching the marks of ve hundred feature lms a
year (Nagib 2006: 31). Neither can Japanese cinema be understood in terms
of a distinction between art and popular cinemas. An approach to the under-
standing of Japanese cinema in terms of its diference from America, within a
Self/Other binary, is inadequate to understanding the complexity of Japanese
cinema. Examples of this type of approach are epitomised by the work of Burch
(1979) and Desser (1992). Yoshimoto points out that: studies of non-Western
cinemas based upon the axiomatics of Self/Other opposition cannot but
reproduce the hegemonic ideology of Western neo-colonialism (2006: 33).
This means that the positioning of Japanese cinema as radical and opposi-
tional, in comparison to the inherent and perceived conservative ideology of
mainstream American cinema, functions simply to consolidate Japan as a place
of inalterable diference and exoticism.
In The Concept of National Cinema Higson points out that this concept
is often used prescriptively rather than descriptively, citing what ought to be
the national cinema, rather than describing the actual cinematic experiences
of popular audiences (2002: 133). The construction of a national cinema
therefore presupposes a coherence and unity and as a consequence proclaims
a unique identity and a stable set of meanings. Higson continues:
The process of identication is thus invariably a hegemonising, mytho-
logizing process, involving both the production and assignment of a
particular set of meanings, and the attempt to contain or prevent the
proliferation of other meanings. (2002: 133)
What it is important to understand in the case of Japanese national cinema
is that the very concept of a homogenised national identity was always fraught
with difculty because of the close relationship between Japan and the West.
In reaction to the threat to Japans construction of nationhood through the
menace of Westernisation, studies of Japaneseness, known as Nihonjinron,
proliferated. And while generally Nihonjinron is associated with post-war
Japan, its origins can be found much earlier, as a response to the modernisation
undertaken as a consequence of the Meiji Restoration. Burgess writes: With
the period of nation-building following the Meiji Restoration (1868), discus-
sions of Japanese identity acquired both a new Other the West and a new
urgency (Pyle 1969) (2004).
During the Meiji Restoration, Japanese cultural identity was constructed in
opposition to the Other (not-us). The word for foreigner was ijin (a diferent
person) and was used mainly to refer to white foreigners because of their
marked diference, from the self . Burgess continues:
Nihonjinron is formulated on the basis of evaluative comparison (Befu
1993: 113). It aims to demonstrate not only that Japan (and Japanese
language, culture, people) is diferent (uniquely unique) from the rest
of the world but also that it is superior or better. Diference a stark
and evaluative comparison is central to the maintenance of identity. In
lying foundi ons 27
Japan, this manifests itself in a sharp distinction between what it means
to be a Japanese and what it means to be a foreigner. (2004)
Further, and paradoxically, Western discourse about the inherent diference
of the Japanese, which utilised adjectives such as inscrutable, exotic,
anti-individualistic, provided a mechanism through which Japan would
redene itself. Iwabuchi labels as self-orientalism the process by which Japan
dened itself in terms of existing denitions on the part of the West (1994).
In Orientalism, Said dened Orientalism as an exercise of cultural strength
in which the West determined that the Orient and everything in it was, if
not patently inferior to, then in need of corrective study by the West (2003:
401). An example of this approach can be found in Ruth Benedicts book,
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (1946), based
upon interviews with prisoners of war in Allied camps; in fact, Benedict never
visited Japan, instead basing her conclusions solely on interviews with Japanese
immigrants and extant written materials. These conclusions constructed Japan
as a shame culture in opposition to the guilt culture of Western societies,
and through the processes of Orientalism and self-Orientalism (or complicit
Orientalism), became a mechanism through which to distinguish Japan from
the West, and indeed the West from Japan. As such, the search for what was
distinctive about Japanese society operated within pre-existing Orientalist
assumptions about Japan and the Japanese rather than difering from them.
The idea of the community as fundamental to the ie system of kinship, was
situated in opposition to the traits of an imaginary America associated with
rampant individualism, selshness and commodity fetishisation. Iwabuchi
writes:
Japan is represented and represents itself as culturally exclusive, homoge-
neous, and uniquely particularistic through the operation of a strategic
binary opposition between two imaginary cultural entities, Japan and
the West. (2002: 7)
Underlying this binary distinction between Japan and the West is a
convenient forgetting of Japans own colonial past. Victory in the First Sino-
Japanese War (1

August 1894 to 17

April 1895) led to the successful annex-
ation of Korea, as well as control over Taiwan ceded by China. Japans colonial
ambitions were thwarted during the Second Sino-Japanese War (7

July 1937 to
9

September 1945), at which time defeat forced Japan to give up her colonial
territories. While Iwabuchi (1994) recognises the importance of Saids work on
Orientalism, he critiques Saids treatment of Japan as a non-Western, quasi-
Third World nation which has been the victim of Western (American) cultural
domination in Saids Culture and Imperialism. Iwabuchi remarks that the total
absence of a consideration of Japanese imperialism/colonialism in his analysis
of imperialism and culture is striking to me (2002: 3).
From the pre-war slogan wakon ysai (Japanese spirit, Western technol-
ogies), which allowed Japan to reinforce its cultural and colonial superiority
in the pan-Asian world, to the contemporary Datsu nyu (Escape the West,
Enter Asia), Japans search for national identity has shifted from global to local
identication with East Asia. Indeed, Japans nostalgic glance backwards at
Hong Kong articulates a desire for a diferent mode of non-Western mimetic
modernity (Iwabuchi 2004: 152). And as Chaudhuri points out, East Asian
territories have a unied experience of late modernity when compared to the
West. In addition, Chaudhuri writes that pan-Asian countries:
share many centuries old cultural traditions: Confucian ethics, based
on lial obligations and loyalty between rulers and their subjects, and
between family members and friends; Buddhism; supernatural beliefs;
classical theatre and Chinese classical painting, characterized by the
subordination of gures to landscape and the absence of the illusion of
depths. (2005: 93)
As such, and as LaMarre points out, the Japanese empire (like Japanese
modernity) cannot be construed as a simple repetition of the British or American
empires. Nor can its diference be dismissed as a failure, a failed imitation of
Western models, or as a sort of non-imperial empire (2005: 3589).
Iwasaka and Toelken argue that the prevalence of stereotypes in the West
either constructs the Japanese as narrowly ethnocentric and nationally aggres -
sive, and sees their behaviour as a hold from the samurai era, or else consider
them too Westernised (1994:1). Instead, these myths are a result of cultural
nostalgia on the part of the West, for some exotic imagined Japan of cherry
blossoms, geisha and tea ceremonies (1994: 23). The success of both The Last
Samurai (Zwick: 2003) and Memoirs of a Geisha (Marshall: 2005) seems to
attest to the perpetuation of these myths. Indeed, Memoirs of a Geisha caused
uproar in both China and Japan, particularly around the casting of Zhang Ziyi,
a Chinese actress, in the lead role as Sayuri. In fact, the other two leading
female roles are also played by Chinese actresses (or Chinese-Singaporean in
the case of Michelle Yeoh). Japanese actresses had to be content with secondary
roles. China promptly banned the lm, as no one had bothered to think about
the atrocities committed by Japan on China in the 1930s. In Japan, the fact that
a Chinese actress was cast to play a geisha, instead of a Japanese actress, was
no less palatable.
Iwabuchi (2002) utilises the term cultural odor in order to afrm the
national identity of cultural exports positively, even when relying heavily on
stereotypes. This odour becomes a fragrance, a socially and culturally accepted
lying foundi ons 29
smell, through the process of identication with pre-existing symbolic images.
Cultural odour, according to Iwabuchi, can be erased through the deletion of
racial, ethnic and bodily characteristics associated with the nation of origin.
For Iwabuchi anime and computer games are paradigmatic of this erasure of
bodily odour: Consumers of and audiences for Japanese animation and games,
it can be argued, may be aware of the Japanese origin of these commodities,
but those texts barely feature Japanese bodily odor identied as such (2002:
29). In opposition to this is Shapiros argument that The ostensive Western
setting and features of the characters allow lmmakers to create and audiences
to receive intense subtextual undercurrents of very sensitive, contemporary
sociocultural problems in Japan (2002: 268).
GLOBAL FLOWS
The relationship between Japan and the West is a complex one, and therefore
to understand Japanese cinema in opposition to Western forms is perhaps to
be complicit in the promotion of myths around Japan as a place of inalterable
diference. Neither is distinguishing between Japanese cinema as art cinema
and Western or First World cinema satisfactory, as Japanese genres, such as
horror, often merge the formalist modernism of directors such as Ozu with
the melodramatic nature of mainstream narrative. In addition, Japanese
cinema shares common features with other nations in the pan-Asian world
and therefore cultural proximity is as important a factor in the construction of
Japanese cinema as its relationship to the (imagined) West.
The importance of lm as an industry and the development of a studio
system, the transformation of cinematic vocabulary as a result of the relationship
with Hollywood cinema, and the importance of indigenous theatrical arts and
religious belief systems all lead to an understanding of Japanese cinema as
national cinema in terms of cultural specicity without denying the impact
that the relationship between Japan and the West had on the construction of
Japanese cinema from its early days until after the Allied Occupation.
2
Horror after Hiroshima
T
here can be little surprise that the aftermath of the Second World War, and
the Allied Occupation (194552), would give rise to vengeful ghosts from
the pre-modern past, or indeed give birth to monsters, including Godzilla. The
facts and gures are stark: 1.8 million dead and 680,000 missing or wounded;
cities demolished; and Japans position as a Pacic power totally destroyed.
Saturation bombing raids on Tokyo and the dropping of the atomic bomb,
rst on Hiroshima on 6

August 1945 and then on Nagasaki three days later,
left much of Tokyo in ruins, Nagasaki devastated and Hiroshima a burning
wasteland. Victims not immediately killed by the bombs would die slowly and
painfully, and generations to come would be efected by the fallout as the full
horror of radiation poisoning became evident.
In addition, the indignity of the Allied Occupation, during which Japan was
forced to adopt Western democratic values and abolish state Shint, functioned
to call into question the very foundations of Japans intricate obligations system,
which dictated the relationship of the individual to the community, and there-
after to the State. And whilst the emperor was reinstated towards the end of the
Occupation, his role was reduced to a largely symbolic one, with no real power.
This was a major upheaval in the very foundation of Japanese societal values
and obligation, as the emperor was seen as a descendant of Amaterasu (the Sun
Goddess, Shints chief deity) and had become synonymous with Japanese
nationhood since 1868 (Littleton 2002: 47).
POST-OCCUPATION CINEMA
This tension between pre-modern Japanese paternalism and modern Western
democratic values would constitute the main thematic trajectory of post-
Occupation Japanese cinema. It was not a question of abandoning traditional
oo f i osim 31
Japanese values for seemingly more democratic ones, but of co-opting one in
order to re-establish the other. Standish points out how, in post-war Japanese
cinema, American individualism was utilised as a mechanism through which
to reassert traditional Japanese ideology around the primacy of the nation-
state: individualism, as expressed through the Hollywood-derived goal-
orientated hero was co-opted to the narrative needs of a hyper-masculinist
ideology underpinning total mobilization (2005: 179).
Films with a contemporary setting (gendaigeki) continued to be popular in
the immediate period after the Occupation, and a variation on the genre, the
politically committed shakiamono, or social problem/tendency lm, associated
with directors such as Sekikawa Hideo and Kamei Fumio, emerged (Richie
2001: 146). There was also a return to the period lm, or jidaigeki. Whilst many
social dramas adopted a realistic (Western) form of lmmaking, the jidaigeki,
inuenced by traditional theatrical forms, continued to be presentational and
formalist with its emphasis on spectacle and visual style.
Not surprisingly, given the physical devastation and psychological trauma
that the Japanese had sufered during and after the Second World War, the
1950s saw a rise in popularity of the horror lm. In Nightmare and the Horror
Film: The Symbolic Biology of Fantastic Beings, Carroll contends that horror
and science ction lms proliferate at times of economic and political anxiety,
in that they allow the expression of the sense of powerlessness and anxiety
that correlates with times of depression, recession, Cold War strife, galloping
ination, and national confusion (1981: 17).
The two most important lms that would inuence the growth of the horror
genre, and pave the way for its contemporary success in a global market, are
Tales of Ugetsu in 1953 and Godzilla in 1954. At a time of societal disruption,
shifting relationships between men and women, the demise of rigid distinctions
between classes and the rapid modernisation of Japan, the horror lm provided
one of the most suitable mechanisms through which to articulate anxieties and
concerns over the changing nature of Japanese society at a time of unprec-
edented upheaval. In Godzilla, the monstrous mutant reptile with its atomic
breath functions as a reminder of the devastation caused by nuclear weapons
and critiques modern technological warfare, whilst simultaneously mourning
the loss of tradition. Similarly, Tales of Ugetsu expresses fears around moderni-
sation, implicit within the growth of a consumer society dictated by material
desires, as embodied by the seductive female ghost. Even more signi cant is
the embedding of the discourse of hibakusha in both lms to articulate the
persistence of historical trauma and the collective denial of culpability. This
often took the form of a tragic young heroine sufering from atomic-related
illness (Lowenstein 2005: 86). In this way, the gure of woman enables a
historical narrative of forgetting, where victimization replaces responsibility
for aggression (2005: 85). The active forgetting of both Japans colonial past
and the attack on Pearl Harbor which initiated war in the Pacic is rendered
invisible through this myth of victimology which dominated post-war Japanese
cinema.
Whilst it is not my intention to discuss the monster genre, or daikaijueiga,
generally in Japanese cinema, Godzilla clearly elucidates societal, economic
and political concerns in Japan at the time of production that are mirrored in
the ghost story, which emerges almost simultaneously. While better known in
its truncated version in the West as Godzilla: King of Monsters (Honda and
Morse: 1956), the original Japanese version has only recently been released
on DVD. In terms of the ghost story, Tales of Ugetsu not only lays down the
foundations for the erotic ghost story or kaidan pinku eiga (discussed in
Chapter 4), but also contains key themes and characters that will be identi-
able to contemporary audiences whose awareness of Japanese horror has been
formed by the success of Nakatas Ring and Shimizus Ju-On: The Grudge
with their sequels and American remakes. These include the vengeful female
ghost with long black hair; the haunted house; themes of abandonment and
alienation; doomed love all of which are framed by the ghostly aesthetics of
the mise-en-scne and musical score. Both lms emerge from the Kabuki and
N traditions (as discussed in the last chapter), the special efects and spectacle
inuencing Godzilla, and the stories of ghosts, demons and other supernatural
beings forming the basis of Tales of Ugetsu.
FROM THE ASHES
During the Second World War, the director of Godzilla, Honda, had been
stationed in China. On his return to Japan, Honda not only was present during
the saturation bombing of Tokyo, but also saw rst-hand the devastation caused
by the dropping of the bomb, code name Little Boy, on Hiroshima 68 per
cent of the city destroyed and an estimated 70,000 people instantly killed, this
gure rising to around 200,000 as a result of radiation sickness. It is no surprise
therefore that Godzilla, which some critics argue is loosely based upon The
Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (Louri: 1953), is both a thinly disguised metaphor
for historical trauma and a warning against its repetition. At the same time,
Godzilla is also represented as an unstoppable force of nature, like an erupting
volcano, or a devastating Tsunami, which is more or less how many Japanese
remember World War II anyway (Buruma 2006).
It is signicant therefore that the opening image of the lm is a long shot of
dark waters and crashing waves accompanied by a crescendo of violins, trumpet
horns and the clashing of cymbals. In the following scenes, an explosion, from
which emanates a brilliant white light, sets a shing trawler, the Eiko-Maru,
alight. Long shots of the boat on re are cross-cut with medium and close-up
oo f i osim 33
shots of the victims on the trawler. In this sequence, a series of associations
are made between nuclear bomb (the explosion), nature (the savage seas) and
human sufering (the shermen).
At the same time, the image of shing boats caught up in a nuclear explosion
would have been all too familiar to Japanese audiences, not only in light of
the use of the atomic bomb, but also coming soon after another incident in
which, once again, the Japanese were unwilling victims of nuclear warfare. On
1

March 1954, a tuna trawler, the Lucky Dragon, became caught up in testing
of the H-bomb, being carried out by the United States. Many of the shermen
became ill with radioactive poisoning and some of them would later die. It is
not surprising that this was a major news story in Japan at the time or that
it caused a public outcry against nuclear testing. Allsop contends that these
scenes of destruction at sea also allude to the battles lost by the Japanese at sea
during the Second World War and the reluctance of the Japanese government
to report losses to the public, wishing to maintain an illusion of victory at all
costs (2004a: 65). This can be seen in the manner in which the cross-cutting
between the doomed shing trawlers and the shermen on board not only
provides a human face for the scenes of devastation, but also constructs a
discourse of victimology which helps to deect any guilt associated with the
historical events that underlie the images.
Although an investigation is started, neither the shing company nor
the military is able to provide a reason for the mysterious destruction
of the Eiko-Maru or that of two other ships that are sent to the scene of
the explosion, which sufer the same fate. The explosion wakes Godzilla,
a prehistoric and pre-modern monster, from his repose on the ocean bed.
During a terrible storm on the Island of do, near where the explosion
happened, Godzilla attacks, crushing wooden houses underfoot. A fact-
nding team is sent to do, led by Professor Yamane (Takeshi Shimura), a
respected palaeontologist. Yamane discovers giant footprints, the presence of
radiation (strontium-90) and trilobite (an ancient fossil) in the sand by the
shoreline. Like many scientists in science ction lms, Yamane wants to study
the monstrous Godzilla as a past object emblematic of a new type of scien-
tic knowledge. In Yamanes terms, Godzilla is not a monster but a victim.
Anderson writes:
His concern to save the monsters life appears to arise out of an identi-
cation with a fellow war victim who is metaphorically Japanese, and
also as a source of as yet untapped scientic knowledge that unthinking
destruction will eliminate before it is decoded. (2006: 30)
Central to the narrative is the romance between the daughter of Professor
Yamane, Emiko (Momoko Kochi), and Ogata (Akira Takarada), a dashing
young naval salvage ofcer who works for the Southern Sea Company. Tsutsui
points out that:
One of the most surprising aspects of the 1954 Gojira is how little
time the monster actually spends on screen. Indeed, as much attention is
given in the lm to a melodramatic, sentimental subplot as the rampages
of Godzilla. (cited in Gunde 2005)
The romance between Emiko and Ogata is crucial, in terms of providing a
counterpoint to the primal Godzilla. Scenes of Emiko and Ogata together
are cross-cut with those of Godzilla throughout. It is key, therefore, that we
are introduced to the couple immediately after the scenes of the sinking of
the trawlers. It is clear from expression, body language and the brief words
that they exchange with each other that Emiko and Ogata are romantically
involved. However, as Ogata receives a phone call from the shipping company,
shadows fall over the couple, hinting at the presence of some malevolent force
which threatens their happiness. In Japanese culture, according to Shint, the
indigenous religion of Japan, the inside (uchi) is associated with safety, the
family and Japan as a whole; Littleton writes, The interior of a home is, after
all, a sacred space compared to the outside world (2002: 61). The outside
(soto) is a place of danger, consisting of marginal groups or outsiders. Nadeau
argues that the inside is the nation, in opposition to what lies beyond the seas
(1996: 110).While uchi and soto are shifting signiers constantly in ux in
Japanese linguistics (in which one persons soto is anothers uchi) rather than
xed binary oppositions, it could be argued that the United States is envisaged
as the ultimate outside here. But this is an outside which is also on the inside.
Godzilla, as we shall see, is aggressor and victim, self and other, his identity
as subject caught up in the discourse of the situated self, which is central to
Japanese linguistics. In this scene, danger from the outside has been brought
into the safety of the inside, as expressed visually through the use of chiar-
oscuro lighting as strips of darkness descend over Emiko and Ogata. In Shint,
the inside is constituted as a sacred space, and the outside, a profane space.
Nadeau explains, Shinto, with its emphasis on delement and purication,
associates profane space with pollution and evil, and sacred space with purity
and brightness (1996: 110).
In a later scene, Emiko is momentarily blinded by a ash of bright light
when she witnesses the full extent of the danger of the oxygen destroyer (see
below). The visual imagery associated with Godzilla is that of the profane
darkness, disease, and death. Tanaka writes, Godzillas preference for darkness
and intense dislike of light evokes the behaviour of B-29 bombers, which ew at
night and sought to evade searchlight beams (2005). In opposition, the visual
imagery associated with Emiko and Ogata is that of the sacred and the inside,
oo f i osim 35
as expressed through the concepts of purity and brightness. Purity, however,
is not an original state of innocence, as associated with Christianity in which
Adam and Eve are tempted by earthly pleasures and fall from grace. Instead,
Shint inscribes humanity as fundamentally good, with evil as an ephemeral
state of being rather than an innate quality (Balmain 2007b).
It is important, both visually and in terms of narrative motivation, that
Godzillas rampages are cross-cut with scenes of Emiko and Ogata together.
This situates heterosexual romance as a mechanism through which to defeat
the destructive Godzilla. Standish argues that the functioning of romance in
post-war cinema provides a point of departure from the social repression (and
often the absence) of woman, which was at the centre of national policy or
propaganda lms:
Romance provided both a vehicle through which the requisite dominant
constructions of sexuality were inscribed in cultural and economic terms
of masculinity and femininity, whilst simultaneously becoming synon-
ymous with an antiwar imperative that challenged the underlying text
inherent in images of masculinity predicated on sexual repression that
dominated national policy lms. (2005: 210)
Emikos engagement to the mysterious Dr Daisuke Serizawa (Akihiko
Hirato), who lives with her and her father, is situated in direct opposition to
her romance with Ogata. As such, Serizawa is aligned with Godzilla, as he also
threatens the happiness of the couple who can be considered as emblematic
of the nation as a whole. Serizawa is a recluse, who spends most of his time
in the darkened gothic laboratory where he carries out his experiments, and
as such he is visually connected to Godzilla. Whilst Godzilla is metaphori-
cally a weapon of mass destruction, Serizawa possesses the power to obliterate
all living things with his invention called the oxygen destroyer. Signicantly,
the presence of facial scars on the left-hand side of Serizawas face feminises
him by situating him as the archetypal A-bomb victim whose self-sacrice
functions to displace Japanese national responsibility for the trauma itself
(Lowenstein 2005: 86). As such, both Godzilla and Serizawa are doubles in
that they are both positioned as victims of nuclear war.
The romance between Ogata and Emiko also functions to map out changes
in the social structure in Japan after the Allied Occupation. Writing about the
radical changes in Japanese socio-economic structures as a consequence of the
democratisation of Japan during the Allied Occupation, Noreiga points to the
fact that most of the reforms implemented went far beyond what could be
found at the time in America:
Reform gave women full legal equality and ended the authority of the
clan over the family and the father over adult children. Compulsory
education was extended to nine years, further reducing paternal inuence.
So-called reform exceeded what American society would have accepted
for itself at that time, indicating that the purpose was more to undermine
the patriarchal basis of Japanese society than to reform it. (2006: 43)
These reforms were not, in fact, motivated by a genuine concern for the oppres-
sion of women and children under Japanese patriarchy. Instead, the changes
were instigated by Americas desire to ensure that Japan would never again be
a military threat to the West. American capitalism invaded Japanese feudalism,
bringing with it the ideal of the bourgeois nuclear family and a concept of
the boundaried self that was foreign to the collectivism that had underpinned
Japanese society for centuries.
The relationships between individuals, the community and the state,
following the Confucian principles of loyalty and benevolence, as articulated
within state Shint (which the Americans tried to abolish through reforms),
was based upon what is known as the ie system. Although the democratic
values of the West, as applied to Japan during the Occupation, attempted to
break down the rigid vertical structure of Japanese society, remnants of the ie
system can still be found at work in contemporary Japan, dictating relation-
ships with parents, employers and perceived superiors. As this is such a funda-
mental structure of Japanese society, elements of which still exist today, and
often provides a pivotal theme in Japanese horror cinema, it is worth sketching
out the ie system in some detail.
The foundations of the ie system were laid down during the Edo Period
(16031867), during the reign of Tokugawa Ieyasu (the Shogunate or Shogun).
At this time, a strict class system was enforced that can still be seen within corpo-
rations, and especially as embodied within the gure of the salaryman. This
system consisted of ve classes with the Samurai on top, followed by peasants,
then artisans and nally merchants. A fth class was formed of outcasts,
people involved in what were seen to be impure professions. Responsibility for
the family was clearly dened as belonging to the head of the household, who
was then responsible to the larger community, and ultimately to the emperor.
The eldest son of the family was the automatic successor, while younger sons
were expected to make their own way in the world and arranged marriages were
made for daughters of the household. In the absence of an heir, it was common
for families to adopt a suitable successor who would then carry on the family
name. The system, however, was predicated on the repression and oppression
of women, for whom the rules of appropriate behaviour were dictated by her
obedience to her parents, husband and children, in that order.
The ie system, based upon the worship of ancestors (Davies and Ikeno
2002: 120), rests upon the often competing concepts of giri and ninj. Giri
refers to a strong sense of obligation, and is the social cloth that binds Japan
oo f i osim 37
together, whilst ninj denotes generosity or sympathy towards the disadvan-
taged, and sympathy towards each other (Dubro and Kaplan 1986: 28). Ninj
promotes the avoidance of conict, and should take precedence over giri, or
duties towards ones superiors, family, relatives and ancestors, people from
whom a favour or gift has been received, duty to clear ones reputation (i.e. a
vendetta), and nally observance of social proprieties, in that order (Hunziker
and Kamimura 1994). It is clear to see how and why giri might well come into
conict with ninj.
Understanding the functioning of the ie system, along with the rapid changes
in Japanese societal structures, can therefore elucidate our understanding of
the centrality of romance in Godzilla. Serizawa, to whom Emiko is engaged,
is the natural (and adopted) successor of Yamane as dictated by the ie system.
Emiko and Ogatas romance therefore seems to threaten the very structures of
Japanese society, in that ninj (personal feeling) comes into conict with giri
(social obligations). As such Emikos duty to her father, under the ie system
and the wider notion of On, should take precedence over her own feelings. On
is the system of obligations that bind the living to the dead in terms of the debt
(giri) that is owed to them. Filial piety, after all, was the central tenet of Confu-
cianism and lay at the foundations of all forms of authority, especially that of
a master, who was regarded as the father of the mind (Buisson 2003: 39).
This model became so rmly entrenched within daily life and the education
system in Japan that it became appropriate to sacrice ones own life when
either ones master or ones parents were dishonoured. Littleton foregrounds
the need in Japan to maintain face (known as tatame in Japanese), in which the
loss of face necessitates acts of atonement on the part of the community in
order to make up for the violation of the social code (2002: 59). When Japan
surrendered at the end of the Second World War, the War Minister Anami,
Head of the Imperial Army, committed ritual suicide as an act of penance on
behalf of the shamed nation. Serizawas suicide has a similar function in
Godzilla, providing a mechanism through which to save and restore face in
the aftermath of defeat.
However, with the threat of Western democracy to the underlying structures
of Japanese society, the emergence of Godzilla can be interpreted as expressing
anxieties over the erosion of pre-modern Japanese structures, or indeed over
the very notion of Japan as a nation, constructed through diference from
the West. Napier argues that, in Japanese mythology, pre-modern monsters
are external aliens or outsiders who threaten the collectivity, but who can be
avoided or appeased (1996: 95). Again, this can be understood by reference
to Shint beliefs. According to Shint, Japan is home to over 8 million deities.
(Ross 1996: 27). Known as kami (often translated as deity), they are found
everywhere: in mountains, rivers, trees, rocks and everyday household items.
Kami are inherently neither evil nor good, and indeed, according to Shint,
the nature of the kami depends on the circumstance that gave rise to it:
The Shinto tradition does not believe that there is an absolute dichotomy
of good and evil. Rather, all phenomena, both animate and inanimate, are
thought to possess both rough and gentle, or negative and positive,
characteristics and it is possible for a given entity to manifest either
of these characteristics depending on the circumstances. (Littleton
2002: 26)
Godzillas negative energy is therefore not constructed in terms of an absolute
evil, as many critical readings of Godzilla have suggested. Instead, Godzilla
can be interpreted as a physical manifestation of the disruption of wa, or the
harmony between man and nature. Littleton writes, Rules governing human
behaviour are considered necessary for the maintenance of wa, without which
both society and the natural world would disintegrate into chaos (2002: 59).
For Shapiro the distortion in the relationships between people and nature is
the main theme of post-war Japanese cinema: It is this distortion that must
be analyzed if we are to understand fully Japans atomic bomb cinema (2002:
271). This explains the reason why Japanese atomic bomb cinema focuses less
on the protagonists than in comparable Western lms dealing with the atomic
bomb. Instead, the emphasis is on a vague but nonetheless important concept
of the restoration of balance and harmony (Shapiro 2002: 271). Shapiro
suggests that this emphasis is most clearly seen in Japans monster lms, such
as Godzilla. It could be argued that, in American cinema, monsters are often
interpreted as symptoms of an (individual) psychosexual crisis with their
fairy-tale structure (hero defeats monster and rescues the damsel in distress,
undergoing a transformation from boy to man in the process). In Godzilla
none of the protagonists goes through this transformation of self and, as such,
it is difcult to interpret the monstrous Godzilla as a projection of inner sexual
conict, unlike King Kong in the lm of the same name (1933). For Shapiro,
rather than interpreting Godzilla as an overt condemnation of Americas use
of nuclear weapons, it is more productive to consider the lm in terms of how
war (and masculinity) disrupts the fragile balance between man and nature. He
writes: Thus, the world is dangerously unbalanced. Something must counter-
balance the male element in this lm (2002: 275). It is therefore up to Emiko,
caught between her father, her anc and her lover, to restore harmony, as
the male element here, as elsewhere, is aligned with violence and disharmony.
Shapiro argues that the ghting between the men over Godzilla and Emiko
creates a vacuum or ma (the term in Japanese aesthetics for an empty or blank
space which needs to be lled), which can only be remedied by Emiko as repre-
sentative of the female principle. The visual result of this can be seen when
Emiko breaks up the ght between Ogata and Serizawa over the use of the
oo f i osim 39
oxygen destroyer she steps in and unites the two men in a common purpose.
However, her actions indirectly cause the death of Serizawa, thereby opening
up an empty space that is so powerful that it draws Gojira back into our lives
again and again (Shapiro 2002: 278).
The repeated images of pollution and bodily corruption are central to the
imagistic system of destruction, disease and death associated with Godzilla,
and are thus associated with the disruption of harmony. In Godzilla, pollution
is signalled by the annihilation of all life from the water near to where the
explosion happened. This is made clear in a series of short scenes in which we
see shermen returning back to do with empty nets and, later, poisoned sh
being put back into the water. It is also signicant that, as a consequence, many
wells on do are polluted and it is unsafe to drink from them.
At the same time, pollution was becoming a cause of concern in Japan, not
only as a lingering aftermath of the Second World War, but also in terms of
industrial pollution, caused by a mass exodus of people leaving the country
for the cities. One such example is Minamata Bay, used as a dumping ground
for industrial waste in the 1920s by the Chisso Corporation. The resulting
pollution contaminated the shing waters and impacted on the livelihoods of a
substantial proportion of the villagers living in Minamata, a small factory town
570 miles from Tokyo. Estimates suggested that in a period of 36 years, between
1932 and 1968, 27 tons of mercury compounds found their way into Minamata
Bay. By the mid-1950s some villagers were displaying symptoms associated
with a degenerative condition, which became known as Minamata disease.
The dark surging waters from which Godzilla emerges condense references
to industrial pollution and the black rain of Hiroshima,

and are therefore
linked to the profane. In Purity and Danger, Douglas argues that in primitive
societies uncleanliness functions as a spiritual state of unworthiness (1966:
11). As such, the sacred is separated from the profane by rules expressing its
essentially contagious character (Douglas 1966: 21). This opposition between
purity and impurity, an essential component of Shint, is a basic theme in
Godzilla.
This can be clearly seen in the confrontation between Ogata and Emiko, and
Serizawa, when the lovers try to convince Serizawa to use the oxygen destroyer
to kill Godzilla. In this sequence, the three are sitting around a table, on which
stands a square shbowl with sh swimming in it. The shbowl functions as a
symbol of life and harmony. This is opposed to the death of the sh in the large
tank seen earlier when Serizawa demonstrates his invention to Emiko. This
visual symbology of death/life, darkness/light and disease/purity structures
the lmic imagery, only giving way to purity when Serizawa and Godzilla die.
The tension between past and present, tradition and modernity is empha-
sised visually and thematically in Godzilla, through the direct opposition
between the island (do) and the city (Tokyo). The rural spaces of do stand
in contrast to the neon Tokyo. The diference between the pre-modern and the
modern is foregrounded through the doubling (a literary device which allows
the representation of competing ideas/ideologies by splitting the subject into
two separate characters) between Professor Yamane and Gisaku (Kokuten
Kodo), an old villager who lives on do. Yamane and Gisaku utilise diferent
interpretative frameworks to explain Godzilla, although both agree that it is
the nuclear testing that is to blame for Godzillas appearance. For Gisaku,
Godzilla is an enraged god, brought to the surface by the lack of belief in
traditional values demonstrated by the younger generations abandonment
of appropriate rituals of appeasement that were necessary to retain harmony,
including the sacrice of a shrine virgin and gigaku performances (a type of
music and dance theatre which predates both Kabuki and N, often used to
exorcise evil spirits). Anderson writes:
the lecture of the island elder could also stand in for a Japanese folklorist
lecturing on the consequences of the loss that comes with neglecting
traditional ways, and failing to respect and sustain indigenous, non
European-American identity. (2006: 27)
The name Gojira is a composite of the words for gorilla and whale, which
further suggests a link between Godzilla and the supernatural. There are a
number of ghosts and monsters associated with water, including the Kappa
Fig. 2.1 Godzillas rampage, Godzilla (Ishir Honda, 1954, Th / The Kobal
Collection)
oo f i osim 41
or Water Imp. Others include the playful Shojo, a sea ghost with red hair
who enjoys nothing better than a good party; the giant mermaid or Isohime,
who tortures and then devours her victims; and Umi Bozu, a gigantic bald
ghost with staring eyes. Then there are Funayrei, or ghosts of those that die
at sea. Godzillas appearance evokes ukiyo-e images of water dragons who
were associated with thunderstorms, and whose breath was thought to cause
lightning and/or rain. It is signicant that Godzilla rst appears during a
terrible storm, which devastates the island of do.
Godzillas thirteen-minute rampage through Tokyo and its aftermath evokes
the imagery of the Second World War including the aftermath of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki and the saturation bombings of Tokyo as buildings are crushed
underfoot by Godzilla, who is framed against the skyline by a wall of ames.
The Diet building, the Nichigeki Theatre and the Matsuszakaya department
store, signiers of modernity and progress, are razed to the ground in Godzillas
wake. In the middle of these scenes of disaster, the fate of a young mother and
her two children adds a tragic dimension to the scenes of destruction. Huddled
in a corner by the Matsuszakaya department store, she passively awaits her
fate, telling her children that they will soon be in heaven with their father. The
centrality of the relationship between mother and child is prevalent in post-war
Japanese cinema, especially in a type of domestic melodrama known as mother
lms or hahamono. Buruma goes as far as to suggest that all Japanese love
stories are all variations of the haha mono (1984: 32). A key scene in Godzilla,
which takes place after Godzillas rampage across Tokyo, ends with Emiko
cradling a young child in her arms. This is an iconic image of mother and child
that, as we will see, becomes a key feature, if not the key feature, of Japanese
horror cinema from the 1950s onwards.
The horric nature of Godzillas rampage around Tokyo would have had
resonance with Japanese audiences at the time. Hamamoto comments on the
reception of the lm in Japan:
One critic said the scariest part of Godzilla is the screams of the people
running away. Their terror, he feels, came across as authentic, because
they were able to draw on the real horror of witnessing entire cities
rebombed into burning rubble. (2006)
The apocalyptic mise-en-scne of Tokyo as a burning wasteland the next day,
with the remains of the city laying submerged under swirling smoke and the
bodies of the sick and injured being taken to a hospital, again visually mirrors
Tokyo after the saturation bombing raids during the Second World War, as well
as the lingering aftermath of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In
the light of the merciless destruction caused by Godzilla, some Western critics
have dismissed the creature as both profoundly alien and absolutely evil:
The monsters allegorical power also is more terrible (and obvious) in
the original. Incinerating and crushing whole cities, Godzilla evil,
overwhelming, and profoundly alien clearly is intended to embody
nuclear warfare, waged against helpless Japanese civilians. (Steele 2005)
However, to interpret the gure of Godzilla as a simple symbolic represen-
tation of the threat of America to Japan, as Steele does, is too simplistic.
Noreiga argues that Clearly Western conceptions of the Other or monster
as repressed sexual energy (Wood), class struggle (Jameson), or archaic,
conicting impulses (Carroll) do not fully explain the Japanese monster
(2006: 46). This is a linguistic diference, in that the Japanese language does not
distinguish between the personal pronouns I and you, or self and other;
instead, the relationship between self and other in Japanese culture is one in
which the self immerse[s] itself in the other (Noreiga 2006: 46). This concept
of the relational self suggests a mobility of identity as encapsulated within the
shifting boundaries of inside, uchi, and outside, soto. This then enables us to
make sense of Noreigas statement that Godzilla comes to symbolize Japan
(Self) as well as the United States (Other) (2006: 46). As Napier explains, the
traditional Japanese self is more difuse and other-directed than the more
individualistic Western self (1996: 94). In these terms, as we have seen, the
anxieties expressed about Godzilla are as much about Japan, as uchi, as about
the threat from the United States, as soto.
In order to restore the harmony between man and nature, life- strengthening
rites, or naobi, are necessary. In these terms, Serizaws sacrice not only
co-opts democratic individualism, as in the service of traditional Japanese
nationalism in an attempt to bridge the gap between the two, but also provides
a mechanism through which harmony between man and the environment is
restored. Standish argues that the sacricial hero is an important mechanism
through which traditional identity is restored in the face of encroaching
Westernisation. Drawing on Terry Eagletons concept of the sacricial victim
as a gure standing for the expiation of communal guilt, Standish argues that
the development of the sacricial hero of the humanist war-retro lm can
in general terms be understood as forming part of the process of communal
internalization of the values of the nascent American-dominated world order
(2005: 203). Serizawas sacrice restores purity and brightness. Here individu-
alism, as articulated through the goal-orientated hero, Serizawa, is co-opted
in the service of the greater good of the nation-state. His suicide is the triumph
of light over darkness, purity over pollution, and thus restores temporary
harmony to the world.
The death of Serizawa metaphorically signals both the breakdown of
the traditional Japanese value system and the reafrmation of those same
values. At the same time, Emiko and Ogatas romance is made possible only
oo f i osim 43
through Serizawas sacrice. In addition, the romance, just like the monstrous
rampages of Godzilla, undermines the paternalistic function of Yamane and
his position of power within the household. As such, Yamane is a predecessor
of the absent father, who, like the iconic mother, will become another identi-
able trope of Japanese horror. In a key scene in which Yamane and Ogata
argue about whether to study or kill Godzilla, Ogata is placed in a higher and
more dominant position within the frame than Yamane, thus mirroring the
disruption of the vertical boundaries that determined relationships between
people in the ie system. But with the nal words of the lm, which are given
to Yamane, who warns of the possibility of the emergence of another Godzilla,
it could be argued that lost power is restored to the symbolic father gure. As
Shapiro insightfully comments, in his criticism of Noreigas identication of
Christian symbolism at work in Godzilla, Can you have latent Christianity
without Jews or Christians, or even the concept of self ? He concludes: [A]ll
the early Gojira lms portray the men, and the male Gojira, as the cause of the
problem (with the men receiving far less sympathy than the monster) (2002:
278).
GHOSTLY RETURNS
In Old Japan, the world of the living was everywhere ruled by the world
of the dead the individual, at every moment of his existence, was
under ghostly supervision. In his house, he was watched by the spirits
of his fathers; without, he was ruled by the god of his district. (Hearn
1904: 134)
Mizoguchis Tales of Ugetsu is often cited as the prototypical Japanese ghost
or avenging spirit (onryou) lm. Along with Ozu and Kurosawa, Mizoguchi
is considered one of the most important directors of Japanese cinema. Unlike
Kurosawa, Mizoguchi was concerned with depicting the struggles of ordinary
people rather than the exploits of Samurai and emperors. Based upon short
stories in Uedas (17341809) Tales of Moonlight and Rain (1776), Tales of
Ugetsu is a morality play about the system of obligations that binds men to
women in Japanese society, and the dreadful consequences of failure to abide
by this. According to Tucker, Mizoguchi:
lms a world whose social system is one immediately recognizable to his
Japanese audience. Rarely do his characters attempt to act against that
system. Most of them sufer under these social codes but their sufering
is shown as something that happens, that is the way things are, rarely
with any implication of the way things should be. (1973: 58)
At the same time, by criticising that social world in which his characters become
caught up, through the representation of feckless men and downtrodden
women, Tucker contends that Mizoguchis lms have done much to liberate
Japanese women from the position that they held until recently of being
second-class citizens (1973: 59). Whilst Mizoguchis lms are noted for their
strong female characters, they also champion traditional Japanese values, as we
shall see is the case in Tales of Ugetsu.
In Tales of Ugetsu, two peasants, Genjuro (Masayuki Mori) and Tobei (Sakae
Ozawa), see the war as an opportunity to progress up the social scale. Whilst
Genjuro desires to be a master potter, Tobei providing the lms comical
moments wants to be a Samurai. Their interwoven narratives provide a
savage indictment of post-war masculinity and the loss of traditional Japanese
values in the light of encroaching Americanisation, associated with commodi-
cation and materialism. Both men associate happiness with material wealth
and status, and are discontented with their simple life. As such, modern
selsh individualism associated with the city is situated in opposition to the
pre-modern selessness of rural Japan. As in Godzilla, the pathological
nature of modernity is situated as threatening to a sense of national identity
based around collectivity, lial obedience and frugality.
After their village is ransacked, Genjuro and Tobei are determined to escape
the connes of the village and their peasant status, and attempt to leave by boat.
The fog-enshrouded waters, menacingly absent of all life, hint at the presence
of the supernatural. Eventually, however, the group come across another,
seemingly empty, boat. As the boat draws near, they nd a dying man in it,
who warns them of danger ahead. Concerned for the safety of his wife, Miyagi
(Kinuyo Tanaka), and his son, Genjuro persuades them to return to the village.
However, Tobeis wife, Ohama (Mitsuko Mito), insists on accompanying them,
not trusting her husband on his own: fears that all too soon prove justied.
Through the vagaries of fortune, both brothers nd what they seek. Tobei
becomes a Samurai by duplicitous means and Genjuros pottery is admired
and sells for a high price. The theme of abandonment runs throughout the
lm, with both men abandoning their wives and their duties as husbands for
the empty trappings of material success. The dereliction of their duties as
husbands and, in Genjuros case, also as a father has horric consequences;
Tobei discovers that, in his absence, his wife has been raped and forced into
prostitution, while Genjuro nds his homestead deserted and his wife dead
when he eventually returns home. The lm works within Shint beliefs in
which calamitous happenings are seen as punishment for not complying with
the complex obligations systems that structure societal relations. In Tales
of Ugetsu, the sufering of the women is brought about by a failure to act in
accordance with these obligations, as selshness (associated in Japan with the
West) is privileged over selessness.
oo f i osim 45
Once in the city, Genjuro nds his pottery appreciated by the beautiful and
ghostly Lady Wakasa (Machiko Ky). Dressed in white, with a kimono veiling
much of her features, Lady Wakasa has a status which is signalled both by the
opulence of her kimono and by the fact that her servant accompanies her. The
shots of their rst meeting make the class diferences between the two clear;
Genjuro is framed from the point-of-view of Lady Wakasa who looks down on
him as he sits on the ground surrounded by his wares. When she invites him
back to her house to deliver his pottery and to collect his money, Genjuro nds
himself unable to say no. In a sequence echoed in later Japanese ghost lms
he follows her home, walking behind her servant, to a grand mansion. Once
there, seduced by Lady Wakasas beauty and the opulence of her lifestyle,
Genjuro forgets about his wife and son. He succumbs to Lady Wakasas spell
and marries her. His life with Lady Wakasa is in direct opposition to the scenes
of simple peasant life with Miyagi and his son with which the lm begins.
Unrestrained physical appetites associated with materialism, including carnal
desire and gluttony, are situated as the causational factor leading to the neglect
of family duties and obligations.
Parallelism is utilised efectively to foreground the dangers of these
unrestrained appetites and highlight the sufering of Genjuros wife and son,
Fig. 2.2 The rst meeting between Genjuro and Lady Wakasa, Tales of Ugetsu (Kenji
Mizoguchi, 1955, Daiei / The Kobal Collection)
who Genjuro has abandoned for a life of luxury and idleness. Just as Genjuro
declares his undying love for Lady Wakasa and tells her that he must be in
heaven, the lm cuts to Miyagis desperate struggle to return to their home.
The idyllic and pastoral mise-en-scne of cultivated grass and gentle waters,
as Genjuro and Lady Wakasa picnic, is in contrast to the dark house where
Miyagi and her son are hiding, as bandits ransack it. The sumptuous picnic
that is laid out on a blanket in the former scene further functions to highlight
Miyagis plight. It is thus particularly poignant that Miyagi not only is forced
to beg for food for her son, but is attacked by a group of men for that scrap of
food. In the ensuing altercation she is fatally wounded, and the last shot shows
her struggling to make her way home, using a large branch to aid her. The rich,
as epitomised by Lady Wakasa, are shown as idling their time away, whilst the
poor are forced into animal-like behaviour in order to survive.
Too late, Genjuro comes across a priest, who tells him that he bears the
mark of death. He learns that Lady Wakasa is a ghost, who, having died prema-
turely, has become tied to the world in order to experience love. The priest
paints Buddhist mantras on his body to keep him from falling under her spell.
The use of Buddhist mantras to keep dead spirits away is a common trope of
the Japanese ghost story, although it does not always work, as in Sones Hellish
Love (1972) and Mimi-nashi-Hoichi (Hoichi the Earless) in Kwaidan.
Realising that his life with Lady Wakasa is an illusion, Genjuro is freed from
the spell she has cast on him. Determined to return home to his wife and son,
he rejects Lady Wakasas pleas to join her in the afterlife. In the ensuing ght,
Genjuro faints. When he wakes up, the palace is a deserted and burnt-out shell,
and Lady Wakasa and her nurse have disappeared. To make matters worse, the
money that he has managed to save is then taken of him, and he returns home
as poor as he was when he left.
When Genjuro returns, he nds his house empty and in a state of disrepair.
However, the second time he walks into the house, he is surprised and over -
whelmed to nd Miyagi and his son are waiting for him. Overcome by guilt,
Genjuro begs for Miyagis forgiveness, which she gives. He sits with Miyagi
and his son, a picture of domestic bliss. Later that night, Genjuro falls asleep
with his son in his arms. Awaking the next morning, he nds his wife gone
and his home destroyed. In an ironic twist, he discovers that, whilst he has
been living a life of luxury, his wife also died and, like Lady Wakasa, she too
is a ghost. The lm ends with both men picking up their duties as head of the
household, with a voice-over by Miyagi mourning the fact that it is only now
that she is dead that Genjuro can be a proper husband.
In an interview with Schilling, Japanese director Juzo Itami discusses how
the demise of the ie had catastrophic consequences for Japanese society after the
Second World War. According to Itami, this produced a generation of people
who live[d] only according to their desires (cited in Schilling 1999: 80). Itami
oo f i osim 47
locates this as a result of the breakdown in traditional Japanese paternalism, a
direct consequence of the defeat in the Second World War:
the role of the father [is] to teach their children they need gamen, or
perseverance and fortitude, that they cannot live simply according to
their own desires, that there are morals and laws that human beings must
follow. But in Japanese society that role has become extremely weak,
particularly in the post war period. Because Japanese men fought the
war and lost it, their value as role models has really declined. (cited in
Schilling 1999: 79)
Tales of Ugetsu seems to suggest that a return to traditional values is necessary
for a post-military masculinity. When the lm begins, Genjuro is situated as
a poor role model in that he abandons his wife and child without hesitation.
Harmony is only restored and guilt expiated through the death of Miyagi.
Linked to consumerism and illusion is the gure of Lady Wakasa. She is the
physical embodiment of seduction and sensuality, and therefore aligned with
capitalism and modernity. As such, she is the opposite of the self-sacricing
Miyagi, aligned with tradition, who puts her family before herself and whose
death is dictated by her husbands selsh desires. Barrett argues that Lady
Wakasa is a malevolent spirit, who is restless because she died inopportunely
before she could become a bride and experience fullment as a woman (1989:
105). According to Barrett, as Lady Wakasa has no living descendants, she
can be classied as a muenbotoke a spirit kept tied to this world as there is
no one to deliver the appropriate death rites which would enable her to pass
on. Richie views Lady Wakasa more sympathetically, as the double of Miyagi:
Rather, both women died wanting love. The spirit in the haunted mansion is
to be equated, not contrasted, with the loyal and loving wife. They are equal
(2001: 130).
Lady Wakasa is the prototype of the beautiful but dangerous Japanese
ghost who haunts Japanese horror cinema. Napier suggests that the seductive
female ghost represents the intense attraction of the Other, of the outside,
an Other that the collectivity seeks to shield its members from (1996: 1000).
In Japanese mythology vengeful ghosts are called yrei, and more often than
not are female. Cinematic representations of yrei are very similar to those in
traditional ukiyo-e prints. Dressed in white (white kimonos are used for burial
in Shint), with long unbound black hair, yrei are often depicted with no
legs, and hands that dangle uselessly from the wrist. Their appearance is often
accompanied by oating ames, called hitodama.
DEADLY OBLIGATIONS
Tales of Ugetsu also introduces what will become a distinguishing feature
of Japanese horror: the concept of On. Again, as this is such a fundamental
component of Japanese horror, it seems worthwhile exploring it some detail.
Iwasaka and Toelken dene On as:
the kind of obligation that one assumes (in Japanese idiom, one wears
it) when one has been the recipient of love, nurturance, kindness, favor,
help, or advice especially from a superior in the social system. On entails
not only an awareness of having received a favor, but carries with it the
absolute necessity to respond and repay. (1994: 19)
These obligations do not end with death but continue afterwards, both in
terms of people who have died without fullling their obligations or paying
their debt, and those left behind who have an obligation to the departed. For
the Japanese, the world of the living and the world of the dead are therefore
intimately bound together, as demonstrated by the Buddhist Obon festival
in which the dead are honoured. Toelken writes about the importance of the
continuing responsibilities towards ancestors in Japanese culture: In Japan and
elsewhere today, celebration of Obon certainly focuses on the idea of responsi-
bility to departed parents, the debt that can never be repaid (1994).
Often, it is the non-fullment of these familial and societal duties that leads
to the emergence of the vengeful ghost, as when these responsibilities are
unfullled or violated, the resulting imbalance opens the door to malevolent
entities (Hochberg 2000). Further, the etymology of the worlds of the living
and the dead suggests a close connection between the two. When someone
dies, his or her spirit moves from kono-yo (the world of the living, or this world
here) to ano-yo (the world of the dead, the world over yonder, there). As such,
the two worlds exist simultaneously, occupying the same space and time, with
permeable boundaries between the two. This permeability of the boundary
between kono-yo and ano-yo provides the plot line for many Japanese horror
lms, including Tales of Ugetsu. Toelken argues that obligations are intensied
rather than negated by death:
If the proper memorials and celebrations are observed by the living
family, the spirit slowly evolves into a local deity, called a sorei or kami,
and responds to the petitions of the living by exercising concern for
their fortunes: enhancing the catch of shermen, assuring the fertility
of crops, easing childbirth, and inuencing the nancial stability of the
whole family. In other words, the obligations and debts that are thought
to exist between generations of a Japanese family are not interrupted by
death but are intensied by it. (1994)
oo f i osim 49
PRE-MODERN MONSTERS
Both Godzilla and Tales of Ugetsu meditate on the relation between the
pre-modern and the modern in a rapidly changing society. Godzilla and Lady
Wakasa are transitional gures, caught between tradition and modernity,
mourning the loss of an authentic identity as embedded in the community, in
the light of the imposition of Western democratic values on Japanese socio-
economic structures through a problematisation of the family unit.
Anderson, writing about the Overcoming Modernity (Kindai no chkoku)
conference in 1942, draws our attention to the fact that Japans only hope was
to overthrow the foreign corruption of the Japanese body politic by returning
to Japans traditions and roots as best as it could (2006: 23). Further, the
disruption of wa, as constructed through the fragile relationship between man
and nature, is reformed in Godzilla and Tales of Ugetsu through the female
principal: Emiko in the former and Miyagi in the latter. Shapiro comments,
in relation to Emiko, Only when she has resolved what direction she will take
and reveals her love for Ogata is harmony and balance restored (2002: 277). In
her study of Japanese fairy tales, Kawai argues that the woman of will best
expresses the Japanese ego (1996: 170). If Emiko is a woman of will, Miyagi is
a typical example of the sufering woman who endures selessly and becomes
more beautiful through this endurance, as such embodying the iconography of
the hibakusha. The iconic imagery of the mother and child, and the valorisation
of the maternal bond, is an important visual and thematic trope in Japanese
horror cinema, as is the absent or bad father. Further, the idea of individual
sacrice as atonement for guilt of another, as articulated by the self-sacricing
Serizawa and Miyagi, is another feature that can be seen in Japanese horror
cinema.
If Godzilla adds the atomic bomb and the possibility of apocalyptic
destruction to horror cinema, Tales of Ugetsu foregrounds a number of themes
that will become central to the Japanese ghost story: doomed love, adulterous
afairs, beautiful female ghosts seeking love (and/or revenge), and haunted
houses. Both Godzilla and Lady Wagasa are external aliens, who threaten social
order from outside and problematise the concept of identity in a rapidly trans-
forming society. Napier says the Fantastic Other may be seen as an important
means by which post-Restoration Japanese began to construct a Westernized
sense of the self (1996: 97).
3
Edo Gothic: Deceitful Samurai
and Wronged Women
W
ith its period setting, deceitful Samurai and wronged women, Tales
of Ugetsu laid the foundations for the Edo Gothic ghost story, which
accounted for most Japanese horror lms during the 1950s and 1960s. Once
again, an obsession with status and material wealth provides the narrative
motivation for murder, blackmail and adultery. Instead of the lm focusing
on the lower working or peasant classes, the male protagonists in Edo Gothic
are down on their luck and displaced Samurai, or rnin, who break with the
code of the bushid, Samurai code of conduct, in order to enhance their status.
Once again, it is the women that sufer the most. Unlike the passive Miyagi in
Mizoguchis Tales of Ugetsu, who remains the spiritual focus of the family even
in death, the wronged women in Edo Gothic do not forgive their husbands
sins so lightly, instead returning after death to wreak a terrible vengeance.
As Hughes writes in Familiarity of the Strange: Japans Gothic Tradition,
Although women in Japanese Gothic ction are often victims of male abuse,
their spirits are capable of powerful revenge (2000).
Japanese cinema in the late 1950s and early 1960s can be best understood in
terms of a distinction between mind (seinshin) and body (nikutai), as expressed
through the opposition of romantic love and carnal desire. Whilst the socially
informed lms of the Japanese New Wave were concerned with the materialism
of the body, the period drama continued to constitute the subject through an
abstract ideological essence associated with the spirit (Standish 2005: 223).
Tucker distinguishes between directors of the ethical right, or traditionalists,
and those on the ethical left, whom he terms protestors (1973: 42). On the
left were the directors of the Japanese New Wave, including Hani, shima,
Masumura and Teshigahara, whilst on the right were directors such as Ozu,
Mizoguchi, Naruse and Gosha (Tucker 1973: 43). Fatalism is a key convention
of the traditionalists, and is associated with what is known in Japan as mono-
no-aware, a type of resigned acceptance of ones fate. Richie denes mono-no-
do goi : diful smui nd wongd womn 51
aware as an observance of the way things are and a willingness to go along
with them. an acceptance of adversity, and an appreciation of the inevi-
table (2001: 63). For Shapiro, Richies denition is inadequate. Instead he
argues that mono-no-aware is both an appreciation of the ephemeral nature of
existence, or the impermanence of things, and a profound sense of sympathy
that is more difcult to dene (2002: 2004).
The diference between lms on the left concerned with nikutai and lms
on the right concerned with seinshin can be thought of in terms of acceptance
of the status quo on the one hand, and social protest on the other, although, as
Tucker points out, this division is actually more complicated than it seems:
Yet lms can be made in which characters exemplify completely mono-
no-aware and yet be implicit criticism of the status quo, and at the other
extreme a number of lms have been made which had an overt intention of
being critical towards the accepted social mores yet ended by supporting
them. (1973: 43)
The period dramas of Edo Gothic were the opposite of the shakiamono lm,
the social problem lm, which represented one of the other dominant genres in
Japanese cinema in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Edo Gothic lms were tradi-
tional and tended to reinforce conservative values, with their helpless victims
trapped in nightmarish gothic landscapes, articulated through the expres-
sionistic surfaces of a subjective rather than objective reality. In Standishs
terms, Edo Gothic can be seen as expressive of a type of post-defeat victim-
ization or higaisha ishiki (victim consciousness). We saw one manner in which
this post-defeat victimisation worked in the discussion of Godzilla in the last
chapter. Like Daiei studios black lms, Edo Gothic focuses on the exami-
nation of morality in an age of rampant materialism (Standish 2005: 2004). In
Edo Gothic this is embodied within the physical scars of the vengeful ghosts,
through which individual and historical trauma become displaced from the
self on to the other. However, the boundaries between self and other become
increasingly problematised, as the external alien turns inward.
It needs to be noted that Japan was not the only country to use a period
setting and the gothic form to articulate anxieties around modernity, identity
and rationality. There was a denable trend in the 1950s towards gothic horror.
In the United Kingdom, Hammer was producing its own period gothic horrors
with lms such as The Abominable Snowman (Guest: 1957), Curse of Franken-
stein (Fisher: 1957) and Dracula, Prince of Darkness (Fisher: 1966). And in
America, Roger Corman directed some of the all-time classic adaptations of
the work of Edgar Allen Poe, including: The Fall of the House of Usher (1960),
The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) and Tales of Terror (1962).
Not only did Western gothic nd its roots in medieval society with a dominant
imagistic system derived from Catholicism, but in some cases gothic texts also
utilised the Orient as a place of exoticism and eroticism. In Beckfords Vathek
(1786), supposedly based loosely on some of the stories in The Arabian Nights,
the main character, Caliph Vathek, is a tyrant whose decadence is such that he
sacrices fty of the most beautiful children in his desire for arcane knowledge
and power. Botting writes: Translations of Arabian stories led to a vogue for
Oriental tales and a love of the exotic. The East constituted another space in
which the expanding imagination could freely roam (1996: 59).
In Japan, as in the West, gothic ction served to function not only as a
mechanics of transgression (of propriety, morals and values of patriarchy),
but also, somewhat paradoxically, as a means of reasserting social and ethical
boundaries (Botting 1996: 7). In the West, gothic literature and lm allowed
a reconstitution of identity through its confrontation with sheer otherness
(Botting 1996: 9). At the same time, in its Buddhist sensibility and privileging
of spirituality, Edo Gothic is markedly diferent. Hughes writes:
Buddhist sufering aris[es] out of desire and craving in a spirited world.
Desire may cause self-division, dramatized by the dangerous doppel-
ganger, but the Japanese solution is rarely found in the reafrmation
of self. It is, instead, the emptying of the self that constitutes cosmic
achievement In translation, life is not a battleground for God and the
Devil the two grow naturally together in the eld of life. (2000)
For Kawai this concept of nothingness is beyond negative and positive
values (1996: 20). The centrality of sufering to Edo Gothic, connected to the
quest for the empty self, is commonly expressed in the symbiotic relationship
between mother and child. Further, while the concept of ancestry is important
to Western gothic forms, it does not have the same currency as it does in
Japan. The ie system and the symbolic functioning of debt as fundamental
to On mean that the concept of ancestral duties has a much greater currency
in Japanese gothic literature and Edo Gothic lm. And instead of the rich
symbolism of Catholicism that provides the backdrop to many a gothic tale,
Japanese Edo Gothic draws on an eclectic mixture of religions, from Confu-
cianism to Buddhism and Shint. On the occasions when Japanese horror does
draw on religious iconography derived from Christianity and Catholicism, it is
usually for aesthetic rather than symbolic reasons. In spite of these diferences,
in Japan, as elsewhere, the story of the vengeful ghost capture[s] the adultery,
conspiracy, betrayal and revenge common to the modern Gothic (Hughes:
2000). However, belief in the ontological materiality of ghosts often separates
Western gothic from Japanese:
The Japanese artist has for centuries presented the real as unreal and
do goi: diful smui nd wongd womn 53
the unreal as real In fact a strongly-held belief in the reality of the
dead, both in religious and psychological terms, does much to explain the
presence of ghosts in Japanese lms. (Tucker 1973: 110)
THE BACKGROUND
Although some are set later, during the Meiji Period (18681912), Edo Gothic
lms are generally set during the Edo Period (16031867), during which
the Samurai became obsolete. The period setting is important, as it parallels
contemporary concerns at the time over the breakdown of social structures in
the face of economic expansion and the perceived Westernisation of Japanese
society. During 1953 and the early 1970s, Japan experienced what is known as
Miracle Growth or the Economic Bubble through the enforced moderni-
sation of Japan, and with it the rapid development of consumer culture and
massive migration of people to the city. In fact, by 1968, Japans GNP (gross
national prot) was second only to that of the USA. At the same time, as
Standish points out, these radical transformations in Japans economy led to
the increasingly alienated individual, with men constantly at work and women
left fending for the children with little or no help:
In short, high economic growth ofered in the same instant greater levels
of material security but at the cost of self-abnegation as security and
welfare were built upon acquiescence; and concurrently urban society
spawned increasing feelings of alienation. (2005: 309)
One reaction to this shift in Japanese society from production to repro-
duction was the emergence of neo-nationalism and discourses of Japaneseness
(Nihonjinron). In 1970, the writer Yukio Mishima (192570) committed ritual
suicide, or seppuku, whilst crying out, Long live the emperor. In 1961,
Mishima published Patriotism as a response to the growing materialism under-
lying Japanese society, as articulated through what he saw as the moral and
spiritual degeneracy of Japan. In Patriotism, Mishima promoted the code of
the bushid and with it traditional morals and values. Mishima wanted to put
an end to Japans so-called democratic system and reinstate the emperor in his
rightful place as the political and spiritual leader of Japan. In the immediate
aftermath of Mishimas death, Philip Shabecof wrote:
What he really was seeking was a return to the samurai tradition, which
he saw as an ethical and esthetic system truer to the spirit of Japan than a
modern army. He deplored most of the signs of Westernization in Japan.
Western inuence, he felt, was corrupting Japan and robbing her of her
essential spirit. (1970)
DECEITFUL SAMURAI
In Edo Gothic, the loss of wa, or the spiritual connection between man and
nature, is symbolised through the privileging of selsh desires and desire for
status over selessness (seisen). In Edo Gothic deceitful Samurai, who abandon
the code of bushid and neglect their lial and societal duties for material gain,
demonstrate a lack of ninj (compassion) towards others. Unlike Mishima, who
wished to return to traditional values as embodied by the (mythical) Samurai,
the rnin in Edo Gothic has little compassion for others; instead he places
self-interest before the needs of the community. The rnin leaves a trail of
bodies in his wake, as he dispenses with the code of the bushid in an attempt
to progress up the social scale, as in Ghost Story of Yotsuya (1959) and Ghost of
Kagama-Ga-Fuchi (Mori: 1959). Further, women are often the victims of the
dispossessed Samurais social ascent: either abandoned, whether intentionally
or unintentionally, as in the Black Hair segment of Kwaidan and The Ghost
Cat of Otama Pond, or murdered, as in The Ghost Story of Yotsuya. The gure
of the wronged woman, returning from the dead as a vengeful ghost, is the
gurative and symbolic outcome of the loss of traditional and pre-modern
values. Ross writes of Edo ghost stories, especially exciting was the idea of a
wrathful female ghost returning to exact vengeance for former mistreatment
(1996: 129).
The most famous director of Edo Gothic in the late 1950s and early 1960s
was Nobuo Nakagawa (190583), who directed The Ceiling at Utsunomiya
(1956), The Mansion of the Ghost Cat (1958) and The Ghosts of Kasane Swamp
(1957), to name but a few. His most famous lms are his seminal adaptation
of the Kabuki play, Ghost Story of Yotsuya (1959), and his vivid depiction of
Buddhist hell and torture, Hell (1960).
Adapted for the screen over thirty times, with its deceitful Samurai, Iemon,
and its wronged woman, Iwa, Ghost Story of Yotsuya is the archetypical Edo
Gothic narrative. The Kabuki play by Tsuruya Nanboku IV, rst performed in
1821, was based upon an old Japanese folktale of Oiwa in which a man brings
about the death of his wife, only to have her spirit wreak vengeance on him from
beyond the grave. Nanboku gave the story a contemporary twist by integrating
two real-life events within the narrative: the murder of their masters by two
servants, and the story of a Samurai who, discovering his mistress was having
an afair, brutally killed both her and her lover (who was a servant) and nailed
their bodies to a board before throwing them into the Kanda River. In the play,
The object of her [Oiwas] wrath does not feel any guilt for his actions, but
still is presented as a despicable character responsible for the heroines plight
(Barrett 1989: 99). Of the gure of Iwa, as vengeful yrei, Barrett writes:
Perhaps she could have been created only during Nanbokus degenerate times
when the social fabric based on loyalty towards superiors was coming apart
(1989: 99). The re-emergence of Oiwa from her watery grave in the late 1950s
provides a point of parallelism between past and present, times at which the
social fabric of Japan was torn apart:
The bond of parent and child lasts through this world,
But that of husband and wife lasts forever.
How can you kill one who is yours body and soul,
who is bound to you for generations to come?
I cannot leave this baby, innocent of any sin!
O, the fury of a woman maddened
is truly like unto the greatest terror there is. (My emphasis)
(Nakagawa: 1957)
Nakagawas lm begins with a long shot of a Kabuki stage, on which a gure
dressed in black sings about the obligations and ties that bind women to men,
and parents to their children. This use of the song acts as a typical gothic frame.
As in the folktale, and subsequent play, Iemon (Shigeru Amachi) is a rnin
in love with the beautiful daughter of a rich merchant. The lm is divided
into three distinct sections, each signalled by a fade to black, mimicking the
structure of classical tragedy. The rst, the beginning or incentive moment,
begins with the murder of Iwas father, Samon (Shinjir Asano), and ends
with that of Yomoshichi (Ryozaburo Nakamura), the anc of Iwas sister. The
middle section or climax focuses on the events leading up to Iwas (Kazuko
Wakasugi) death and ends with the tormented Iemon mistakenly killing his
new wife, Ume (Junko Ikeuchi), and her grandfather, Ito, as he is pursued by
the ghosts of the dead. The nal section is the denouement or resolution, in
which the ghosts take their revenge.
In the high stylised and theatrical opening scene, Iemon is seen pleading
for Iwas hand in marriage but is ridiculed by Samon and his retainer. The
impenetrable class diferences between Iemon and Samon are projected on to
the mise-en-scne. The frame is articially divided into two vertical sections,
by a tree that separates Iemon and his servant from Samon and his retainer. On
the left, Iemon and his servant are seen kneeling, while on the right-hand side,
Samon and his retainer are standing up. The tree functions as a visual marker of
the importance of vertical hierarchies and boundaries in pre-modern Japanese
society. Iemon oversteps the boundaries, both literally and metaphorically:
rstly, by stepping into the space occupied by Samon and his retainer, and
then by taking out his sword and slaying both of them. Barrett comments, In
Nakagawas version Iemon becomes a somewhat more sym pathetic character,
since he kills Iwas father in a t of indignation on account of his lower-
samurai-class origins (1989: 100). Here it is pride which leads to Iemons
violent act, which links to the formal characteristics of classical tragedy in
which the tragically awed hero (or anti-hero) is situated as the pawn amongst
circumstances beyond his control.
As in tragedy, one act of violence leads to another in a never-ending spiral
that can only be resolved through the tragic heros death. Parallelism and
mise-en-scne are utilised visually to foreground Iemons sufering as a result
of his downfall from honour. Iemons servant, Naosuke (Shuntaro Emi), like
Shakespeares Iago, uses blackmail to persuade Iemon to help him get rid of
Yomoshichi, as he desires Sode (Noriko Kitazawa), Iwas sister, who is in love
with Yomoshichi. Greed also motivates Naosuke to encourage Iemon to get rid
of Iwa, who stands in the way of a protable match with the Ito family. The
parallelism between the two couples, Iemon and Iwa, and Naosuke and Sode,
is used to emphasize the magnitude of Iemons downfall, visually and themat-
ically constructing him as the double of Naosuke, rather than his superior.
Indeed, when Naosuke reminds him of this fact in the scene at Snake Temple,
Iemon takes out his sword and cuts him down.
The tragic dimension of Iemon is signied by the constant framing of
him against blood-red backgrounds: against the red ag in the scene when he
rescues Iwa; reections of a blood-red night sky ickering on Iemons face as he
agrees to murder Ume; and red banners blowing in the wind when he receives
the poison from Naosuke. In the aforementioned scenes, the red background
functions not just as signier of desire and symbol of impending doom, but
also as an externalisation of Iemons inner conict and guilt. Sedgwick uses the
metaphor of the veil in gothic ction as that which connotes sexuality through
the interplay of concealment and revelation (like the kimono in Japanese
culture), as a metonym of the thing covered and as a metaphor for sexual
prohibitions by which sexual desire is enhanced and specied (1986: 143).
In addition, the framing of Iemon through vertical iron bars, as in the scene
where he ofers Iwa to the masseur Takuetsu (Otomo Jun), in repayment of a
debt, and then its repetition when he convinces Takuetsu to sleep with Iwa,
constitutes a mise-en-scne of imprisonment and connement. This also links
to the tragic gure of Henchard in Hardys The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886),
who, in selling his wife and child, demonstrates a lack of concern for the
needs of others and therefore brings about his own downfall. Iemons pride is
similar to Henchards, interpreted as hubris. According to the rules of classical
tragedy, hubris is the existence of a fatal aw, usually an excess of pride or
ignorance, which leads the tragic hero to believe that he can violate the moral
and ethical laws of the community without retribution. According to Bachnik,
The Japanese equivalent to the apple in the Garden [of Eden] is personal
pride, or hubris, which leads to the use of social power on the basis of purely
personal designs for control. Bachnik explains:
The expression of personal power is destructive of society, since self
is indexed in relation to society. The more the self operates in purely
opportunistic terms, the more the potential for destruction of others
and even for the social organization involved. Finally, this imbalance is
ultimately destructive to self as well, since the organization of self hinges on
its relationship with society. (1994: 225)
In Ghost Story of Yotsuya, Iemons personal ambitions are situated as
threatening to the very structures of Japanese society according to which the
individual should put duty and obedience before personal desire. Further, as
in Tales of Ugetsu, Ghost Story of Yotsuya meditates on the socio-economic
pressures that cause men to sink into brutality. It is poverty and lack of status
that are causational factors both in the original murder and Iemons subsequent
betrayal of Iwa. This is clearly demonstrated in the rst scene in Edo, after
Iemon and Iwa are married, and Iwa has given birth to their son. The gentle
noise of the wind chime, between bamboo blinds on either side, symbolises the
coming of summer. Open umbrellas are to be found in the corner of the right-
hand side of the frame and a distant gure can be seen carrying umbrellas on
his back. In the next shot, from the outside and through the bamboo blinds, we
see Iemon and Iwa at work. The camera pans inside as Iwa stands up and moves
away from Iemon, who is sitting working on an umbrella. The umbrellas are
a signicant visual trope, in that they symbolise poverty and Iemons reduced
social status. Indeed, at the time, it was common for impoverished Samurai
to be employed as umbrella (wagasa) makers. The umbrella also functions to
signify the growing distance between Iemon and Iwa. The inside (uchi), the
domestic space, here is distinguished by its lack of human feeling (ninj), as
expressed visually by the physical and emotional distance between Iemon and
Iwa. In addition, the use of a frame within a frame, as in the shot of Iemon
standing in the doorway with the bamboo blinds casting shadows on his face,
foregrounds the existence of moral darkness within Iemon, which will overtake
him when he murders Iwa.
When Iemon leaves the house he hears his child cry and turns around, but
after a moments hesitation continues on his way. The juxtaposition of this
scene with the following one, in which he rescues Ume from bandits, is signi-
cant, in that Iemon has already been shown as demonstrating a lack of ninj
(compassion) and giri (duty) to his wife and child. This is a pivotal turning
point, in which, both literally and metaphorically, darkness overcomes light,
and selshness overcomes selessness, and as such paves the way for Iwas
murder.
Iwas death scene is a key sequence in all lm versions and Kabuki produc-
tions of the story. Signicantly, the murder happens on the night of Iemons
marriage to Ume. When Iemon leaves the house, having given Iwa the poison,
he is again framed in the doorway, the bamboo shadows once again reecting
both his internal conict and moral darkness. When Takuetsu arrives, under
the pretence of giving the sickly Iwa a massage, she thinks that this is an act of
compassion on the part of Iemon. However, when he makes sexual advances
towards her, Iwa is horried, refusing to believe that Iemon would be capable
of such deception. Meanwhile, the poison that Iemon gave Iwa, pretending
that it was blood medicine to help with poor circulation, begins to work. In
great pain, Iwa cries out and covers her face with her hand. She goes over to a
mirror that is covered by a black lid; as she slips the cover of the mirror, the
camera pans in on Iwas reection and we see that the left-hand side of her
face is covered with open weeping wounds and sores and her eye is swollen
shut. Here the mirror, as iconic symbol of female vanity, is linked to the abject
as it foregrounds the interplay between pollution and purity that constitutes
representations of women in Japanese art and popular culture. As Iwa is dying,
reworks celebrating Iemons nuptials create a canopy of colour in the night
sky. The cross-cutting between the scene of Iwas betrayal and death and the
reworks emphasises the horror of Iemons crime, as well as functioning as
a metonymic signier of historical trauma, embodied within the sufering
woman, who symbolises nationhood.
While Iwas disgurement is key to the original folktale, it can also be inter-
preted as a metaphorical reference to the traumatised and defeated Japan after
the Second World War. This is manifest trauma as genetic scar written on
the female body, as symbolic of nationhood. In Little Boy: The Art of Japans
Exploding Subculture, Rauer writes:
Twenty-two years after the mass obliteration of souls, the atomic bombs
dropped on Hiroshima and three days later on Nagasaki on August 9,
1945, monstrous deformities persisted in the Japanese psyche tragi-
cally splintered by defeat, subjugation, humiliation, and inconceivable
horrors unable to command a return to a unied monolithic persona,
the ordered cerebral imperative and societal dignity of pre-nuclear
innocence World War II left indelible stains on the Japanese psyche.
(2005)
Iwas disgured and destroyed face is just one example of the scarred
protagonists found in Japanese horror cinema of the 1950s and 1960s. Another
example can be found in Teshigahas Face of Another (1966). The protagonist is
a chemical scientist, Okuyama (Tatsuya Nakadai), whose face has been terribly
burnt in an accident, so that it almost bears no resemblance at all to a human
face. Okuyamas existential quest for a new face (hence the title of the lm)
allows a liberation of desire from the rigid constraints of Japanese patriarchy
and from the trauma of history, by making the subject anew. In addition to
this, Okuyama identies with a young woman (Miki Irie) in a lm that he sees,
who also has a badly scarred face. Further, Okuyamas wife (Machiko Ky)
suggests that Okuyamas putting on a mask to cover up his deformed face is
no diferent from the make-up worn by women. These multiple references to
the relationship between face and self, mask and make-up, further suggest that
the mask is an increasingly universal aspect of modern capitalist society where
one cannot escape the emphasis on appearance reected in the critical mirrors
of consumer society (Napier 1996: 103).
Similarly, Shinds Onibaba also makes explicit disgurement as metonymic
signier of war trauma. Shind had already made a number of lms dealing
with the impact of the nuclear bomb on Japan, including Children of Hiroshima
(1952) and Lucky Dragon No. 5 (1959). In Onibaba, an older womans (Nobuko
Otowa) jealousy of her daughter-in-laws (Jitsuko Yoshimura) beauty and her
afair with a handsome young deserter, Hachi (Kei Sato), lead to her donning
a hannya mask (a N mask which is used to express inside emotions on the
outside, here the sin of envy). McDonald argues that the link to the bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been all too evident for Japanese
audiences at the time (McDonald 2006: 118). And in addition, Shind himself
is on record as saying he based the make-up design for the brutal unmasking
scene on photographs of maimed hibakusha [victims of atomic bombs]
(McDonald 2006: 118).
Iwas disgured face can be seen to condense references to the scars of the
Second World War, the Shint concept of pollution, and the perpetration of
the feudal oppression of women. Her death is crucial, as Jordan points out:
Overcome by the treachery of her husband and her hideous appearance, Oiwa
is lled with resentment and anger. The poison and illness are secondary to
such powerful emotions which cause her death (1985: 22). As such, it could
be argued that the representation of historical trauma as physical trauma,
written on the face of Iwa in Ghost Story of Yotsuya, also reveals the disgured
underside to traditional conceptualisations of appropriate Japanese femininity
and motherhood. Iwas ornate comb is found later by Takuetsu, and given to
Sode, who immediately realises that it is her sisters. When Iwa appears to Sode,
leading her to Yomoshichi, she appears as she was in life. This is in opposition
to the disgured vengeful wraith that haunts Iemon. Barrett remarks, The
comb symbolizes Iwas beauty and her loss of it. It also indicates the dual
aspect of Japanese spirits who appear to be vengeful only to those who wronged
them (1989: 101).
In a scene of graphic violence shocking for the time, Iemon kills Takuetsu,
his sword slicing through Takuetsus arm, the dismembered limb still twitching
as it lies on the ground beside him. Together with Naosuke, Iemon crucies
the bodies on a wooden door, before disposing of them in a nearby river. Iemon
marries Ume as planned, but the ghosts of Iwa and Takuetsu return to haunt
him. Iemon ends up killing both Ume and Ito, as they take on the visages of
the departed. And as in the folktale, Iemon discovers that everywhere he goes,
the spirits of the dead haunt him restlessly (Jordan 1985: 31). When the ghosts
appear, red and green lighting is used to highlight their otherworldly and
demonic dimension. The use of green and red lighting is linked to the colour
imagery associated with oni (demons), who hunt for sinners, taking them back
to hell. Rubin writes:
The earth Oni, according to Buddhist belief, are responsible for disease
and epidemics (they are dressed in red). The Oni of hell (red or green
bodies) hunt for sinners and take them by chariot to Emma-Hoo, the god
of hell. There are invisible demons among the Oni whose presence can
be detected because they sing or whistle. The Oni who are women are
those transformed into demons after death by jealousy or violent grief.
(2000)
The nal act or denouement takes place at Snake Temple, where Iemon
has ed in terror from the vengeful ghosts. Often referred to as the dream
sequence in the play, the appearance of the ghosts haunting Iemon is as likely
to be an ontological signier of Iemons torment and guilt as real ghosts.
Certainly, the colour imagery suggests that the ghosts may be external projec-
tions of guilt and inner conict on the part of Iemon. Jordan writes, As with
many ghost stories, Iyemons torture in Yotsuya Kaidan is largely a manifes-
tation of his own guilt (1985: 32). Naosuke follows him to the temple, and so
starts the nal revenge of the ghosts.
As in Utagawa Kuniyoshis print, Hebiyama, snakes drop from the ceiling
of the temple. In traditional Japanese mythology, serpents are associated
with both good and evil. The snakes, like the rats in the later Illusion of Blood
(Toyoda: 1966), are linked to the feminine. This is made explicit in Ghost Story
of Yotsuya when Iwa tells Iemon that she was born in the year of the snake. It is
apt therefore that Iemon ees from the ghost to the temple at Snake Mountain.
Here the snakes dropping from the ceiling are not benevolent deities, but rather
symbols of the fearful world, the world of the dead and revenge (Jordan 1985:
151). When Iemon stabs Naosuke, Iwas body surfaces from a pond of red
blood and is substituted for that of Naosuke as he falls to the ground. Here an
association is made between blood, femininity and pollution the pond as a
womb and water as amniotic uid. Douglas argues that All bodily emissions,
even blood and pus from a wound, are sources of impurity (1966: 35).
Skewed low- and high-angle shots are edited together as a visual mirror
of Iemons deteriorating state of mind as the golden statue of the Buddha at
the centre of the room is replaced by glowing hitodama coming towards him.
Iemon falls backwards on to the ground as the menacing gure of Iwa, with
her child in her arms, approaches him. As the child cries, a red mosquito net
oats down from the ceiling, trapping Iemon. Barrett writes, This recalls the
summer night when Iwa, inside such a tent, dutifully drank the poison Iemon
had given her (1989: 102). Try as Iemon might, there is no escaping his inner
demons, whether real ghosts or projections of guilt.
At this point, Sode and Yomoshichi enter the temple, dressed in white with
swords in their hands, declaring revenge on Iemon. As they ght, the ghosts
of Iwa and Takuetsu continue to haunt Iemon, impeding him. A hand rising
from the ground clutches his foot, dragging him backwards; Takuetsus head
appears on a tree trunk; and the shutter Iwa and Takuetsu nailed in place
swings downwards and across his face, momentarily blinding him. Finally,
the ground opens up and Iwa appears from the depths of the Earth, like an
Oni, come to take the sinner to the underworld. The tormented Iemon begins
stabbing at the air, waving his sword around wildly. Iwa appears in front of
him holding the baby, distracting him, and just then Sode strikes. This is a
signicant departure from most variations of the story up until that time, in
which it is the brother-in-law who metes out the nal blow.
No longer able to ght, Iemon falls to the ground and begs Iwas forgiveness.
The nal shots are of Iwa, returned to her former beauty and holding her son
tenderly in her arms, surrounded by bright light. The nal image of mother
and child is highly symbolic. This could be as, Barrett points out, a reference
to Motonobu Kanos painting of The Sad Mother Kannon (Hibo Kannon-zu), as
suggested by Masatoshi Ohba. At the same time, there is an obvious similarity
between the Mother Kannon of Buddhist belief, the embodiment of sufering,
and that of the Virgin Mary in Western religion. Barrett concludes, once Oiwa
the Vengeful Spirit achieved her purpose, she could, like Mary, attain eternal
rest, which is called jobutsu or nirvana in Buddhism (1989: 1023).
THE SACRED MATERNAL
Iwa is the prototype of the vengeful woman who can be found in many
contemporary Japanese horror lms. With her long dark hair and disgured
face, there can be little doubt that the gure of Iwa provided the template
for Sadako in Ring. As with Miyagi in Tales of Ugetsu, Iwa dies for the sins of
her husband. Before her death, her ethereal beauty represents an idealised
version of femininity and a valorised image of Japanese motherhood, through
its symbolic relation to the Mother Kannon. In Unstable Mothers: Redening
Motherhood in Contemporary Japan, McKinlay points out how the concept
of rysaikenbo (good wife, wise mother) was seen as key to the establishment of
Japan as a nation-state during the Meiji Period leading up to the First World
War:
As the term suggests, the notion of rysai kenbo saw a re-dening of
women in terms of their roles as nurturers of children and overseers
of the domestic arena. At the same time, the principle of rich country,
strong military [fukoku kyohei], which saw Japan determined to establish
a nation-state comparable in strength to those of the West, emphasised
the importance of the family unit within the social hierarchy. (2002)
The family unit therefore acted as a microcosm of the ie system that functioned
within Japanese society more generally. The role of women as mothers gained
increased signicance in light of the need to produce a strong military and
nation-state within the dictates of state Shint. Further, McKinlay also points
out that this valorisation of the maternal continued, even after the so-called
democratisation of Japan during the Allied Occupation:
Although the ofcial ideologies of rysai kenbo and fukoku kyohei were
somewhat tarnished after 1945 by their association with the pre-war
imperialist state, the discourse on women and maternity associated with
them continued to inuence state policy and social ideology at least until
the late 1980s. (McKinlay 2002)
The nal image of Iwa in Ghost Story of Yotsuya can be seen as a represen-
tation of the sacred maternal and its continued signicance in Japanese cultural
and social mythology. This valorisation of the maternal is, as we shall see, a
common feature in Japanese horror. The contradictory nature of the feminine
as both polluted and pure, here signied through the gure of Iwa, cannot
be simply dismissed as articulating male anxieties around female sexuality, as
Western psychoanalytical frameworks would suggest. Instead, this oscillation
between abject and iconic mother needs to be understood by reference to the
creation myth of Shint.
The myth of Izanagi (Male-who-invites or August Male) and Izanami
(Female-who-invites or August Female) is told in the oldest Japanese texts,
the Kojiki (712 , Ono Yasumaro) and Nihonshoki (720 , by a committee of
scholars). Izanagi and Izanami, two deities (or kami), were brother and sister,
according to legend. They descended from Heaven to an island, Onogoro
(Spontaneously-congeal-island), which they created and they became man
and wife.
After their marriage, Izanami gave birth to a number of seas, islands, rivers
and trees (Hadland Davis 1992: 22). However, the couples rstborn was a
monstrous leech child (Littleton 2002: 41). Following this and with help
from the older kami, Izanami gave birth to Amaterasu (the Sun Goddess, from
whom the emperor was said to be descended), Tsukiyumi (the Moon God),
Susano (the Raging Male) and Kagutsuchi (the Fire God). Izanami died from
do goi: di ful smui nd wongd womn 63
burns, after the birth of Kagutsuchi, and left the Earth, descending to the Land
of Yomi (the Land of the Dead). The Land of the Dead is associated with
pollution, decay and death. Unable to live without her, Izanagi followed her to
Yomi. When Izanagi came across her at last, Izanami pleaded with him not to
look at her. However, consumed with desire to see her, Izanagi broke a piece of
his many-toothed comb and lit it in order to set eyes on his beloved wife:
The sight that greeted him was ghastly and horrible in the extreme. His
once beautiful wife had now become a swollen and festering creature.
Eight varieties of Thunder Gods rested upon her. The Thunder of the
Fire, Earth, and Mountain were all there leering upon him, and roaring
with their great voices. (Hadland Davis 1992: 24)
Izanagi managed to escape from the wrath of Izanami and the Eight Ugly
Females of Yomi that she sent after him. Reaching the exit, he asked his wife for
a divorce, to which she responded that she would kill a thousand people a day.
Izanagi replied that he would then cause to be born fteen hundred to replace
those that she killed. This is afrmative of the Shint belief in the power of life
over death and the optimism that underlies that religion. Having escaped from
the Land of Yomi, Izanagi blocked of the entrance with a large rock. Contact
with pollution meant that Izanagi had to participate in rites of purication,
through which numerous kami were born. These rites, or O-hara, remain funda-
mental to Shint. Izanagi built himself an abode of gloom in the island of Ahaji,
where he dwelt forever in silence and concealment (Hadland Davis 1992: 25).
In her discussion of the cultural diferences between Western and Japanese
fairy tales, Kawai points out that the injunction not to look, a common feature
of many fairy tales, comes from the female character in Japan as in The Bush
Warblers Home, unlike the typical male prohibitor in Western fairy tales such
as Bluebeard (France) and Faithful John (Germany). As we have seen in the
Shint creation myth, it is Izanami that prohibits, and Izanagi who breaks the
prohibition. Further, Kawai points out that often the prohibitor sufers more
than the male character who breaks the prohibition. In The Bush Warblers
Home for example, a woodcutter comes across a beautiful woman in a strange
mansion. She leaves for town and tells him that under no circumstances should
he look in the next room. As soon as she is gone, he breaks the injunction and
nds riches and treasures in the room; in the process he breaks three eggs
in a bird nest. When the woman returns, she berates the woodcutter, who
unwittingly caused the death of her three daughters by breaking the eggs; she
turns into a bush warbler and ies away (Kawai 1996: 12). In this tale, as in
others, the woman disappears, leaving the woodcutter alone once more. Very
rarely in Japanese fairy tales are those who break injunctions punished (as in,
for instance Red Riding Hood). Instead, the woman disappears, in a similar
way to Iwa, leaving the reader/viewer with a sense of mono-no-aware and an
impression of the strong function of nothingness in Japanese thought.
In Ghost Story of Yotsuya, both tale and lms, it is made clear that the
vengeful ghosts may indeed be projections of Iemons guilt rather than
ontological entities. Further, the ghost of Iwa can only materialise and gain
human shape if her image momentarily possesses another. This prototype of
the vengeful female wraith in Japanese cultural thought can be traced back to
the gure of Lady Royoko in The Tale of the Genji. In this sense, Iemon dies at
his own hand made clear in the later Illusion of Blood (Toyoda: 1966), when
Iemon, in a tting end, falls on to his own sword. Although Iwa is more sinned
against than sinning, like the woman in the bush warblers tale, she also ends
up disappearing from the narrative world as a consequence of the actions of
the male protagonist.
WRONGED WOMEN
A heightened interest in supernatural beings occurred during the
Edo period, although tales of ghosts had been circulated in Japan for
centuries. The common theme that runs throughout these stories is that
of the wronged or jealous woman. (Jordan 1985: 26)
Along with the tale of the tragic sufering Oiwa, the tale of Okiku is the other
most important inuence on the archetypical wronged woman who appears
in both early and contemporary Japanese horror lm. In the story, Okiku is a
maid, who works for a Samurai called Aoyama Tessan. Aoyama makes sexual
advances towards Okiku, which she rejects. In anger, he hides one of a set of
ten plates, given to him by Dutch visitors, and then asks her to fetch the plates
and count them in front of him. Of course, there are only nine plates, and
Aoyama blames the loss of the plate on Okiku in order to try to convince her
to become his mistress. Okiku refuses again and Aoyama kills her, disposing
of her body down a well. The story goes that, each night, Okiku can be heard
from the depths of the well, counting from one to nine, after which she gives
a heartrending wail. In some versions of the story, Okiku drives Aoyama to
madness and death; in another, Okiku is hung upside down in the well; whilst
in another, the ghost of Okiku is vanquished by a neighbour of Aoyama, who,
when she nishes counting to nine, cries out ten. Jordan writes, and the ghost
with a scream disappeared (1985: 26).
Another example of Edo Gothic is Ishikawas The Ghost Cat of Otama Pond
(1960). It is set in the present. Tadahiko (Shozaburo Date) and Keiko (Kitazawa
Noriko), a young couple in love, become lost in the woods by an old dirty pond.
Try as they may, they cannot seem to nd their way out of the forest; instead,
do goi : diful smui nd wongd womn 65
they keep on coming back to the pond, which changes colour every time they
nd themselves back there. Here we have an example of Freuds concept of the
uncanny (unheimlich), as that which should be familiar becomes instead strange
and frightening, or unfamiliar. In his essay on The Uncanny [1919] (1990),
Freud writes of a time in Italy when, having gone for a walk, he nds himself
lost in an unknown street. When he tries to nd his way back to a familiar
street, Freud is surprised to nd himself, on two further occasions, back at
this unknown French quarter, at which, Freud writes, a feeling overcame me
which I can only describe as uncanny, and I was glad enough to nd myself
back in the piazza I had left a short while before, without any further voyages
of discovery (1919: 359). The uncanny evokes a sense of fear, and in The Ghost
Cat of Otama Pond functions as a portent of doom.
Eventually, the couple give up trying to nd their way home, and when they
come upon an old deserted house, they seek shelter from a storm. Keiko is
cursed when she catches sight of the ghostly form of an old woman in the
house and falls into a coma. Tadahiko nds her unconscious and carries her
into the old building. As she sleeps, she is bathed in red light, symbolising the
nearness of death. The old woman is a bakeneko, or ghost cat. Slantchev ofers
the following denition:
It is believed that if a cats owner is killed and it licks its blood, the
creature will become a cat monster, or kaibyo (also known as bakeneko)
that could possess people and control malevolent spirits. As a metaphor
of all those people who died violently and were never properly buried (as
in the recent war), the cat spirit embodies the search for retribution that
would let the dead rest in peace. (2006)
The next day the young couple proceed to Tadahikos home, where a priest
(who can be thought of as the waki that we nd in N theatre, as discussed in
Chapter 1) tells him that Keiko is cursed and it will be necessary to perform
an exorcism. During the exorcism, the priest relates the story of how the curse
came to be. Past and present are connected as the camera moves outside, over
trees and over the pond, returning to the house as the narrative of the past
begins. The use of the mobile shot here, linking past to present, is comparable
to the revolving stage (kabuki no butai) used in Kabuki. Like other examples of
Edo Gothic, the subsequent narrative, set in the Edo Period, tells of doomed
love in a society in which desire for wealth and sexual desire lead directly to
murder, tragedy and a dreadful retribution.
The lovers are Yachimaru (Shozaburo Date), the son of Shinbei, who is the
headman in the village, and Kozasa (Kitawaza Noriko), the daughter of Gensai
(Numata Yoichi), an infamous villain. The two houses are sworn enemies,
which means that in line with giri (or duty), the lovers cannot marry. Again giri
comes into conict with ninj (human feeling). Yachimaru leaves for the city,
promising Kozasa that he will return for her. In his absence, the magistrate
plots with Gensai and Goroto (who is in love with Kozasa) to get rid of Shinbei,
as the magistrate desires Yachimarus sister, Akino. Before we meet the three
main antagonists for the rst time, a wide shot of a Samurai sword against a
red background lls the frame, signifying the murderous natures of the men.
When Shinbei goes to see the magistrate on the part of the villagers, who are
complaining about high land taxes, even though to question a superior would
more often than not result in death, the perfect opportunity arises to get rid of
him. However, unlike Serizawas sacrice in Godzilla, Shinbeis self-sacrice
for the benet of the community does not restore harmony to society. The
three men kill him as he is on his way home, and throw his body into Otama
Pond; as they do so, the pond turns blood-red. They proceed to Yachimarus
family home and kidnap Akino, killing the grandmother (Satsuke Fuji) and
her servant. As the old woman dies, surrounded by ames, her face is covered
in red, raw burns, obscuring her features. Again we have bodily trauma as a
visual reference to historical trauma, which is by now a signicant component of
Japanese horror lm. Rather than sufer disgrace, or indeed be shamed, Akino
commits suicide using one of her hair ornaments, and her dead body is placed
out of sight down a well. In Yachimarus absence, Kozasa is engaged to Goroto
in accordance with her fathers wishes. Yachimaru returns to the village when
his ghostly sister, Akino, appears to him, but also falls victim to the avaricious
magistrate and his retainers; his body joins that of Shinbei in Otama Pond.
Immediately after this we see the family cat, Toma, licking the blood spilled by
Yachimaru during the ght.
Scenes of Kozasa surrounded by owers, either at home or in the eld where
she used to meet Yachimaru, signify the transient nature of life and articulate the
fatalism implicit in mono-no-aware. The lm enters the denouement with the
revenge of the ghosts. Blood imagery is used to signify the presence of vengeful
ghosts, from spots of blood on Kozasas wedding kimono; water turned into
blood in Gensais sake cup; drops of blood leading to Akinos hairpin; and the
red light that oods Gensais house just after the re bell rings.
When Gensai discovers the dead body of OBan (his mistress), the ghost of
Akino, lit in green, appears behind him. Gensai kills his wife when the ghostly
Akino appears in her place. Similarly Goroto kills Kozasa by mistake. The
moment Kozasa dies, she returns to life as a bakeneko, sitting on the roof,
watching and orchestrating the three mens demise. Surrounded by the ghosts
of the dead, the magistrate, Goroto and Gensai come to their timely end, and
their bodies join those of their victims in Otama Pond. As the narrative from
the past ends, the camera once again circles round the forest and back to the
house in the present, where we discover that Tadahiko and Keiko are both
descended from the warring houses. The curse is broken once the cat is laid to
do goi : di ful smui nd wongd womn 67
rest and appropriate rituals are said; the lovers in the present are now free to
marry, unlike those in the past who can be together only in death.
Whilst the lms discussed up until this point are not well known in the
West, the gures of the wronged woman and deceitful Samurai can also be
found in the Black Hair segment of the award-winning Kwaidan (1964).
In Black Hair a young Samurai (Rentaro Mikuni) who is down on his luck
divorces his devoted wife (Michiyo Aratama) in order to marry the daughter
(Misako Watanabe) of a rich lord. He soon comes to regret his decision, as
his new wife turns out to be vain and selsh, the opposite to his old wife. The
contrast between the two is connoted visually through the use of cross-cutting
between his vain second wife idling away her time and his rst wife working.
Whilst his second wife is lazy and pampered, his rst wife sits at the spindle all
day making cloth. He lets the second wife go home, no longer able to put up
with her spoiled behaviour. Finally, when his term of service is up, he returns
back to his old home and his rst wife.
The village is deserted, and his old home is both depilated and empty.
Rotting boards crumble under his feet as he walks through the house, but
surprisingly enough he discovers his wife as he left her, at the spinning wheel,
the room in which she sits apparently unmarked by time. She is happy to see
him and accepts his apologies, seemingly understanding of why he left her in
the rst place. They spend the night together, but the Samurai awakes the next
morning to discover he has slept with a rotted skeleton with white hair. This
tale of romance becomes one of terror, as the white hair turns to black and
ings itself around the Samurais throat. Hair as a source of pollution and fear
is also a constant trope in Japanese horror. Ebersole writes, In Japan, human
hair was employed in purication rituals, but it was also a potential source of
pollution and danger (1998: 86). Like the bodies of the dead, in the absence
of proper funeral rites, it was believed that hair could become possessed by a
vengeful kami. The cultural resonance of hair taking on a life of its own is also
related to beliefs that female hair was associated with life force, sexual energy,
growth, and fertility (Ebersole 1998: 85). Ebersole elucidates, the long hair of
young women was believed to have the power to attract kamis or divinities, who
would descend into it and temporarily reside there (1998: 85). Hearn points to
the similarity between Japanese superstitions around female hair and the myth
of Medusa. He writes, the subject of such tales [is] always some wondrously
beautiful girl, whose hair turns to snakes only at night; and who is discovered
at last to be either a dragon or a dragons daughter ([1932] 2006: 44). Further,
Hearn asserts that other tales based around the relationship between wives
(okusama) and concubine (mekeke or ashio) also feature hair as demonic. Forced
to live together, their apparent harmony would be disturbed at night when
The long black tresses of each would uncoil and hiss and strive to devour
those of the other (Hearn [1932] 2006: 44).
Terried, the Samurai ees the house, chased by his dead wifes hair. The
next morning, he discovers that his wife died soon after he left, and that his
home has been abandoned for a number of years. This is reminiscent of the
story in Tales of Ugetsu, with the Samurai discovering that, in abandoning
his devoted rst wife for riches and wealth, he has ended up with nothing.
The moral of the story, central to Edo Gothic, is that wealth is an illusion that
cannot make man happy.
CONVENTIONS OF EDO GOTHIC
Writing about Hirorshi Inagakis Samurai trilogy, McDonald argues that there
are two routes available for the Samurai in his quest for identity:
opportunism versus integrity. The opportunist is content with an animal-
like existence. His progress is regress, dened by images of stagna-
tion, decline, connement and chaos. Integrity is the hard-won choice,
requiring stern commitment to the tenets of bushid, the samurai code of
conduct. This choice is associated with images of ow, ascent, openness
and cleanliness. (2006: 69)
In Edo Gothic, the Samurai usually follows the rst path of opportunism and
regress; visual images of corruption, blood and connement (frames within
frames, shots through barred windows and doors) dominate the mise-en-
scne. In a similar manner to lm noir, low-key lighting, distorted camera
angles and extreme long shots are used to externalise the inner corruption,
and foreground the interplay between good and evil. The use of water imagery
(rain, ponds, lakes) can be interpreted as both a signier of corruption and, at
the same time, a reference to the sacred maternal.
The constant references to the vengeful ghost of both Iwa and Okiku function
not only as symbols of female oppression, but also as allegorical signiers of
the persistence of historical trauma. We have also seen the continuance of the
valorisation of the maternal, most explicitly in the iconic image of mother and
child at the end of Ghost Story of Yotsuya and the reafrmation of traditional
values, which privilege frugality, honesty and lial duty. A sense of mono-no-
aware, or the transitory nature of life, and fatalism, is a dominant theme in Edo
Gothic, as it is in Japanese fairy tales and horror cinema. Iwasaka and Toelken
argue that the lack of demarcation between the land of the living and that
of the dead is central to Japanese folklore, and that the elds of illusion and
reality overlap and interact, and may indeed not be distinguishable, resulting
in a kind of ambiguity and simultaneity which can thrive on anxiety and guilt
and which can create the most stunning of tragedies (1994: 38). Further,
do goi : di ful smui nd wongd womn 69
they argue that Japanese popular cinema allows the expression of emotions not
permitted by the strict dictates of Japanese society: in the actions of an angry
ghost, feelings of guilt, selshness, jealousy, and betrayal can be acted out in
metaphorical tableau scenes which would be repressed in everyday life (1994:
38). Edo Gothic allows this expression of emotions through the gure of the
vengeful ghost as wronged woman and the situation of the narratives in the
(feudal) past, where personal desire takes precedence over societal dictates and
the present is structured as always in thrall to the past. Edmundson writes:
Gothic is the art of haunting, and in two senses. Gothic shows time and
time again that life, even at its most ostensibly innocent, is possessed, and
the present is in thrall of the past. All are guilty. All must, in time, pay
out. And Gothic also sets out to haunt its audience, possess them so that
they can think of nothing else. (1997: 5)
4
Ghosts of Desire:
Kaidan pinku eiga
T
hese days the more cheaply produced AV (adult video) has largely taken
over from the soft-core Japanese independent lm known as pink lm
or pinku eiga and its mainstream studio-produced equivalent, roman porno
(romantic pornography). Recently, pinku eiga has been making a comeback,
with lms such as The Bedroom (Sato: 1992), Tandem (Sato: 1994), The Woman
in Black Underwear (Zeze: 1997) and Lunchbox (Imaoka: 2004). However,
before the Allied Occupation, the only way to see sexually explicit lms was
either to visit the city and purchase a burumubi (blue movie) from an eroto-
gushi (smut peddler) or to attend an underground screening of domestically
produced stag lms (Macias 2001: 172).
In 1949, EIRIN (Administration Commission of Motion Picture Code of
Ethics) was set up to police violent and sexually explicit lms. With a similar
role to the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) in the United States
and the BBFC (British Board of Film Classication) in the United Kingdom,
EIRINs guidelines in relation to sex and violence were considerably more
open to interpretation. In terms of obscenity, EIRIN dened three specic
areas as not suitable for public consumption: (1) genitalia, (2) pubic hair and
(3) penetration shots. While similar restrictions around penetration shots and
genitalia operated elsewhere, the restriction on pubic hair, as we have already
seen, means that sexual violence and extreme sadomasochism, unacceptable
in the West, managed to get through EIRIN as long as there was no sign of
female pubic hair. This meant that Japanese pink cinema could never truly
be considered hard-core, as it was constrained by censorship regulations,
which either required fogging or, more commonly, the careful positioning of
objects within the frame, such as vases and bottles, so that the genital area was
obscured from view.
In contrast to the humanistic dramas of canonical Japanese directors such as
Kurosawa and Mizoguchi, stood the politically informed lms of the Japanese
goss of dsi : kaidan pinku eiga 71
New Wave, concerned with transgression and subversion and associated with
directors such as shima. Standish argues that the Japanese New Wave:
challenged humanism by exposing it to the ideological constructedness
of reied romantic love by subverting it to carnal desire and taking it
through consummation, perversion, crime and punitive acts of violence.
(2005: 223)
Produced by Shchiku Studios, Takechis Daydream (1964), with its surre-
alistic mixture of dentistry, torture and rape, is often cited as the rst pink
lm. Hunter argues that Daydream was the rst of the Japanese New Wave to
present a blatantly erotic storyline. Takechi would go on to be known as the
Godfather of Japanese porno cinema (Hunter 1998: 7). The term pink lm,
or pinku eiga, was of American origin and was originally applied to low-budget
and low-prole stag lms (Hunter 1988: 26). Takechi followed Daydream with
Black Snow in 1965, its combination of sex and violence so provocative that it
led to Takechi being arrested on charges of obscenity. Like shima later on,
Takechi was eventually found innocent of the charges. In a time of dwindling
box-ofce receipts in the face of the challenge from television, the success of
lms such as Market of Flesh (Kobayashi: 1962) and Daydream clearly demon-
strated to the studios that there was a substantial market for erotic cinema.
These soft-core pornographic dramas were to be the saviour of studios such
as Shchiku, Nikkatsu and Tei, each of which would produce their own type
of erotic lm. Hunter writes, Roman porno saved Nikkatsu, and some critics
have suggested it may have even saved the entire Japanese lm industry from
imminent disaster (1998: 23).
Grossman contends that, whilst the pinku eiga was ostensively fuelled by the
sort of left-wing politics and cinematic experimentation associated with key
directors of the Japanese New Wave in the 1960s such as Imamura, shima and
Yoshida, its use of sex as a political tool was nothing if not problematic (2002).
One of the key gures associated with low-budget independent pink cinema is
Kji Wakamatsu, noted for lms such as Violated Angels (1967), Go Go Second
Time Virgin (1969) and The Embryo Hunts in Secret (1966). Wakamatsus angry
lms utilised sexual violence as a mechanism of questioning the body politic.
In Violated Angels, the mutilated and bloody bodies of young nurses are laid in
a circle on a white sheet, forming a visual parody of the Japanese ag in which
the emergence of the national state is explicitly linked to violence towards the
colonial Other (in the real story on which it is based, the nurses are Filipino),
through which the body of the woman functions as signier of the body politic.
In The Embryo Hunts in Secret, the lms story concerns a young woman who
is imprisoned by her lover and subjected to increasingly violent acts of sadism,
a common theme in pink cinema. Take, for example, Masumuras Blind Beast
(1969), based upon a story by Rampo, where a blind painter traps a beautiful
model in his studio and they enter into an increasingly violent relationship,
culminating in both their deaths.
The rst wave of pink cinema (196472) came from mainly independent
studios such as Okra, Kanta and Wakamatsu (Weisser and Weisser 1998: 20).
The second wave (197182) began when Nikkatsu abandoned its usual action
genre for roman porno or mainstream romantic pornography. Tei would follow
suit with its shigeki rosen (sensational line) and became known for its sexually
violent lms, known colloquially as pinky violence genre.
One sub-genre of pinku eiga was the erotic ghost story. Inuenced by Kabuki
and N, the erotic ghost story is less sexually explicit than pink cinema. Like
Edo Gothic, the ghost story provides a mechanism of articulating cultural
anxieties at a time of rapid transformation in Japans socio-economic structure.
Napier contends that the theme of metamorphosis is an integral component
of Japanese belief systems. Whilst Shint emphasises that all animate and
inanimate things can be inhabited by kami, Buddhism, according to Napier,
takes things one step further: with its notion of a karmic cycle suggesting a
potential bestiality in humans and potential humanity in animals. This trans-
formation, she contends, is largely afrmative: From this point of view, the
notion of metamorphosis is a largely positive one, suggesting a philosophical
acceptance of a universe where boundaries between the human and the natural
are constantly uctuating (1996: 109).
The wronged woman, a convention of Edo Gothic, as we have seen, con -
tinues to gure prominently in the erotic ghost story, as can be seen in the
vengeful ghostly cat women of Kuroneko (1968) and the virgin bride seeking
love after death in Sones retelling of the folktale of The Peony Lantern,
Hellish Love, in 1972. Another variation on the wronged woman theme can be
found in the beautiful suicide ghost of The Discarnates (1988). Her counterpart,
the less common wronged man or cuckolded husband, is the vengeful ghost in
shimas Empire of Passion (1978).
VENGEFUL CAT WOMEN
Like The Ghost Cat of Otama Pond, Kuroneko is based upon the folktale of
the shape-shifting gure of the bakeneko, or ghost/vampire cat. According to
myth, unless their tails are cut of when they are young, cats can grow into
nekomata (goblin cats with twin tails said to possess the power of death). Addis
writes of Japanese folklore, Beliefs in supernatural creatures and events have
helped people to understand and accept the mysterious and imponderable
elements in the universe by making them accountable (1985: 177).
The number and popularity of tales about ghost cats and goblin cats led to
the creation of a sub-genre known as bakeneko mono or monster-cat tales. As
we saw in The Ghost Cat of Otama Pond, it is women that turn into bakeneko,
suggesting a causal link between femininity, shape-shifting and death. In
Kuroneko, the ghost cat takes the shape of beautiful and seductive women,
who entrance and entrap their prey, draining them of blood. The lms are
shot in black and white, and low-key lighting with its play of shadows is used
to emphasise the feline qualities and transformative nature of the bakeneko
women. Napier suggests it is the very stratied nature of Japanese society, built
upon the denigration of women, which leads to this fascination with transfor-
mation and metamorphosis. She writes, the very strength and fearsomeness
of the powers attributed to these monstrous women attests to the low status of
women in real life (1996: 100). The discourse of respectability and lial duty
that underpins constructions of women, encapsulated within the discourse of
rysaikenbo (good wife, wise mother) from pre-feudal times onwards, empha-
sises their secondary status in Japan: A respectable womans life was governed
by three submissions to her father, to her husband and to her eldest son
(Buisson 2003: 57).
Unlike Napier, Richie sees the transformative and sometimes bestial female
ghost simply as a construction of male anxiety and desire. He comments, The
Japanese ghost is constructed by males for males (cited in Napier 1996: 100).
Similarly, Creed, in her exploration of female monstrosity in cinema, denies
any sense of empowerment contained within the gure of the transgressive
female in horror cinema, arguing that The presence of the monstrous-
feminine in the popular horror lm speaks to us more about male fears than
about female desire or feminine subjectivity (1993: 7). In these terms, both
Richie and Creed view representations of female monstrosity as nothing more
than constructions of male desire and anxiety.
However, unlike the rape victim in the more typical erotic lm of the time,
female ghosts do have an agency that can be read as subversive and politically
informed. Linda Ruth Williams, in her discussion of J. Sheridan Le Fanus
lesbian vampire novella Carmilla (1872), writes that the realm of the undead
constitutes a liminal space within which the subject shifts into another gear,
and ceases to dene itself according to the either/or choices of the binary,
waking world (1995: 96). Williams suggests that Carmilla, the lesbian vampire
of the title, can be interpreted as ofer[ing] a feminist version of the death drive
(1995: 96). Freuds theory of the death-drive was constructed in the aftermath
of the First World War, as an explanation of the repetition of traumatic events
within an individual for which there seemed to be no resolution. Freud came
to the conclusion that desire not only was a consequence of the need of the
organism to preserve its life, but also represented a desire (the death drive) to
return to a state of undiferentiation and extinction, associated with the ever-
present archaic mother (Freud [1920] 1995: 594628).
Williams argues that the death drive is an expression of desire, desire
which wants its discharges, which returns to itself in order to extinguish itself
(1995: 160). In these terms, the vampiric or transformative self functions to
subvert gender power relations and identication, since it betrays the possi-
bility that pleasure is dangerous, and our victims might also be our violators
(Williams 1995: 176). In these terms, the female ghosts of the erotic ghost
story, as embodied most evidently within the ghost cats in Kuroneko, might
well be symbols of male desire and projections of male anxiety, but at the same
time they ofer a mode of empowerment outside traditional binaries. They
no longer simply accept their fate, as in Tales of Ugetsu, but are active agents
who call into question the discourses around femininity, respectability and
passivity.
Kuroneko is set during the Sengoku Period, also known as Warring States
Period, which lasted from the nin War (146777) until the unication of
the country by the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1615. The Sengoku Period
is notable as a time of total breakdown in social order and consequently one
of the most violent periods in Japanese history. The nin War, which devas-
tated Kyoto, then the capital of Japan, was marked by bitter territorial battles
between competing Daimyo (military leaders). It was a period of social mobility,
in which even the lowest peasant farmer could become a Samurai if he proved
his mettle as a warrior.
In Kuroneko, the ghostly bakeneko function as a symbol of an identity in
transition, through their ability to shape-shift across both gender and class
boundaries. At the same time, the locating of the action in the spaces linked by
Rajomon Gate is signicant. Similarly to Rashmon, Rajomon Gates towering
presence provides both dramatic and historical symbolism that mirrors the
main narrative trajectory. This gate functions as both metaphorical device and
an organisational structure around which the narrative of the lm takes place,
separating both literally and metaphorically the inside and the outside, the
Daimyo and their Samurai, and the farmers and their land. As such, the gate
is both connective and divisive; it both joins and separates the two narrative
arenas in which the main events of the lm take place. Historically, the Rajomon
Gate was built in the eighth century as a symbol of strength and aesthetic
beauty; however, by the time in which the lm is set, it had fallen into a state
of disrepair and had, as Cummings points out, become a haven for thieves,
brigands, and various sordid activities (2005: 5).
The lm begins with the brutal assault, rape and murder of two women,
Yone (Nobuko Otawa) and her mother-in-law, Shige (Kiwako Taichi). Yone and
Sjige have been forced to eke out a meagre existence in the absence of Gintoki
(Kichiemon Nakamura), Shiges son and Yones husband. Gintoki, we discover
later, has been forcibly conscripted into the army. It is this abandonment of the
women, albeit not intentionally, which is the causational factor in the violence
that erupts at the beginning of the lm, reecting again the fact that tension
between ninj and giri often leads to violence.
The scene of the two womens brutalisation is shot in graphic and unremitting
detail; the animal-like behaviour, the lack of extraneous extra-diegetic sound
and the use of close-ups on the mens faces as they watch the women being
raped, all the time greedily devouring the womens food, suggest a reversion
to a primitive state dictated by pure instincts. The period setting of Kuroneko,
which is one distinguished by its factional ghting and lack of leadership,
mirrors that of contemporary Japan in the 1960s. shima comments:
Our generation is a fatherless generation. When I look at our fathers
generation, who defeated in war did not accept responsibility and who in
the post-war period continued with the lies, I feel that we are a generation
of orphans. (cited in Standish 2005: 230)
As a consequence of their violent and untimely deaths, Shige and Yone
are transformed into vengeful spirits or bakeneko, beautiful cat-like women,
after their cat feasts on their dead and charred bodies. Unlike in the tradi-
tional wronged woman trope, the womens vengeance is not restricted just to
those who harmed them; instead, all Samurai are subject to their wrath. As
such, Kuroneko sets the trend for contemporary Japanese horror cinema, in
that the revenge of the wronged women is not just contained to those that
have committed the ofence against them, but is taken more generally against
Japanese paternalism as a whole.
The two womens transformation cuts across boundaries not just between
animal and the human, but also between the working (peasant) classes and the
upper classes. Sumptuous kimonos replace their tattered clothes, while their
make-up is highly stylised in the manner of noblewomen of the time, with
raised short blackened eyebrows, painted faces and accentuated lips. Ornate
hairpieces are used to pin up their lustrous black hair, and they oat rather than
walk. It is this metamorphosis across the class divide that allows the women,
like cats, to entice, snare and then take home their prey to devour and kill. At
the same time, this shape-shifting signals the transitional nature of identity
and, by association, Japaneseness. Jackson comments: If form is taken as a
determinant of identity, then it is hardly surprising that a cultural preoccu-
pation with metamorphosis should surface at times of deep social transitions
(cited in Williams 1995: 1089).
The montage of shots that accompanies the rst revenge sequence provides
the template for subsequent attacks, creating a series of associations between
the Rajomon Gate, the outside and the inside, the wronged women, their now
demonic state and their brutalisers. The scene begins with a close-up of the
name of the gate, highlighting its symbolic and metaphorical signicance. From
below, the ghostly Yone is seen as she oats across the bridge. Immediately
following this, a tracking shot follows the gure of a Samurai on horseback (the
leader of the gang that killed the women), returning to Kyoto. A close-up of a
black cat on the bridge, yowling, acts as a portent of doom. Then the spectral
gure oats over the Samurai and Yone suddenly appears in front of him.
Though on one level he recognises that she is in fact a ghost in fact he asks
her if she is a spectre his vanity and desire get in the way and he agrees to see
her home. Cummings comments, signicantly, the ghosts lure the samurai by
their appetites (comfort, sake, sex) rather than attack them outright, making
the same gluttony that brutalized the women now spell their own demise
(2005: 8).
Once back at the womens home, the Samurai is plied with sake brought
to him by Shige and served to him by the beautiful Yone. Shige dances in the
background in a manner reminiscent of N performances, as Yone seduces the
Samurai. The savagery of their lovemaking, in which sex turns into violence
and death, is signicant in that it will later be juxtaposed with the lovemaking
between Yone and her husband, Gintoki. Like the kimono that both conceals
and reveals, the true identity of the women is hinted at but never fully realised
visually; instead, the female body is always in transition, never xed and
static, suggesting an inherent instability in subjectivity. Kawai writes that the
Fig. 4.1 Victim as violator: Yone (Nobuko Otawa) in Kuroneko (Kaneto Shind, 1968,
Th / The Kobal Collection)
goss of dsi: kaidan pinku eiga 77
multiplicity of female characters found in Japanese fairy tales should be recog-
nized as always changing positions, not as development stages. These protean
female gures express the Japanese mind: multiple layers creating a beautiful
totality (1996: 189).
The next day, the body of the Samurai is discovered in the burnt-out ruins
of the womens former home, where the poor plunder the corpse for clothes
and armour to sell. Cummings writes that this scene, and similar ones, have a
broader context than a simple revenge narrative; he contends that the ghosts
represent the poor who exact justice against those who abuse them (2005:
9). The wronged women, therefore, not only subvert gender norms but also
function as metaphorical signiers of class oppression.
Subsequent killings follow the same sequence of events. The ghostly Yone
appears to a Samurai; she invites him to accompany her home, where she seduces
him and then kills him. Cummings notes: each mini-narrative [is] seen in fewer
and more fragmented pieces, emphasizing the ritualistic and serial nature of
the ghosts onslaught (2005: 9). The rhythmic nature of the womens revenge
is broken up by the reappearance of Yones long-lost husband, Gintoki, now a
respected and powerful Samurai, who is given the task of defeating the demonic
vengeful female ghosts by the cowardly Mikado (Hideo Kanze). This marks a
pivotal point in the narrative, in which the lm becomes a tale of tragic lovers
(kitagawa utamaro), rather than merely a revenge narrative. Gintoki soon
realises that the ghosts he has been sent to vanquish are those of his beloved
wife and mother. As is typical in Japanese horror lm, the protagonist becomes
caught in the classic ninj and giri conict. Whilst giri requires obedience to
ones superiors, necessitating that he defeat the women, ninj compassion,
emotion and love prevents him from doing so. Ultimately, the only solution
to this conict is death for Gintoki.
The implicit eroticism in the scenes in which Gintoki makes love to Yone
is the opposite of that seen in the revenge sequences of the narrative. The
lyricalism of these scenes is expressed through the highly stylised mise-en-
scne of eroticism in which gauze curtains conceal the bodies of the lovers.
Romantic music accompanies their lovemaking, emphasising the lovers ecstasy
and commitment to each other. At the same time, as Cummings contends, the
cold visuals, highlighted through the use of black and white, and the audiences
foreknowledge that the couples love is doomed give the sequences a signi-
cant degree of melancholy (2005: 12). This is emphasised on the eighth day,
when Gintoki discovers that Yone has sacriced herself for him by choosing
love over eternal life. In the well-worn archetype of the self-sacricing woman,
Kuroneko seems to emphasise traditional Japanese paternalistic values rather
than transgressing them. Yone ts the archetype of what Barrett terms the
All-Sufering Female, who because of her romantic attachments to the earthly
world is denied rebirth and instead forced to undergo the torments of hell
(1989: 122). By giving up her demonic guise, Yone is fullling societal dictates
of appropriate femininity, or within a Japanese context, respectability as artic-
ulated within the discourse of rysaikenbo.
But the daughters sacrice is situated against the monstrousness of the
archaic mother gure, who continues on her vengeful quest, undeterred by
her maternal obligation towards Gintoki. It would seem that in her monstrous
maternity Shige is simply a repository of male anxieties, or an embodiment
of Creeds monstrous feminine (1993: 88104). Certainly, the scene in
which Gintoki cuts of her arm, rendering her powerless and unable to feed
and continue her revenge, seems to imply male anxiety over both maternal
and female empowerment. In addition, Shiges pox-ridden face, when she
attempts to retrieve her arm from Gintoki, suggests inner decay, impurity
and corruption. As such, this monstrous mother is the opposite of traditional
representations in the hahamono genre, which celebrates the sacricing and
sufering maternal. As the conventions of the Japanese ghost story at the time
necessitated, the lm ends with the death of Gintoki, who is unable to defeat
his monstrous mother. Similar to the rape-revenge lm discussed in the next
Fig. 4.2 The monstrous mother: Shige (Kiwako Taichi), Kuroneko (Kaneto Shind,
1968, Th / The Kobal Collection)
chapter, Kuroneko is a tale of tragic love. At the same time, the inability of the
son to defeat his monstrous mother can be interpreted as a feminist protest
against the restrictive denitions of maternity in Japanese society.
TRAGIC LOVERS (KiTAGAWA UTAMARO) AND THE
VIRGIN BRIDE
The story of tragic lovers (kitagawa utamaro) has proved to be a mainstay of
Japanese cultural artefacts including printmaking (ukiyo-e), literature, poetry
and theatre. Once again, the conict between social obligations (giri) and
personal emotions (ninj) drove stories of doomed love. At the heart of such
stories was the concept of shinj, which translates as inside the heart but also
means double suicide. Whilst ostensively a tale of female revenge, Kuroneko
is ultimately a story of doomed love, in which both the lovers die in similar
circumstances. One of the archetypical stories of doomed love is the folktale of
The Peony Lantern, which, along with The Ghost Story of Yotsuya, is one
of the Japanese folktales most frequently adapted for the screen. Based upon a
Chinese legend, it was introduced to Japan by Sanyutei Encho (18391900) in
the form of Rakugo (a traditional Japanese type of comic storytelling).
Subsequently adapted for Kabuki, with the title Kaidan Botan Dr, it was
performed at the Kabuki-za in July 1892. It was the rst Japanese ghost story
on lm in 1921, and has been lmed numerous times since: as The Bride from
Hell, directed by Yamamoto in 1968, and more recently as Haunted Lantern, by
Tsushima in 1998, amongst others. The Tale of the Peony Lantern is a story
of star-crossed lovers who are unable to be together because of class diferences.
The young woman in the story belongs to an upper-class household, whilst her
would-be lover is a masterless Samurai or rnin. Prevented from seeing the
Samurai, the young woman dies of a broken heart, only to return from the land
of the dead to consummate their relationship. The Samurai becomes cursed,
and dies enclosed in the skeletal arms of his dead love. The lovers, unable to
be together in life, are nally united in death, their bodies buried side by side
(Hadland Davis 1992: 22830 and Ross 1996: 14454).
Set during the Tokugawa Period, Hellish Love features a young masterless
Samurai called Shinzabur (Hajime Tanimoto), who is forced to make a living
as an umbrella (wagasa) maker, and therefore is not a suitable match for the
daughter of a nobleman, the beautiful but sickly Otsuyu (Setsuko Ogawa).
The fact that their love is doomed is foregrounded in the rst encounter
between Shinzabur and Otsuyu, which takes place at the opening of the
lm. Caught in a ferocious thunderstorm, Otsuyu and her maid, Oyon, take
shelter. Rain functions as both a potent of doom and a projection of interior
emotions in conict with with societal duties and obligations that dene the
relations between men and women. It is here that the two would-be lovers
meet. Shinzabur ofers Otsuyu one of his umbrellas, which she accepts
reluct antly. The umbrella, as status symbol, foregrounds the impenetrable
class barriers between the two, as well as functioning as a signier of doomed
love. The symbolic importance of the umbrella is solidied in a later scene, in
which Otsuyu asks Oyon, If I die, can my soul y where it wants? The next
shot is of umbrellas drifting upwards, in slow motion, as they slip through
Shinzaburs grasp. The sharing of an umbrella (aiaigasa) by a couple formed
a central trope in tales of tragic lovers and functioned to establish their love
in the face of societal opposition (sharing an umbrella was a metaphor for the
positioning of the couple outside traditional societal mores and dictates). In
Japanese horror cinema, the umbrella as a prop is both a symbol of status and
a signier of doomed love. Shinzabur and Otsuyu t into what Barrett terms
the archetypes of the weak passive male and the all-sufering female. Barrett
contends that, whilst the nature of doomed love is to reinforce societys bound-
aries, stories of tragic lovers contain an element of social protest:
Still, the archetypes of the All Sufering Female and the Weak Passive
Male are problematic, for stories about tragic lovers can be considered a
protest against the society that would not permit their love. (1989: 120)
In Hellish Love, Shinzaburs and Otsuyus love is doomed because of the rigidity
of class barriers in Japanese society. In accordance with giri, Shinzaburs lack
of status means that he and Otsuyu cannot be together. Barrett writes that, in
such cases, duty required that The young man should obey and passively let
love slip through his ngers (1989: 125).
In a montage of short scenes, the theme of doomed love is foregrounded
through the careful placing of props, as is the archetypical nature of the
characters. In the rst scene, Shinzabur takes up his sword and swings it. As
he thrusts the sword into the ground, he says, I make umbrellas; her fathers a
rich Hatamoto Samurai. Falling to the ground, with his head bowed in defeat,
he cries out, How can I escape from these feelings that torment me? In the
background, an open umbrella is placed carefully against the right-hand wall.
In the next scene, the camera pans across a grassy eld leading to a lake. The use
of a brown lter evokes the imagery of traditional Japanese prints (or ukiyo-e),
as the camera zooms in on Otsuyu, who is standing at the end of a short pier
by a lake. The camera pauses for a brief moment, and we can hear the sound of
wind chimes in the distance. The next shot is a close-up of the face of Okuni,
maid of the household, as she stands staring directly in front of Otsuyu; this is
followed by a cut to Otsuyus body lying on the ground, holding a cup in her
left hand, a pool of blood by her head. The camera returns to Shinzabur, who
looks into space, distracted, as he works.
This montage is signicant in that it situates Shinzabur as the archetypical
passive male and Otsuyu as the all-sufering female. Barrett writes about the
role of the passive male in Kabuki: In Kabuki the peaceable lover was further
weakened by being in the lower rungs of the merchant class. Lack of funds
often precipitated his tragedy (1989: 125). Shinzaburs passivity is signalled
through the montage of shots which show him idling away his time as Otsuyu
is murdered. The signicance of the bridge where Otsuyu is standing is also a
conventional trope of stories of doomed love; the bridge is a typical meeting
place for lovers in tales of romantic passion and tragic love (Barrett 1989: 119).
In a dream sequence, Shinzabur goes to meet Otsuyu. They go back to
her house, where they make love. When Otsuyu drops her robe, soft focus is
used to blur the bodies of the lovers. In the scenes between them, passion is
externalised on to the mise-en-scne. As in Kuroneko, the romantic passion of
the doomed lovers is expressed lyrically. As the camera slowly tracks forwards
and backwards along the horizontal axis, and along a screen that separates the
lovers bodies from the spectators gaze, the screen gradually transforms from
green into red as an external signier of passion. Otsuyu lets her hair down,
signifying a break with familial and societal ties, and gives Shinzabur a lock
of her hair, promising that she will come for him on 13

August. As Ebersole
writes, For a woman, to let her hair down in the presence of a man was a sign
of intimacy (1998: 194). Just then, Otsuyus father, Ijima, bursts into the room;
attempting to kill Shinzabur, he fatally stabs his daughter instead. Shinzabur
wakes up in the boat where he is shing with his servant, with a lock of black
hair clutched in his hand. This dream functions as a signier of the instability
between reality and illusion, a crucial component of Japanese ghost stories.
The scenes of romantic passion are, as in Kuroneko, juxtaposed with scenes
of carnal desire. These scenes show Okuni and Ijima, and later, Okuni with
Genjiro, her lover. Okuni has been having an afair with Ijima since his wifes
death. Motivated by greed, Okuni conspires with Genjiro to murder Ijima
and Otsuyu. The evident carnality of Okuni, who uses her sexuality to get
what she wants, is situated in opposition to the passive and virginal behaviour
of Otsuyu. In the scenes between Shinzabur and Otsuyu, soft lighting and
romantic music are used to emphasise their love for each other, and add to the
emotional impact of the scenes. The voyeuristic gaze is impeded by barriers,
which conceal the bodies of the lovers from view. In the rst scene between
the lovers, a screen obstructs the spectatorial gaze, and in the nal love scene,
a high-angled shot looking down at the lovers again impedes the operation of
an omniscient point-of-view. The overt exhibitionism and animalistic passion
of the scenes of carnal desire between Okuni and Genjiro, shot in medium
and close-up, are thus a direct contrast to the love scenes between Shinzabur
and Otsuyu. The relationship between Shinzaburs servant, Tomozo, and his
wife, Omin (Hidemi Hara), parallels that of Genjiro and Okuni. Not only are
sex scenes lmed in the same direct style, but also both couples transgress their
giri or duty to their superiors as a consequence of unrestrained appetites, both
eshly and monetary. Here, as elsewhere, commodication and consumerism
associated with Westernisation are situated as responsible for the development
of the individual as antithetical to the community and the wider system, or ie,
which denes ones subjectivity in relation to the whole. Hamabata writes: The
social should take primacy over the emotional, durable form over transient
feeling. The uchi should be sacriced for the sake of the ie (1994: 206). Failure
to do so puts the very foundations of society at risk, and the continuance of the
ie as a durable form of class and gender relations.
As in the folktale, Tomozo peers through a gap in the wall of Shinzaburs
house and sees the leg of a skeleton entwined with Shinzaburs. A priest is
called and rituals and mantras are said to keep his ghost bride away. The greedy
Tomozo and Omin accept 100 ryos from Oyon to remove the protection,
thus leaving Shinzabur exposed. For their transgression of the social codes of
behaviour, Okuni and Genjiro and Tomozo and Omin must be and are justly
punished. Both the couples die after ghting with each other about money, the
very root of their transgressions. Okuni, discovering that the 100 ryos have
disappeared, blames Genjiro. They pick up swords and ght. Outside the
house, Okuni slips on a pool of blood and is accidentally stabbed by Genjiro,
who falls backwards on his own sword. Omin poisons the drinking water in
an attempt to steal the money from Tomozo. However, he murders her when
he discovers her with the money, which she swallows in order to prevent him
from taking it from her. But, having retrieved the money and with Omin
dead, he drinks a cup of water, which leads in turn to his death. The lm ends,
as with all stories of tragic lovers, with Shinzabur also dead. Ross writes, His
hair matted, and with long unkempt beard, he looked like an old, sick man,
emaciated and sucked dry. Yet, when Yusai looked closer, he thought he could
see a trace of a smile around Shinzaburos lips (1996: 154). The nal shot is of
the three ghosts moving into a sea of fog and disappearing into the distance as
the festival of Obon ends.
THE CUCKOLDED HUSBAND
Much can be read into the fact that Japanese ghosts tend to be almost
exclusively female. Is it a national guilt projected and transformed into
fear because of the violently subordinate place women had in the tradi-
tional Japanese society? Is it a way of admitting that the wronged ones
(those most eager to avenge themselves) tended to be mostly women?
Whatever the case may be, there are much fewer stories and lms about
male ghosts (when they appeared, they were mostly warriors haunting
their last battleeld). (Ognjanovic 2006a)
Vengeful spirits, or yrei, in Japanese horror cinema are mainly, as we have seen,
female. Ognjanovic suggests, as does Napier, that one way of interpreting the
primacy of female ghosts in Japanese society is a result of womens subordinate
role. However, whilst not so prolic or iconic, male ghosts seeking revenge do
feature in Japanese horror cinema. In the last chapter, we saw the archetypical
male ghost in the vengeful unquiet spirit of Yachimaru with his unkempt hair,
white robe and make-up in The Ghost Cat of Otama Pond. In addition, Secor
and Addis point out, Male ghosts became among the most popular gures in
later kabuki plays (1985: 49). But in Japanese horror lm, male ghosts tend
to be secondary gures to the vengeful female yrei, or else ghosts of warriors
long dead, as in the Hoichi the Earless segment of Kwaidan. At the same
time, whilst the gure of the cuckolded husband or lover is a prominent feature
in both Edo Gothic and the erotic ghost story, he rarely becomes a vengeful
spirit.
shimas Empire of Passion is a tale of tragic love, and takes as its premise
forbidden love between an older woman and a younger man, which culminates
in the murder of the cuckolded husband and his revenge from beyond the
grave. As has been noted by some critics, Empire of Passion bears a supercial
relationship to early examples of lm noir such as The Postman Always Rings
Twice (Garnett: 1946).
Empire of Passion is set in 1895, at a pivotal turning point in Japanese
history, after the restoration of the emperor, and in the aftermath of the rst
Sino-Japanese War, which ended Chinas dominance in the Far East and raised
Japan to a position as a major world power. The lm centres on the love triangle
between Seki (Kazuko Yoshiyuki); her husband, Gisaburo (Takahiro Tamura),
a rickshaw operator; and the virile, younger Toyoji (Tatsuya Fuji), an ex-soldier
who has returned to the village after taking part in the Sino-Japanese War. In
the gures of the two men, the tension between pre-modern values, as epito-
mised by the hard-working and genial Gisaburo, and the modern, based around
democratic values from the West and embodied in the form of the handsome
and aggressive Toyoji, is explored.
As in shimas earlier and better-known Empire of the Senses (1976), overin-
dulgence in earthly pleasures leads to death. Like Kichizo (Tatsuya Fuji) and
Sada (Eiko Matsuda) in the aforementioned lm, Seki and Gisaburo are victims
of their own morality and the human need for intimacy marks their downfall
(Allsop 2004b: 108). The afair between Seki and Toyoji begins not with sex,
but with food and the sharing of cakes and drinking of tea. The sharing of
the last cake between the two symbolises the unbreakable bond between them.
The repetition of this cake-sharing just before they are caught and punished,
stresses the tragic nature of their love. Empire of Passion has been seen as a
companion piece to the earlier and more explicit Empire of the Senses, but Seki
has little in common with the sexually aggressive Sada in the latter. It is Toyoji
who forces himself upon Seki, and who then shaves her pubic hair as an almost
animalistic act of domination over her: an act that has to culminate in the death
of Gisaburo (and most likely an implicit criticism of the Japanese censorship
system). And although Seki helps Toyoji strangle her husband, she portrays an
emotional depth and guilt, unlike Sada, who strangles Kichizo with his own
kimono tie, signifying her total domination over him (Allsop 2004b: 109).The
body of Sekis dead husband is then thrown down a well, which, as we have
seen, is one of the most constant motifs in Japanese horror cinema.
The rst physical encounter between Toyoji and Seki is when he forces
himself on the reluctant woman. Buruma writes, Before sexuality can be
puried it must rst manifest itself. In Japanese pornography this usually
means rape (1984: 59). Having once experienced forbidden pleasures, Seki
gradually takes a more dominant role in the sexual relationship, initiating
sex on a number of occasions, when it is Toyoji who is reluctant. As Buruma
argues, They become addicted to the forbidden fruit. They are polluted, or
rather, their inherent impurity manifests itself (1984: 60). This is also the main
theme of Empire of the Senses, in which Sadas unrestrained desire makes her
ever more demonic and demanding as the narrative draws to its bloody end. In
Empire of Passion, not only does Toyojis passion make manifest Sekis inherent
impurity, as her unleashed desire seems to attest to, but also the well down
which they throw Gisaburos body can be interpreted as a representation of the
archaic maternal gure associated with Shint, especially as wells in Japanese
mythology are connected to the Underworld, where Izanami ed. This is
clearly shown when Seki and Toyoji attempt to retrieve Gisaburos body from
the well, after Toyoji has been seen throwing leaves down it, rather than taking
them home for fuel as he should have done. The lthy water at the bottom of
the well signies pollution, and yet at the same time, healthy plants are growing
down the walls of the well. As such, the well functions as a symbolic represen-
tation of the dualistic sides of the original archaic mother gure. As Seki and
Toyoji desperately search in the muddy water for Gisaburos body, his ghost
appears at the top of the well looking down on his two murderers. He throws
leaves and handfuls of grass at the lovers and Seki is blinded in the process.
And so begins the denouement in which the lovers are captured and publicly
ogged for their transgression against the community. But Sekis blinding,
although functioning as symbolic punishment, allows her other senses to gain
prominence, as in the nal segment of Blind Beast.
In a similar manner to Hellish Love, medium shots and part-blocking are used
for the erotically charged love scenes between the two antagonists throughout.
Once Seki is blinded, the nal lovemaking between the two takes on a ferocious
brutality and desperation. In fact, the camera tracks away from the couple and
remains in the centre of the room, whilst cries of passion can be heard. The
viewer is positioned by the camera, in a place of blindness rather than sight,
like Seki. This repeats a constant motif within the lm around spectatorship,
desire and sight, or indeed the lack of sight. In an earlier sequence, the almost
comical gure of Inspector Hotta (Takuzo Kawatani) hides under Sekis house
in an attempt to entrap the couple. However, he is unable to see anything and the
visible signs of desire remain elusive, as they do for the extra-diegetic spectator.
The refusal to allow a totalised vision of bodies embedded within space is one
that is necessitated by censorship laws, but it also signals the tension between
the pre-modern (the body) and the modern (sight). Igarashi comments on the
link between modernity and sight in the early 1920s in Japan:
During the 1920s, particularly in the urban areas such as Tokyo and
Osaka, people experienced a fundamental reworking of human relation-
ships due to the rapid transformations of the material conditions of daily
life. In this process, sight emerged as a privileged sense since it helped to
construct a rational, modern space Within this modern urban space,
vision becomes the preferred trope of rationality while the other senses
were relegated to a secondary status, conned to the domestic realm.
(2005: 301)
By fragmenting the scene of desire into a montage of part-shots and close-ups,
seen through gaps in doors, screens and oorboards, Empire of Passion reasserts
the power of the body and the senses over that of rationality and sight. This is
clearly shown through the use of chiaroscuro lighting when the police, at last,
come to arrest the lovers; shafts of radiant light frame their bodies as a visual
sign of transcendence. Here the clean body, as compared to the polluted one,
emphasises the purity of the lovers. Barrett explains, in relation to the plays of
Chikamatsu, that lovers become pure after they fall in love and are ready to
die for it (1989: 123). As in the lms of the Japanese New Wave, the material
body subverts the ideological base of romantic love and, as such, Empire of
Passion explicitly critiques the suppression of desire by the Japanese state and
the paradoxical nature of Japanese censorship laws.
Although not forgotten, Gisaburo bears many of the characteristics of the
muenbotoke. Barrett writes: The thought of them arouses not only sympathy
but fear because they could cause the living trouble if not appeased or pacied
somehow (1989: 81). For much of the lm, Gisaburos ghost appears as a
sympathetic gure, appearing in an unthreatening manner unlike most female
yrei in Japanese horror cinema at the time. It is as if he has not come to terms
with his death, as he sits by the re, drinking and eating with Seki, as he did
whilst he was alive. This is clearly shown in the scene where Seki, having bought
sake for her dead husband, comes across Gisaburo in his rickshaw as she makes
her way home. Gisaburo insists that the terried Seki rides with him, as she
did when he was alive. Against a background of gloomy fog, lit with blue light,
Gisaburo becomes increasingly distressed and disorientated, as he is unable
to nd his way home. The use of blue lighting as a mechanism of visually
expressing a characters isolation and alienation will become a key component
of the mise-en-scne of Japanese horror. In Empire of Passion, the vengeful
ghost of Gisaburo can only be laid to rest once Seki and Toyoji have been
punished for their sins against both Gisaburo and the wider community. That
this is presented as a spectacle of violence, in which the pair are ogged whilst
the community watches, is signicant because it allows a reassertion of ratio-
nality as signied by vision and sight. Barrett writes: Social order is afrmed
because true lovers are doomed. The audience gets a vicarious pleasure and is
also admonished that such behaviour leads to death (1989: 1223).
SUICIDE GHOSTS
The vengeful female ghost, Kei (Yuko Natori), is at the centre of Obayashi
Nohuhikos contemporary erotic drama, The Discarnates (1988). One night,
Kei knocks on the door of Harada (Morio Kazama), a writer of television
dramas. Dressed in black with a bottle of champagne in her hands, she is
rudely rejected by the self-obsessed Harada. When Harada next meets her, she
is a ghost and her transition is signied visually through her white costume.
For Iwamura, the visual appearance of Kei bears iconographic similarities to
Regan (Linda Blair) in The Exorcist (1973), and she suggests that the character
of Kei owes as much to the demonic Regan as it does to traditional Japanese
folktales of vengeful ghosts:
While this lm displays an inuence of traditional Japanese folktales,
it is arguable that the female character is equally based on the demon
from The Exorcist. This combination of traditional folktale and American
lmic representations of women is possibly related to the preference of
Japanese youths for American lms. Japanese youth nd Japanese lms
depressing, and are attracted to the comparatively carefree lives that
American characters are represented as leading, as well as the tendency
for American lms to portray a happy ending. (1994)
It seems to me, however, that the representation of Kei in The Discarnates is
more in line with traditional folkloric archetypes than Iwamura acknowledges,
although the nal sequences in which she is revealed as a ghost, levitating
from her bed, do bear a supercial resemblance to similar ones in The Exorcist.
In that lm, Regan is the product of the breakdown in the nuclear family in
America, and her embodiment by Satan can be said to articulate patriarchal
fears around both female liberation and female sexuality. I would argue that
Kei is altogether a more tragic gure, a symbol of isolation and alienation in
a post-modern society of rampant Westernisation and individualism, whether
the ghosts in the lm are interpreted as a hallucination on the part of Harada
(as Iwamura suggests) or as real spirits.
Whether a projection of Haradas isolation or a real ghost, Kei functions
as a symbol of Haradas callousness towards other people, demonstrating a
lack of ninj in a society torn between Western individualism and Japanese
communalism. The past repeats in The Discarnates through the reappearance
of Haradas dead mother and father, when he returns for a visit to his childhood
home. During a Rakugo performance in his hometown, he comes across a man
(Tsurutaro Kataoka) who is the double of his dead father. Invited back to the
mans home, he nds his mothers doppelgnger (Kumiko Akiyoshi). Harada
soon realises that in fact these are his parents, Hidekichi and Fusako, captured
from a moment in his past, just before their deaths. It is through returning
to this idealised nostalgic past that Harada nds himself once more able to
connect with those that he loves in the present.
Unlike the typical erotic ghost story, in which the past is seen as violent,
primitive and ultimately destructive, The Discarnates expresses a nostalgic
longing for the past, for a time of childhood, before the restrictive burdens
of Japanese paternalism conne and dene the subject. The vibrant primary
colours, red and yellow, of this idealised past are contrasted with the dull,
grey-greenish of the present. Further, the open, welcoming domestic spaces
of Haradas parents traditional home are contrasted with the closed spaces
of Haradas apartment: one of only two apartments, or living spaces, within a
block dominated by work spaces, the other apartment inhabited by Kei. Unlike
in his parents traditional home, which is structured within and through the
community, a pervasive atmosphere of disconnection and loneliness is artic-
ulated by new living spaces as constructed within the rareed palate of the
present. The past is associated with the (sufocating) maternal and is coded
as feminine, and the present is linked to the (absent) paternal and coded as
masculine. At the same time, having a living space within a work space collapses
the domestic and the private, the inside and the outside, and comments on the
long unsocial hours worked by Japanese men.
Tateishi points to the Meiji Restoration in 1868, which saw of the old
feudal Shogunate system, marking the beginning of Japanese modernity.
She comments: The transformation of Japanese society was rooted in the
notion of progress and development, which rhetorically signied a break from
tradition and the past, as in the Enlightened Rule of the Meiji (2003:
295). Tateishi argues that one response to the enforced industrialisation of
Japan took the form of a cultural nostalgia, in which there was an acknow-
ledgement of what was lost, and an attempt to re-experience it (2003: 296).
This cultural nostalgia is articulated in The Discarnates through the
idealisation of the past and of childhood. It is signicant therefore that his
daily visits to his father and mother allow Harada to recover a sense of identity.
In turn this allows him to reconnect with the present, as shown through his
passionate afair with the ghostly Kei. Kei tells Harada that she has been badly
burned in the past (her scars are actually wounds self-inicted on the night
she committed suicide), and their encounters therefore take place in the dark,
with Keis body concealed. This subverts the usual conventions of Japanese
erotica in which the over-valuation of female breasts and the fetishisation of
the covered female crotch function as metonymic signiers of desire, as these
are the only things that can be shown directly. At the same time, Haradas
relationship with his dead mother can be said to border on the incestuous.
Although he is a grown man, she continues to treat him as a child. On a
number of occasions, Fusako insists that Harada takes of his clothes in order
to escape from the stiing heat, which can be said to function as a metaphor for
the sufocating closeness of the mother/child bond in Japan, which has been
the subject of much discussion in light of the increasing violence within the
family in Japan. In one scene, Fusako, dressed in a imsy slip, falls of a stool
as Harada is helping her reach some ice-cream glasses on the top shelf. She
slips, falling into her sons arms, initiating a brief frisson of Oedipal desire as
they exchange glances. In one sense the lm can be said to centre on Haradas
Oedipal trajectory in that his parents can be seen as an externalisation of his
death drive that expresses itself in terms of a desire to return to the mother.
A Freudian interpretation would argue that the early death of his parents has
left Harada with an incomplete Oedipus complex, and it is this which renders
him unable to attach to his wife and son in the present (Freud [1924] 1995:
6615). But more simply, the almost sufocating closeness of the relationship
between mother and son provides a means through which to comment on the
breakdown of the family within contemporary Japanese society.
A key convention of the Japanese ghost story is, as we have seen, that an
encounter with the dead ultimately leads to death. Harada becomes increas-
ingly haggard as his daily visits to his dead parents and his nightly visits to his
ghostly lover take their toll. On a number of occasions, Kei forces Harada to
look into a mirror; the reection that he sees looking back is one of gradual
decay and disease. Like Emiko in Godzilla, the actions of the female principal
provide a mechanism through which balance is restored:
Then Katsura, like the archetypical vengeful spirit, not only gets revenge
but also restores balance. Through her, Harada is able to transcend his
sense of loss. While the vengeful spirit can lead men to destruction, then,
she can also work positively as a guide. (Iwamura 1994)
However, the female ghost can only be empowered through her liminality, and
is eventually forced into self-sacrice in order to reassert a traditional Japanese
masculinity.
Harada leaves the past behind, as metaphorically signied through the
burning of the chopsticks from his last meal with his parents. In Buddhist
death rites, chopsticks have come to have a symbolic function, both as repre-
sentative of the last meal and, if improperly used, capable of attracting death
(Buisson 2003: 200). The nal scenes are of Harada with his son; having
successfully negotiated his Oedipus complex, he is able to be a proper man and
father. Thus The Discarnates reinforces traditional Japanese values around the
sanctity of the family.
GHOSTS OF DESIRE
Sufering ghosts of desire are a central convention of the Kaidan pinku eiga.
More often than not female, these ghosts ultimately valorise traditional
Japanese conceptions of masculinity and femininity, as they end up sacricing
themselves for the good of the wider community. This is closely tied into the
death drive, in which ghosts function as metonymic signiers of the desire for
a return to the generative mother: either metaphorically as, in Empire of Passion,
or literally, as in The Discarnates. The erotic ghost story was at its height in the
1960s and 1970s, as a tangential sub-genre of the pink lm; we can see this in
the focus on the sexualised and desiring body. The demise of the pinku eiga
and its replacement by AV means that the erotic ghost lm no longer has such
a prominent position in contemporary Japanese horror, although there have
been a number of recent lms dealing with ghostly desire. The seductive and
sometimes demonic female ghosts, a key archetype of the genre, have trans-
mogried into frightening and less seductive vengeful ghosts like Sadako in
Ring and Kayako in Ju-On: The Grudge. The fact that the vengeful male spirit
and/or monster is an exception rather than the rule can be understood by
reference to the dominance of woman in traditional Japanese fairy tales. The
fact that the erotic ghost story still provides a metaphor for female empow-
erment, with lms such as Shikoku (Nagasaki: 1999) and inugami (Harada:
2001), implies, perhaps, that womens liberation has some way to go.
Part 2
Genre
5
The Rape-Revenge Film:
From Violation to Vengeance
I
n Pitfall (Teshigahara: 1962), the middle-aged owner of a sweet shop (Sumie
Sasaki), who is trapped in an almost deserted town as she waits for news
from her lover, is violently raped by a policeman (Hideo Kanze). While she
protests to begin with, she soon begins to participate actively in her rape, as if
her violation had liberated suppressed desires.
Kurosawas award-winning Rashmon (1950) is based on a rape of a woman
and the subsequent murder of her husband, as told by various participants.
The events unfold through the competing narratives of the dead Samurai,
Takehiro (Masayuki Mori), the notorious bandit/rapist, Tajomaru (Toshiro
Mifune), and the beautiful rape victim, the Samurais wife, Masako (Machiko
Kyo). However, the rape itself is only ever shown from the male perspective
and the narrative is framed through the story of the woodcutter (Taksahi
Shimura), the only witness of the attack outside the triangular relationship
of those directly involved. The unreliability of all the narrators suggests that
no objective version of the truth can ever be achieved. As Richie puts it, The
seeming reality of each version makes us question that of the other (2001:
139). It is not suggested that the rape did not happen; rather the stories told
focus on how it happened, with each person giving a diferent and competing
version of events. Critical readings of the lm rarely explore the rape sequence
or, indeed, comment on the fact that Masako goes from unwilling victim to
willing lover in the short space of fty seconds. When rst attacked, she resists
and struggles, staring upwards into the sky, disconnected from the on-going
violation of her body. The rape ends with an eleven-second shot of the woman
in Tajomarus arms. In this medium shot, we see Masakos hand caressing
Tajomarus back, seemingly making it clear that Masako is taking pleasure
from her violation.
The words of her husband, as recounted by the woodcutter, signal how little
attention is paid to her. Speaking to Tajomaru, the husband says, Stop! Stop!
I refuse to risk my life for such a woman! To his wife, dirty and half-naked, he
spits out: You are a shameless whore! Why dont you kill yourself ? Turning
back to the bandit, he totally devalues his wife: If you want her Ill give her
to you! I regret the loss of my horse more than the loss of her. Later Masako
tells the men Just remember a woman loves a real man. And when she
loves she loves madly, forgetting all else. But a woman can only be won by the
strength of swords. Masakos words can be seen as a reference to the symbolic
phallus (the sword, strength, a real man) as object of female desire.
The fullest explanation of events is through Tajomarus narrative, with
which the court case begins. The woman presents her case next, but it is lled
with gaps and ellipses for example, she forgets what she did with the dagger
and her story ends when she faints. For this reason, of all the accounts given,
the womans story, surrounded by male views of the rape and its aftermath, is
positioned as the least truthful. The two accounts that follow hers, that of her
dead husband, speaking through a medium, and nally the woodcutters (his
second), which takes place outside the law, both undermine the veracity of her
own version of events.
In Judgement by Film: Socio-Legal Functions of Rashmon, Kamir
(2004) points to the similarity between the on-screen events and the legislative
framework, in which Tajomaru is presented as a prosecuting gure, Masako as
the defendant, and the priest (Minoru Chiaki) and the woodcutter as rebuttal
witnesses. In addition, the casting of Toshiro Mifune, already a big star by this
time, in the leading role, arguably prevents the character of Tajomaru from
being constructed as an unsympathetic villain. As Barrett stresses:
The bandit played by Toshiro Mifune in Rashmon (1950) is both the
Untamed Male and a believable character. His sexual desire for the noble-
mans wife is natural rather than perverted, and he is a likeable villain
since his actions result from simply human failings. (1989: 58)
In Barretts terms, Mifune adds an authenticity to the lm and is both the
point of identication for the male spectator and object of desire for the female
spectator, as a consequence of which his viewpoint is privileged within the
text. Kamir comments: The lm joins its main characters in discrediting the
women, inviting the implied viewer to be prejudiced against one sex in favour
of the other (2004: 128).
Indeed, the court case does not focus on the rape as a crime against the
person, but instead chooses to focus rather on the murder of the husband. The
fact of Masakos rape thus becomes incidental, although it is pivotal to the plot.
As such, it works within patriarchal male rape fantasies, solidied in Japan as a
cultural myth, which implies, of necessity, that there is no such thing as rape.
Kamir expands on this:
-vng film: fom vi oli on o vngn 95
Consequently women, especially sexual women, and particularly women
complaining of sexual assault, are impure, provocative, and untrust-
worthy; wishing and encouraging sexual encounters, they fabricate false
accusations, faking virtue and harming their sexual partners. They are
unreliable witnesses, not to be trusted. (2004: 130)
The location of the narrative in the past is also signicant. At this time
in history, a Samurais wife had an absolute duty to maintain her virtue and
to obey strict moral guidelines of behaviour to ensure that such an event as
the rape within the narrative does not occur. In this sense, the blame for
the rape in Rashmon lies with the woman; she uncovers her face when she
and her husband stop briey, and it is this that draws Tajomaru to her. Then,
having been violated, it should have been her duty to take her life hence the
symbolism of the dagger within the narrative rather than live with the shame
and bring dishonour on her husband. Kamir writes: Her choice to live, her
survival, her life itself, constitute grave, ofensive, rebellious sins against the
social order and its most sacred of values (2004: 140).
VICTIMISATION
The manner in which Rashmon deals with rape can be considered typical of
Japanese cultural mythology, in which rape has not, until very recently, been
considered a crime. This is highlighted by the recent comment, in 2003, by
a leading Japanese politician, Seiichi Ota, a member of the ruling Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP), who said, at a symposium on Japans declining
birth rates: Gang rape shows the people who do it are still vigorous, and that
is OK. I think that might make them close to normal (BBC News Online:
2003). Whilst the response of the Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, was to
criticise Otas remarks, the vice-chairman of Japans Bar Association, Yasuyuki
Takia, said that Mr Otas remarks were indicative of Japanese societys passive
attitude to rape, which often goes unreported. And in terms of marital rape,
the idea that forced sex when married constitutes violence is still relatively
new in Japan (Nakamura 2003: 163).
It would be too easy to say that the ubiquity of rape in Japanese cultural art
forms, including but not restricted to cinema, has a direct correlation with the
real world, especially, after all, as we have seen that Japanese society is predi-
cated on female obedience and submission. Further, not only is rape a central
feature of early independent pink cinema, but it also formed a dominant
motif in mainstream cinema in the 1970s and 1980s with titles such as Rape!
(Hasebe: 1976) and Please Rape me Again (Nishihara: 1976). More recently, the
notorious Rapeman series of lms, directed by Takao Nagaishi and beginning
in 1990, have proved popular mainstream entertainment in Japan (Hunter
1998: 87). Hunter argues that the manner in which some of the lms seem to
condone rape may indeed be problematic:
It is not just the frequency with which violent rape of women occurs in
these lms, but in particular its apparent condoning, which confuses/
ofends. Generally speaking, the women in pink lms fall in love with
their rapists, and end up begging for more; the victims are stereotypical
innocents such as schoolgirls, nurses, nuns, young brides etc. (1998: 81)
While the debates surrounding the relationship between images of sexual
violence and its reality are largely beyond the scope of this book, it is still
necessary to sketch them out in order to understood the cultural meanings of
these violent expressions of (male) desire, rather than simply dismissing the
lms as inherently misogynist. These debates can be situated within the anti-
pornography movement associated with Second Wave Feminism (usually dated
from the late 1960s or early 1970s). Radical and polemical feminists and writers
such as Dworkin (19462005) and MacKinnon believed that pornography was
responsible for the sexual oppression of women and that pornographic repre-
sentations were closely linked to real sexual violence. In Pornography: Men
Possessing Women, Dworkin writes:
Pornography is the essential sexuality of male power: of hate, of ownership,
of hierarchy; of sadism, of dominance. The premises of pornography
are controlling in every rape and every rape case, whenever a woman is
battered or prostituted, in incest. (1989)
In 1978 Dworkin and MacKinnon formed Women against Pornography,
a radical feminist group which argued that sexual liberation had little to do
with female rights; instead it perpetuated inequality and female subjugation.
Pornography was associated with male violence, and rape became the key word
for expressing this relation. In the words of Robin Morgan: Pornography is
the theory, rape is the practice (cited in Horeck 2004: 79). At the other end
of the spectrum are the liberal and pro-pornography feminists who defend
pornography in terms of free choice in America this took the form of citing
the freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment while not necessarily
condoning pornography. As Boyle writes, anti-censorship feminists often
agree with anti-pornography feminists that much pornography is both sexist
and misogynist (2005: 2930).
Take, for example, Williams, who in Hard Core, identies pornography in
terms of generic and iconographic features, comparing it to the Hollywood
musical, and argues that it works within mainstream conventions in terms of
the male/female opposition that structures the narrative (2006: 6087); or
Kipnis, who proposes that pornography is both a legitimate form of culture
and a ctional, fantastical, even allegorical realm; it neither simply reects the
real world nor is it some hypnotizing call to action (2006: 119). Here porno-
graphy either is just another genre or is inherently transgressive as a medium
of cultural expression. But this is insufcient and too reminiscent of similar
debates around horror cinema: Feminist anti-violence activists have also
sought to connect violence against women in lm and in pornography and
gorenography in particular to real world violence (Boyle 2005: 124). And
while it might be difcult to prove a causal link between the two, the exploi-
tation of women and children in pornography is not so simply dismissed. As
Kelly writes, Child sexual abuse is not caused by child pornography, rather
the pornography is a record of abuse which has already taken place (cited in
Boyle 2005: 31).
Media efects theory (Gauntlett 2006: 5465), which has proposed an
unproblematic reality between texts and their consumption, ofers little data
to justify the anti-porn or other anti-violence campaigners. Indeed, a recent
survey into the relationship between rape and the prevalence of sexually
explicit materials in Japan between 1972 and 1995 suggests the opposite.
Diamond writes: The incidence of rape has progressively declined from 4677
reported cases with 5464 ofenders in 1972 to the 1995 incidence of 1500 cases
with 1160 ofenders (1999). However, other research shows a signicant rise
in sexual violence within the family as a response to the bursting of Japans
bubble economy in the late 1980s (Nakamura 2003: 1625).
Other theorists have foregrounded the centrality of fantasy in pornography
and sexually violent materials. While the term fantasy may be more protable
to use in terms of discussing sexually violent and explicit materials, it is not
without its problems. Horeck points out that feminist discourse has utilised
fantasy in terms of rape in two main ways: In the rst instance, rape fantasy
refers to lurid male fantasies of violating helpless woman. In the second
instance, the terms refers to the troubling female rape fantasy, in which
women fantasize about being sexually violated by men (2004: 4). While to
suggest that all women have rape fantasies is inherently problematic, an under-
standing of the relationship between fantasy and reality can help us under-
stand how rape and revenge operate cinematically in Japanese cinema from
the 1970s in order to explore how the enduring force and intensity of public
fantasies of rape can help us better understand the depth and the extent of that
violence (Horeck 2004: 13). Indeed, as we shall see, the Angel Guts series of
lms, as a paradigmatic example of representations of rape in Japanese cinema,
deliberately critique any simple causal relationship between representation and
societal violence and as such pave the way for the recent rape-revenge lms,
such as Audition (Miike: 1999) and Freeze Me (Ishii: 2000).
VIOLATION
In his case study of Freeze Me, Lafond compares the lm to the original cycle
of rape-revenge works such as I Spit on Your Grave (Zarchi: 1978) and Ms 45
(Ferrara: 1981) in order to stress the lms specic cultural social concerns
(Lafond 2005: 78). While Lafond correctly sees Freeze Me as a condemnation
of male violence in contemporary Japanese society (2005: 84), he perfunctorily
dismisses the director Takashi Ishiis previous involvement with the notorious
Angel Guts lms, based upon his adult manga of the same time. As a result,
Lafond constructs a binary distinction between the vengeful Chihiro in Freeze
Me and the character of Nami, as violated woman, in the Angel Guts lms,
stating that: His rst lms depict nothing but sexual stereotypes (2005: 77).
In Hantkes discussion of Audition he refers to the positive critical reception
of the lm in the West and asks, Does Audition lack cultural specicity, or is
there something specically global about the lm that has allowed it to work
so well transnationally? (2005: 55). Hantke suggests that Asami, the avenging
angel of Audition, can be best understood as a reincarnation of the specically
Japanese pre-modern archetype of the wronged woman, which makes visible
the social areas, such as the domestic incarceration of women, over which
modernisation seems to have passed without leaving a trace. Hantke goes on
to suggest that Western audiences may well perceive the lm diferently, in the
form of a patriarchal backlash against 1960s feminism (2005: 61).
Whilst both Lafond and Hantke ofer interesting readings of the contem-
porary Japanese rape-revenge lm, neither locates the emergence of the female
avenger as a logical outcome of the oppressed, violated and open body of the
woman in mainstream romantic pornography during the 1970s and 1980s.
In order to understand the complexities of the contemporary rape-revenge
lm, it is necessary rst to interrogate the representation of rape in Japanese
cinema. As the Angel Guts series provides a direct link to the rape-revenge lm,
through Ishii, it seems appropriate to begin by considering the complexity
of the representation of rape within these lms, and by exploring both their
cultural context and possible political subtext.
There has not been any sustained critical discussion of the Angel Guts series.
Instead their misogyny tends to be taken for granted. The series consists of ve
ofcial lms made between 1978 and 1988 by noted directors such as Sone
(Angel Guts: High School Co-Ed (1978) and Angel Guts: Red Classroom (1979))
and Tanaka (Angels Guts: Nami (1979)). The last two lms in the series are
the directorial debuts of Ikeda (Angel Guts: Red Porno (1981)) and Ishii (Angel
Guts: Red Dizziness (1988)). Two unofcial lms followed, both directed by
Ishii, called Original Sin (1992) and Angel Guts: Red Lightning (1994).
Having had to leave Nikkatsu, where he was working as an assistant director,
due to poor health, Ishii wrote the groundbreaking adult manga on which the
lms are based in 1977. The success of the manga led Ishii back to Nikkatsu,
rst as a writer and then eventually a director. The Angel Guts lms deal directly,
and sometimes unpleasantly, with the relationships between men and women
in a society dominated by oppression and domination, force and submission.
This is foregrounded through the use of the same central characters, Nami
and Muraki, throughout the series.
With its biker gangs, disenfranchised masculinity and gang rape, Sones
High School Co-Ed bears similarities to Cravens The Last House on the Left
(1972) although rape does not lead to revenge in the former and Italian
director Bavas nihilistic Rabid Dogs (1974). It is clear that the representation
of acts of violence towards women by men in cinema in the 1970s was not
something specic to Japan. Sharp points out, in the commentary to High
School Co-Ed, macho rape fantasies of this type were fairly common within
European Exploitation Cinema (2005).
In High School Co-Ed, Nami (Machiko Ohtani), is the archetypical victim,
an innocent young schoolgirl who is subject to the unwanted attentions of a
group of aggressive young bikers (bszoku), made up of Kajima (Kenji Kasai),
the gang leader, Tetsur Kawashima (Sansho Shinsui), the protagonist, and
Sadakuni (Tatsuma Higuchi). In the rst lm, Nami does not play a signi-
cant narrative role, but functions as an object of desire and exchange within
the male group. Here, as in I Spit on Your Grave and Last House on the Left,
the rapes are presented as almost sexless acts of cruelty that the men seem to
commit more for each others edication than for their own physical pleasure
(Clover 1992: 118).
This is clear from the opening sequences, in which the gang force a yellow
car of the road and terrorise the young couple travelling in it. The fact that
we have not been introduced to either the male rapists or the couple in the car
makes the following rape sequence disturbing. Wearing a virginal white dress,
the woman is raped rst by Tetsur and then passed over to Kajima. During
the rape, the motorbikes are strategically placed as to ensure that the actual act
itself remains hidden, as necessitated by Japanese censorship regulations at
the time. Both men keep their motorcycle helmets on during the rape, which
means that there is no point of identication for the spectator.
The motorcycle helmets also work to set Tetsur and Kajima apart from
Sadakuni visually. Sadakuni wears sunglasses instead. This is signicant,
because as it transpires, Sadakuni is not able to participate in the gang
rape, although he does join in with the two men, as they talk and joke over
the womans raped body, making gestures at each other and even discussing
Sadakunis mother.

Once Kajima is nished he ofers her to Sadakuni, but
Sadakuni becomes violent and brings out a knife with which to cut the woman
rather than rape her. Sadakunis impotency seems to suggest that rape is a type
of homosocial, if not homosexual, bonding ritual. This is very reminiscent of
100 i noduion o jns oo film
the rape of Jennifer in I Spit on Your Grave, when Matthew is unable to partic-
ipate in the violation. Clover remarks, [It] is against his failed performance
that the others can dene their own as successful. She continues, For I Spit
on Your Grave, at least, gang rape has rst and foremost to do with male sport
and male pecking order and only secondarily to do with sex (1992: 122).
And whilst Sadakuni and Kajima are constructed as fundamentally
un sympathetic and increasingly unstable characters, Tetsurs role outside the
group, as protector, brother and surrogate father of his sister, Megu (Megu
Kawashima), provides a more empathetic point of identication. At the same
time, socio-economic conditions are posited as a possible explanation, but not
excuse, for the gangs brutalisation of women. Tetsur lives in some anonymous
manufacturing suburb of Japan, and the backdrop to the events is a bleak,
steel-grey industrial landscape. The male group is presented as marginalised,
disconnected from wider society and fundamentally alienated in their relation
to the new changing landscape of Japan. As Clover remarks, in relation to I
Spit on Your Grave:
The explanation that I Spit on Your Grave presents on the gender axis
is thus one having to do not with the male sexual nature per se (that is,
the individual males sexual appetite) but with male social nature, or male
sexual nature as it is constituted by group dynamics. (1992: 123)
The formation of the group identity over the traumatised bodies of women
is particularly resonant in terms of Japanese societal structures, in which to be
part of the in-group (uchi) is seen as preferable to being an outsider (soto). The
increasing tension and struggle for power between Tetsur and Kajima is rst
seen when Tetsur prevents Kajima from assaulting a young schoolgirl, Nami,
who comes to play a pivotal role later on. As a consequence, Kagami threatens
Megu, which suggests that the womans body only serves as a mediator for
these same sex fantasies, the channels through which the characters relate to
one another (Sharp 2005).
The rape of Nami is central in High School Co-Ed, as it is in all the Angel
Guts lms. At rst Tetsur is reluctant to rape Nami as she reminds him of his
sister, Megu, but he is forced into it by the male group. The scene in which
Tetsur rapes Nami sets the standard for similar set-pieces in the next four
lms in the series. The gang waits until Nami is forced to walk home in the
rain after school, before chasing her and eventually cornering her in a deserted
train yard. There is a coldness captured by the dingy blue narrow interior
spaces between trains in which the attack takes place. Tetsur treats Nami
violently, putting on a show for the other two men who are watching. He hits
her, drags her along the ground, and with his hands around her throat begins
to strangle her, at which point Nami goes limp, her resistance gone. In the rape
-vng fi lm: fom vi oli on o vngn 101
scene, Tetsur treats Nami as if she was his lover, tenderly caressing her, his
gentleness in direct opposition to his earlier brutality.
In opposition to the rape sequences in the remainder of the series, this scene
is notable for its uninching camera work, panned in on the face of the victim
as she is violated. In contrast to the absence of sound during the rape sequences
in I Spit on Your Grave, low romantic music can be heard as the rain falls on
the face of Nami as she raped. This unfamiliar juxtaposition between romantic
love and sexual violence foregrounds a theme which is found in all the Angel
Guts lms, in which the fantasy of rape is contradicted by the reality of the
act itself. At the same time, the driving rain in which Nami washes herself in
the foreground, whilst the men ght over her in the background, inaugurates
a dominant motif of the series, in which rain is used to signify both alienation
and isolation.
Unlike in the previous group rape scene when the body of the woman was
circulated between the men, Tetsur refuses to pass Nami to Kajima. This is
a pivotal moment in which Tetsur breaks with the group. However, the fact
that his sister, Megu, ends up sufering for his actions when she is herself
raped by Kajima, is typical of Japanese cinema at the time. The lm ends with
Tetsurs violent act of self-annihilation, when he brutally murders a Yakuza
and is subsequently captured by the police.
Although rape is important in this rst lm in the Angel Guts series, it is
only signicant within the main narrative theme of male alienation in modern
industrial Japan. Here Representations of rape, and the gure of the raped
women operate as the ground over which the terms of the social and the
sexual contract are secured (Horeck 2004: 9). The next four lms in the
Angel Guts series portray rape in a very diferent manner and fantasy takes over
from reality. With the introduction of Muraki as the male protagonist, and the
focalisation of the narrative mainly through Namis point of view, Angel Guts:
Red Classroom sets the trend for the remaining lms in the series. It is on the
relationship between Muraki and Nami, as somehow symbolic of relationships
between men and women more generally, that these later lms focus.
The opening sequences of Red Classroom show a young schoolgirl being
gang-raped, before self-reexively the camera pulls back to show that this is in
fact a lm being shown to a small group of men, in an underground cinema.
One of the men, Muraki (Keizo Kanie), a photographer for an adult magazine,
becomes obsessed with the woman in the lm, whom we learn is Nami (Yuuki
Mizuhara), and sets about trying to nd her. When he eventually tracks her
down, he is disturbed to discover that the original rape in the lm was not a
performance, but rather the real thing. Again, as in High School Co-Ed, rape as
patriarchal fantasy is exposed as being predicated on the exploited female body.
This revelation provides a moment of subversion against the eroticism of the
raped female body in the opening sequence by undermining its fantasy value.
102 i nodui on o jns oo film
Nami takes Muraki to a love hotel (love hotels are dedicated to couples, and
are in demand as space is at a premium in Japanese households), as experience
has taught her that this is what any man or all men want from her. Seeing
himself as a knight in shining armour and Nami as a damsel in distress,
Muraki proposes to do a spread in his magazine in order to help her regain
her tarnished status. They set up a meeting for the next evening, but the police
arrest Muraki on the charge of under-age pornography. While Muraki denies
knowing the age of the young girl that he photographed, this scene is used to
imply that Muraki is no better than the group of men who raped Nami.
Three years later, Muraki is a husband and father, but remains obsessed
with Nami, in her absence constructing her as some sort of Confucian ideal
of womanhood. This introduces the theme of the Otaku to the series, played
out through the increasingly alienated and isolated male protagonist, whose
subjectivity is constructed outside traditional social structures. The term
Otaku was originally associated with readers of anime, but gradually came to
denote an unhealthy obsession with an ideal, whilst at the same time referring
to someone who never leaves the house.
Muraki in Red Classroom is not a yet fully-edged Otaku, as his relationship
with his wife and child demonstrates. As we shall see, in the fourth lm in the
series, Red Porno, Muraki is the very epitome of the Otaku, who has no life
outside the room that he rents and the pornographic magazines that he uses
to pleasure himself. It is clear in Red Classroom that the narrative, as in the
remaining lms in the series, is a permutation of the stories of tragic lovers
that, as we have seen, are so prevalent in Japanese popular culture and art.
This is expressed through mise-en-scne and cinematography. A cinematic
palate of primary colours reds, blues and yellows and periods of torrential
rain provide the background to this contemporary story of tragic love. In Red
Classroom, this is emphasised when Muraki nally discovers Nami working as
a prostitute in a seedy bar, selling her body to any man who wants it. Her total
degradation is made clear in two crucial sequences. In the rst we see Nami
encourage her pimp to urinate on her naked body. In the second, watched by
Muraki, Nami is sexually used and abused by a group of six men, before being
sold to the highest bidder. Once again we have a conict between idealised
fantasy and real life, which self-reexively comments on the violated female
body as erotic fantasy and spectacle in Japanese popular culture. This is shown
when Namis lover brings a young schoolgirl, who has been hidden in the
basement, for the sexual pleasure of the group of men. As Nami gazes over to
the young girl being raped, her face remains expressionless. And so the cycle of
abuse repeats itself. These two scenes of Namis degradation make it clear, as
does the subsequent scene between Muraki and Nami in the driving rain, that
Namis identity and humanity have been fully extinguished by the brutality of
the men that surround her.
Nami goes from innocent schoolgirl in the rst lm in the series, to prostitute
in the second and career-driven working woman in the third. Directed by
Noboru, Nami (1979) is signicantly more violent and brutal than Sones
rst two entries in the series. The plot of Nami centres around a magazine
reporter, the Nami (Eri Kanuma) of the title, who is doing a piece on rape
for the magazine she works for, which is called The Woman. Here Muraki
(Takeo Chii) is also a reporter, whose sister has been a victim of a violent rape.
Muraki teams up with Nami, and ends up trying but failing to save her. Whilst
the purpose of the article is to explore the efect of rape on victims, and how
they manage to continue with their lives, Nami becomes increasingly obsessed,
and ultimately aroused by the stories that she forces the victims to relate to
her in graphic detail. In one scene, while she is in the shower, Nami is shown
fantasising about one of the stories she has been told. Here it is Nami, rather
than Muraki, who confuses the fantasy of rape with the reality of the violent
act itself. It is only when Nami interviews a nurse, a survivor of a particularly
violent rape, that she discovers the reality that underlies the fantasy. In the
process she becomes yet another victim and statistic of sexual violence, as the
disturbed nurse attempts to act out the violence perpetrated against her by
using Nami as her substitute.
At this point, the narrative disintegrates and reality and hallucination
prove interchangeable as Nami becomes unhinged. Her deteriorating hold on
reality is contained within the increasingly swerved angles and red lters that
constitute much of the mise-en-scne for the nal half-hour. She continues to
have fantasies about being raped, and in one scene accuses the whole staf of
the magazine of abusing her. Again Muraki tries to prevent her total annihi-
lation but fails, as do all the variants of Muraki in all the Angel Guts lms. The
lm ends when Nami, for whom all men have become potential rapists, kills
Muraki.
The fourth lm, Red Porno, directed by Ikeda, is the most explicit lm in the
series, and borders on hard-core pornography in places. Nami (Jun Izumi) now
works in a department store. Asked one evening to stand in at a photo session
for a friend, Nami discovers to her horror that it is for an S&M magazine,
called Red Porno. She is coerced into posing for photographs and the edition
in which these are published becomes a bestseller, leading to her being sacked
from her job. Again, this can be seen as a comment on the contrast between
the ubiquity of sadomasochistic imagery and idealised constructions of appro-
priate femininity in Japanese society, where traditional values and codes of
decorum coexist with a highly organized and professional marketing of sex for
consumption (Lloyd 2002: 72).
This time Muraki (Masahiko Abe) is the very epitome of the sad isolated
Otaku generation. He lives in a rented at, which he rarely leaves, and spends
most of his time looking out of his window. The very opening scenes of the lm
construct an alienated and isolated mise-en-scne of desire, which also functions
to situate Nami and Muraki as doubles. The rst scene shows Nami mastur-
bating, with her legs under a kotatsu (a Japanese heated table). The camera
zooms in until Namis red-lit crotch lls the screen, unwavering in its direct
gaze, as she brings herself to orgasm. In the following scene, Muraki is similarly
shown masturbating, whilst looking at photographs of Nami. In a later sequence,
Muraki watches through his window as a young schoolgirl uses everyday objects
to masturbate. An egg and pencils provide her with simulacra of the male
phallus. As she orgasms, the egg breaks, yellow and red juices com mingling as it
runs down her legs. These solitary acts of pleasure obviously function as erotic
spectacles, but at the same time the visual distance between Nami and Muraki,
and Muraki and the schoolgirl, seems to suggest an alienated and isolated desire,
a poor substitute for an intimate relationship between two people.
Not only does Nami lose her job, but her married lover also breaks up their
afair, and she becomes more and more isolated, as shown in the masturbation
sequence towards the conclusion of the lm where Nami uses the leg of her
kotatsu as a substitute for the penis. Muraki eventually persuades Nami, his
idealised fantasy woman, to meet up with him. However, as in the preceding
lms in the series, the relationship between Muraki and Nami is thwarted by
circumstances beyond their control. On his way to meet Nami, the husband of
a woman who takes him for a pervert and rapist shoots Muraki, whose Otaku-
style existence has caused concern within the community. In a highly symbolic
scene, Muraki falls down a ight of stairs, and his body is framed against
broken mannequins, lying at the bottom of the stairs. These mannequins are
women as object, stripped of her physicality, and symbolise the female body
as commodity, mimicking self-reexively the double standards by which real
woman cannot compete with an idealised femininity. Muraki struggles to make
it to his date with Nami and holds out a red umbrella to her, before he dies. The
umbrella, as we have already seen, is a motif of tragic love, and here its colour
obviously symbolises desire. At the same time, this series of scenes implies that
Muraki has an idealised, romanticised vision of Nami hence the symbolism
of the passive mannequins which is at odds with the reality of female identity
and sexuality. In an interview, Takeshi Ishii (2005) argues that Namis frigidity
is a symbolic metaphor for Japans frigidity after the Occupation.
At the same time, censorship regulations are constitutive of an erotics of
the fetish, in which the covered crotch, as signalled through the repeated use
of panty shots, is fetishised. It is not, however, just the female body that is
fragmented, as a result of the need both to show desire and to conceal the
actual operation of desire; the penis cannot be shown either. However, the
symbolic phallus is omnipresent, displaced on to everyday domestic objects,
such as a table leg, a showerhead, an egg and pencils. In addition, the centrality
of the breast in sex scenes, as the only object of desire that can be shown, stands
as metonymic signier of both male and female desire.
In the rst four lms, Nami is not just all women or any woman, but also
the eternal victim, born to be raped, abused and dominated in an unjust
patriarchal society in which she has no identity beyond her objectication.
However, Muraki fares no better; in his various guises, he is pornographer,
stalker, fantasist and Otaku. The nal lm in the series, Red Dizziness, is much
more a romantic melodrama than a pornographic lm, even though it has the
obligatory number of sex scenes required by roman porno. Here Nami (Mayako
Katsuragi) is a nurse, who, whilst on night shift, is subjected to a violent but
unsuccessful rape by two of her male patients. Fleeing back to her home and
her boyfriend, a pornographic photographer, she nds him having sex with
one of his models (Jun Izumi). Betrayed, she leaves the house and ees.
Muraki (Naoto Takenaka) is a stockbroker who has been embezzling money
from his clients and employers. His wife has left him as a consequence of the
threatening phone calls they have been receiving, and Muraki is a man on the
edge. Desperate, he leaves his house and gets into his car. Not watching the
road, he knocks Nami of her bicycle and, convinced she is dead, puts her body
into the front seat of the car whilst he decides what to do with her. Suddenly
realising that Nami is still alive, Muraki ties her up and tries to have sex with
her on the front seat whilst she is unconscious. However, like Namis male
patients, Muraki is unable to penetrate her, and Nami suddenly wakes up to
nd, once again, an attempted violation of her body.
Nami runs away but Muraki catches her, and they end up together in a
dilapidated and deserted building where Muraki again attempts and fails to
rape her. Indeed, the last lm in the series is about the inability rather than the
ability to rape, and suggests that a relationship between a man and woman needs
to be based upon mutual love and trust. The remaining narrative details the
growing relationship between Nami and Muraki, both isolated and alienated
characters, eventually leading to an erotic and extended sex session between
the two at a love hotel. But as in all Angel Guts lms, it seems that men and
women are not meant to be together. Muraki leaves to buy petrol and is shot
for no apparent reason. As he promised earlier, his spirit returns to her, to the
deserted building where their relationship began, as symbolised by the broken
tape recorder which suddenly works again. A song of romantic love comes out
of the radio, as Nami stands alone in the dark. The lm ends with Namis reali-
sation that Muraki is not coming back.
However strong the desire may be to dismiss the Angels Guts series of lms
as pure sexploitation, in their uninching vision of the raped, violated and
abused women these lms work at some level as an indictment of the oppressive
nature of Japanese paternalism. It is true to say of these lms that there is little
in the way of positive male characterisation, and as such, this draws parallels
to the original rape-revenge cycle in America, in which all men are presented
as sexually repulsive (Lehman 1993: 109). Lehman comments, The male
spectator can hate rather than simply identify with these men who embody
desires similar to their own (1993: 112).
At the same time, the constant objectication of the female body, its fragmen-
tation into a series of fetishistic body parts breasts, legs, the covered crotch
is in a sense at odds with the underlying narrative of female oppression in
Japanese society and the commodication of the female body as an object of
exchange between men. And the reference to guts in the title has symbolic
importance as a reference to the sacred and aesthetic dimension of being which
is often constrained by the rules and regulations of Japanese society. It is
difcult to deny the political sub-text of the Angel Guts lms and the implicit,
if not explicit, criticism of Japanese societys oppression of woman.
ANTI-MODERNITY AND THE NATIONAL BODY
Angura is the name given to an art movement of the 1960s, which was charac-
terised by its opposition to modernity. Matsui explores the origins of anti-
modern thinking in the wake of the Meiji Government in 1867, through which
modernization in Japan has unambiguously meant the acceptance and domes-
tication of Western theories and aesthetics (2002: 142). At the same time, the
preservation of the ie system meant that Japan had, in Matsuis words:
a self-contradictory social structure in which utilitarian competition was
encouraged, while the preservation of the overprotective structure of
the Japanese family by public institutions prevents the development of
individualism and original thinking. (2002: 142)
This incomplete modernity as a result of the enforced modernisation of
Japan through the adoption and integration of Western ideas and values sat
uncomfortably with traditional Japanese ethics and paternalism. This conict
was often explored in literature and the visual arts, through the reassertion
of the pre-modern Japanese motherly sensibility against the inuence of
modern Western patriarchal culture (Matsui 2002: 143). The late 1960s and
the early 1970s saw the spread of anti-modern spirit, or what Matsui terms
a return of the repressed Japanese body (2002: 144). Angura culture also
focused on the domestic spaces, rather than the public sphere. The reason
for the rise of the Angura movement included the failure of political protest
against the JapanUS Security Treaty and the repression of the students
protest movement against the authoritarian policies of Japanese universities
between 1968 and 1972 (Matsui 2002: 144). This anti-modern sentiment was
contained within a counter-cultural movement, which asserted the body, or
-vng fi lm: fom vi olion o vngn 107
nikutai, against the intellect. Matsui writes, the energy of Japanese youth ran
to the production of underground dance and theatre, pornographic lms and
narrative comics (2002: 144). However, in the aftermath of the United Red
Army murder case in 1972, whose members were associated with the left-wing
tendencies of the Angura movement, the meaning of Angura became associated
more with underground comics, whose theme concerned lyrically depicting
the details of their daily life with a sense of isolation and frustrated sexuality
(Matsui 2002: 147).
VENGEANCE
The Angel Guts series provides a useful position from where to start to consider
the recent emergence of the rape-revenge lm in Japanese horror cinema, rather
than contextualising it in the light of the original American rape-revenge cycle.
Certainly it becomes possible to see the gure of Chihiro (Harumi Inoue) in
Freeze Me as another variation on the eternal female that is the key theme
in Ishiis work. In these terms, Chihiro, the beautiful ofce worker, could as
easily have been called Nami, and Nogami, her boyfriend, Muraki. The pivotal
diference here is, of course, that Chihiro ghts back against male oppression,
unlike the various incarnations of Nami in the Angel Guts series. Similarly, in
Miikes Audition, the ethereal and beautiful Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina) is no
longer the mutilated, violated body of traditional Japanese narratives of rape,
but an avenging angel who mutilates the male body, transposing it into a series
of body parts, the narrative position originally occupied by the woman.
Portraying rape through ashback demonstrates how trauma returns and
imposes itself upon the subject, but also self-consciously positions the
cinema audience, calling attention to their role as spectators. (Horeck
2004: 105)
Both Freeze Me and Audition present the rape/abuse of the central
character through a series of ashbacks, rather than directly. The driving
rain against which the credits are set in Freeze Me clearly signies the alien-
ation and oppression of Chihiro, as the next two scenes also demonstrate. The
rst scene is a short sequence of Chihiro as a child, standing on a deserted
pavement under a street lamp as snow urries envelop her, whilst the sounds of
a struggle are heard. In the present, Chihiro is shown as a condent, articulate
and self-assured young women, exchanging banter with her workmates and her
boyfriend. As she sits typing in the darkened ofce, she is suddenly grabbed
from behind, a hand groping her breast; as this happens, the lm switches to a
grainy format, capturing the terried expression on Chihiros face. Unlike the
traditional dualistic format of the rape-revenge lm, Freeze Me, like Audition,
embeds the events of the past within the present-time format of the narrative.

In doing so, both lms suggest the continued inuence of past oppression
on their female protagonists, as well as connotating the pre-modern body,
associated with the feminine spirit, in which a co-existence of diferent
historical moments attains a reality through individual or collective
memory (Matsui 2002: 144).
It is perhaps no coincidence, given the Angel Guts series of lms, that it
transpires that Chihiro has been gang-raped by three thoroughly unpleasant
and unredeemable male characters as a child. The past seeps into the present
as one of the rapists, Hirokawa, turns up on Chihiros doorstep. Again, driving
rain and snow are utilised to create an imagistic system of oppression and
isolation as Chihiro ees and takes the lift back up to her apartment. Threat-
ening her with exposure, as if somehow the rape was her fault, Hirokawa
proceeds to abuse her again. As such, Freeze Me foregrounds the stigma of
shame and loss of honour attached to a rape victim, commenting on a pater-
nalistic society which continues to function through the oppression of women.
It is society that allows men such as Hirokawa to use and abuse women as
simple objects of exchange. Even Kojima, the second rapist from the past who
rst asks for her forgiveness, is quick to blame the rape on Chihiro, before
attempting again to force himself on her. Baba, the third rapist, is the typical
self-obsessed Otaku, playing his violent video games whilst Chihiro is forced
to wait on him hand and foot. No longer is rape a mechanism through which
to liberate female desire from its oppression; instead it is seen as the very basis
of that oppression. As is the convention in the rape-revenge lm, Chihiro takes
a bloody and violent revenge against each of her attackers separately. Using
close-at-hand domestic objects a bottle lled with water, a hammer and
wrapping the bodies up in plastic, Chihiro utilises the space of the domestic
(interiority) to turn the tables on the men. The corpses of the men she keeps
in industrial-size freezers, nding their company much more amenable when
they are simply objects. Here the male body as object subverts the traditional
idealisation of the female body.
There is no happy ending for Chihiro. Earlier her boyfriend, Nogami, is
repelled when Hirokawa ofers to sell her to him and relates her rape in detail.
Instead of saving her, Nogami ees. In a society predicated on female respect-
ability, Chihiro is now damaged goods and no longer marriageable. Freeze Me
seems to be suggesting, as we saw in Rashmon, that rape is still constituted
as somehow the responsibility of the victim, rather than the violator. Nogami
returns, just as Chihiro is about to ee the country, giving her hope that she
can start again. But Nogami is constructed as little better than her rapists, as
Lafond points out:
In fact, Nogamis acts are clearly at variance with his declaration of
intent: he pretends to be concerned about Chihiros problem, although
he is clearly more interested in her body as he keeps fondling her breasts
during his whole monologue. (2005: 83)
Her one symbol of hope dies when she is forced to kill Nogami after
he discovers the body of one of her rapists. As such, Freeze Me is no more
optimistic than the earlier Angel Guts lms in imagining an equal and equitable
relationship between the sexes. The nal image, which suggests that Chihiro
is also dead, provides a bleak commentary on the oppression of women in
Japanese society.
Miikes Audition also explores the gap between men and women, and simil-
arly suggests an unbridgeable chasm between the two by utilising a variation
on the rape-revenge format. Unlike Ichiis Freeze Me, Audition was marked
by a general consensus of agreement as to its critical merits in the West. And
Fig. 5.1 Asami, the epitome of idealised
womanhood, Audition (Takashi Miike, 1999,
Omega / The Kobal Collection)
it was the perceived perversity of the ending sequences that, arguably, created
a general buzz amongst lm viewers as a whole. For most of the lm, the
narrative plays out as a typical romantic drama, albeit with a twist. A middle-
aged widower, Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), seeks to nd himself a new wife by
duplicitous means by auditioning (hence the title of the lm) for an actress for
a part in a low-budget independent lm with the help of his friend Yoshikawa
(Jun Kunimura), who works in the lm business. Unlike the typical male
character in Japanese rape dramas, Aoyama is fundamentally a respectable
and sympathetic character, providing a possible point of identication for
the (male) spectator. Asami, a beautiful and seemingly demure young woman,
seems to meet all of Aoyamas criteria; she appears to be the epitome of passive
Japanese womanhood and respectability, as contained within the discourse of
rysaikenbo. In his promise to Asami that he will love only her, a promise that
he cannot keep, Aoyama is the lm suggests at least partly culpable for
Asamis violent revenge against him.
During a romantic weekend together, Asami disappears. The remaining
narrative focuses on Aoyamas obsessive search for her. All he discovers are
lies and half-truths; men who have been in contact with her are either missing
or dead, and the ballet school at which she learnt to dance is boarded up and
derelict. In the end it is not Aoyama who nds Asami (as, in a sense, she never
really existed outside his fantasies), but Asami in her role of murderous and
sadistic fatal femme (Pidduck 1995: 65) who nds Aoyama. In a subversion
of the conventions of Japanese sadomasochistic pornography, in which the
violated and open body of the woman functioned as an object of sadistic
pleasure, it is now the paralysed, impotent and objectied male body that is
now experimented on by Asami with her steel wire and sharp pins.
In his search for Asami, the places to which Aoyama goes are ltered through
a red lens, signifying corruption, disease, sexuality and impurity. In one scene,
set in the old dance school, the crippled gure of Asamis uncle and abuser
(Renji Ishibashi) plays the piano, whilst next to him a bin full of bloody long
sharp sticks attracts ies. Here the mise-en-scne signies something corrupt
and malevolent, something festering away at the heart of Japanese society.
Similarly, the old building where Asami used to live is a place of death, bodily
corruption and abjection, as Aoyama sees from the corner of his eye a palpating
tongue, a symbol for the female vulva. As the nal events take place, the lm
dips in and out of hallucination and nightmare: Asami, a pretty young girl in
her ballet costume, being abused by her uncle with long hot sticks in the past;
Asami, cutting of the head of her uncle in the present; Asami as a fetishised
schoolgirl with her head in Aoyamas lap. While the gure of the fatal femme
can be understood as a feminist statement, Mes suggests that Audition is
about two people who misunderstand each other; and this (often unconscious)
mistreatment works both ways (2004: 204).
SEX AND VIOLENCE
The densely populated and highly gendered space of the city is counter-
balanced in Japanese visual culture that uses sex as a form of dissent,
transgression or disobedience that rejects the efects of Japanese modern-
ization and frequently returns to pre-modern indigenous traditions
which, focussing on the raw body, became metaphors for the violation of
the national psyche or body of Japan the uncovering of this power is a
form of resistance which enables critical reection. (Lloyd 2002: 1617)
The aggressiveness of both the erotic and scopic drives in the Angel Guts lms
brings together Eros (life) and Thantos (Death), sex and violence, as a form
of counter-cultural protest against modernity, Westernisation and commodi -
cation. The libidinal and abject body, as constructed through both the violated
female body and the saturated mise-en-scne of primary colours, condenses
multiple traumatic events in the construction of the modern Japan. These
events include Japans colonisation of Korea and the use of Korean women as
comfort women (forced to prostitute themselves for Japanese soldiers during
and after the Second World War), the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
and the subsequent Allied Occupation. The Angel Guts series, with its emphasis
on the taboo and marginalised areas of society, can most protably be under-
stood as part of this counter-cultural movement. Whether rape is a male or
female fantasy, these lms suggest that the reality that underlies the fantasy is
brutal and has real consequences. At the same time, the lms expose the contra-
dictions within Japanese society, in which the commodication of sex exists
uneasily side by side with traditional discourses of appropriate femininity.
Further, it is possible to interpret these lms as feminist, as the trashing of the
Confucian ideal of woman as demure and submissive is one of the essentials
of Japanese feminism (Bornof 2002: 51). And, although gendered images of
violence are fundamentally unpleasant, it is necessary to tackle such images in
order to challenge and change the meanings and rewards attached to violence
in our society (Boyle 2005: 49).
While Williamss discussion of pornography as a genre may well be appli-
cable to the Angel Guts lms, the lms themselves are not paradigmatic
examples of pornography. Indeed, as we have seen, these were mainstream
productions, nanced by Nikkatsu, one of the main studios at the time. And
although it could be argued that the lms eroticise rape through its visuali-
sation, we are positioned through the use of the subjective shot (point-of-view)
to have empathy with the female victims. Neither is it true to say that pornog-
raphy is inherently transgressive, even in relation to Japanese pink cinema
(either independent or mainstream); lms such as Crazy Lips (Sasaki: 2000),
which portray the repeated violation of the female body as little more than
erotic spectacle, exist side by side with lms that ofer nuanced explorations of
sexual desire such as The Woman in Black Underwear and Lunchbox. In relation
to Rousseaus Le Lvite dEphram, Horeck writes that the substitution of a
womans body for that of a mans operates as an attempt to distinguish self and
other through the medium of the woman as rapable object. In doing so, the
rapable female body denies the possibility of homosexual desire and constructs
the male body as exempt from violation (Horeck 2004: 52). Citizenship then is
made possible through the violation of the body of the woman, but at the same
time, the tenuous nature of the socio-sexual bond is revealed (Horeck 2004: 65).
The visual and symbolic gap between men and women in the Angel Guts lms
clearly articulates anxieties around the instability of the socio-sexual contract
and can be related to the transformations in the socio-political framework of
Japan at a time of unprecedented economic and social change.
While Lafond (2005) suggests that Freeze Me can be understood through
comparison to the American rape-revenge lm, the contemporary Japanese
rape-revenge lm is a continuation of, rather than a break with, the violated,
traumatised and raped body commonly found in roman porno. In relation to
I Spit on Your Grave, Boyle states that such self-conscious performances of
rape myths arguably draw attention to their absurdity (2005: 139). In their
depiction of the gap between violent men and abused women, Freeze Me and
Audition continue the themes laid down in the Angel Guts lms. Chihiro and
Asami are just one more face of the wronged women in Japanese culture.
Neither of these women can nd solace in the present, as the traumas of their
pasts (as connotative of the historical past) cannot be forgotten; nor can they be
forgiven. They are victims of repression and oppression, and only death and
loneliness remain for them.
.
6
Zombies, Cannibals
and the Living Dead
W
ith more than 24 million sales worldwide, the Resident Evil video game
franchise began in 1996 with Resident Evil for Playstation 1. The game
is based upon an earlier one, only released in Japan, called Sweet Home, which
is often compared to Hoopers Poltergeist. The video game series has so far
spawned three lms, Resident Evil (Anderson: 2002), Resident Evil Apocalypse
(Witt: 2004) and Resident Evil: Extinction (Mulcahy: 2007).
Perhaps surprisingly, taking into account the success of the zombie-haunted
spaces of the Resident Evil games, there are not that many Japanese zombie
lms. Whilst one of the alternative titles of The Discarnates was Summer amongst
the Zombies, the lm bears very little relation to what in the West we conceive
of as a zombie lm; there is very little gore and no scenes of cannibalism,
and the dead return looking for love rather than as consuming revenants who
threaten the world with apocalyptic destruction. Most Japanese zombie lms
have emerged in the wake of the success of Resident Evil, including Versus
(Kitamura), Wild Zero (Takeuchi) and Junk (Muroga), all released in 2000,
and Stacy the following year. More recently, we have Tokyo Zombie (2005),
based upon the manga by Ysaku Hanakuma and directed by Sat.
Sats Naked Blood (1995) is one of the few cannibal lms to come out of
Japan. Slater writes that the lm takes the theme of cannibalism to a new
extreme (2002: 15). A science ction/horror hybrid, it takes as its premise
a drug called My Son, whose purpose is to eradicate pain by producing a
massive secretion of endorphins. Three women, who are taking part in a trial
of new contraceptive drug, unknowingly also become test subjects for My
Son, run by Yuki Kure (Masumi Nakao).
The rst woman (Yumika Hayashi) develops a voracious appetite for human
esh, and more specically her own. In a series of disturbingly graphic scenes,
she is shown eating her ngers after having plunged them into tempura batter;
cutting of her labium and devouring it as if it was a great delicacy; sawing
EUP_Balmain_07_Ch6.indd 113 12/9/08 10:06:40
through her breast before with relish eating her nipple; and then, after thrusting
a knife into her eye, cheerfully eating it, all the time moaning in (sexual)
pleasure. The second woman (Mika Kirihara) becomes a human pincushion,
also feeling pleasure instead of pain as she mutilates her body with jewellery
and a variety of other sharp objects. Whilst these acts of self-harm are taking
place, Eiji (Sadao Abe), the seventeen-year-old son of Yuki, who is responsible
for adding My Son to his mothers contraceptive drug, is shown lming the
results of his experiment, calling to mind comparisons with Powells study of
male voyeurism and masochism in Peeping Tom (1960).
The manner in which the women die, as a result of gluttony and vanity, bears
a supercial resemblance to Finchers Se7en (1995), in which characters meet
their deaths in a manner betting their lives. The nal woman, Rika Mikami
(Misa Aika), traumatised as a result of her rst ever period, is an insomniac and
the drug afects her diferently. Instead of nding pleasure in her own pain, she
nds pleasure in the pain of others. Not only does she kill the other women,
including Yuki, but she also slits Eijis throat after making love.
The apocalyptic end sequences show Rika, with her young son (whose
father we presume is Eiji), in the middle of an empty and deserted landscape,
determined to rid the world of all living plants; the exception is the cactus,
with which she is shown communicating in previous scenes through the use of
virtual reality headsets. Hunter writes:
Mixing shock gore with cybersex, medical fetishism, video mediation,
narcolepsy and Nietzschian notions of eternal return, Naked Blood may
well be the ultimate fusion of the visceral, the psychopathological and the
metaphysical, a lm whose nearest analogue in Western cinema would be
the work of David Cronenberg. (1998: 139)
Unlike Italian cannibal lms, such as Deep River Savages (Lenzi: 1972) and
Deodatos Last Cannibal World (1977) and subsequent Cannibal Holocaust
(1979), in which members of expeditions to the Amazon Basin meet up with
esh-eating natives and rarely escape with their lives, Naked Blood explicitly
links cannibalism with commodity fetishisation and consumerism. As such,
Naked Blood has more similarities with the zombie lm than the cannibal
lm.
As Slater points out, dening a real zombie movie is difcult (2002:
15). However, he goes on to make a crucial distinction between spirits of the
dead and the living dead, as in the Haitian myth (2002: 17). Further, cannibal
and zombie myths have diferent origin stories tribal ritualistic cannibalism
as opposed to the soulless corpses of the living dead controlled by black or
voodoo magic. Romeros Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead
(1978) transformed the zombie and cannibal into the composite living corpse
zombis, nnibls nd living dd 115
motivated purely by hunger for human esh. Known as Zombi in Italy, Dawn
of the Dead spawned hundreds of zombie lms, including Fulcis Zombie Flesh
Eaters in 1979, which was retitled Zombi 2 in order to cash in on the success of
Romeros lm.
The shufing zombies in the Japanese zombie lm tend to be recycled
revenants of the zombie lms of the 1970s and 1970s, as in Junk and Wild Zero.
At the same time, these zombies owe as much to contemporary popular culture,
both American and Japanese, as they do to their earlier prototypes. Junk is
perhaps closer to what we in the West have come to expect from a zombie lm
than Wild Zero, Versus or indeed Stacy, with its schoolgirl zombies. And whilst
Versus does feature zombies, it would be difcult to categorise it within the
generic features of the zombie lm.
RESURRECTION
Kitamuras Versus, with its forest of resurrection and battle between immortals,
is as far away from the conventions of the zombie lm as it is possible to get.
An escaped prisoner, KSC2303 (Tak Sakaguchi), nds himself trapped
in a menacing forest, hunted down by a Yakuza gang, hired assassins, two
policeman and a mysterious man (Hideo Sakaki). A mysterious beautiful girl
(Chieko Misaka), whose blood contains the power of rebirth, stands between
KSC2303 and the Man. With a nod to Stephen Kings Dark Tower series,
with its gunslingers, wastelands and mysterious man in black; Argentos The
Stendhal Syndrome (1996); the Wachowski brothers science ction-dening
The Matrix (1999); Romeros The Night of the Living Dead and Fulcis Zombie
Flesh Eaters; with a plot derived from Highlander (Mulcahy: 1986); disem-
bodied shot sequences that call to mind Raimis The Evil Dead (1981) and its
merging of Hong Kong action sequences (especially with regard to the lms of
John Woo) with those commonly found in traditional Samurai lms; Versus is
similar to an extended post-modern music video rather than a narrative lm.
The plot itself, if in fact it can be called a plot, revolves around the battle
between good and evil that has been going on since the beginning of time
and will go on until the end of time. Good and evil are embodied by the two
protagonists: the Dark Hero and the Man (hence the similarity to Highlander).
Between the two stands the Girl, the archetypical self-sacricing woman,
whose blood has the power to resurrect the dead. The prologue of the lm,
set 500 years before, introduces us to the main characters the Dark Hero,
the Man and the Girl and explains the meaning of the location, the Forest
of Resurrection; this is the 444th portal of 666 gates, which allows those killed
in it to come back to life. The prologue also introduces the key concept of
the karmic cycle, which creates a temporal and spatial connection between
the past, present and future. Further, the karmic cycle is an eternal cycle of
rebirth, in which good (seless) and bad (selsh) actions in this life determine
our karma in the next. The Dark Hero and his nemesis, the Man, in Versus
are forced to repeat their encounter throughout eternity. There is no escape
for any of the three central characters from their karma. The Dark Hero must
battle the Man, and the Girl must be the pawn passing between the men. This
is true of the past, as it is of the present and of the future. The nal scene is of
an apocalyptic world set 99 years in the future, where, amongst the devastated
landscape, the battle between the Dark Hero and the Man continues.
The battleground can be interpreted as a type of limbo, between the planes
of existence, in which characters cannot die but are forced endlessly to return
to life to continue their chosen paths. As the members of the Yakuza gang die
one by one, they return to life as zombies, forced into a never-ending cycle of
violence and death. Unlike the 1970s zombie, these re guns, use knives and
have the potential to act like sentient beings. And these zombies cannot be
killed, even with a shot to the head a common way of killing these creatures
in the traditional zombie lm and video games such as Resident Evil. When the
Man thrusts his hand into the chest of the leader of the Yakuza gang (Kenji
Matsuda), removing his heart, the latter does not die. Versus totally dispenses
with the mythology of the zombie and the implicit criticism of consumerism
and capitalism, as connotated by the living dead of Romeros zombie cycle,
choosing instead pure kinetic thrills and a post-modern aesthetic based on
speed and circulation. As Harper writes in relation to the lms of Romero:
Zombies function in Dawn of the Dead as a lumpenproletariat of shifting
signicance, walking symbols of any oppressed social group. This function
is derived in part from their origins in the literature and cinema of the
twentieth century, in which zombies are synonymous with oppression
and slavery. (2002)
Even though the zombies are to an extent controlled by the Man in Versus, they
do not function as revenants produced by the oppressive forces of capitalism,
as in Dawn of the Dead. Cool replaces class, image replaces identity, and style
triumphs over substance. Versus is representative of a trend in Japanese visual
art towards what is known as the super-at aesthetic, epitomised by the pop art
of Murakami. Shimada writes that Murakamis Superat Manifesto proposed
that everything exists on a at two dimensional plane situated somewhere
between traditional Japanese painting and modern anime (2002: 188). Shimada
comments on how some Western critics and curators see Japanese pop culture
and its eradication of history and meaning as radical, futuristic and uniquely
Japanese (2002: 188). In opposition to this view stand critics such as Bornof,
who argues that Everything about Murakami is commercial and derivative
(2002: 66). Again, debates surrounding nationalism and self-orientalism are
foregrounded in discussions of Japanese culture. The super-at surfaces and
MTV aesthetics of Versus are symptomatic of the trend in Japanese art towards
trash aesthetics, which, as I argue later in this chapter, can be seen as a type of
asobi (play) and as such challenge rather than support the status quo.
INVASION
Wild Zero seems to be more of a marketing tool for the Japanese band, Guitar
Wolf, than a sustained political critique. In fact, consumerism is embraced
in Wild Zero, rather than critiqued, as it is in Versus. Like Versus, Wild Zero
borrows from a number of zombie, science ction and action lms, including
Plan 9 from Outer Space (Wood: 1959), Rock and Roll High School (Arkush:
1979) featuring the punk group The Ramones, Mars Attacks (Burton: 1996)
and even Hitchcocks Psycho (1960). As in Rock and Roll High School, the
protagonist, Ace (Masashi End), is a fan of the coolest band on the planet,
Guitar Wolf (the band is made up of the appropriately named Guitar Wolf,
Drum Wolf and Bass Wolf), with their quifed hair, black leather trousers and
jackets, and motorbikes.
Guitar Wolfs primary mission is to combat the very uncool J-Pop, which
is in danger of taking over from rock and roll as embodied by The Captain
(Makoto Inamiya), in his skin-tight Lycra shorts, who proclaims that Rock
and Roll is Dead, leading to a shoot-out with the Group. A fan Ace (Masashi
End) helps Guitar Wolf out, becoming a blood brother in the process. The
fact that they end up battling zombies from outer space, and an assortment of
baddies (including a Yakuza gang), seems somehow incidental to the aesthetics
of cool that runs throughout the lm. Guitar Wolf is forever ensuring that
his hair in his place and that he retains his cool (kakkoii) image, even during
battles with the unending deluge of zombies.
The action takes place in and around the town of Asahi-Cho, the scene of
a meteor shower and for some unknown reason the site of the alien invasion.
The main love interest in the lm, Tobio (Kwancharu Shitichai), whom Ace
rescues on more than one occasion from gangs of murderous zombies and
other perverts, is anatomically male rather than female, the revelation of which
recalls a similar scene in The Crying Game (Jordan: 1992). Gender should
not, the lm proclaims, stand in the way of true love or the aesthetics of cool.
Writing about transgender practices in Japan, Lunsing argues that men who
do not wish to conform to the boundaries of the construction of male gender
act to undermine its rigidity and that such practices transgress the typical
masculinity associated in Japan with the phrase okoko rashiku shinsai: behave
like a man (2003: 33). While playful in its approach to the zombie genre, Wild
Zero explicitly critiques traditional ideological constructions of masculinity.
In Wild Zero, even turning into a zombie should not stand in the way of
true love, as in the case of Toschi (one of the few who has not been turned
into a zombie), who is reunited with his girlfriend even after she has become
one of the living dead. The lms ending, in which Guitar Wolf hacks through
the alien ship using his guitar, whilst of course retaining his cool, gives some
indication of the sheer lunacy of Wild Zero.
However, in its depiction of Japanese youth culture, as epitomised by the
casting of the members of Guitar Wolf, Wild Zero is continuing within the
tradition of youth-orientated lms, known as the Sun Tribe or taiyozoku lms,
of the 1950s and 1960s. In Imagining a New Japan: The Taiyozoku Films,
Raine traces the term to the emergence of a new generation of post-war
Japanese youth:
Like the French term nouvelle vague, the word taiyozoku (Sun Tribe)
referred to a postwar generation before it was applied to the cinema. It
was coined to describe the rich, bored, and vicious characters populating
the pages of writer Shintaro Ishiharas books, such as Season of the Sun
(1955) and Crazed Fruit (1956). Those characters embodied all that
Japans postwar disillusioned youth desired, and that Japans new conser-
vative government feared: absent parents and an excess of money, leisure,
and sex. (2005)
The tragic gure of James Dean, as eternally immortalised on celluloid in his
most famous role as James Stark in Rebel without a Cause (Ray: 1965), along
with those of Marlon Brando and Jack Palance, adorned many Japanese lm
magazines in the 1950s. And in 1957, Elvis Presley was, according to Raine,
the big new foreign face in Japan in what he terms an intensication of
celebrity and consumer culture (2005). The Sun Tribe lms were the prede-
cessors of Nikkatsus later roman porno genre that ooded cinemas in Japan in
the 1970s and 1980s, as discussed in the last chapter. Films such as Crazed Fruit
(Nakahira: 1956) and Punishment Room (Ichikawa: 1956) established a sense of
cool through what Raine terms an intimacy between character and youth
audience (2005). The same could be said of Japanese zombie lms. Whilst
taiyozoku lms were successful, or perhaps because of their very success, a
climate of moral panic was created by the mass media over the so-called youth
delinquency that these lms were seen to glamorise. Raine comments:
In the summer of 1956, almost every week brought new cautionary tales
of young hoodlums terrorizing seaside resort towns, young women forced
into sexual slavery, and lewd behavior among male workers on vacation.
(2005)
The pressure from government, moral pressure groups such as the PTA, and
EIRIN eventually led to the demise of the taiyozoku genre. In a society which
privileges conformity over diference, the community over individualism,
and the inside over the outside, the embracing of American popular culture
and its ideological link to consumerism and commodity culture allowed the
youth of Japan a mechanism of expression which was not available within
the rigid hierarchies of traditional Japanese paternalism. Emerging from this
sub-culture in the 1980s were the bszoku and yank. The term bszoku
(translated as the tribe of running violently) is used to refer to motorcycle
and car gangs (Standish 1998: 70), while yank is the term for urban gangs or
juvenile delinquents marked out by their bleached hair and Yakuza-inuenced
outts. Yank often become members of Yakuza gangs when they are older.
According to Sat, bszoku behaviour needs to be understood as a type of
asobi (play), whose purpose is to function as a rite of passage from youth to
adulthood (Standish 1998: 57). Standish suggests that bszoku should be
considered as an example of generational consciousness that poses a direct
challenge to the traditional work ethic and achievement-orientated ideology
of the previous generation (1998: 58).
In Angel Guts: Red Classroom, discussed in the last chapter, the motorcycle
gang, or bszoku, is directly related to class structures within the lm. With
the exception of Tetsur, the biker gang are unemployed, and their violence is
motivated by the gap between their social aspirations and their social reality.
This gap is expressed within the mise-en-scne of industrialisation against
which the narrative is set. However, in Wild Zero, the bszoku are constructed
as heroes rather than anti-heroes. Unjustied violence towards women, which
formed the key conventions of Nikkatsu roman porno generally and the Angel
Guts series in particular, is replaced by justied violence towards the shambling
zombies that threaten to take over Japan. The homoerotic overtones of the
biker gang in Red Classroom, never fully realised, is displaced by a questioning
of normative constructions of heterosexuality in Wild Zero through the love
story between Ace and Tobio. Indeed, the lm ends with a subversion of the
codes of patriarchal heterosexuality as the faces of Ace and Tobio in a heart-
shaped frame provide the nal dening image of the lm. Even Versus suggests
an alternative to compulsory heterosexuality in the relationship between the
leader of the Yakuza gang and one of his henchmen, expressed through both
costume and mise-en-scne.
COMMODIFICATION
By the standards set by Wild Zero, Junk is a relatively sane excursion into zombie
territory, although once again the lm features a Yakuza gang, in addition to
hordes of shambling living dead. Directly referencing Romeros The Night of
the Living Dead, Fulcis Zombie Flesh Eaters and OBannons The Return of
the Living Dead (1983), the zombies in Junk are the product of experimen-
tation gone wrong on the part of the American military. As such, Junk seems to
continue the implicit critique of military technologies associated with America
and the West that can be traced back to the monstrous emergence of Godzilla
in a post-nuclear context.
At the beginning, the typical mad scientist of the science ction genre, Dr
Kinderman, brings back to life a beautiful young woman, Kyoko (Miwa Yanag-
izawa), who returns the favour by immediately killing him. Take a group of
jewellery thieves, including a kick-ass action heroine, Saki (Kaori Shimamura),
a Yakuza gang, and hordes of hungry entrail-eating, self-cannibalising zombies
(who can this time be killed by a shot to the head), led by the beautiful Kyko,
and you have the formula for a nostalgic zombie lm whose roots are rmly
embedded in the 1980s.
Unlike Wild Zero and Versus, Junk manages to retain a critique of commodity
fetishisation; members of the gang of thieves and the Yakuza gang are eaten
alive as they desperately battle for a bag of jewels worth one million yen. Even
when dead, the leader of the Yakuza gang, Ramon (Tate Gouta), keeps a deathly
hold on the bag, although he no longer has any use for it. This is similar to the
manner in which the zombies in Dawn of the Dead are mindlessly attracted
to the shopping mall a double play on the practice of consumption and
consumerism in American society, of which the shopping mall is emblematic.
Sakis desire for a brand new sleek Porsche, which she intends to buy with
her proceeds from the robbery, comments on the aspirational nature of the
commodity in contemporary society.
At the same time echoes can be found of Parasite Eve (Ochiai: 1997), also
a game produced by Sony in 1998; a widower, Toshiaki Nagashima (Hiroshi
Mikami), seeks to bring back his dead wife, Kiyomi (Riona Hazuki), with disas-
trous consequences. In Junk, it turns out that the experiments were started
by Dr Takashi Nikada (Kishimoto Yuuji), in an attempt to return his wife,
Kyko, to life after she was killed in a car crash. And in Junk as in Parasite Eve,
the resulting mutation is constructed in terms of a threat to humanity. Given
the conventions of Japanese horror, it should come as little surprise that Dr
Nikada is forced to sacrice himself in the service of the greater good, in order
to vanquish the mutant zombies for ever; nor that Kyko takes on the coded
characteristics of the vengeful female yrei before she is nally defeated by
Saki. In a sequence which provides a direct visual reference to the death of the
replicant Priss (Daryl Hannah) in Ridley Scotts Blade Runner (1982), Kyko
is shot; falling to the ground, her body convulses and she makes screeching
noises, just as Priss does. But unlike Priss, bullets cannot keep Kyko down.
She gets to her feet, her hair now white and her features ghost-like, more
like a traditional yrei than a zombie. Replicant-like, she continues to defy
death even when dismembered, the top half of her body grappling with Akira
(Osamu Ebara) the only other member of the thieves besides Saki to survive
the onslaught of the living dead. It is up to Saki, as is typical of the nal
girl (Clover: 1992) of the contemporary horror lm (the last girl standing, the
prototype being Laurie in Carpenters Halloween), to rescue Akira by killing
her nemesis, Kyko. However, she is returned to an appropriate Japanese
femininity (as is often the case with her Western counterpart, the nal girl);
having escaped from the zombies with Akira, who arranges for a car salesman
to meet them with a car (by ofering him twice the money that it is worth), she
declines to drive, instead taking the passenger seat. Unlike Versus and Wild
Zero, in which gender categories are subverted, it could be argued that Junks
conclusion restores normative patriarchal and heterosexual values.
FEMINISATION
The schoolgirl icon, one that even shop-worn harlots aspire to emulate,
has by now been a staple in Japanese sexual iconography for 50 years.
Many Japanese men are galvanized by what they call Roricon short for
Lolita Complex. (Bornof 2002: 50)
While Versus, Wild Zero and Junk can be seen as expressions of male sub-cultural
resistance, the low-budget, digitally shot Stacy, with its ravenous murderous
zombie schoolgirls, or Stacies, can be usefully interpreted through its
engagement with shjo bunka or girls culture, the dominant force in Japanese
popular culture since the 1970s. Stacy reworks traditional conventions around
femininity, of which the virginal shjo is a dominant trope, through the juxta-
position of the shjo and the sexually promiscuous kogal: the schoolgirl before
and after her transformation into a zombie.
The plot of the lm, such as it is, concerns the transformation of pubescent
schoolgirls into Stacies, and the inability and inadequacy of Japanese pater-
nalism to deal with this zombication. The reason for the zombication of the
schoolgirl is never made clear. Instead, it becomes the duty of fathers, brothers
and boyfriends to kill their loved ones; hence the lms tagline, Men, kill your
daughters! Be the one to kill your girlfriend! Failing this, the Romero Repeat
Kill Squad (an ofshoot of the military) is called in to do the job for them.
Whilst the Romero Repeat Kill Squad cut the bodies of the Stacies up into
165 pieces, Dr Inugami (Tsutsui Yasutaka) another mad scientist experi-
ments on their still-thinking brains in order to try to discover what it is that
brings the dead schoolgirls back to life. Despite the obvious verbal and visual
references to American zombie lms (such as Dawn of the Dead, Day of the
Dead and The Evil Dead ), Stacy is not a simple parody of the genre that can
be considered generically outside its specic cultural and historical context.
Indeed, as in Wild Zero, the zombies are not unthinking, decaying corpses
without motivation; instead, they come back to life seeking the love that was
denied to them whilst alive. As such, they are comparable to the traditional
yrei of Japanese ghost stories, rather than the zombies of the West.
The fetishised gure of the pubescent schoolgirl in Japanese culture is a
common trope of contemporary Japanese horror. With her short skirt, white
shirt, blazer and coloured necktie, known as sailor fuko (the secondary school
uniform in Japan), she can be found in lms such as Eko Eko Azarak: Wizard
of Darkness, Cursed (Hoshino: 2004), Suicide Circle and Battle Royale. This
fetishisation of the schoolgirl is epitomised by kawaii (cute schoolgirls), young
pop idol schoolgirls called aidoru, who were at the height of their popularity
in the 1990s, and the cult of Lolita. The gure of the schoolgirl is also ever-
present in pornography and Lolicom (Lolita Complex) anime and manga.
Treat writes:
The word most often associated with this shjo culture is kawaii, or
cute. This aesthetic value is directly linked to the consumer role that
shjo exist to play. A kawaii girl is attractive, and thus valorized, but
lacks libidinal agency of its own. While others may desire the shjo
and indeed, another phenomenon in the Japan of the 1980s was the
talk of the rorikon Lolita complex of adult heterosexual males the
shjos own sexual energy, directed as it is towards stufed animals, pink
notebooks, strawberry crepes and Hello Kitty novelties, is an energy not
yet deployable in the heterosexual economy of adult life in Japan. (cited
in Nakamura and Matsuo 2003: 69)
Here Treat argues that the very non-sexuality of the shjo can be interpreted
as threatening to the dominant heterosexual economy in Japan. As Nakamura
and Matsuo comment, Performing shjo is one active and dynamic way that
Japanese women can control their sexuality (2003: 69).
The virginal shjo is the counterpart of the sexually promiscuous kogal.
Napier argues that the shjo and her alter ego the burikko (the cute girl), is the
perfect non-threatening female, the idealized daughter/younger sister whose
femininity is essentially sexless (1998: 94). But she is more than sexless; she
signies maidenly virtue, propriety and respectability. At the same time, shjo
is also the slang for virgin in Japanese. Her very presence is said to cause a
feeling of moe in the male spectator. Derived from Otaku culture, moe also
refers to an absence of vanity, or self-awareness, of cuteness on behalf of
the shjo. Whilst some argue that moe does not have any sexual connotations,
others have suggested that it can encompass elements of paedophilia. At the
same time, the shjos hyper-femininity or girlishness conforms to traditional
Japanese stereotypes of appropriate femininity. Davis and Ikeno elucidate on
the persistence of traditional concepts of woman in contemporary Japan:
This powerful stereotype takes many forms. First, almost all little girls
have dress-up dolls called rika-chan ningy, which have ideal propor-
tions, reecting the Japanese image of the feminine. Therefore, girls
tend to yearn to be like these dolls and identify with them. In addition
to dress-up dolls, there are various kinds of toys that symbolize womans
roles: miniature models of items such as sewing machines, kitchen appli-
ances, and household items. (2002: 181)
In Those Naughty Teenage Girls: Japanese Kogals, Slang, and Media Assess-
ments, Miller argues that the term kogal has come to denote greedy, witless
shoppers (2004: 241). Similarly, Lloyd discusses the signicance of increasing
economic independence and sexual freedom for teenage girls in the 1990s. She
writes:
Presented by the media as bodies to be consumed, they were also seen
as consuming bodies who congregated in Tokyos fashionable shopping
centres awaiting opportunities to acquire the latest luxury goods.
(2002: 78)
In a similar manner to the moral panics that accompanied other sub-cultural
movements, such as taiyozoku and bszoku gangs, as detailed earlier in this
chapter, the Japanese and foreign media in the 1990s constructed the kogal
lifestyle and language in terms of deviant behaviour. However, as Miller points
out, the use of labels for specic sub-cultures can work rst to record and then
to recuperate the potential resistance within that sub-culture through rede-
nition. Further, Miller contends that Kogals symbolize the ongoing rede-
nition of women in late capitalism (2004: 226).
Heavily inuenced by black American culture, in particular hip-hop and
soul, the kogal is the latest in a long line of girls and women who have resisted
the norms of paternalist culture in Japan, which denes women in terms of
respectability. One of the earliest types of resistant girl and woman was the
daraku jogakusel (degenerate schoolgirl) of the Meiji Era. The kogal, however,
is closer to the pre-war mogal, who, similar to the kogal, was described as
decadent, hedonistic and supercial. Miller suggests that every time these
new types of resistant femininity appear, they incrementally destabilize and
modify normative gender ideologies (2004: 226).
The term kogal is thus applicable to the zombie schoolgirls in Stacy in that
they fail to conform to the complex system of obligation that denes both
familial and societal relationships in Japan, unlike the gure of the shjo. At
the same time, these conicting and contradictory images of the schoolgirl
function to demythologise her fetishisation, as object of the male gaze. This
can be clearly seen in the rst few scenes of Stacy.
The very rst image of the lm is a typical romanticised image of the
schoolgirl as shjo.We see Kana, dressed in the compulsory sailor fuko, sitting
in the grass, surrounded by four young children of whom she is taking care. As
the children put owers on Kana, they refer to her as Sleeping Beauty waiting
for the Prince to come. This ironic reference to Victorian fairy tales, contained
within both the pastoral mise-en-scne and the dialogue, situates Stacy as a
post-modern fairy tale. The camera pans left, to the gure of another schoolgirl,
Eiko (Natsuki Kato), walking with her back to the camera and holding a wind
chime. As she walks away from the camera, the mother of the children passes
her. She calls out to Kana and the camera pans right, cutting to a close-up of
the back of the schoolgirl as she slowly stands up.
Unlike the previous zombie lms discussed, Stacy makes explicit the
connection between consumerism and zombication. When the children
ask their mother whether she has bought them anything, Kana stands up,
the camera gradually revealing her transformation into a zombie. Against
all dictates of maternity (rysaikenbo), Kana turns on the children and tears
them to pieces with her voracious red mouth. While in the foreground Kana
is consuming the bodies of the children, Eiko can be seen in the background,
constructing a visual connection between the two. Holding a wind chime and
bathed in bright light, she appears as a typical virginal shjo: the opposite to
the consuming cannibal, or kogal.
The opposition between the schoolgirl as shjo and as kogal is therefore
foregrounded immediately as a key theme. In New Year (Bon-Sai), by the
Japanese artist, Hiroshi Masuyama, a bonsai tree is placed in the centre of
the frame. On either side of the bonsai tree are two prepubescent schoolgirls,
one sitting and the other kneeling. Lloyd points out how the bonsai tree in the
painting is used to connote careful nurturing and cultivation, and therefore
calls the spectators attention to the disjunction between the traditional image
of the tree and that of eroticised schoolgirls. Lloyd comments:
Masuyamas depictions of the erotized images of young girls, placed
on the same level and occupying the same indeterminate space on the
canvas, present the spectator with two contradictory and conicting
images which embody diferent values and cultural sensibilities of past
and present-day Japan. (2002: 79)
The same is true of the construction of the prepubescent schoolgirl in Stacy, as
demonstrated by the opening sequences discussed above. Through the use of
deep focus, the competing and conicting images of the shjo and the kogal, as
both demure daughter and consuming cannibal, comment on the gap between
cultural mythology and lived reality for women in contemporary Japanese
society. Bornof states that the Japanese educational system was devised to
nip individualism in the bud and discourage abstract thought (2002: 61).
However, changes in the socio-economic structure of Japan have led to radical
transformations in the education system. Bornof writes:
In Japan, where consensus, peer pressure and the strictures of the group
have reigned for too long, individualism is welcomed as a key to Utopia
but, unfortunately, little understood. Still deplored as mere selshness in
the eyes of the older generations and even exalted by some of the young,
individualism is producing alienation. (2002: 63)
Whilst ofering the type of graphic gore that we associate with the zombie
narrative, Stacy is also, perhaps somewhat paradoxically a love story, a variation
of the tale of tragic lovers. The main narrative utilises parallelism, situating
the romance of Eiko and a middle-aged puppeteer, Shibu (Toshinori Omi),
against that of a young member of the Romero Repeat Kill Squad, Arita, and
his penfriend, Momo, who becomes a Stacy. The only explanation that the lm
ofers for the zombie schoolgirls is a reference to a spate of killings of school-
girls in the past. In these terms, the lm seems to suggest that the Stacies are
embodiments of female oppression and male aggression.
Throughout the lm, Eikos costume alternates between the typical
schoolgirl uniform and the costume of the gothic Lolita: a Victorian rufed
white gown that imitates the look of Victorian porcelain dolls. The manner
in which Eiko is dressed suggests a similarity between shjo and kogal, in
which both female identities subvert patriarchal language through which
female identity is constructed. Buisson argues that fantasy about schoolgirls,
or Lolitas, is the most pervasive male fantasy in Japan. He writes: With the
growth of video and the internet, it makes more converts everyday, people
who literally fetishise images of students in provocative poses, even secondary
school girls on the threshold of puberty (2003: 64). At the same time, the
gure of the gothic Lolita

has also been theorised as representing a reaction
against the kogal sub-culture.
The transition phase between being a shjo and becoming a kogal is called
Near Death Happiness (or NDH) in the lm. This phase takes place approxi-
mately a week before the transformation. As such, it is both a transition and
a transitory phase of identity for the schoolgirls-cum-zombies in Stacy. In
Stacy, rather than the schoolgirls becoming women and adopting their proper
place in the family, their metamorphosis situates a female identity outside
patriarchal and capitalist norms. Rather than turning into good wives and
mothers, or rysaikenbo, as dictated by the traditional value system of Japanese
society, Stacies become uncontrollable and unmanageable, thereby resisting
restoration to patriarchal norms. The result of this, as suggested by the voice-
over to the lm, is the eventual destruction of society as a whole, as there will
be no more children born.
The existence of the Drew Repeat Kill Troops, which consists of three
young girls still to become Stacies, further threatens traditional construc-
tions of appropriate femininity. This provides an intertextual and imagistic
reference to Charlies Angels (McG: 2000). As in the other zombie lms
discussed, American popular culture is remediated in order to provide a site of
resistance to pre-modern traditions. These action girls provide an alternative
to the governmental Romero Repeat Kill Squad and the concept of shame
that failing to kill your own daughter or girlfriend entails. In their desire for
celebrity, the girls seek to make enough money to pay for an iconic star to kill
them. The girls do not, however, live to full this wish; instead, they sacrice
themselves in the name of true love.
The sequences leading up to the transformation of Eiko from shjo to kogal
are signicant. She spends her last day with Shibu at the botanical gardens,
where she used to play with her sister as a child. Once again, the lm shifts
between the pastoral and the hyper-real, as it cuts between the gardens and the
military camp where the schoolgirls about to become a Stacy have been sent.
At the military camp, Arita nally comes across Momo, who has transformed
into a Stacy. His attempt to rescue her indirectly leads to the death of the
Drew Troops, who give up their mission to kill her, touched by the love that
Arita shows Momo. As the girls lie dying on the oor, the lm cuts between
Eiko in the botanical gardens and the military camp, creating a continuity or
sisterhood between the women. Dressed in her gothic Lolita outt and ooded
by brilliant white light, Eiko appears to the zombied Stacies in Dr Inugamis
laboratory. Constituting an expression of female language or parler-femme,
a concept introduced by feminist writer Luce Irigaray linked to the idea of
disruptive excess (Irigaray 1996: 44) in opposition to patriarchal structures,
the voices of the dying Drew Troops, the Stacies and Eiko become one.
The lm concludes with Eikos (unseen) death at the hands of her lover,
Shibu. Once again, we have the motif of the sacricial woman, whose death
makes possible a restoration of order in the diegetic world of the lm. At the
same time, it is love (the love of Shibu for Eiko and the love of Arita for Momo)
that enables the construction of a new future in which men and women once
again become connected.
Whilst ostensively Stacy projects male anxieties around the erosion of patri-
archal power and situates romantic love as a solution, it also critiques the ideal-
isation of the gure of the shjo and the over-valorisation of the attributes of
hyper-femininity found in contemporary Japanese society. These misbehaving
teenagers, to coin a phrase used by Miller, undermine patriarchal models of
propriety used to evaluate and control women (2002: 241).
CONSUMERS
It is little surprise, therefore, that most Japanese zombie lms have appeared
in the aftermath of the collapse of the bubble economy in 1990. The Japanese
zombie lm, as we have seen, is a cannibalistic genre, which not only refer-
ences the traditional stereotype of the zombie, but also transgresses generic
boundaries. It could be argued that Japanese zombies are vengeful yrei rather
than traditional zombies, as is made clear in Junk. And while at rst glance
the Japanese zombie lm appears to be a matter of style over substance, as
perhaps most evidently seen in the MTV aesthetics of Versus, the utilisation
of American forms can be seen as a type of counter-cultural and sub-cultural
resistance to traditional Japanese structures and cultural forms. As such, the
Japanese zombie lm can be considered as a logical outcome of angry youth
lms, such as the Sun Tribe lms.
In New Kids on the Street: The Pan-Asian Youth Film, Desser identies a
dominant tendency in East Asian cinema as the rise of youth-oriented lms,
which share similar iconography and motifs. In terms of Japan, Desser argues
that the Sun Tribe, or taiyozoku, lms of the 1950s, together with the lms
of the Japanese New Wave, made politically cogent attacks on mainstream
Japanese society through the use of youthful protagonists who reject their
cultural heritage in favor of protest and rebellion (2008). In these terms,
the hyper-at aesthetics of the Japanese zombie lm should be considered
as a remediation of this trend for youth protest cinema and understood as a
critique of Japanese modernity and with it the Japanese preoccupation with
the consumption of luxury goods (Lloyd 2002: 69). We saw how bszoku and
yank gangs were associated with youthful rebellion and gave rise to associated
media panics. In Napiers words: Bszoku have adapted and inverted images,
styles and ideologies to construct an alternative identity, an identity which
challenges the ideal of Japanese social and cultural homogeneity (cited in
Standish 1998: 58). Desser argues that one characteristic of adolescence is the
struggle to dene oneself against familial bonds and expectations (2008). The
zombie lm articulates the adolescent struggle for identity in a society built
upon knowing ones place in the larger structure; the outcome of this struggle
for self-determination is often an apocalyptic future identiable in the waste-
lands of Versus and Naked Blood.
7
Haunted Houses and
Family Melodramas
O
ne of the dominant features of contemporary horror lm is the manner in
which the break-up of the nuclear family has become a source of horror.
Films such as The Amityville Horror (Rosenberg: 1979), Poltergeist (Hooper:
1982), The Shining (Kubrick: 1980), The Stepfather (Ruben: 1987) and, more
recently, Hide and Seek (Polson: 2005) and Silent Hill (Gans: 2006), based on
the video game series, situate the threat to the family as coming from within
rather than outside. These gothic narratives construe the sins of the father, as
monstrous Other, as that which returns to threaten the sanctity of the bourgeois
nuclear family. In Japanese horror lm, however, it is the sins of the mother,
and her daughter as her double, that return to threaten the home as microcosm
of society, signifying the persistence of trauma, both historical and economic.
Kurosawas Sweet Home not only provided the inspiration for the Resident
Evil series of games, but also was the template for the contemporary Japanese
haunted house lm. With its vengeful maternal ghost, Sweet Home pregures
Nakatas Dark Water (2002) and Shimizus Ju-On: The Grudge, with its sequel,
Ju-On: The Grudge 2 (2003). These lms deal with anxieties around transfor-
mations in the nature of the family in Japan from the ie system to the Western
nuclear form, using the template of the haunted, or cursed, house. While Sweet
Home and Carved: A Slit-Mouthed Woman (Shiraishi: 2007) ofer monstrous
mothers whose horric acts of violence subvert the ideology of rysaikenbo,
Dark Water focuses on the vengeful foetus while Ju-On: The Grudge takes as its
inspiration the wronged woman theme.
Barrett stresses the importance of the family in contemporary Japanese
dramas, in which loyalty to ones superiors has been considerably de- emphasized
in favor of homilies about familial and neighborly ties. He continues: This
indicates that, in the value system of contemporary Japanese, the family has
become more important than polity (1989: 219). At the height of the economic
boom, we nd the gure of the salaryman (sararman), the featureless face of
und ouss nd fmi ly mlodms 129
Japanese modernity (McLelland 2003) and in popular consciousness a latter-
day samurai, selessly dedicated to the national cause of economic expansion
(Stockwin 2003: xiv). Loyalty to the company was privileged over mens role in
the family, as father and husband. Death by overwork, or karoshi, led to court
cases in which companies have been forced to compensate families for the loss
of their provider. Suicides by men in their forties and fties constitute approx-
imately forty per cent of all suicides in Japan. When the economic bubble
burst, rising unemployment created a crisis in hegemonic constructions of
an idealised masculinity based upon loyalty to the corporation. McLelland
writes:
There has been a fundamental shift in popular discourses about mascu-
linity from salary man to family man a shift that has left some men
of the older generation feeling stranded and many younger men feeling
confused about what is expected of them. (2003)
In diferent ways, the lms discussed in this chapter interrogate the changing
shape of the family in contemporary Japan. The domestic space, uchi, which is
connected to ideas of the sacred, becomes instead a place of horror and terror.
However, unlike in Godzilla, in which the threat is mainly associated with the
profane spaces of the outside (soto), the threat is now inside and knocking on
the door of the last bastion of Japanese patriarchy: the family as embedded
within the wider community.
MONSTROUS MOTHERS
The mother-xation of men, or their inability to break from their
mothers inuence, appears to be a common phenomenon in many
cultures. However, it seems there are some characteristics particular to
contemporary Japanese society that promote an extreme closeness in
motherchild relationships, especially in the case of the motherson
bond. (Gssmann 2000: 209)
Gssmann argues that the closeness of the motherchild dyad in Japan, as
expressed in popular cultural representations, can be seen as a result of the
absent father and the competitive education system which gave rise to the
kyiku mama or education mother; this, he suggests, explains the prevalence
of the mazo-kon (mother complex) amongst sons of wealthy parents. Similarly,
Goldberg argues that dominant Japanese ideological constructions of maternity
have not adapted to t the changing social landscape (2004: 373). However,
in popular culture, in opposition to this over-valorisation of the maternal, is
the demonic or nightmare mother. As Goldberg writes: The ipside of the
idealized representation of Japanese motherhood, found in the haha-mono, is
the bukimina haha: the nightmare mother who has a special link to madness or
the supernatural (2004: 373).
In a similar vein, in his analysis of changing male and female roles in Japanese
television drama, Gssmann argues that since the 1970s traditional represen-
tations of woman as either the reliable mother or the sufering woman, and in
particular those associated with the cult of motherhood, have shifted in favour
of the demonic mother; the latter can be found in television drama of the 1990s,
the paradigmatic example of which, according to Gssmann, is Ive Always
Loved You (Zutto Anata ga Suki Datta). Gssmann argues that the demonic
mother is a perverted, negative version of the strong, reliable mother, who
sufers not only in the outside world but within the family as well (2000: 213).
However, the demonic mother is not a new archetype, as Kawai points out in her
discussion of the Great Mother in Japanese fairy tales. In stories such as The
Woman Who Eats Nothing and The Two Kannons the demonic side of the
Great Mother gure is commonly represented as Yama-uba (yama: mountain,
uba: old woman or crone). In a similar vein to Goldberg, Kawai argues that such
negative images of the mother gure in Japanese culture:
function to compensate the general trend in Japan to evaluate motherhood
extraordinarily highly. It has been taboo to talk ill of or to neglect Mother.
In contrast, fairy tales portray so vividly her dreadful devouring power.
(1996: 33)
The Woman Who Eats Nothing provides the template for the monstrous
cannibalistic mother in Carved with her slit for a mouth, while Sweet Home, it
could be argued, is a contemporary version of The Two Kannons (Kannon
is a Buddhist deity). As such, it is worth sketching the fairy tales out briey
to begin. In The Woman Who Eats Nothing, a man marries a beautiful
woman who declares to him before they are married that she eats nothing.
However, one day, the husband watches his wife surreptitiously and, to his
horror, discovers that the woman who eats nothing is in fact the woman who
eats everything. In Kawais words: This beautiful woman has a big mouth on
the top of her head which devours thirty-three rice balls and three mackerel
(1996: 29). In The Two Kannons, which Kawai does not discuss in detail,
a Yama-uba the negative or demonic side of the Great Mother is being
chased and transforms herself into Kannon when she is cornered. However,
her true nature comes out and she is killed (1996: 34). Kawai argues that the
story is interesting because we sense that even Kannon the positive Great
Mother has her shadow side (1996: 34). Rather than see Japanese fairy tales
about the two sides of the Great Mother as being simply patriarchal fantasies
und ouss nd fmily mlodms 131
or anxieties around female monstrosity, Kawai suggests that their collective
value is directly connected to everyday tragedies (1996: 36).
Finally, this duplicity of the mother gure and the oscillation between her
negative and positive sides also gures in Japanese Buddhism, in which the two
mothers are Kannon (positive) and Kariteimo (negative). Kariteimo is said to
have originated as the Indian Goddess Hariti, the original monstrous mother
who kidnapped and consumed the children of Rajagriha. When Buddha steals
her eldest child, Hariti can empathise with the sufering of the woman from
whom she stole the children, and is transformed into Kannon the goddess of
mercy and iconic symbol of maternal love (Balmain 2007c). As Foster points
out, contemporary legends can encode sometimes contradictory ideologies,
providing insight into the dynamics of complicity and resistance as well as into
the complex sociohistorical concerns of a given moment (2007: 700).
Sweet Home makes the relationship between the negative and positive sides
of the Great Mother explicit. The monstrous Lady Mamiya haunts a decaying
old mansion that a television crew go to in order to discover the rumoured
last fresco of her husband, Ichiro Mamiya, a famous artist; Lady Mamiya is
as tragic as she is demonic. Killing her own longed-for daughter when she
accidentally turns on the furnace in which her child is playing, Lady Mamiya
descends into madness. Her maternity become monstrous as she attempts
to full the maternal bond, even after her childs death, by providing other
children to accompany her child in the afterworld. Her child has been buried
outside the mansion, and mother and child are separated by death as they
were in life. The television crew is comprised of Taguchi, the camera operator;
Asuka, the reporter; Aki, the director, and nally, Kazuo, the producer and his
daughter, Emi. On their arrival, Lady Mamiya makes her presence felt, as she
lurks in the shadows and attempts to use the psychically sensitive reporter,
Asuka, to return her child to her. As tendrils of black shadow fall over Asukas
face, the hidden demonic side of woman is revealed through mise-en-scne
and the interplay of shadow and light. The shadows reach out and consume
both Taguchi and Asuka, before Lady Mamiya captures Emi in her demonic
embrace and takes her down to the basement: the room in which the angry
villagers killed her when they discovered her horric transgressions.
Seemingly opposed to Lady Mamiya is Aki, who represents the good wife
and wise mother. Not only is Aki in love with Kazuo (the symbolic father
gure), but her relationship with Emi is also congured in terms of the
maternal dyad. This is also signalled in terms of costume; Emis dead mothers
dress provides a signier of wise motherhood, transferred from daughter to
Aki as substitute mother, who puts on the dress to ght the monstrous mother
in the nal confrontation.
The mansion itself is Kings Bad Place and Clovers Terrible Place.
King points out that not only are we most vulnerable in our homes, but that a
good horror story about the Bad Place also whispers that we are not locking
the world out; we are locking ourselves in with them ([1981] 1993: 299).
Clovers Terrible Place similarly is a venerable element of horror in which
the promise of a safe haven turns into one of horror as the walls that promise
to keep the killer out quickly become, once the killer penetrates them, the walls
that hold the victim in (1992: 31). The Mamiya mansion is a Terrible House,
a variation of the Bad Place and the Terrible Place, whose walls enclose the
television crew, refusing to let them go.
Not only does Lady Mamiya inhabit the mansion; she also is the mansion,
both literally and symbolically. Although they have the key, the group are
unable to unlock the door. Instead, they have to break through a boarded-up
window; as they do so, a shaft of light illuminates an old rusted babys pram,
signalling the centrality of motherhood to the ensuing narrative. In addition,
the key itself which tries to keep them out is slowly revealed in the opening
sequences at the bottom of folds of pink fabric, visually and symbolically linked
to the mothers genitalia. Gaining entry to the mansion through breaking in
could thus be considered a metaphorical act of rape against the Great Mother,
who has hidden for thirty years undisturbed.
The mothers duplicity is painted on the walls of the mansion. The rst
image that is revealed through layers of dust is an iconic one of the mother
with a child cradled in her arms, similar to those found often in artistic and
sculptural renditions of Kannon as a Buddhist deity. However, once the group
become trapped, they uncover more paintings telling the horric story of the
mansion and showing Lady Mamiyas transformation from wise to monstrous
mother. The use of eshy pink tones in the frescos again provides a symbolic
link to the monstrous mothers womb. Images of birth, death and madness
associated with the maternal are solidied into abject images of bodily putre-
faction when both Taguchi and Asuka are slowly and graphically killed.
In her discussion of the abject, Kristeva (1982) argues that the most abject
of all things is childbirth, as the outside comes into contact with the inside,
the boundaries between which give the subject a sense of their integrity.
Indeed, as Creed (1993) has persuasively argued, the abject is omnipresent in
horror cinema; it is encapsulated in that moment when, faced with scenes of
bodily disintegration and graphic horror, the spectator chooses to look away.
Yet, although the mansion is an abject rendering of the maternal womb, the
reintegration of Lady Mamiya into appropriate maternity, from Kariteimo to
Kannon, when reunited with her child she is enveloped in bright white light
as she oats up towards the sky suggests the inseparability of the two sides
of the Great Mother. This is also inferred through the interplay of light and
shadow, made explicit when an elderly petrol station owner, Mr Yamamura (the
wise old man we often nd in horror cinema, whose warnings are ignored), tells
Kazuo that light alone is not enough to conquer the deadly and demonic Lady
Mamiya, as light only functions to create more shadows. Once again in Japanese
horror cinema, the light of modernity here is shown as causative of demons and
monsters that can only be conquered by a return to traditional ways.
If the television crew represents modernity and modern ways, Mr Yamamura
represents pre-modern and traditional beliefs, as he is the one who retrieves
Emi from Lady Mamiya using only willpower and an old carved amulet. His
self-sacrice, in a similar manner to that of Serizawa in Godzilla, provides
the mechanism through which traditional values and morals are asserted over
those connected to modernity and Westernisation. As such, the real father,
Kazuo, is displaced and replaced by both Yamamura and the motherdaughter
dyad of Aki and Emi. Throughout the lm, he is shown as inefectual, unable
to communicate his feelings, needing to be looked after by his daughter and
eventually unable to retrieve her from Lady Mamiya. In a moment of light
humour when Aki and Emi have returned to the outside, the camera pans
inside, a cupboard falls open and the terried Kazuo falls out. Sweet Home
provides the prototype for many Japanese haunted house lms, although it is
one of the few to have a demonic presence contained behind the walls of the
Terrible Place; in many examples of the genre, such as Ju-On: The Grudge and
Carved, the grudge associated with the vengeful ghost is able to travel outside
the original place of her (his) death and cannot be contained by mere walls.
Carved is one of the most recent Japanese haunted house lms, and its
portrayal of the demonic mother is much more negative than that in Sweet
Home. Based upon an urban legend, which took form in Japan in the 1970s
(Foster 2007), Carved tells the tale of a small community terrorised by the Slit-
Mouthed Woman literally mouth (kuchi) slit / split (sake) woman (onna)
(Foster 2007: 699) who steals and tortures young children. This is the mother
at her most demonic and most frightening. Like most female ghosts, the Slit-
Mouthed Woman (Maki Mizuno) as immaterial ghost does not have the power
to attack the living; instead, she possesses other mothers in order to carry
out her bloody deeds. Most obviously, she embodies patriarchal fears around
female power, her mouth interchangeable with her vagina, both in imagistic
and symbolic terms. It is interesting to note the shift from Shint myth here
in which, as we have already seen, the female genitalia are an object of carni-
valesque laughter rather than abject fear. According to Western interpretative
frameworks, Foster argues that the Slit-Mouthed Woman can be considered a
representation of the Freudian oral sadistic mother, or the pre-Oedipal dyadic
mother as theorised by Kristeva, and as such is a para digmatic example of
Creeds monstrous feminine (Foster 2007: 703). At the same time, for young
girls the rumour of the Slit-Mouthed Woman encompassed existing anxieties
about forthcoming sexual maturity. Akiyama stresses the link between the
erotic and the mother in Japanese cultural mythology:
The slit located in the lower part of the mothers body, the big mouth
that gives birth to the child probably it can also suddenly open up and
swallow the child A place that is usually covered up and cannot be
seen, it twitches like an entirely independent living thing, and can at
certain times become wide enough to give birth to a baby. (cited in Foster
2007: 703)
Junichiro also makes the connection between the erotic and the demon mother:
Her beautiful body houses a dark, cruel and evil element. If we examine this
more closely, it is clear that this is not a particular evil inherent in women.
Rather it is an evil desired by men; a reection of masculine lust (cited in
Buruma 1984: 49). In Carved, this takes the form of the slippage from beautiful
to horric, the Slit-Mouthed Woman continually asking Am I Pretty? even
as the disgured face beneath the mask of beauty is revealed. This is a repre-
sentation of the desired in its most sexualised, extreme unbeautiful form
(Foster 2007: 703). Here, female disgurement, once again, metonymically
articulates the persistence of historical trauma mapped on to contemporary
economic trauma.
In Carved, as in the legend, the Slit-Mouthed Woman can be heard
constantly asking whether she is pretty words that only her son can hear
only to reveal the abject horror beneath the mask. The rst time we see her,
she is a decaying corpse, foregrounding the interplay between monstrosity
and beauty on which the legend plays. The iconography utilised in the lm in
terms of the Slit-Mouthed Woman is also very close to the urban legend: long
black hair, a white gauze mask (masuku) covering the lower half of her face,
and a long pair of scissors in her hand as she seeks victims. The scissors can be
interpreted as an embodiment of patriarchal castration anxieties; the scissors
that cut, like the mouth, can be understood as a signier of the vagina dentata
(or the toothed vagina) that which Freud argued was the uncanniest thing
of all in his essay on the uncanny. The white mask is a symbol of fears about
disease, pollution (environmental and personal) and contagion, together with
evident anxieties about female sexuality, as already discussed. Foster traces the
use of masks in Japan back to 1918 when they were employed against Spanish
inuenza and perhaps most notably during the SARS (severe acute respiratory
syndrome) outbreak in 2002 (2007: 707). And, as we have already seen, the
masks central to traditional dramatic forms, including N and Kabuki, feature
in many Japanese horror lms. A contemporary example of the use of masks
is in Persona (Komatsu: 2000), a psychological horror lm in which the mask
is used literally to cover up the identity and gender of the murderer; as more
and more students adopt the mask, it becomes increasingly difcult to identify
the murderer. In addition, the image of the slit mouth also has precedents in
contemporary Japanese lm and can be found in Miikes Ichi The Killer (2000)
in the gure of Kakihara (Tadanobu Asano), the masochist seeking the perfect
sadist, the Ichi (Nao Omori) of the title. Kakiharas slit mouth can be seen not
only as a form of self-mutilation but also as a type of cosmetic surgery in which
the body is recongured outside of traditional bodily norms.
Indeed, Foster demonstrates that the gure of the Slit-Mouthed Woman
haunted many womens magazines in Japan in the 1970s, frequently appearing
in Josei jishin (Woman Herself), Josei sebum (Woman Seven) and Shukan josei
(Weekly Woman) (Foster 2007: 710) and functioning as a metaphor for the
ability of cosmetic surgery to subvert traditional iconic conceptualisations of
femininity in Japan. In these terms, she can be read as a symbol of protest in
which the female subject confront[s] the objectifying male gaze and register[s]
a powerful protest against the status quo (Foster 2007: 718).
Carved opens with an establishing long shot of an almost deserted park.
The colour palate of the opening sequences is predominantly a washed-out
sepia, which, as we have seen in Japanese horror lm, evokes the past. A
short montage of scenes showing children talking about the rumour of the
Slit-Mouthed Woman are interspersed with three short vignettes showing
ordinary family life and continuing with the theme of the urban legend. In the
rst, we see a father sitting down and talking to his daughter about it, relating
its origins back to the time he was at high school. To his wife, he comments
that this reminds him of the old days. This observation repeats the insepa-
rability of the past from the present in the formation of social, cultural and
national identity. The second short scene shows two young sisters discussing
the legend, refusing to go shopping for fear of the monstrous woman, who is
rumoured to appear in the park at 5 p.m. when children are on their way back
from school. The third scene, the most crucial to the plot, is that of a mother,
Mrs Sasaki, hitting her daughter Mika while saying that she wished the Slit-
Mouthed Woman would come and take her away, something that soon comes
true. These scenes introduce us to a common trope in contemporary Japanese
horror: the displacement of the traditional extended family by the fragmented
nuclear family in which gender roles have become confused. Finally, we are
introduced to the two main characters in the lm, a young female teacher,
Kyoko Yamashita (Eriko Sato), and a male teacher at the same school, Noboru
Matsuzaki (Haruhiko Kato).
It is crucial to the plot that we are introduced to Kyoko just before we see the
Slit-Mouthed Woman for the rst time, suggesting commonalities between the
two women, although at this time Kyoko appears to be the monstrous mothers
opposite, the good wife. In the next scene, we see Noboru discovering a crude
drawing of the Slit-Mouthed Woman on the blackboard in one of the empty
classrooms and we simultaneously hear the voice from the past asking Am I
pretty? just before the lm cuts to the image of her decaying corpse. Long
shots, tracking shots of empty corridors and high-angled vistas of the town
from the roof where Kyoko is standing, together with the sepia palate, create
an uncanny and uneasy atmosphere. Spatially and emotionally, the community
is situated as fractured and individuals alienated. This is a community where
mothers beat their children for not talking, as in the case of Mika, or for not
loving them, as in the case of Kyoko (as we discover in a ashback towards the
climactic sequence of the lm). In another ashback sequence, we see Noborus
mother becoming the archetypical Slit-Mouthed Woman, as she beats and kills
his brother and sister, who do not so much die as fade out from the frame in the
ashback. At the same time, we glimpse the positive side of the Great Mother
in a battle with the negative side, as she hands Noboru a knife to kill her with
and pleads with him to cut of her head. Instead, Noboru cuts his mothers
face, a simulation of the surgical act, which, instead of creating beauty, creates
diference congured as female monstrosity.
In Carved, the Terrible Place is Noborus family home, an old house situated in
the middle of nowhere on Childbeck hill, its red roof indicating that something
terrible lurks inside. In the basement, the Slit-Mouthed Woman tortures and
kills children, and it is here that she is nally vanquished as Noboru, crippled
at the hands of his demonic and deadly mother, manages at last to decapitate
her and put an end to her reign of terror. At the same time, both Mrs Sasaki
and Kyoko are restored to appropriate maternity, as Mrs Sasaki becomes the
self-sacricing mother and the encounter with the monstrous mother leads
Kyoko to be reconciled with her own daughter.
The mothers portrayed in both Sweet Home and Carved are the very
opposite of the wise mother, each one a modern-day Slit-Mouthed Woman in
their aggression and violence towards their daughters. Napier argues that in
post-war fantastic narratives women no longer ofer a refuge from moderni-
sation but instead seem to have become increasingly Other, unreachable,
even demonic (1996: 57). In another lm on the same theme, Apartment 1303
(Oikawa: 2007), young women who rent out the apartment of the title end up
dead, supposedly suicides. A young woman, Mariko (Noriko Nakagoshi), inves-
tigating the death of her sister, discovers the vengeful ghost of the monstrous
mother is behind the deaths of the young women, wanting them as daughter
substitutes. Unlike the typical archetypal sufering and wronged women, these
monstrous mothers are constructed as threatening to patriarchy, although they
are eventually defeated by their surrogate daughters.
These monstrous females are the latest in a long line of dangerous women
found in Japanese myths and folktales, as well as in real life: for example, the
poison women (dokufu), sexually voracious and criminal women of the 1870s.
Both Foster and Gssmann agree that the emergence of the demonic mother
in lm and television can be understood in part as a response to the education
mother, the growth of the Japanese feminist movement in the 1970s and also
in relation to the rapid shifts in Japanese society during and after the economic
boom. In his analysis of femininity in Japanese television drama, Mamoru
stresses the importance of socio-historical context:
the period spanning the 1980s and the 1990s was a time of rapid growth
in terms of the societys consumption of consumer goods and its access to
information; Japans society became more complex and the self-evident
nature of the norms that dened everyday Japanese life were beginning
to lose their solid foundations. (2004: 26)
Further, both Foster and Gssmann suggest that the portrait of the demonic
mother is not necessarily reactionary, in that she marks a point of resistance to
traditional Japanese constructions of femininity and motherhood. While the
disgured and monstrous woman embeds the discourse of hibakusha, signalling
the persistence of historical trauma, she also represents more contemporary
anxieties specic to her cultural and historical location. As Foster writes, the
Slit-Mouthed Woman legend becomes a symbolically overdetermined allegory
of the sufering incurrent in Japans post-war drive towards economic success
(2007: 708).
THE VENGEFUL FOETUS
Hideo Nakatas Dark Water (2002) is based, like his earlier Ring, upon a story by
Koji Suzuki (known as the Japanese Stephen King). In Dark Water, the central
character is a young woman, Yoshimi (Hitomi Kuroki), recently separated from
her domineering husband, Kunio Hamada (Fumiyo Kohinata), who is strug-
gling to support and maintain custody of her ve-year-old daughter, Ikuko
(Rio Kanno). Kunio can be interpreted as representative of the salaryman,
who places duty to the company over and above that to his family.
This is signalled at the beginning of the lm, through the dialogue between
Yoshimi and the court ofcials, and through the mise-en-scne of isolation
and emptiness that conveys the emotional and physical distance between the
couple. Kunio is sitting in the corridor, as Yoshimi walks towards the interview
room. As she passes him by, there is no indication of familiarity between the
couple. When she is nished, she takes a seat as far away from Kunio as she
can manage. In the interview itself, she refers to Kunio as an absent father, who
never remembers his daughters birthday and had no time for her when they
were together. At the same time, this opening sequence allows doubts around
Yoshimis state of mind and stability to be introduced. We discover that, in
the past, Yoshimi had a nervous breakdown, which required hospitalisation.
Yoshimi accounts for this by stating that her job as a proofreader for a large
publishing house meant that she had to read violent and sadistic books, over
and over again, which resulted in her breakdown. This can be seen as a critique
of the prevalence of sadomasochistic pornography in Japanese society, in which
women are repeatedly violated, raped and objectied. As such, it could be
argued that she is situated as an unreliable narrator, the sort of character that
is commonly found in the gothic, who is unable to distinguish between ction
and reality. It also implies that her version of events in terms of her marriage
is not one on which we can rely. Just as Yoshimi is portrayed as someone who
confuses ction and reality, Kunio is obsessed with facts and details, rather
than their interpretation. In Dark Water, femininity is associated with super-
stition, the supernatural and the subjective, whilst masculinity is linked with
the rational, the observable and the objective.
Suzuki writes of Yoshimi in Dark Water that The world as she perceived
it was largely at odds with the world as others saw it (2006: 22). In the story,
Yoshimi sees herself as destined to be a single parent, just as both her grand-
mother and mother were, as she has an irrational fear of sex:
She had never once found anything enjoyable about the physical union of
man and woman. Her only word for it was agonizing. Yet there is never
any shortage of talk about sex in the world. She simply couldnt under-
stand it. Perhaps some insurmountable barrier separated her from other
people. (Suzuki 2006: 22)
In the lm, Nakata constructs a back story for Yoshimi, replacing her fear
of intimacy with abandonment by her mother in the past, to explain her
unstable and neurotic personality. This functions to draw a parallel between
the collective past and personal present, in that Yoshimi ultimately abandons
her child, mirroring the actions of not only her mother, but also Mitsukos
mother (who abandons Mitsuko, the vengeful ghost who haunts the building
in which Yoshimi and Ikuko live). It is key therefore that the lms very rst
image is that of children being picked up by their mothers, as school ends for
the day. Rain is pouring down, and canopies of bright-coloured umbrellas are
used to prevent the children and their mothers from getting wet. The camera
pulls back and the gure of a young girl, with long brown hair, sitting on the
ground by the shut doors of the school and looking outside, is seen from the
back. As the children and their parents depart, one of the teachers notices the
child. She goes into the school and says to the child, Yoshimi, no ones come
for you. This emphasises Yoshimis isolation; as the camera switches to the
outside, the rain cascading down the glass can be seen as an externalisation of
her inner psyche. As the camera pans in, capturing the child in close-up, we
can no longer see the rain but it can still be heard. The theme of abandonment,
central to the main narrative, is emphasised through the economy of this scene.
At the same time, the driving rain mirrors the physical and psychical isolation
of the child separated from the group. The lm cuts to the present the rain
creating continuity between distinct temporal spaces and we see Yoshimi,
now an adult, looking out of a window as rain falls.
The opening sequences also introduce us to the colour imagery that is used
to represent the past. The opening credits are placed against a background
of brownish-yellow water, and throughout the lm yellow and brown are
used as the background to ashbacks from the past. In the present, a drab
bluish-grey predominates, with the exception of ashes of colour in scenes
in the kindergarten, and between the mother and child in the apartment. In
Dark Water, bright colours are used to represent childhood and freedom; the
bluish-grey signies adulthood, and a sense of nostalgia for an idealised past,
associated with childhood and innocence. Writing about Koreedas Maboroshi
(1995), McDonald argues that Koreeda symbolically links light imagery to
color corollary in order to dramatize Yumikos vacillating state (2006: 204).
The same could be said of the use of colour in Dark Water: that is, colour
provides an external expression of Yoshimis inner turmoil. In this manner,
Mitsukos red bag with its white rabbit, which Ikuko nds on the roof of
the apartment complex, can be interpreted as signifying death as well as the
uncanny. Try as she might, Yoshimi is unable to get rid of the bag and keep
the outside at bay; it constantly reappears in the spot beside the water tank on
the roof. Its repetition and re-emergence cause Yoshimi to become ever more
hysterical, until eventually she discovers Ikuko has brought the satchel into the
apartment.
This is a pivotal turning point in the narrative, marking the instant in which
death has invaded the domestic space, from which for Yoshimi there can be no
turning back. As she grabs the red bag from Ikuko, she has a vision of it falling
into deep, dark water. This is also the moment which ultimately will lead to
Yoshimi abandoning her daughter for the dead Mitsuko. In fact, she leaves
her daughter alone whilst she goes back up to the roof, where the water tank is
continuing to overow with brackish, contaminated water.
On the roof, she has another vision of Mitsuko climbing up the water tank,
her bag slipping out of her hands into the water and her body following. In this
sequence, the water tank can be interpreted as symbolic of the archaic mothers
womb. A sound of banging can be heard, accompanied by bulges in the wall of
the tank as if something inside is trying to get out. The metaphor of pregnancy
and birth is further solidied by the gushing water coming through the ceiling
and out of the taps in the apartment where Ikuko is alone. The water in the bath
is dark and muddy, and as Ikuko leans over to try and turn the taps of, a pair of
green, decaying arms reach up and grab her, pulling her down under the water.
We have already seen that water imagery is not just associated with isolation
and alienation, but is often a metaphor for pollution and corruption in Japanese
horror cinema. At the same time, water is clearly associated with death in Dark
Water, in that it represents the transitory nature of life. McDonald, tracing
the etymology of the phrase oating weeds, situates it within the traditional
Buddhist view of the world as eeting and impermanent (2006: 96).
Juro Kara, a renowned theatre director associated with the Angura
movement, emphasises the importance of the lower place in his plays as the
site of Japanese collective memory that had become lost in the drive towards
modernisation. Kara termed this place kawara, or the riverbed. The riverbed
was the place where social outcasts congregated, with the aim of committing
suicide by throwing themselves into the muddy waters, but instead joined
together and became performers instead. Matsui writes:
In short, kawara was a place of rebirth; as its topological deviation
from the civilized place made kawara the outside of socio-economic
rules, people could shake of their learned restraint to live with physical
immediacy. (2002: 160)
In Karas mythological schema kawara is also the place of both the violated
maternal body (the soil) and the goddess, and he argues that the construction
of modern Japan, with its tall skyscrapers, conceals the water that lies under-
neath these phallic symbols of patriarchal power. Matsui comments: Water
is a regressive image symbolizing suicide and amniotic uid, related to the
memory of pre-modern Japanese existence (2002: 160). And in addition, it
could be argued that polluted water in Dark Water represents the manner in
which society has been contaminated by modernity (Napier 1996: 35). The
water imagery functions to add a sense of the impermanence of life; hence
the importance of the credit sequences. When the dead Mitsuko appears, she
leaves a trail of water behind her and water is continuously owing into her
apartment from a damp patch in the ceiling.
In these nal sequences, Mitsuko takes on a corporeal materiality and a
demonic reality. There is an obvious similarity with Dont Look Now (Roeg:
1973) and the moment of revelation when the red-hooded gure (Adelina
Poerio) that John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) has been chasing all over Venice,
thinking that it was his dead child returned to life, turns around to reveal a
monstrous and murderous dwarf. At the same time, the inuence of Kubricks
The Shining can also be felt, with the tank functioning in a similar manner to
the boiler as an externalisation of the central characters madness.
In these terms the overowing water tank and the gushing waters that
come out of the empty lift in Dark Water can be interpreted as an external
projection of Yoshimis increasingly disturbed mind. Once again, this suggests
that Mitsukos ghost may well be just a hallucination, a signier of Yoshimis
increasing inability to cope with work and her duties as a mother in the absence
of a father gure. Certainly, one of the key narrative themes of Dark Water is
the relationship between mothers and their daughters, in both the past and the
present. There are two absent mothers, Yoshimis and Mitsukos; in the end,
Yoshimi chooses to sacrices herself, and abandons her living child for the dead
Mitsuko. It is a poignant moment when Yoshimi in the lift, drenched through by
the continuously gushing water, takes hold of the decaying body of Mitsuko and
holds her to her breast, as Ikuko stands helplessly watching in the corridor.
Mitsuko can be considered as an archetype of the vengeful foetus from
Japanese mythology and folktales. In Japanese folklore, a child is considered
a foetus, as not having an identity separate from the mother, until it reaches
the age of seven. As Iwasaka and Toelken point out, death brings into focus
a number of very important elements in the Japanese worldview: obligation,
duty, debt, honor, and personal responsibility (1994: 6). This is clearly demon-
strated in traditional Ubume stories, such as Kosodate-Yrei, in which a
pregnant woman dies suddenly and is buried. However, on the forty-ninth day
after her burial, the villagers discover that there are forty-nine funeral cakes
(mochi) missing from in front of the Buddha, where the cakes had been placed.
The cofn is opened and a baby is found in its dead mothers arms, with one
of the funeral cakes in its hands. The villagers try to take the child away from
its dead mother, but the mothers arms remain clasped tight around her still-
living child. The mother only gives up her baby when a nursing mother is
brought to her and shows the dead mother her lactating breast. She promises
that she will feed and look after the child, and with that the corpse lets go.
Fig. 7.1 Mother and child, Dark Water (Hideo Nakata, 2002, Kadokawa Shoten /
The Kobal Collection)
Iwasaka and Toelken point to the operation of two contrasting, but mutually
interactive, modes of obligation and guilt within the folktale (1994: 64). Firstly,
it is the child, rather than the mother, who is a potentially dangerous ghost, as
the child, unlike its mother, is unritualised, having not yet been born. And
it is consequently the duty of the living to provide the proper rituals which
will allow the foetus to rest, and therefore the living may prosper, and the
community (for the time being) will be safe. Iwasaka and Toelken argue that
the tale not only dramatize[s] the obligatory interactions of mother and child
but also the living and the dead which are both concerns which engage the
Japanese legend audience (1994: 64).
The dominant theme of Dark Water is the tension between the obligations
of mother and child to each other, and those that dene the relations of the
living and the dead. As we have seen, Yoshimi is forced to choose between
her living daughter, Ikuko, and the dead Mitsuko. She decides to become
Mitsukos mother in order to appease the vengeful foetus and to protect Ikuko,
thereby putting her obligations to the wider community over her familial duty
in the present. As such, Dark Water draws on traditional folklore in order to
comment and perhaps critique contemporary Japanese society.
Another example can be found in the low-budget The Locker (Horie: 2003),
loosely based upon the trend in Japan in the 1970s for leaving unwanted
babies in coin lockers. A haunted locker at Shibuya station contains the
vengeful spirit of an abandoned child, Sachiko. The theme of abandoned and
unwanted children is paralleled in the main narrative through the character
of Aya (Horikita Maki), whose mother died in childbirth. Aya has a difcult
relationship with her mainly absent father, who blames her for his wifes death.
Although her friend and tutor, Reika (Mizukawa Asami), tries to reassure
her that there is no such thing as an unwanted child, the narrative suggests
otherwise. Sachiko, it turns out in the sequel, The Locker 2 (Horie: 2003), is an
unwanted foetus, whose mother abandoned her in the locker, thus giving rise
to Sachikos re-appearance as a vengeful demonic ghost, who literally sucks
the lifeblood out of her victims, growing older with each death. Reika, the
protagonist in the rst lm, is clearly placed in the maternal position by her
relationship with the unloved Aya.
In The Locker 2, the creepy, long-haired Sachiko returns to take Reika, the
substitute maternal gure, back to the world of the dead with her, leaving Aya
once again abandoned and without a protective mother. As in Dark Water,
The Locker and The Locker 2 utilise traditional Japanese mythology in order
to comment on the contemporary crisis in the family, as demonstrated by the
practice of abandoning newly born babies in lockers.
In Dark Water, Yoshimi can be interpreted as the archetypical self-sacricing
woman, as commonly found in Japanese horror lms of the 1950s and 1960s.
As in Tales of Ugetsu, the death of mother is necessary in order to reunite the
father with his child, and to enable the father to full his familial duty. At the
same time, Dark Water works within traditional Japanese mythology, which
valorises the centrality of the maternal bond.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND THE MONSTROUS FATHER
Similarly, Shimizus Ju-On: The Grudge (2003) utilises traditional Japanese
mythology around the wronged woman and the vengeful foetus in order to
comment on changes in the shape of the Japanese family in the wake of the
economic depression in the late 1990s. Told in episodic fashion, the lm
brings together the stories of six characters, all of whom come into contact
with an accursed house and subsequently die as a reult of the curse: Rika
(a social worker), Kazumi (a woman currently living in the house), Hitomi
(the sister of Kazumis husband, Katsuya), Toyama (the brother of the
ghostly female yrei, Kayako), Idzumi (the daughter of Toyama) and Mariko
(Rikas friend and colleague). The gure of Rika provides a nominal thread
that brings together the disparate strands of the narrative. Although in its
American remake and in its sequel, Ju-On: The Grudge 2, it is the gures
of Kayako (Takako Fuji) and her abandoned child, Toshio (Yuya Ozeki),
who have become iconic, in the original lm it is the jealous husband, Takeo
Saeki (Takashi Matsuyama), responsible for the murder of his wife and the
abandonment of his child, who is constitutive of the houses curse. The lm
thus bears similarities to The Amityville Horror and The Shining, in which
male violence and aggression provide the foundations for the horric events
that take place within the narrative.
In Ju-On: The Grudge, the opening sequence maps out visually, within the
mise-en-scne, the dominant motifs of emptiness and alienation which lead to
the eruption of male violence within the home. Establishing shots of deserted
streets, caught in grainy black and white footage, present us with an apocalyptic
vision of the present, or perhaps the future; they are connected visually with
the scene of masculine aggression, as the camera, within the domestic space,
pans in on a pair of nervously tapping feet, surrounded by the debris of torn
family photographs on the oor. The subsequent montage of shots, which cuts
between Takeos barely concealed aggression signied by his blood-splattered
shirt, face and hands, and captured through close-ups and part shots and the
lifeless face of his female victim, Kayako, creates a visual imagistic system at
the heart of which is the destruction of the family unit through male violence.
McRoy contends that the underlying masculine violence in the lm can be
interpreted as a cultural response to the crisis in masculinity that is a result of
socio-economic factors. Writing about the opening sequences, McRoy argues:
One can read the fragmented, impressionistic opening montage as illus-
trative of a profound social disorientation, but one can also comprehend
the sequences implied violence as emblematic of a larger compulsion to
re-establish and/or maintain a regime of masculine dominance. (2005:
179)
McRoy suggests that references to the American slasher lm of the late 1970s
and early 1980s can be seen in Shimizus occasional appropriation of visual
tropes (2005: 179). However, as in Dark Water, it is Kubricks The Shining,
with its implied domestic violence and child abuse and portrait of a dysfunc-
tional society, that is most clearly referenced, both thematically and visually
in Ju-On: The Grudge. The sepia tones of the opening sequence, the panning
down deserted streets, the high-angled disorientating shot of the outside of
the house, and inside the agitated actions of Takeo, can all be seen as indirect
references to The Shining. In his discussion of the supernatural horror lm,
Dyson writes, Although the Overlook is clearly a bad place as Stephen King
puts it, it is Jack Torrances mental breakdown that allows dark forces to gain
a foothold in the material world (1997: 252). This is also true of Ju-On: The
Grudge, as it is Takeos violent actions that allow dark forces, in the form of the
curse, to gain a foothold in the material world. The malice and anger of Takeo
are like a virus, in that they infect all those who come into contact with the
house the family home as a microcosm of Japanese society and then spread
into the world outside, infecting others. The infectious nature of the curse can
be seen when the security guard dies at the hands of Kayako, a shadowy black
wraith-like gure caught on the security cameras, as Hitomi helplessly watches.
Humphries argues that the eventual outcome of an individualistic society is
the fragmentation of the social that exposes the subject to aggressive forces
he or she can turn against the other at any moment (2002: 203). In exploring
social fragmentation or disorientation, as McRoy calls it, Ju-On: The Grudge
can be understood as a critique of consumerism, capitalism and commodi-
cation as embodied within the individual, as separate to the community. Ju-On:
The Grudge also expresses fears around the growing violence within the family.
Buruma writes that Random killings are rare in Japan, but families wiped
out by mothers or fathers going berserk are not (1984: 224). In the opening
sequence, traditional concepts of male activity in its most extreme form are
juxtaposed with the ultimate in female passivity the dead woman. In her article,
Japanese Women Confront Domestic Violence, Yukiko Tsunoda emphasises
the commonplace nature of domestic violence in Japanese culture:
In Japan, domestic violence is so pervasive that it is considered a normal
part of marriage, never recognized as a serious social problem, and
lacking even an appropriate term in the Japanese language. Moreover,
battered women have been deprived of any social institution where they
can confront domestic violence. (1995)
Tsunoda points out that, until fairly recently, the gure of the battered woman,
or indeed the concept of domestic violence itself, was either considered a
Western problem, or seen as a consequence of socio-economic inequality and
therefore took place only within low-income households. Indeed, the ideology
of Japan as a safe country, as compared to the decadent crime-ridden streets of
the USA, was at the centre of many discourses of Japanese nationalism. The
very concept of domestic violence, therefore, threatened not just the notion of
patriarchal privilege within marriage, but also the very construction of Japan
as a nation by contrast to its perceived Other here the West, as implied in
the discourse of self-orientalism which was discussed in Chapter 1.
Although there can be little doubt that signicant improvements have been
made in the area of womens rights in Japan, including landmark rulings with
regard to sexual harassment at work and the physical and emotional abuse of
woman by their husbands (Tsunoda 1995), cases of domestic violence have
escalated in response to the economic recession of the late 1990s. In fact, 30.9
per cent of all divorces in Japan in 1997 were granted on the basis of male
violence (Nakamura 2003: 170). Nakamura argues that gender norms in Japan
are constitutive of violence towards women:
While Japanese men learn to express themselves through competition,
aggression and violence, for the most part they grow up not verbalizing
their inner feelings. Indeed, one important social skill for masculine
men is control of their emotions. Expectations of control are higher for
men than they are for women. Painfully pent-up emotions then became
directed towards intimate others in the private arena of the home, mens
only fort for safety reconrming their masculine identity and pride
(otoko no koken). Unfortunately, some men express unmanly emotions
in manly fashion, using various (including verbal) forms of violence.
(2003: 168)
In Ju-On: The Grudge, the murderous Takeo can be best understood as
a representation of Japanese masculinity in the aftermath of the so-called
economic bubble. The present mirrors the past as the story slowly unfolds.
Tokunaga Kazumi (Kanji Tsuda) and her husband, Katsuya Tokunaga (Shuri
Matsuda), live with Katsuyas aged mother, Sachie (Chikako Isomura). Once
again, the theme of abandonment is central to the main narrative, as it is in
Dark Water. Both Sachie, who Rika nds alone in the house, and Toshio, who
Rika nds hiding in a cupboard in the opening, framing episode, comment
on the breakdown of the family, drawing a line of similarity between the
abandonment of the very old and the very young in contemporary Japan. Rikas
discovery of Sachie, lying on a soiled futon, and the scenes of Kazumi ignoring
her mother-in-law in the second episode of the lm emphasise the strain that a
growing elderly population is putting on the framework of the Japanese family,
torn as it is between the traditional ie system and the more democratic values
epitomised by the triangular formation of the nuclear family.
Katsuya, portrayed as a typical salaryman, returns late at night to nd
his mother alone, and his wife in a catatonic state in the upstairs bedroom.
As Katsuya rings for an ambulance, the crouched gure of Toshio appears in
the corner of the room and Kazumi breathes her last. The camera pans in on
Katsuyas face, as the darkness enfolds him in its violent grasp, both metaphor-
ically and literally. Later in the lm, the police discover Katsuya and Kazumis
dead bodies against the wall in the attic, the present mirroring the past.
The parallelism between the two stories, the past and the present, between
Takeo and Katsuya, structures a masculine identity dened in and through
violence. And yet it is the products of that violence the seductive and fright-
ening gure of Kayako, the original wronged woman, and her child, the
vengeful foetus, Toshio who come to function as gures of dread for most of
the narrative, rather than the originator of the curse, Takeo.
In the end sequences, in which Rika goes back to the house to attempt to
save her best friend, Mariko (who is already dead), she comes face to face
Fig. 7.2 Takeo corners Rika: domestic violence in Ju-On: The Grudge (Takashi
Shimizu, 2003, Oz Company Ltd / The Kobal Collection)
with her nemesis, Kayako. As Kayako slowly crawls down the stairs, her limbs
broken and bent, Rika stands transxed in front of a mirror, holding her hands
in front of her eyes. A montage of shots reveals that Kayako has been haunting
Rika, constructing the two women as doubles of each other. As Rika looks in
the mirror, she sees not her own face, but that of the ghostly Kayako. Kayakos
hands come out, covering Rikas, as she emerges from her blouse. Taking her
hands away from her eyes, Kayako disappears. Here the visual motif of the
double situates Kayako as a gure of sympathy rather than fear. However, this
separation of woman into beautiful image and abject body could be argued
as articulating masculine fears around female subjectivity and empowerment.
As she crawls down the stairs, dragging her broken body, Kayako transforms
from vengeful yrei into the pitiful wronged woman. This is visually signied
through the revelation of the human face behind the mask. At the bottom of
the stairs, Kayako holds out her hand towards Rika, as if pleading with her
for help. Removing her hands from her eyes, Rika discovers that the room is
empty. Another noise can be heard, and this time Takeo appears at the top of
the stairs. Repeating the earlier gesture of Kayako, Takeo holds out his bloody
hands towards Rika, but this time the gesture signies menace and male
violence. The nal shot is of the dead Kayako, lying against the wall of the
attic, as the camera pans in; suddenly her eyes open, returning the gaze of the
cinematic spectator.
DOMESTIC DISRUPTIONS
The similarity between the contemporary haunted house lm in Japanese
cinema and earlier lms such as The Amityville Horror and The Shining is not
coincidental. Unlike the original Japanese horror story of the 1950s and 1960s,
the trope of the vengeful ghost is not a mere embodiment of individual guilt,
but rather is a collective projection of societal guilt. All the lms discussed, in
one way or another, meditate on the prevalence of domestic violence as a result
of socio-economic transformations in the very nature of Japanese society. At
the centre of these lms are the monstrous mother and her equally monstrous
progeny. Goldberg argues that New Wave lms such as Blind Beast marked
a shift in the representation of the mother in Japanese cinema: It is during
this period that the element of blame comes overtly into play, and unnatural
mothers who do not full the ideals of Japanese motherhood are depicted as
begetting monstrous children (2004: 374). However, the mother is also a tragic
gure, whose disappearance/death functions to complete our sense of beauty
(Kawai 1996: 58), working within the Japanese aesthetic of mono-no-aware.
It is clear to see how upheavals in Japanese society, brought about by rapid
modernisation, have led to a breakdown in the traditional Japanese pre-modern
family structure, as embedded within the wider ie system that regulated the
relationships between people in the broader context of the community and the
nation. Societal breakdown, as signied by domestic violence, child neglect
and abandonment of the elderly, is negotiated through recourse to traditional
Japanese mythology and folktales, within the generic frame of the haunted
house narratives.
8
Serial Killers and Slashers
Japanese-Style
Rather than products of dysfunctional families, Japanese psychos are, by
and large, products of the contemporary Japanese society where alien-
ation, distance and detachment, lack of afect, indiference towards others
and selshness seem to be rules of the day. (Ognjanovic 2006b)
U
nlike America, Japan traditionally has had a low rate of violent crimes
against the person. This seems to be changing, in the aftermath of the
so-called Otaku murders in 1988 and 1989 carried out by Miyazaki Tsutomu,
and the notorious esh-eating media celebrity, Issei Sagawa, in 1981. In June
of that year Sagawa shot Renee Hartevelt; he then cut up her body and cooked
strips of esh, which he consumed, before taking pictures of her mutilated
corpse. Predating both these cases was the notorious Iwao Enokizu, in 1964,
who went on an eighteen-month killing spree before nally being caught.
Ognjanovic blames the appearance of the Japanese psychopath on the breakdown
of the societal structures through which the subject identies himself (herself)
as embedded within the community, rather than on dysfunctional families.
It is the displacing of the situated self by the individual ego associated with
Western isation which, it is implied, is the root cause of the emergence of the
Japanese serial killer.
As is true of Ed Gein, whose seemingly normal exterior hid a pathological
killer, real-life serial killings have provided the inspiration for Japanese horror
lm. One of the most notable is Imamuras Vengeance is Mine (1979), which
focuses on the seventy-eight-day hunt for the charismatic Enokizu, by the
Japanese police. More recently came the low-budget Tokyo Psycho (Oikawa:
2004), which ofers a ctionalised account of the so-called Otaku murderer. The
notion of the outsider, so essential to both real-life and ctional constructions
of the serial killer, has a greater symbolic function, within a society based upon
the relational self and underpinned by neo-Confucianism, than in the West
where the serial killer can be theorised as the inevitable outcome of a society
based upon the sanctity of individualism and underpinned by the imaginary
ideology of the American Dream.
In addition to these dramatisations of real-life serial killers is the Japanese
version of the slasher lm. The key lm is Evil Dead Trap (1988), which brought
together Ikeda (director) and Ishii (writer) for the rst time since their collabo-
ration on the Angel Guts series of lms. Evil Dead Trap is generally considered
to be a pivotal turning point in Japanese horror, paving the way for the contem-
porary success of lms such as Ring and Ju-On: The Grudge. However, like
the original slasher cycle in America, low-budget exploitation lms such as
Entrails of a Virgin (Komizu: 1986) also proved popular with audiences. Other
variations on the ctional serial killer lm are Another Heaven (Iida: 2000),
Angel Dust (Ishii: 1994) and The Guard from the Underground (Kurosawa:
1992). Fujiis Living Hell (2000) is particularly interesting, as it was marketed
in the West as Living Hell: A Japanese Chainsaw Massacre, thus encouraging
audiences to compare it to Hoopers infamous The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
(1974).
SERIAL KILLERS: BETWEEN FICTION AND FACT
Imamuras Vengeance is Mine, about Iwao Enokizu, does not attempt to justify
Enokizus killing spree through recourse to popular psychoanalysis, unlike
comparable American lms based upon the real-life exploits of Ed Gein,
such as Hitchcocks Psycho (1960), Hoopers The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
the low-budget pseudo-documentary Deranged (Gillen and Ormsby: 1974)
and Demmes award-winning Silence of the Lambs (1991). In all these lms,
with perhaps the exception of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the motivation
for murder on the part of the ctionalised Gein is clearly linked to a negative
Oedipus complex in other words, the male childs inability to separate from
the mother due to the lack of a father as symbol and maintainer of the patri-
archal order; this is often connoted through mise-en-scne, costume and props
rather than the actual presence of the mother. Vengeance is Mine does not ofer
an explanation of the possible motivations behind the killing spree of Enokizu
(played with intensity by Ken Ogata), a charming conman, thief and murderer;
nor does it ofer a psychological or economic framework which might justify
Enokizus violent acts. Although some factual information, such as Enokizus
Catholic background, his prolic sexual appetite and his desertion of his wife,
is ofered, none of these facts explains the reasons behind his killing spree.
Vengeance is Mine dispenses with the linear narrative and temporal conti-
nuity of the traditional serial killer lm. Instead, we have a narrative dened by
temporal disunity and incoherence. The use of temporal ellipses that is, gaps
si l ki lls nd slss jns-syl 151
in the temporal framework of the narrative is signalled early on in the lm.
In this scene, the rst shot is of a dead body in an empty eld; the next shot, of
a helicopter, provides a transition between the rst shot and the following one,
in which we return to the eld, now swarming with policemen. The manner
in which the lm is narrated also foregrounds temporal disunity. Beginning
with the capture of Enokizu, the subsequent narrative of his crime spree is
pieced together non-chronologically through the use of ashbacks and written
reports, and is motivated more by the police investigation than the order of the
crimes themselves.
In Everyday Nightmares: The Rhetoric of Social Horror in the Nightmare
on Elm Street Series, Heba distinguishes between coherent and incoherent
horror lms, arguing that coherent horror lms are monoglossic that is,
supportive of the status quo and that incoherent lms are heteroglossic
refusing narrative closure and explanation. He writes: incoherent horror
movies focus on humanitys capacity to create its own horrors that cannot be
contained by the coherent master narrative. In fact, many incoherent horror
movies code the dominant culture itself as the source of horror (1995). This
could explain the critical reception of Vengeance is Mine, in which the failure
of the lm to dene Enokizus acts in relation to some societal or psychological
ills confounded Japanese critics at the time. In Goldsmiths examination of the
lm, he quotes the following, taken from a review by a critic from the Kinema
Jumpo magazine:
For Japanese lm, 1979 was a year in which Imamura Shoheis Vengeance
Is Mine demonstrated overwhelming strength. While it is the rst lm in
some time for Imamura, if I could venture a personal opinion, I must say
that Im not even sure of the directors viewpoint. (cited in Goldsmith
2005)
It is the middle-class aspirations and status of Enokizu, who is the son of a
sherman-cum-hotel owner, that critics in Japan found so problematic. For
them, used to the construction of the outsider as social outcast as a result of his
lowly place in the social hierarchy, the representation of Enokizu, whose outsider
status cannot be explained by socio-economic constraints, proved difcult to
understand. Goldsmith elucidates, Enokizu cannot easily be contained in any
particular tier of the class system, and this status as a total outsider allows
him to mediate between diferent levels of society at will (2005). Unlike the
traditional left-wing conception of the alienated outsider, the result of class
division under the capitalist system of production, Enokizu seems to choose
and even revel in his outsider status. He shows no remorse for his crimes, either
within the past events or during his present connement in prison. Further,
in Vengeance is Mine, spatial dislocation determines the relationships between
characters, thus mimicking the isolation of the individual in contemporary
Japanese society.
Roberson and Suzuki argue that, as a result of unprecedented economic
growth in the early 1960s, mens roles became portrayed as those of taxpayers
and workers, functioning as correct citizens as part of a state-sponsored
patriarchal industrial-capitalist system that place[s] the family in subor-
dinated support of the state (2003: 7). Gendered assumptions and expecta-
tions centred on the idea of daikokubashira, which, according to Roberson and
Suzuki, means literally the large black pillar of traditional Japanese houses
(2003: 8). Gill explains:
In the image of the daikokubashira, man merges with the pillar. It is
an image of reliability, of strength, of stasis. The pillar that supports
the household has an honour, represented in its/his dominant central
position, but also bears a heavy load supporting the roof/supporting
the family. (2003: 1445)
Enokizu has no xed identity either within the family or within the corpor-
ation as a substitute for the family; instead he assumes the identities of others,
including that of a university professor, in order to get close to his victims before
robbing and killing them. In this he is a transgressive gure. This is particularly
relevant, as mobility of masculine identity in Japanese society was something
which, at the time, was associated with the working classes and specically day
labourers. In Gills terms, day labourers identities are constructed in terms
of physicality, immediacy and mobility (2003: 151), which are grounded in a
proletarian tradition (2003: 152). In so far as Enokizu cuts across traditional
constructions of masculinity, in both social and cultural terms, he subverts
hegemonic constructions of an idealised masculinity that were prevalent at the
time.
Enokizus relationship with women is founded on deceit, but it is a deceit
that, even when revealed, as with Haru (Mayumi Ogawa) one of the women he
becomes involved with during his murderous spree does not seem to matter.
Haru chooses to continue her relationship with Enokizu, asking: Whats
the diference? Goldsmith writes: What denes Enokizu is not his position
within a social binarism, but his connection to a primal physical energy that
Imamura sees as underlying all human life (2005). As we have already seen,
the lms of the Japanese New Wave situate the material body (nikutai) in
opposition to traditional conceptions of the spirit (seishin) associated with the
family-state and a hyper-militarist position (Standish 2005: 210). As such,
Enokizus search for personal fulment, irrespective of the societal damage,
can be understood as a privileging of the body and materiality against some
anomolous concept of the spirit in service of the nation-state, together with a
si l kills nd slss jns-syl 153
critique of Westernisation. And, as in the Japanese New Wave, the role of the
father is questioned. Writing about the taiyzoku genre, Standish comments:
Within these lms the role of the father gure is precarious, as they are
emasculated representations of the generation who lost the war and were
criminalized through war crimes trials. (2005: 231)
Vengeance is Mine foregrounds this loss of masculine potency through the
inadequate father gure. This is demonstrated in the scene where Enokizus
father attempts, but fails, to make love to Enokizus estranged wife. In addition,
in one of the ashback sequences, we see Enokizus father being humiliated by
a Japanese naval ofcer. In a later scene, Enikozu is shown harassing a young
Japanese woman, who is out with a group of American soldiers. While father
and son are situated as doubles, the lm does not blame the father for the
sons actions. In the nal sequences, when Enokizus bones are thrown into
Beppu Bay (by his father and his wife), the continued use of the freeze frame
to capture the bones frozen in time and space suggests the inability of Japanese
paternalism to deal with the shifting nature of class and economic relation-
ships in a rapidly modernising Japan.
THE COLLECTOR
Closely related to the psychological horror lm and to the splatter
movie, the stalk-and-slash lm was conceived by Hitchcocks Psycho
(1960), nurtured by Hoopers The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and
came of age with Carpenters Halloween (1978). Here the psychopath,
supernatural or all-too-natural, gures as a central menace to a string of
(usually) women-in-peril, though any vaguely promiscuous teenager is a
natural target. (Newman 1996: 300)
Violated Angels (Wakamatsu: 1967), The Embryo Hunts in Secret (Wakamatsu:
1966) and Blind Beast (Masumura: 1969) can be considered early examples of
the stalker lm, in which a beautiful young woman is subjected to increasingly
brutal attacks and rape by an unsavoury male attacker. Structurally, they are
similar in that the actual stalking part of the lm is given less time than the
graphic scenes of repeated violent attacks on the female victim(s). The endings
are also the same: the male attackers death at the hands of his female victim. In
fact, Violated Angels was purportedly inspired by the true story of the twenty-
ve-year-old Richard Speck, who brutally raped and killed a group of young
nurses in Chicago on 13

July 1966. Hunter writes:
Legend has it that Wakamatsu, inamed by this provocative news story
from the West, conceived and executed his extraordinary lm Violated
Angels (released in 1967) within a week of hearing about it. Apparently it
was not so much the slaughter itself so much as the fact that one nurse
survived, which appealed to Wakamatsus sensibilities. (1998: 40)
Similar to Violated Angels is Tokyo Psycho (Oikawa: 2004), which was also
based upon a true case, but this time one that happened in Japan. Ognjanovic
writes: [The] case is paradigmatic for numerous otaku-like psychos that are
later found in the movies like ALL NIGHT LONG, EVIL DEAD TRAP
2 etc. During the trial, The defence argued that the audiovisual culture of
videotapes and television, the lack of a sense of reality in the information
society and the isolation of youth are behind the crime as sickness of modern
society (2006b).
Between 1988 and 1989, the murders of four young girls, aged between four
and seven, took place. The culprit was a seemingly mild-mannered clerk called
Tsutomu Miyazaki, who was twenty-seven at the time of his arrest. Due to the
fact that he was found with a large collection of pornographic manga, violent
horror lms and home-made lms detailing the molestation and murder of
his victims, he was dubbed The Collector by the Japanese press. Ognjanovic
details the manner in which Miyazakis crimes were blamed on his so-called
emotional immaturity, articulating contemporary fears around youjika (the
infantilisation of culture), which is seen to represent an immature or an incom-
plete identity. Hasegawa argues that the concept of youjika is used in terms of
a hollowness or unisexuality, that is a sexuality that is yet to be distinguished
or diferentiated (2002: 157).
Miyazakis arrest created a moral panic around Otaku sub-culture. In
Amateur Manga Subculture and the Otaku Panic, Kinsella explores the
relationship between radical political movements of the 1960s, the devel-
opment of manga sub-culture, and youth culture. She writes: Although the
political point of youth radicalism became completely obscure by the early
1970s, younger generations, youth culture, and young women, became the
focus of nervous discourse about the apparent decay of a traditional Japanese
society (1998). The Miyazaki case caused a widespread media panic, through
which it was perceived that a whole generation of Japanese youngsters were
threatening the very foundation of Japanese society. Kinsella comments:
After the Miyazaki murder case, the concept of an otaku changed its
meaning at the hands of the media. Otaku came to mean, in the rst
instance Miyazaki, in the second instance, all amateur manga artists and
fans, and in the third instance all Japanese youth in their entirety. (1998)
Like the Ed Gein story in the USA, the Otaku killer has become rmly
embedded within Japanese culture as source of inspiration for post-modern
narratives of pathological masculinity. Tokyo Psycho substantially changes the
true-life story of Miyazaki, transforming him from a paedophile and child
murderer into an obsessed transgendered stalker, Komiya Osamu (Taniguchi
Masashi), whose object of afection is a beautiful young graphic designer called
Yumiko sawa (Kokubu Sachiko).
In Psycho Paths: Tracking the Serial Killer Through Contemporary American
Film and Fiction, Simpson argues that the serial killer is a post-modern shape-
shifter who violates societal taboos through the doubling of normalcy and
madness in one composite gure:
The serial killer is a postmodern shapeshifter or changeling child whose
spiritual essence was kidnapped by pornography or bad genes or abusive
parents and replaced with the soul of Cain. Any given killer has one
pleasant or at least non-threatening face with which to conduct public
negotiations, and another evil face with which to terrify helpless victims.
This doubling strategy allows inhuman evil to lurk behind human
normalcy, simply because the serial killers actions by their very nature
cannot help but propel him beyond the liminal into what Noel Carroll
identies as the interstitial territory reserved for the most egregious
taboo violators. (2000: 34)
Loosely working within the conventions of the stalker lm, the obsessed
stalker, Osamu (who we discover later on is Mikuriya) is typical of the post-
modern serial killer, in his ability not only to hide his psychosis behind the
mask of normalcy but also to shape-shift between multiple personas, both
masculine and feminine. In the opening scene of the lm, Yumiko and Moe
(Yumikos work partner and best friend) are in their ofce, a living/work space
in an anonymous grey block. A knock on the door startles Yumiko Moe is
asleep on a couch but when she peers through the keyhole, the corridor seems
empty. However, when she looks a second time, she is horried to see the visage
of a strange woman, with a white eye patch and smeared lipstick, pressed up
against the glass the convex glass distorting the image. The camera follows
Mikuriya as he runs away, rst through a long shot and ending with an extreme
low-angled close-up. Writing about Juraj Herzs The Cremator (1968), Scoeld
argues: Magnied body parts on screen are disturbing because they tamper
with the continuity of the human form generally beheld during mundane life.
When shown mere parts of the body, viewers are denied the unied whole which
they desire (2007). The use of extreme close-ups here distorts the image and
imbues a sense of horror linked to the fragmentation of the bodily integrity.
Here, as in The Cremator, the key to the horror is visual disorientation, as the
spectator is positioned within the disturbed consciousness of the serial killer.
In this scene, Mikuriya is holding an open red umbrella, signifying both
passion and danger, and creating a caricature of femininity whose overdeter-
mined signs disestablish traditional codings of femininity and masculinity.
In his subsequent construction of a macabre sculpture made out of a dead
womans body, piano wire and ashing lights with a photograph of Yumiko in
the centre, serial killing is congured as a performance art explicitly linked to
the art of cinema itself. Schneider writes: a cinematic metaphor is efected
whereby the killer gets equated with a kind of artist, and the carnage he leaves
behind with works of art (2001).
In a later scene, like Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, Mikuriya
disguises himself using the face of the recently butchered Moe and this time
gains entry to the work space, allowing him to abduct Yumiko. Halberstam
comments in relation to Demmes lm that it is a horror lm that, for once,
is not designed to scare women; it scares men instead with the image of a
fragmented and fragile masculinity, a male body disowning the penis (1995:
168). The use of female skin, here as in The Silence of the Lambs, can be said to
act as a fetishized signier of gender for a heterosexist culture (Halberstam
1995: 1689).
However, these similarities apart, Tokyo Psycho does not engage with a
psychoanalytical framework through which to understand the shifting contours
of the serial killer. The little information we have is that he was a loner, an Otaku,
without friends, who may or may not have strangled his parents with piano
wire whilst he was in high school. Instead, the narrative focuses on Yumiko and
her attempts to discover the identity of this mysterious visitor and of the writer
of a letter she has subsequently received which bears the words You were born
to marry me. At a high-school reunion, she remembers a similar letter that
she had from Osamu. If we are supposed to identify a traumatic event in the
past as an interpretive framework for Osamus actions in the present, then it
would be this rejection by Yumiko of his expressions of love. When Mikuriya
eventually manages to kidnap Yumiko, he persists with his declarations of love
even when torturing her. As in the Angel Guts lms and pink cinema, romantic
love becomes inseparable from male violence and female violation. Yet Yumiko
continues to refuse him. Finally, like many nal girls before her, she manages
to turn the tables on her attacker, who she drowns in the sea; unlike some, she
needs no protector/father gure to help her defeat the monstrous male. It
is evident that Tokyo Psycho is much more a ctionalisation than Vengeance
is Mine. This can also be seen in the manner in which Tokyo Psycho utilises
saturated canvases of primary colours red, yellow and blue as an externali-
sation of the mind of a deranged serial killer, which is in opposition to the more
objective semi-documentary style of Vengeance is Mine. Mes and Sharp write
of the latter: Its use of wide long shots with a minimum of edits lends some
of the scenes the air of a TV news report, imbuing the depiction of the actual
murders with a brutally objective coolness (2005: 31).
Further, Tokyo Psycho is very similar in structure to the American stalker
movie in that it focuses on the relationship between a killer and the (usually)
female protagonist, with anyone who gets in the way being dispatched to a
gruesome and untimely death. In the original cycle of stalker lms, the
murderous activities of the mainly male monsters, Jason Voorhees (Friday the
13th, Cunningham: 1980) and Michael Myers (Halloween, Carpenter: 1978),
were explained diegetically through an embedded psychoanalytical framework.
Jason develops an unhealthy attachment to the dead corpse of his mother
when he takes over her mantle in Friday the 13th Part Two (Miner: 1981),
and it is the sight of his sister having sex whilst their parents are out, inter-
preted as an incestuous Oedipal impulse, which provokes the development of
Michael Myerss pathology as constructed retroactively through Halloween
2 (Rosenthal: 1982).
In Tokyo Psycho, however, although we learn of rumours that Osamu
murdered his parents with piano wire, these are never substantiated, and rather
than being motivated by hate, Osamu is dedicated to making the reluctant
Yumiko his bride. Whilst the obsessive character of Osamu encompasses attri-
butes of the Otaku, it is in the subjective mise-en-scne that isolation and alien-
ation, as causational factors in Osamus psychosis, are most fully realised. The
narrative is mainly located within the grey, minimalist apartment block where
Yumiko lives and works. The use of the point-of-view shot of the disembodied
killer, an identiable trope of the original stalker lm, tracking down identical
corridor after identical uninhabited corridor and swerving round corners,
creates an architectural vision of isolation and alienation, and a sensory feeling
of deprivation (Balmain 2006). There is a feeling of the uncanny captured
by these repeated tracking shots that in places do not seem connected to the
obsessed stalker. The serial killer here, as in Vengeance is Mine, articulates a
crisis in hegemonic constructions of masculinity; multiple identities, as so
many masks, can be said to express contemporary Japanese patriarchal anxiety
over the shifting of masculinity as a stable sign. Further, in Tokyo Psycho, the
architecture of the post-modern city mirrors the internal psychosis of the
Psycho of the title. Sacchi writes that living in Tokyo has become the art of
living in the labyrinth:
The metropolitan area of Tokyo is today more a non-place, hailing less
from architecture and the traditional denition of space than from the
ubiquitous, labyrinthine presence of telecommunications networks,
intelli gent buildings and machines, plant for the accumulation and
difusion of energy and water, waste removal and recycling, and diverse,
inter-connect transport systems. (2004: 2289)
As such, the title of the lm suggests perhaps that anyone and everyone in
the disorientating urban jungle that is Tokyo must of necessity become a psycho
in order to cope with the visual trauma that is the city (Purini 2004: 8).
THE SLASHER FILM: JAPANESE-STYLE
In these movies, isolated psychotic males, often masked or at least hidden
from view, are pitted against one or more young men and women (especially
the latter) whose looks, personalities, or promiscuities serve to trigger
recollections of some past trauma in the killers mind, thereby unleashing
his seemingly boundless psychosexual fury. (Schneider 2002)
Although stalker and slasher lms are often confused as constituting one
distinct sub-genre, they are, in fact, not the same. The stalker lm, as theorised
by Dika (1990), has a distinct two-part temporal structure, the reason behind
the killings is usually sexual revenge, and the binary central relationship
between the nal girl and the male killer can be understood as allowing a
female although not necessarily feminist rite of passage through the defeat
of the male monster. It could be argued that the stalker lm is ideologically
reactionary in that the end can be seen as afrming rather than challenging the
status quo. As Clover points out, the central character may be gendered female,
but her androgyny makes her a suitable substitute for the male spectator, who
can enjoy the masochistic pleasures of fear from a distance (1992: 4264).
The slasher lm, however, does not necessarily stick to the distinct temporal
structure of the stalker lm and the killer is not necessarily male; neither is
the killer necessarily motivated merely by sexual desire. As Heba states, the
evolution of slasher movies suggests that another, broader set of codes, in
addition to the ones Dika identies, is at work (1995).
While Tokyo Psycho, with its psychopathic killer motivated by sexual desire
(rather than rage), falls into the category of the stalker lm although it must
be noted that there is no reason given for his psychosexual obsession the
killer in Japanese slasher lms, as we will see, often has supernatural origins.
Whilst the male antagonists in Vengeance is Mine and Tokyo Psycho are patho-
logical symptoms of Japanese modernity, the supernatural monsters in Evil
Dead Trap, Entrails of a Virgin and Living Hell can be considered revenants
of pre-modernity, symptoms of the repressed past whose repetition functions
to subvert the aesthetics of shame associated with the sexualised body. In An
introduction to the American Horror Film, Wood distinguishes between
necessary repression (that which is needed for the operation of society) and
surplus repression, which functions in the service of the dominant ideology.
He writes, one can ask what, exactly, in the interests of alienated labor and the
patriarchal family, is repressed (2002: 26). In Japan, it is the materiality of
the body linked to the pre-modern, and a time before Westernisation, that has
been repressed in order to enable the development of capitalism and ensure
economic prosperity.
Entrails of a Virgin (1986) is the rst in a trilogy of lms by Kazuo Gaira
Komizu, which also includes Entrails of a Beautiful Woman (1986) and Rusted
Body: Guts of a Virgin III (1987). Entrails of a Virgin is a strange combi-
nation of slasher lm, Italian exploitation and Japanese pink lm, and is an
early example of gorenography. Notable for its graphic scenes of sex and
violence, its extremely low budget and its not-so-special eforts, Entrails of
a Virgin features a plot, such as it is, that involves a group of photographers
from a pornographic magazine out on a shoot in the woods and their beautiful
models, who get lost in the woods and take refuge in an abandoned building,
where they nd themselves at the mercy of a swamp monster as some sort
of vengeful male deity. Entrails of a Virgin is infamous for its sexual violence
towards women and its gratuitous sex scenes. One of the more unpleasant
scenes features one of the young women, Kazuyo, who is forced to take part
in a wrestling match with Tachikawa, assistant to the photographers; while
demonstrating his athletic prowess to the male group all the time berating
and insulting Kazuyo, he traumatises her so badly that she wets herself
before falling on the ground unconscious. Here, as in the rape-revenge lm,
the woman as sexual ised object is circulated around the male group as some
sort of (homoerotic) bonding ritual. In an equally disturbing scene, Kazuyo,
having descended into a crazed nymphomania as a result of her treatment by
the men in the group, masturbates with a severed arm whilst pleasuring the
swamp monster. In response to her cries for more, she is penetrated so deeply
that she is disembowelled in the process. One of the other models, Kei, is also
ravished by the primal monster and, having been left spent, is decapitated by a
shard of a sign which falls of the roof of a building. This is an example of the
double binary, in which in order to criticise violence towards women explicitly,
along with their objectication, lms have rst to visualise that violence; as a
consequence, they run the risk of being castigated as misogynist. And there
is little doubt that the extended scenes of female violation in Entrails of a
Virgin eroticise the female body, ofering up the open and sexualised surfaces
of femininity to the penetrating and pornographic gaze of the male spectator.
However, unlike its counterpart, the American slasher lm, the male group
are punished for their treatment of woman by the primal monster. Tachikawa
is bludgeoned to death with a hammer; Tachiguichi is penetrated by a spear;
and nally, Asaoka, pursued by the enraged Kazuyo, is choked to death as a
large hook wielded by the monster lifts him into the air and copious amounts
of viscous uid the monsters semen gush into the water nearby. Here, in
opposition to the dominant conventions of the slasher lm at the time, men are
also objects of sexual violation.
Unlike its American predecessors, Entrails of a Virgin does not need to
substitute the male phallus for an external object, such as knife, chainsaw or
axe; instead, it is the monsters enormous phallus (usually depicted in shadow)
that is the weapon of choice. The very presence of the phallus as killing
machine highlights the sexual inadequacy of the male characters, who can only
feel powerful by raping and objectifying women. It is only the swamp monster,
it turns out, who can really satisfy the women in the lm, thus articulating a
male anxiety that, in fact, size does matter. In the end, the nal girl, Rei (the
only virgin amongst the woman at the beginning of the lm), ends up impreg-
nated with the monsters progeny. She lives to survive another day but, in the
manner of the typical slasher lm, the heroine is not free (Dika 1990: 60).
Whilst arguably less artistic than the Angel Guts series of lms, Entrails of a
Virgin operates within a similar sub-cultural critique of the commodication
and exploitation of women in Japan. At the same time, the primal monsters
enormous phallus can be interpreted as an external projection of male wish
fullment and anxieties around masculine power, or indeed the absence of it in
a rapidly changing society.
Ikedas Evil Dead Trap also uses the basic format of the slasher lm, while
adding a specic Japanese avour to the proceedings. A beautiful young
television reporter, Nami (Miyuki Ono), receives a strange videotape, which
shows the torture and murder of a woman. In an attempt to conrm the tapes
authenticity, Nami and four of her colleagues take a trip to an abandoned army
base, the location where the videotape was shot. One by one, her colleagues are
killed in a brutal and graphic manner, which calls to mind the giallo lms of
Argento in particular, until Nami is the only one left. Then she meets a strange
man, Muraki (Yuji Honma), who seems to know more about what is going on
than he lets on; he tries to help her escape.
During the nal confrontation between Nami as the archetypical nal girl
and Muraki, Evil Dead Trap takes on a nightmarish, almost Cronenbergian,
quality. It turns out that Murakis twin, Hideki, has been responsible for the
killings, but Hideki is part of Muraki, rather than apart from him. Borrowing
liberally from Cronenbergs Videodrome (1983), Ridley Scotts Alien (1979)
and earlier lms such as Its Alive (Cohen: 1974), the lm shows the monstrous
Hideki bursting out of Murakis body, determined to reach Nami, who is
situated both visually and thematically as a mother substitute for the angry
foetus. And, as is typical of the slasher genre, the male monster does not die
easily, getting back up after he has been stabbed, burned and shot. In an image
reminiscent of the ending of Halloween, Nami stabs the angry foetus (still
conjoined to Muraki) with a shard of glass, and Muraki falls backwards out of
the window. With a nod to Friday the 13th, Nami wakes up in a hospital bed
to learn that the police did not nd any trace of Hideki. The lm ends with
the grotesque scene of the re-emergence of Hideki from Namis body in an
explosion of blood, plaintively crying, Mama.
Like many contemporary Japanese horror lms, Evil Dead Trap quotes
liberally from a variety of sources, both Western and Japanese, even though
Ikeda professes both not to like horror lm and not to have watched it (Sharp
2005). The maggots on the ceiling that drop into the hair of one of the victim,
before she is brutally eviscerated, pay homage to Argentos supernatural
horror lm Suspiria (1977), as does the sampled soundtrack that accompanies
the lm. The motif of the penetrated, viscous eyeball recalls similar scenes in
both Argentos and Fulcis work. The costume of Muraki when he takes on the
persona of Hideki, with its mask and voluminous plastic cape, also combines the
conventions of the Italian giallo with its remediation in the original American
slasher cycle. The names of the central characters, Nami and Muraki, are, of
course, the names of the protagonists in the Angel Guts series. And the use
of blue lighting throughout many of the chase sequences, along with water
during the nal confrontation emphasising the distance between Nami and
Muraki is, as we have seen, constitutive of the dominant mise-en-scne in
many Japanese horror lms.
The addition of a superuous rape scene, in addition to the obligatory
con sensual heterosexual sex, seems somewhat out of place, but is, in fact, in
keeping with the vast majority of Japanese exploitation and horror lms of
the time. It is, however, signicant that, despite the obvious erotic titillation
ofered by such a scene, it no longer functions as a mechanism of liberating
womens inherent impure nature. In fact, it provides a contrast between forced
and consensual sex that signies shifting changes in attitudes towards women
in the world of cinema, at least. In his review of the lm, Galloway points out
that it was at the insistence of Japan Home Video, the company that provided
the funding for the lm and for whom both Hitomi Kobayashi and Eriko
Nakagawa (two of the actors involved) worked, that the obligatory sex scenes
were inserted. Further, against criticisms by horror lm purists of unnec-
essary explicit sex in the lm, he points out that sexually active young people
are always getting murdered in such lms its a puritanical prerequisite! Here
the sex is just more explicit (2006: 168).
The success of Evil Dead Trap led to two sequels: Evil Dead Trap 2: Hideki
(Hashimoto: 1991) and Evil Dead Trap 3: Broken Love Killer (1993), directed
by Ikeda. While both are interesting lms, they substantially alter the story.
In Evil Dead Trap 2, the serial killer is a female Jack the Ripper and/or Jekyll
and Hyde, called Aki (Shoko Nakajima). An overweight projectionist, Aki has
blackouts; when she wakes up she nds herself next to the severely mutilated
bodies of prostitutes, and she is eventually revealed as the murderous attacker.
In the third lm in the series, the heroine, Nami (Kimiko Yo), attempts to track
down a serial killer, a high-school teacher called, as is typical in Ikedas lms,
Tetsuro Muraki, here played by Shir Sano.
Although Evil Dead Trap is a work of signicantly higher quality than
Entrails of a Virgin, both utilise cultural mythology and supernatural frame-
works in their constructions of male monstrosity. Unlike in Western religions,
sexuality was an important component of both Buddhism and Shint until,
of course, Japan started perceiving itself through the Others eyes. Buisson
remarks, Unlike the Judaeo-Christian West, which insists on seeing sex as
inseparable from evil, Japan does not condemn pleasure in itself (2003: 63).
Indeed, as we have seen in the Shint creation myth, the earth comes into
being because of an act of sexual intercourse between Izanagi and Izanami,
who are also brother and sister. The worship of the phallus is also central to
Shint, and can be seen in the story of Susanoo, the brother of the Sun Goddess
(Amaterasu), who defeats an eight-headed snake. In Japan, the phallus can be
a symbol of fertility or primitive purity. There are shrines dedicated to the
phallus, in which the phallus is displayed in full anatomical detail (Buisson
2003: 65). Shunga (pornography) prints were popular during the Meiji Era
until Japans gaze came to mimic that of the Western Other. The association
between the land, the monster and primal sexuality linked to the pre-modern,
in Entrails of a Virgin, needs to be considered in light of cultural mythology
rather than condemned as out-and-out misogyny. Heba points to a point of
identication between the serial killer and the folkloric monster. He writes,
The supernatural image of the human/monster hybrid is, of course, central
to the project of rendering the serial killer into a proper folkloric demon
(1995). The deity/monster in Entrails of a Virgin and the vengeful foetus in
Evil Dead Trap can be seen as eruptions of the pre-modern body, in which the
economic and the political converge in a politics of bodily corruption, as in the
sub-cultural discourse of Angura that we explored in Chapter 5.
A JAPANESE CHAINSAW MASSACRE?
Whilst the Japanese version of the slasher lm makes indirect references to
the original American cycle of slasher lms, as we have seen, Fujiis 2000 lm,
Living Hell: A Japanese Chainsaw Massacre, invites the spectator to make a
direct comparison with Hoopers The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. As with the
earlier lm, Living Hell critiques the ideology of the family through its repre-
sentation of a monstrous family of cannibals, but with supernatural overtones.
In particular, the demented cannibalistic family reunion towards the end of the
narrative clearly demonstrates Hoopers inuence. The lm has a nightmarish
quality, signalled in the opening sequences when an old woman named Chiyo
(Yoshiko Shiraishi) and a young girl, Yuki (Naoko Mori), torture and murder
a middle-aged couple; and eat the family dog. However, when the police arrive
on the scene, they nd only the seemingly traumatised Chiyo.
The two women then turn up at the house of Yasu (Hirohito Ho), a
wheelchair-bound teenager, who lives at home with his brother, Ken (Kazuo
Yashiro), his (adopted) sister Mami (Rumi) and his father, Dr Kuranda (Hitoshi
Suwabe). Before this, two scenes, set during the previous day, introduce us to
this apparently normal family. The rst scene takes place at breakfast and the
second later that evening. Crucially, the importance of these scenes is to set
up the normality of the nuclear family and to provide a point of contrast to
the nal grotesque banquet. At the same time, something already of-kilter
in the family unit is suggested through switching between the third-person
and rst-person point of view, as focalised through Yasu. On both occasions,
the subjective shot ofers a counterpoint to the impersonal third-person point
of view. Both times he hears Yukis name, a piercing sound is heard and the
camera cuts to a extreme close-up of Yasus face; when he looks back towards
the family group, the domestic scene is blurred and distorted. The second
time, Yasu leaves the table and goes into the next room where a caged bird is
hanging. A high-angled camera shot, cutting between Yasu and the trapped
bird, creates a line of connection between them; Yasu, who like the bird is
helpless, is trapped in his wheelchair. As the director himself points out in
the commentary, this is inuenced by Robert Aldrichs Whatever Happened to
Baby Jane? (1962), rather than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
When the family is out at work, the two women take pleasure in tormenting
Yasu, on one occasion ofering him his dead bird for lunch, and on another a
plate of dead beetles. They take him out in his wheelchair, pushing him into
the path of trafc; dump worms on his lap; repeatedly use a stun gun on him;
take his teeth out with a pair of pliers; and play darts using him as a sitting
target. Yasu is thus situated in a feminine position throughout the narrative.
This is made clear in the scene where Chiyo and Yuki tie Yasu to his bed, with
his legs spread; they pour water on his shorts and then use the stun gun on his
genitals. As with much of the violence in the lm, this is implied in a similar
manner to Hoopers lm, as the camera cuts away at the key moment before
the stun gun comes into contact with Yasu.
For much of the lm, the spectator is forced into a position of masochism, as
structured through the point-of-view shot of Yasu. However, the denouement,
which mirrors a similar sequence in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in which the
family gather together for a reunion party, subverts the view of Yasu as victim.
In this scene, the slim veneer of normality cracks and we view the insanity and
craziness beneath. The two women have nished tormenting and torturing
Yasu, who is sitting in a corner towards the back of the room. The dead body of
Mami is strapped to a chair, whilst Chiyo quietly brushes her hair. Ken returns
from work, dragging the unconscious body of his colleague, Mitsuka (played
by Shugo Fujii), with him. He sits Mitsuka on a chair at the back of the room,
next to Yasu. Just then Dr Kuranda (who we discover is the editor of the paper
that both Ken and Mitsuka work on) returns home, and all hopes of rescue
for Mitsuka and Yasu disappear. There are minimal reserve shots or eyeline
matches in this scene, which forces the spectator into a position of masochistic
identication rather than sadistic control.
In relation to Peeping Tom, Clover distinguishes between the assaultive (male/
sadistic) and reactive gaze (feminine/masochistic). Further, using the beginning
of Halloween as a case study, she suggests that the use of the subjective point of
view of the killer, rather than implying control, actually functions to undermine
his (her) omnipotence; she states, the view of the rst-person killer is typically
cloudy, unsteady, thereby presuming an unstable gaze (1992: 187). Thus the
subjective camera, according to Clover, draws our attention to what cannot be
seen and, in doing so, gives rise to the sense not of mastery but of vulnerability
(1992: 187). Much of the following scene is shot through the subjective point
of view of Yasu, who is sitting at the back of the dining room, and watching in
horror as the macabre family reunion takes place. Here the use of the subjective
gaze, associated with the wheelchair-bound Yasu, articulates vulnerability rather
than mastery, as in Clovers discussions of Halloween.
Candles icker on the table (an obvious reference to The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre) and for dessert Ken ofers the decapitated head of a young woman
to Chiyo, who, it transpires, is his mother. Picking up a metal y swatter, Dr
Kurando proceeds to beat his son with it, whilst Chiyo looks on, laughing
manically. Then, in a lm which foregrounds and operates as self-reexive
commentary on the processes of spectatorship by using Yasu as our diegetic
stand-in, Chiyo proceeds loudly and happily to eat Mitsukas eyeball. The
consumption of the eye is thus highly symbolic.
However, there is a nal plot twist, which reveals that Yasu is not the innocent
victim that he has seemed. Throughout the ashback, shot in negative colour
lm with added contrast, we learn that Yuki was Yasus conjoined twin (in other
words, they were Siamese twins), and that both children were the product of
Dr Kurandos genetic experimentation. A substantial portion of the truth has
already been revealed to the viewer through the investigatory strand of the
narrative, but it is only during the ashback sequences that we nd out that
Dr Kurando experimented on Yuki, using Yasu as a control. When the father
attempts to separate the twins, Yuki asks him whether he loves her and whether
he will marry her when she grows up, thus adding incest to the mix. We see
Yasu snatch the knife from his fathers hand and kill Yuki instead. This could be
seen as either an act of jealousy or the projection of self on to the other in order
to eliminate oneself. In the present, Yasus remembrances cause him to act out
violently against his family, killing them all. The lm ends in a similar manner
to Hitchcocks Psycho, with a sequence showing the police and a psychiatrist
talking about the causes of Yasus psychosis; it is suggested that Yuki was a split
personality, representing (as the mother does in Psycho) the repressed, evil
si l ki lls nd slss jns-syl 165
side of Yasu. Then, as in Psycho, the lm switches to Yasu conned in a mental
asylum. The nal shot is of Yasu screaming.
In the same manner as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with its dysfunctional
family of cannibals and killers, commenting on the imaginary normalcy of the
nuclear family, Living Hell also suggests that, behind the veneer of normalcy,
perversion and insanity may well hide. Unlike the family in The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre, Yasus family appears normal on the surface, as signalled in the
scenes where we rst meet them. Indeed, their madness seems no obstacle to
functioning normally within capitalist society and it could be argued that the
madness is a consequence of the conict in contemporary Japan between tradi-
tional ways and the individualism associated with Westernisation.
JAPANESE MONSTERS FROM THE UNDERGROUND
Japanese monsters, whether psychological or supernatural, are substantially
diferent to those that proliferate in mainstream (American) cinema. For
example, in Kurosawas The Guard from the Underground (1992), the killer is
a former sumo wrestler called Fujimaru (Matsushige Yutaka). Fujimaru has
just been employed as a security guard in a large ofce block, for the Akabone
Corporation, where Akiko Narushima (Makiko Kuro) has just started work
as an art dealer, in the anonymous Department 12. Her colleagues include
Korume (Ren Osugi), her boss, and Hyodo (Hatsunori Hasegawa), Korumes
superior. Hyodo is a drunk and Korume a sexual predator. Very much in the
tradition of the slasher (or stalk-and-slash) genre, Akiko and her colleagues
are trapped in the building, whilst Fujimaru goes on a killing spree. It should
come as no surprise that the resourceful Akiko, similar to the nal girl in the
slasher lm, manages to escape from Fujimarus clutches. However, with its
explicit critique of ofce politics and a sumo-wrestler as a killer, The Guard
from the Underground is quite unlike the American slasher lm.
With its female proler, the beautiful Setsuko Suma (Kaho Minami), who is
putting together a portrait of the serial killer who is murdering women with a
poisoned needle on packed commuter trains, Angel Dust (Ishii: 1994) seems on
the surface to be a Japanese version of The Silence of the Lambs. Setsuko begins
to suspect that her former lover and colleague, Rei Aku (Takeshi Wakamatsu),
who works as a cult deprogrammer, might be behind the murders. Unable to
stop the killings, Setsuko becomes increasingly deranged, to a point where she
becomes convinced that she is the murderer. Unlike the traditional serial killer
and/or slasher narrative, Angel Dust ofers no clear resolution as to the identity
of the killer(s).
Another example of a permutation on the generic features of the serial killer
genre is Another Heaven (Iida: 2000). In this horror/science ction hybrid,
the serial killer is not only from the future, but also from the land of the dead.
In the present of the narrative, like a ghost in the shell, the killer is able to
switch bodies at will. Whilst this might sound similar to Fallen (Hoblit: 1998),
the reason for the killers appearance in the present time of the narrative is,
perhaps, typically Japanese, as is the way in which his ghost can, for short
periods of time, live in water. Galloway writes:
As Manabu pursues the entity, he tries to understand its nature and exactly
what it is. This line of inquiry leads him ultimately back to himself, and
to something that is in all humans; something repeatedly asserts, I am
human, leaving Manabu (and us) to contemplate the malevolent aspect
of humanity and what the human condition is really about. (2006: 158)
Manabu Hayase (Yosuke Eguchi), a policeman, is led to the conclusion
that the beautiful Chizuru Kashiwagi (Yukiko Okamoto) is, in fact, the brain-
eating serial killer. However, Chizura dies before Manabu manages to track
her down, and the killer escapes from her body into that of Kimura (Takashi
Kashiwabara), one of the three men that Chizura had enticed back to her at
for supper (although seduced by her beauty, none of them realises that they
are in fact on the menu). Manabu eventually tracks Kimura down, at which
time the ghostly spirit inside reveals that he returned to Earth because he
was bored in Nirvana. Hence the reason behind the supernatural serial killer
murders is explained through recourse to Buddhism. Once more, this suggests
that religious frameworks and cultural mythology are important factors in the
construction, and our understanding, of Japanese horror cinema as genre.
Ultimately, the function of incoherent horror movies like the Nightmare
series is to continually challenge the codes and authority of the
monoglossic master narrative. (Heba: 1995)
While Japanese serial killer and slasher lms focus in on unmotivated, or
sexually motivated, crimes, it is difcult, if not impossible, to explain their
pathologies by recourse to the type of pop-psychoanalysis that is often used
in relation to American horror. Neither do socio-economic reasons or class
divisions provide the answer. Here the serial killer is identied as a patho-
logical symptom of modernity and the supernatural ghost/monster articu-
lates the return of the repressed pre-modern body. It is clear that, while the
Japanese serial killer and slasher lms might seem at rst glance to be similar
to those of the West, they are in fact very diferent. From a monstrous deity to
a murderous foetus and a body-hopping killer, the monsters of Japanese horror
exceed taxonomies and pathologies of the psychologically motivated serial
killer. What unites these lms is their refusal of coherence through reference
sil kills nd slss jns-syl 167
in a master-narrative for example, psychoanalysis or Marxism which would
make the actions of their killers make sense. As such, these lms challenge
dominant ideologies around gender, sexuality and identity. The horror of such
lms perhaps lies in their refusal to construct an identiable subject, rather
than the actions of that subject.
9
Techno-Horror and
Urban Alienation
There has been no lack of causative factors proposed to account for this
crisis, including materialism, consumerism, the collapse of the economic
bubble, economic restructuring (risutora), the inuence of Western
individualism, a stressful and rigidly competitive education system,
nuclear families, the decline of extended families, smothering mothers,
absentee working parents, decline of parental and other authority,
non-transmission of normative values, lack of socialization, lack of
outdoor activity, urbanization, spatial isolation, media prurience, or
solitary absorption in electronic media, particularly electronic games or
the Internet. (Taylor 2006)
I
n contemporary Japanese cinema, the motifs of alienation, emptiness and
isolation contained within an apocalyptic mise-en-scne of techno-horror,
articulate urban alienation in a society dominated by the image, commodity
fetishisation and economic instability. Taylor points to the multiple factors that
have resulted in the social crisis in contemporary Japanese society. In The
Problem of Identity in Contemporary Japanese Horror Films, Iles documents
how outbreaks of public violence, as encapsulated in the cases of Aum Shinrikyo
and Shnen A, have amounted to an assault on the sanctity, the sense of a
close-knit family, of the Japanese and Japans island mentality which saw it
as a safe country in some way immune to the social ills of the outside world
(2005).
In addition to this, the rise in domestic violence, outbreaks of kireru (unmoti-
vated ts of rage) in primary and secondary schools, economic decline and the
erosion of the family unit have provoked what Iles terms an assault on its
self-image, its sense of security and social stability (2005) in a manner not
experienced since the end of the Allied Occupation in 1952. Napier terms this
the central Japanese myth, which is that Japan is a purely hierarchical, stable
no-oo nd ubn li nion 169
society in which all know their place and authority gures know what is best
(1996: 224). Iles asks: How could horror not emerge in cinema as a reection
of this social condition? (2005)
Given the omniscience of the media-spectacle nature of contemporary
Japanese society, in which serial killers become media stars and virtual com -
munication is replacing face-to-face encounters, it is no surprise that the
dominant form of horror is that in which the source of the horror is techno-
logical, whether as cursed video in Natakas Ring, a DVD that demonstrates
the best way to commit suicide (The Manual, Fukutani: 2003), mobile phone
calls that predict the time and date of death (One Missed Call, Miike: 2003),
a seemingly innocent pop song which leads people to suicide (Suicide Circle,
Sono: 2000), a video game which becomes all too real (St Johns Wort,
Shimoyama: 2001), the scientic invention of a machine which allows the dead
to materialise and whose presence then threatens the world with complete
annihilation (Ghost System, Nagae: 2002), and a version of the Internet which
allows the dead to return to the world of the living (Pulse, Kurosawa: 2001).
REPRESSION
In The Japanese Horror Film Series: Ring and Eko Eko Azarak, Tateishi
delimits two contradictory responses to the relation between modernity and
the past in Japan. The rst take the form of a cultural nostalgia, which involves
an attempt to retrieve the lost past and posit a continuity with the present; the
second is a repressing of the past in the name of progress and the so-called
modern (2003: 296). In the second response, the past becomes dened as
monstrous, chaotic and a threat to all things rational and modern. Tateishi
refers to the reformation of the education system during the Meiji Resto-
ration, in which all references to folklore and the supernatural were eliminated
(2003: 296). She writes: Coded as illogical and chaotic, and thus antithetical
to the project of modernisation, such elements were targeted as the embodi-
ments of those qualities that needed to be eliminated in the name of progress
(2003: 296). As we have seen, the Japanese horror lm is steeped in traditional
folkloric mythology in which the encounter with the past is shown to have dire
consequences (Takeishi 2003: 297). Writing about Ring, Tateishi argues that it
is a lm with modern sensibilities that also displays its ties with the lineage of
Japanese horror cinema to which it belongs (2003: 296).
ERUPTIONS
Nakatas Ring (1998) is an adaptation of Koji Suzukis novel, Ring (1992), the
rst in a trilogy of books. Ring was originally premiered on a double bill with
The Spiral (1998). The Spiral was not successful, and Nakata was commissioned
to make an alternative sequel, Ring 2 (1999), which proved much more popular
with audiences. In 2000, Tsurutas prequel, Ring 0: Birthday, completed the
trilogy.
In Ring, the central character, Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima), is a
modern Japanese career woman, who works as a television reporter and is inves-
tigating the urban myth of a cursed videotape that, once watched, leads to the
death of the viewer exactly seven days later. Signicantly, she is also divorced
and is struggling to combine her career with her duties as a mother to Yoichi
(Rikiya Otaka). Her niece, Tomoko Oishi (Yuko Takeuchi), dies in mysterious
circumstances at almost the same time as three of her friends. Reiko discovers
that Tomoko and her friends have apparently fallen victim to the videotape of
urban legend that she has been investigating. She subsequently locates the tape
in a cabin at the Izu Pacic resort and, like the typical woman in the horror
lm who runs into the arms of the killer rather than away from him, decides to
watch it. She receives a phone call as soon as she has viewed the tape, but all she
can hear is a sound of buzzing static. The resulting narrative is motivated by
Reikos desperate attempt, together with Ryujii her ex-husband and father of
Yoichi, to decipher the meaning of the videotape before the seven days lapse.
As Tateishi points out, the videotape in Ring is a similar mechanism of
dread to the parchment in Tourneurs Curse of the Demon, also known as Night
of the Demon (1957), adapted from M. R. Jamess short story, The Casting of
the Runes (1931). The videotape, however, embodies contemporary anxieties,
in that it is technology through which the repressed past reasserts itself. As
such, technology both metaphorically and literally signies death the loss
of tradition in the face of encroaching modernity is projected on to the female
body, making a series of implicit connections between technology, femininity
and death. Napier comments:
Women have gone from being clearly agents of wish-fullment in fantasies
of escape and cultural retrenchment to becoming aligned with the dark
side of modernity, representatives of a world which entraps and destroys
the male. These changes seem to parallel both the increased alienation
that modernity has brought and the multiplicity of identities now ofered
to Japanese women. (1996: 224)
The rst few scenes of Ring map out a series of associations between women,
femininity and death, and it is clear to see the relationship between women
and the dark side of modernity. The opening credits are superimposed on a
background of almost black, crashing waves. The lm then cuts to Tomoko
and her friend, Masami, discussing an urban legend about a cursed videotape,
which leads to the death of the viewer seven days after watching it. Tomoko
admits to Masami that she has seen it, but neither girl takes it seriously. When
Masami goes to the bathroom, leaving Tomoko alone in the kitchen/lounge,
the television suddenly turns on. Tomoko switches it of, but it comes back on
again. She turns around and gasps in horror, the moment of her death captured
in a still image which freezes the narrative. Water, as we have already seen, is
associated in Japanese horror cinema with pollution, impurity and the archaic
maternal body. Its juxtaposition with the urban legend of the videotape and
Tomokos subsequent death immediately constructs a relationship between
femininity, technology and death.
These associations are also implied by the montage of fragmentary, grainy
black and white images contained on the cursed videotape: a circular image
of the sky at night; a woman standing in front of a mirror brushing her hair;
a short temporal ellipse and a childs gure can be seen standing behind the
woman and to the right; another ellipse and we move back to the woman, who
is now looking across the room; oating kanji pictograms which spell the word
eruption; people crawling across the ground; a gure of a man with a white
towel draped over his head, pointing to the left, whilst crashing waves can be
seen in the background; a close-up of an eye in which the word Sada, written
in kanji (chastity the rst part of Sadakos name which, when translated,
means chaste child) is reected; and nally a long shot of a well. Once again,
the water symbolism signals impurity and chaos, and the word eruption and
the images of people struggling on the ground seem to suggest some sort of
dreadful catastrophe. The man pointing symbolises death, and the gures
of the woman and her child seem to imply a relation between the images
of disaster, chaos and femininity. The fact that the images are some sort of
psychic projection of rage on the part of a young girl, Sadako (Rie Inou), whose
still-living body we discover was put down a well by her father, formalises
the connection between monstrous femininity and the threat of technological
annihilation. In addition, the lm seems to imply that Sadako is the product
of an unnatural birth, conceived by her mother and a water deity, which again
suggests an association of the maternal with the irrational and chaotic.
The word eruption in the videotape, Reiko and Ryuji discover, is a reference
to Mount Mihara on Oshima Island, which erupted in 1950: Shizuko (Masako),
Sadakos mother, predicted this before her suicide. Whilst this is important in
terms of the narrative plot, in so far as it leads Reiko and Ryuji to the island
and eventually to Sadakos body, it also articulates specic cultural anxieties
around the perceived vulnerability of Japan to natural disasters. In fact, during
the twentieth century, Japan has seen thirteen earthquakes, including the Great
Kanto earthquake in 1923, which killed nearly 100,000 people; the Fukui
earthquake of 1948, which left approximately 600,000 injured and nearly 6,000
people dead; and more recently, the Hanshin/Awaji earthquake on 17

January
1995, accounting for 5,500 fatalities. Japan has 108 active volcanoes and an
estimated 15 eruptions per year. It is no surprise therefore that the term tsunami
(harbour wave) originated from Japan, which helps to explain the fear of the
destructive powers of the sea that is central to Ring. In a similar manner to
Godzilla, not only does the natural become mapped on to the technological,
in order to articulate fears around the vulnerability of Japan as a nation; it also
suggests that the loss of belief in traditional values, as implied through cultural
referencing through folklore and mythology, is responsible for the emergence
of the past from its watery grave. While critics have discussed the obvious
references to the folktales of Oiwa and Okiku, I would argue that the story of
the formation of Mount Fuji, which is implied by the reference to volcanoes
and natural disaster in the images on the cursed videotape, is an important
point of cultural reference in Ring; as such, it seems worth while discussing the
folktale and its moral message, in some detail.
Although there has not been an eruption since 1707, Mount Fuji, the highest
mountain in Japan, functions as a sacred symbol in Japanese folklore and
mythology, and has been a place of pilgrimage for centuries. In his discussion
of the legends of Mount Fuji (1992: 1309) F. Hadland Davis describes how
Mount Fuji, which is said to have appeared overnight, came to be. In the story,
a woodcutter called Visu one day hears a loud sound coming from underneath
the earth. Rushing outside, he sees Mount Fuji for the rst time. Hadland
Davis writes, Instead of a desolate plain he perceived a great mountain from
whose head sprang tongues of ames and dense clouds of smoke! Visu names
the mountain Fuji-yama, or the Never-dying Mountain. Hadland Davis
continues, Such perfect beauty suggested to the woodman the eternal, an idea
which no doubt gave rise to the Elixir of Life so frequently associated with the
mountain (1992: 136).
A priest comes to visit Visu and accuses him of not praying, threatening him
with all sorts of dire consequences as a result. Although the priest leaves, telling
Visu to work and pray, Visu spends all day praying and not working, thereby
neglecting his wife and children. As a consequence of this neglect, his crops
wither and die, and his wife and children become thin and emaciated. When
his wife confronts him, Visu becomes ofended; seizing his axe, he leaves the
house and climbs to the top of Mount Fuji, where he discovers three women
playing a game of Go.
Transxed, Visu watches the game, until eventually one of the women makes
a mistake, at which point he addresses the women, who turn into foxes and run
away. He stands up, his limbs stif and painful, and makes his way back to his
home, only to discover that not only is his home no longer there, but also that
no-oo nd ubn li ni on 173
he has been away for 300 years. In place of the house, Visu nds an old woman
and he asks her about the fate of his family, to which she replies:
Buried! hissed the old woman, and, if what you say is true, your
childrens children too. The Gods have prolonged your miserable life in
punishment for having neglected your wife and little children. (Hadland
Davis 1992: 139)
The horried Visu is reported to have spent the rest of his life repenting
for abandoning his family, and it is said that his white spirit can still be seen
on Mount Fuji when the moon is bright. This myth is important in that the
story of the neglect of ones familial duties nds specic cultural resonance in
contemporary Japan, and is expressed in the horror lm through the implicit,
or explicit, neglect of ones family obligations.
In Ring, the moral message of family values is articulated through the
doubling of Shizuko/Reiko and Sadako/Yoichi, and the discourse of child
abuse/neglect, both in the past and in the present. Reiko, a typical modern
Japanese career woman, struggles to juggle work and family, and as a conse-
quence of these competing demands, ends up neglecting her son, Yoichi.
This is made clear in the sequence of scenes leading up the point at which
Yoichi watches the cursed video. In the rst scene, Reiko and Ryuji are in
the news papers library, trying to interpret the images from the cursed video.
Looking at his watch, Ryuji asks Reiko, Is Yoichi OK?, to which she responds,
He is used to being on his own. In the next scene, the camera tracks Yoichi
as he makes his way out of the apartment building, on his way to school. In a
poignant moment, Yoichi turns, looking back up towards the building, before
despondently walking away. With no diegetic sound or other people within
the frame, the mise-en-scne provides a powerful visualisation of Yoichis
loneliness.
In the following scene, Reiko is shown watching television in her apartment,
when she receives a phone call from Ryuji who has deciphered the dialect on
the tape. In the next, Ryuji and Reiko are back in the library, looking for more
information on the images. Reiko gets up and telephones Yoichi to tell him that
she will be late again. It is obvious that he wants her to help him with something
because, although we do not hear his part of the conversation, Reikos response
is You can do it on your own, cant you? Her obvious excitement at coming
close to solving the mystery evaporates when Ryuji reminds her that she only
has four days left to live, and a moment later tells her to stay with Yoichi.
The nal short sequence begins with Reiko and Yoichi visiting her father.
The scene of the boy and his grandfather shing provides visual evidence of
the gap between Reiko and Yoichi. Yoichi and his grandfather are standing
close together in the water, whilst Reiko stands at the edge of the water, away
from both of them. The distance between Yoichi and Reiko is both literal and
metaphorical. Later that day, Reiko is shown putting Yoichi to bed. The room
is lit in blue, which we have seen is a common convention of Japanese horror
cinema, connoting isolation and loneliness, as well as suggesting the presence of
the supernatural. In the next sequence, a series of visual juxtapositions situates
Reiko as the double of Shizuko. During a phone conversation with Ryuji in
which he relates Shizukos suicide, and by association the abandonment of
Sadako, the lm cuts to a paused image of Shizuko on Ryujis television before
cutting back to Reiko, creating a visual parallel between the two women. In the
nal scene to be considered, Reiko wakes up suddenly and sees that Yoichi is
not in bed. Pulling back the doors that lead to the lounge, she is horried to
discover that Yoichi is watching the tape. These parallels also by implication
function to situate Sadako as the double of Yoichi, in that she too is neglected,
abandoned and eventually condemned to death as a result of neglect.
In the gure of Sadako, Ring is utilising the wronged woman and/or
vengeful yrei archetype of conventional Japanese horror. The brief glimpses
of the past situate Sadako rmly as an innocent victim of male oppression
and maternal neglect. These events are focalised through Ryuji, who possesses
psychic powers. In grainy black and white, these images show Shizuko demon-
strating her powers at a press conference. One of the journalists gets up and
cries Freak, and a minute later he falls to the ground dead with a look of
horror on his face. Shizuko turns to her daughter, who is standing at the
very edge of the stage, and says, Sadako you did that. As a result, Shizuko
and Sadako are ostracised, which leads to Shizuko committing suicide and
abandoning her daughter. It is Sadakos female powers that directly lead to
her slow and painful death down the well (Balmain: 2004). This can also be
seen as a reference to the oppression of the socially disadvantaged in Japanese
society. In addition, the ostracisation of Shizuko and Sadako can be seen as
criticism of the importance of Groupism (simply being a part of a group) in
contemporary Japanese society, in which to be outside the group is considered
as a metaphorical death. In Culture and Social Structures, Bada highlights
the continued importance of the collective in Japanese society:
To function alone, and thus be part of no group in particular, is almost
undesirable and incomprehensible . Conformity to a group is so
inte gral to Japanese society that a popular saying is the nail that sticks
up gets hammered down. (2003)
The emergence of the monstrous past is therefore implicitly connected
to the demise of the family and to the On system of obligations that dictate
wider relationships with the community. As such, rather than challenging an
oppressive reality, as Ring seems to in its sympathetic representation of Sadako
as the archetypical wronged woman, consciously or unconsciously, it also
reafrms that reality by constructing Reiko as a neglectful mother, who does
not look after her son properly. The fact that the only way to escape the curse
is to copy the video and give it to someone else suggests that there is no way to
escape the technological alienation of a post-modern, media-saturated society.
At the same time, the fact that Reiko gives the copy of the tape to her father,
who, as we nd out in the sequel, Ring 2, watched the video but did not pass
it on, seems to suggest a conict between the diferent value systems of the
modern nuclear family and of the pre-modern extended family as embedded
within the community. The nal sequences provide an example of the apoca-
lyptic mise-en-scne of techno-horror. A high-angled, long-distance shot of a
car disappearing into the distance on a deserted road and containing Reiko and
Yoichi signals the eventual outcome of the video virus, as a threat to the whole
community. The seemingly endless road and the foreboding dark skies seem to
suggest the presence of some dreadful catastrophe, just out of sight.
ISOLATION
In Miikes One Missed Call, technology also provides a conduit between
past and present, its very existence paradoxically enabling the return of the
monstrous repressed past. Instead of the videotape, it is the mobile phone that
functions as a transmitter of death, utilising the same sort of viral metaphor as
found in Ring. In addition, also similar to Ring, the dysfunctional family is the
causational factor in the production and reproduction of terror. In the credit
sequences, a uorescent orange sweet tracks the credits across the screen, from
right to left; a montage of clips of mobile phones divides the space horizon-
tally, and the only sound is the ringing of mobile phones. This is followed by a
long-distance, high-angled shot of a busy Tokyo, as commuters make their way
home. Childhood, isolation, abandonment, disconnection: are all signied in
the lms establishing sequences.
In the following scene, a group of college students in a restaurant exchange
mobile numbers. One by one, members of the group die in mysterious circum-
stances. Each death is pregured by the one missed call of the title, in which
the future self can be heard screaming in terror. These phone calls give the time
and date, but not the manner, of their owners deaths. As such, One Missed Call
utilises the same sort of premonition of death as Ring.
In Social, Cultural and Economic Issues in the Digital Divide Liter-
ature Review and Case Study of Japan, Otani comments that Japan has one
of the most developed telecommunication infrastructures in the world. Japan
has wired phone lines everywhere, and high levels of Internet availability. In
addition to this, 79.2 per cent of Japanese have access to the Internet from their
mobile phones (Otani 2003). In Japan, advances in mobile phone technology
have created a sub-culture, known as keitai culture. In keitai culture, the user
can not only access the Internet and send text messages and emails; but can also
watch television, produce home movies and transmit them to others, pay bills,
utilise GPS technology, subscribe to dating services, scan and pay for goods,
and play computer games (Nguyen 2005). As such, the mobile phone has
become an extension of the self, an inseparable part of ones personal identity.
In Japan, a Wireless Vision of Future for US: Mobile Internet is Mainstream
as Phones take Place of Computers, Faiola writes:
Cell phones have created extensions of personal space in Japan, said
Yuichi Kogure, who teaches a class on keitai culture at Tokyos Toita
Womens College. You take your world with you when you have your
keitai in your hand. In the keitai world, people forget where they are, and
women [with cell phones], for instance, can be seen putting on makeup
or brushing their hair in the subway, something considered highly rude
in Japan in the past. But now, people are walled inside their own little
world with their keitai and arent even aware of what theyre doing in
public. (2008)
In One Missed Call, a number of outside crowd scenes depict Tokyo as a
city of strangers; every member of the crowd is holding a mobile phone and
either texting or speaking on the phone to someone; immersed in their self-
constructed keitai world, they are indiferent to the world outside.
At Bukkyo University in Japan, fty-two courses are taught utilising the
mobile phone as a mechanism of communication between lecturers and staf.
Instead of asking direct questions, students send their queries and comments
to the lecturers through their mobile phones (Faiola: 2008). Around seventy
per cent of all Japanese own one keitai or more, and there are eighty-nine
million keitai subscriptions. Although the use of mobile phone technologies
has been critiqued as causing the breakdown of the family in an age of the
absent family, Kohiyama suggests that it may well lead to the formation of
a new, improved age of the family, in that it can be seen as allowing better,
rather than worse, communication (2005). In One Missed Call, keitai culture is
viewed from the negative position, as constitutive of a lack of communication,
with characters isolated in their own walled worlds.
The protagonist in One Missed Call is Yumi Nakamura (Kou Shibasaki), who
is studying social sciences at university. The theme of child abuse, abandonment
and neglect is introduced early in the lm with a scene set during a lecture on
child abuse. In this scene, Yumi is sitting in front of her friends, Yoko Okazaki
(Anna Nagata) and Natsumi Konishi (Kazue Fukiishi). Distracted, Yoko and
Natsumi chat and send messages on their mobile phones. However, when
asked about the content of the lecture, Yoko stands up and says abuse spawns
more abuse. As in Ring, the breakdown in relations between children and their
mothers, as displayed in One Missed Call through the rhetoric of child abuse, is
situated as a causational factor in the ensuing production of the vengeful ghost,
who kills indiscriminately.
Immediately following the scene in the lecture theatre is a brief montage
of shots which relate visually to the main theme: a close-up of a pair of adult
hands as they brutally cut the toenail of an unidentied subject; a disorientating
shot past screen doors; a close-up of a closed eye, which then looks through a
peephole; and nally, a close-up of a mobile phone. The camera cuts to Yumi,
sitting in darkness in her apartment, creating an explicit association between
the fragmentary images from the past and Yumi in the present. Further, Yumis
abuse at the hands of her mother is a signicant narrative thread, in that not
only does it parallel the past, but also, importantly, leaves Yumi susceptible to
possession by evil forces: a factor which becomes key towards the conclusion
of the lm.
Later that night, whilst Yumi is on the phone to Yoko, Yoko is pushed of a
platform by a mysterious force into the path of a speeding train. The next day,
another of her friends, Kenji Kawai (Atsushi Ida) is killed when he falls into an
empty lift shaft. When Yumis close friend, Natsumi, also receives a video clip
of her forthcoming death, Yumi and Hiroshi Yamashita (Shinichi Tsutsumi),
whose sister died after receiving a similar message on her mobile phone, decide
to try to nd out who or what is behind the deaths. However,Yumi and Hiroshi
do not uncover the identity of the vengeful ghost until it is too late to save
Natsumi.
The presence of the media, who are quick to latch on to the story of these
phone messages, which predict the time and date when the recipient will die,
functions as a mechanism through which to critique the media-saturated
spaces of contemporary Japanese society, in which the real has been replaced
by the hyper-real. Natsumi is persuaded to participate in a live transmission
of an exorcism by an unpleasant male reporter. The scene of the attempted
exorcism functions not only as an explicit critique of the invasion of the media
into everyday life, but also to highlight the increasing disconnection between
people in contemporary Japanese society; neither the lm crew nor the people
in the Tokyo square outside the studio where the events are being projected
demonstrate any interest in Natsumis plight.
The stage set for the exorcism utilises conventional colour codings associated
with the supernatural in Japanese horror cinema. Bathed in red light, the screen
door behind Natsumi can be seen as an intertextual reference to the original
cycle of ghost stories in the 1950s and 1960s, as can the green light with which
part of the studio is lit. The long black hair that comes out of the ground and
down from the ceiling, by this time a common convention in Japanese horror
lm, indicates the presence of a vengeful yrei or deity. However, the psychic
researcher, Masakazu Hiroyama, is unable to stop the demonic vengeful ghost
and the exorcism is halted mid-way through. Here One Missed Call departs
from the traditions and superstitions of pre-modern Japan, as captured in the
original cycle of ghost stories in the 1960s, in which the appropriate rituals
would lay the unquiet spirit to rest. As such, there is an implied nostalgia for
the pre-modern, before the commodication of the self and the dispersion of
tradition into pure signiers without origin.
The interweaving of present and past is shown in the next scene. This is
signicant, as it operates to throw the diegetic and extra-diegetic spectator
on to the wrong path, as well as foregrounding Yumis vulnerability. In this
extension of the previous short montage of clips, the camera pans up to the
face of Yumi, as her mother tears out her toenails with the clipper. Her mother
grabs her and drags her to her grandmothers room, forcing her to look through
a peephole in the door where she is confronted with the sight of her grand-
mothers hanging body. This traumatic past event explains Yumis seemingly
irrational fear of peepholes, introduced at the beginning of the lm.
As in Ring, the source of the horror seems to be tied up with the death
of a young girl. In One Missed Call, it is the death of a ten-year-old, Mimiko
Mizunuma, from an asthma attack, that appears to be the precipitating factor
for the strange murders by mobile. It transpires that the girls sister, Nanako,
had been in and out of hospital with unexplained injuries, leading to what turns
out to be a mistaken belief that the mother, Marie (Mariko Tsutsui), sufers
from Munchausens syndrome by proxy. As a consequence, Nanako is placed
in a childrens home, where Yamashita manages to track her down. It appears,
at least on the surface, that the girl has been abandoned by her mother, who has
not been to visit her in six months. Yumi tracks Marie down to an old abandoned
hospital. In typical horror lm fashion, Yumi is chased down the corridors, as
she desperately tries to get away from a monstrous force from the past. Green
and red lighting, as in traditional Japanese horror cinema, is used to connote the
presence of the supernatural. Hiroshi turns up just in time to rescue her, but it
is Yumi who has to confront the monstrous maternal on her own.
The rotting body of Marie is found in a wooden box in one of the rooms. It
seems that she has been dead since she disappeared. However, as is common
in Japanese horror cinema, being dead is not sufcient to keep the body from
continuing to live; the proper funeral rites and remembrances need to be said
in order to lay the unquiet spirit to rest. As Yumi is confronted by the abject
mother gure, past and present coalesce, and the dead body switches between
the decaying corpse of Marie and the form of Yumis mother. In an acceptance
of responsibility for the sins of the other, Yumi is an evocative remnant of
the past. When the rotting corpse puts her hands around Yumis neck, Yumi
forgives the mother (both present and past), and reassures the monstrous
maternal corpse. She tells the mother, Ill be a good girl, and promises not
to leave her alone. At this stage, Yumi appears to be the typical self-sacricing
woman. Hiroshi breaks into the room and nds that Yumi has taken on the
role of the mother, sitting with the corpse of the dead Marie cradled in her
arms. This image of child and mother (with the child holding the mother)
is a subversion of the iconic image of mother and child that was a prominent
feature in Japanese horror cinema in the 1950s and 1960s. With the corpse of
the monstrous mother laid to rest, it would appear that the primal chaotic past
has been defeated.
However, an old lm found at the childrens home sheds a diferent light on
past events, and shows that it was in fact Mimiko, desperate for attention, who
caused her sisters injuries. The signicance of the orange sweet is explained;
it was the treat that Mimiko would give her sister in order to keep her from
telling anyone about what was happening. The lm within the lm shows
Marie catching Mimiko in the act of hurting her sister. As Marie grabs her
daughter and draws back, Mimiko has an asthma attack but, instead of looking
after her, Marie walks out of the apartment, leaving Mimiko to die. In a further
subversion of conventions, Mimiko is not the typical innocent victim of either
maternal or paternal oppression; instead, One Missed Call seems to imply that
Mimiko is the result of the sort of extreme narcissistic individualism that has
replaced the communal system of obligations of the pre-modern. The lm
replaces the wounded gure of the wronged woman killed before her time,
which can be understood, with pure evil, which cannot.
In addition, in the nal sequences, Mimiko takes possession of Yumis
body. This transformation could be interpreted as the abused child becoming
the abuser. Indeed, in One Missed Call 2, it is suggested that the evil child,
whether Mimiko or Li-Li, is not a separate individual but rather an external
projection of an internal evil. In One Missed Call Hiroshi fails to recognise
Yumis transformation and, as a consequence, becomes another victim of the
vengeful female spirit when Yumi stabs him. The nal scene takes place in the
hospital where Hiroshi is recovering from his injuries. Dressed all in white,
with her long dark hair owing, Yumi is clearly positioned as an unquiet yrei.
The nal shot is of Yumi leaning over Hiroshi, placing an orange sweet in his
mouth mirroring the actions of Mimiko when torturing Nanako; as she steps
back, a knife can be seen in the hand behind her back.

Creeds comments on
the nal shots of the femme castratrice in Brian de Palmas Sisters (1973) seem
applicable here: The threatening power of woman lingers in the nal shot,
pointing to the insecurity of the male imagination. Man must be ever on the
alert, poised in phallic anticipation wherever signs of the deadly femme castra-
trice are present (1993: 138). It seems that the wronged woman archetype,
central to traditional mythology, has been replaced by the monstrous feminine
more commonly associated with the American horror lm.
DISCONNECTION
Yukio Saito, a Japanese Methodist minister and the instigator of Lifeline,
Japans rst suicide hotline, suggests that high suicide rates in Japan amongst
the young stem from the disconnection between people as a result of mobile,
Internet and other technologies:
a particular form of modern loneliness washing over Japan, where nuclear
families occupy the same home but scarcely communicate, where dating
and friendships are negotiated on the tiny screens of mobile phones,
and where the phenomenon of shut-ins is total, housebound seclusion
has become endemic. What we have seen is the collapse of the family
throughout Japan, even in small towns, said Mr. Saito, who is married
and has a grown son. Loneliness has become universal.

(cited in French
2003)
Sonos 2002 lm, Suicide Circle (also known as Suicide Club), takes a negative
view of Japans media-saturated culture as epitomised by the banal surfaces
of J-pop and keitai culture. Loneliness is the dominant theme in this lm,
which deals with the growing trend in Japanese society for suicide amongst
the young, as well as the unexplained outbreaks of violence at the home and in
the classroom. Suicide is inscribed as a type of post-modern virus, travelling
through the Internet, mobile phones and video technologies, and mainly
afecting the younger, disillusioned generation. Crawford writes:
Although the suicide surge seems to have afected many age groups in
Japan, there has also been an unnerving escalation in youth crime and
violence, a cultural development that is also explored in Suicide Club.
(2003: 306)
Suicide Circles shocking opening sequences, with fty-four schoolgirls holding
hands and jumping of a platform in front of a train, sets the tone for the resulting
surreal, spiralling violence. Hundreds of young people, mainly but not exclu-
sively female, acting in groups and on their own, commit suicide in ever more
innovative and disturbing fashion: a group of schoolgirls and boys jump of a
roof; a mother nonchalantly cuts through her hand as she prepares the family
dinner; and two actors stab themselves in the stomach during a live perfor-
mance. In an interview, Sono talks about the replacement of real communication
between people with virtual conversations though cyberspace, as arti culating
some type of suicidal impulse on behalf of the Internet generation:
The Internet is a way of communication which I think is suicidal.
Anonymous words or opinions travel around the world. It has a freedom,
but at the same time it is very dangerous. It weakens the responsibility and
originality of the words. It doesnt have a face at all. (cited in Crawford
2003: 311)
Crawford argues that the urban techno-alienation in Suicide Circle is most
fully encapsulated in the gure of the Bat, a teenage girl who spends her
time watching an Internet website which logs suicides as ashing circles by
gender before they happen (2003: 311). A group of nihilistic young men, led by
the charismatic and sadistic Genesis, are also signiers of techno-alienation.
With his blond hair and gunguro outt (gunguro being a street fashion identi-
able through bleached hair and goth-like clothes), Genesis (played by real-life
musician Rolly) is a sociopath, brutally kicking animals to death and instigating
the rape of young women, including the Bat whom he has kidnapped. The
police eventually capture Genesis, who is all too keen to take credit for the wave
of suicides, as he poses for the ashing cameras of the media. For Genesis,
image and celebrity are everything; his nihilistic obsession with surfaces can
be interpreted as an implied criticism of contemporary Japanese culture. In
Japans Gross National Cool, McGray writes:
the Japanese art magazine BT equate[s] contemporary Japanese culture
with Super Flat art, devoid of perspective and devoid of hierarchy,
all existing equally and simultaneously. We dont have any religion,
painter Takashi Murakami told the magazine, a bit more cynically. We
just need the big power of entertainment. (2002)
The lm stresses that it is ultimately the lack of connection between
individuals that causes the suicides, irrespective of who is instigating them.
In fact, as Iles points out, the scenes of the suicides seem to suggest that their
whole point is the desire of the individual to be part of a group, rather than
an isolated individual. Iles writes: Visually, this is apparent in the cameras
treatment of the victims of the mass suicides, presenting their corpses as a
jumbled assortment of body parts, the identity of one indistinguishable from
that of any other in the pile (2005).
The reluctance of the police to take the suicides seriously, as a social rather
than an individual issue, is explicitly condemned. The ofcer in charge of
the investigation, Detective Kuroda (Ryo Ishibashi), receives strange phone
calls that seem to be from someone who has knowledge of who or what is
causing the suicides. However, Kuroda takes little notice of the calls and seems
reluctant to designate the suicides as hanzai (a crime rather than jiken, or
accident, as suicides are understood by the police), which would imply social
responsibility. Instead, it is easier to deem them accidents, or the acts of one
individual, even after a white bag containing a circle of esh sewn together
from the next wave of potential suicides is found at the site of each death. This
circle of esh can be interpreted as a reference to giri, or the social cloth that
binds individuals together. As such, Suicide Circle articulates a nostalgia for
the loss of pre-modern traditions, which embedded the individual within the
community.
At the same time, Kuroda is a representation of the absent father, who spends
all his time at work and therefore neglects his family. Therefore, it comes as
little surprise when he returns home from work one day to nd his family have
also become victims. In a moment of epiphany, Kuroda realises that his neglect
is responsible for his familys deaths; his failure to consider the suicides as
murder because they did not directly afect him has directly caused his
familys actions. Kuroda is left with little alternative but to reproduce the acts
that caused the loss of his family and commit suicide. In this manner, suicide
can be seen as a viral metaphor for social crisis.
The banal J-pop songs played by a group made up of young children,
called Dessert, appear to be related to the suicides in some way or form, thus
expressing cultural anxieties over childhood. This is also the case in One Missed
Call, when the ring tone is identied as being from a childrens television
programme. Their music seems omnipresent. The rst song, Mail Me, opens
the lm, and can be seen playing on the television in a number of houses where
the suicides take place; their second song provides a backdrop to the scenes of
multiple suicides; and the lm concludes with the bands nal performance.
One young teenager, Mitsuko (Saya Hagiwara), who resists the temptation
to commit suicide even after her boyfriend kills himself, attempts to track
down the code transmitted by mobile phone. She discovers that the answer
lies in a poster showing Dessert. Mitsuko attends Desserts nal performance
as a group (and nal performance in the lm), at which she seems to be the
only viewer. She is asked by Dessert if she has connections with her family,
with her boyfriend and with the Group itself. She insists, however, that she is
herself and the group applaud her answer. The denouement, though, is still to
come. Mitsuko joins a group of young people behind the stage who are having
strips of their skin shaved of. Does this mean that Mitsuko too is going to
commit suicide? This ending is, as Iles (2005) points out, ambiguous. The nal
scene is set in the underground station where the rst mass suicide took place.
Having been forced to take the matter seriously, the police are now patrolling
the platform. As a train pulls in, Mitsuko joins hands with a line of others, thus
repeating the opening sequence. Just before the train arrives in the station, a
policeman puts his hand on Mitsukos shoulder, signifying perhaps his desire
to reconnect, but she shrugs it of. Iles comments:
Jisatsu sakura thus presents no resolution to the urban problem, only a
critique of its sources and analysis of its form. Its rejection of interpersonal
communication and care is pessimistic, suggesting the impossibility
of urban, consumerist society as something substantiable and yet its
suggestion that children hold the answer to overcome the alienation of
the age is a welcome hint of hope. (2005)
Uenos Ambiguous (2003), supposedly based on a real incident in Japan,
also concentrates on a group of individuals brought together by loneliness and
isolation, who plan to commit suicide together. They communicate with each
other through text messages. However, whilst waiting for a fth person to turn
up, the other members of the group connect with each other. This connection
is through acts of material physicality, such as eating, having sex and working
together. When the fth member arrives and commits suicide in front of the
others, they suddenly decide that, in fact, they no longer wish to die. Ambiguous
seems to ofer a more redemptive vision of the ability of technology to connect
people, in a world of disconnection, than Suicide Circle.
ANNIHILATION
It is in Kurosawas lms that a critique of the postmodern, or post-
individual, form of identity nds its most consistent expression, and
where characters struggle most desperately against the overwhelming
commodication of their selves. (Iles 2005)
The premise for Kurosawas Pulse is that the world of the dead is overcrowded
and that they are trying to escape into the world of the living, using the Internet
as a conduit between the two planes of existence. These shadowy gures begin
to seep into the real world and people start to disappear, uttering Help me
before their body disintegrates into black ashes, leaving a transient mark of
their being in the process. Rather than being able to move on to the world
of the dead, individuals who die like this are condemned to spend eternity
in isolation. An Internet site directs the isolated and alienated to a forbidden
room, whose door is closed with red tape. These forbidden rooms can be seen
as an explicit reference to Internet chat rooms. Once the victims unseal the
door, they fall prey to the hungry wraith-like ghosts of the dead. In its delimi-
tation of the isolated subject who makes contact only through the computer
keyboard, Pulse is commenting on the generation of Internet users, or Otaku,
who prefer the company aforded by technology and virtual relationships
rather than real connections. The ghosts within the machine, sucking the life
out of its victims, are clearly a metaphor for the centrality of disconnection
amongst the younger generation in Japan.
The narrative is presented from the perspective of Michi (Aso Kumiko)
and Ryosuke Kawashima (Katou Haruhiko), both of whom come into contact
with dangerous ghosts and barely escape with their lives. By the end of the
lm, only Michi survives; Ryosuke simply fades away, turning into a pile of
ashes. Like the disgured face of the vengeful female yrei, the ashes of those
who disappear signify the persistence of historical trauma (Iles 2008).
Visually and thematically, the opening sequences introduce isolation,
empti ness and apocalypse, which form the dominant themes of the subse-
quent narrative. The rst shot is of an ocean liner. A conversation takes place
between unnamed men about their position at sea and about their course. The
next shot shows one of the men walking towards the edge of the boat. A female
gure can be seen against the ships railing. She is standing with her back to
the camera. A female voice-over says, It began one day without warning. The
next scene is of a dark, deserted room; for a few seconds, the image ickers like
a light going on and of. Here the idea of the embodied gaze is dispensed with;
instead, perspective, as in Japanese ukiyo-e images and paintings, focuses on
empty spaces and unusual angles. In the following scene, the location changes
to what appears to be a rooftop garden. Green plants and the bright costumes
of the female characters ofer a pastoral mise-en-scne, which is the opposite
of the dark and dingy room in the preceding scene. These opening sequences
produce a series of oppositions: emptiness/fullness, death/life, technology/
nature and dark/light. Again, water imagery is omnipresent in the opening
shots of the ship at sea, connoting the presence of the chaotic and threatening.
Fig. 9.1 Sole survivors: Ryosuke and Michi, Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001, Th /
Magnolia / The Kobal Collection)
The mainly static camera in the scenes in the garden and the placement of
the camera behind a glass partition create a distance between the screen and
the extra-diegetic spectator. In Pulse, the pastoral is situated in opposition to
the technological and the apocalyptic. Scenes of Michi working, towards the
beginning of the lm, utilise a saturated palate of colours reecting the natural
world. As the world becomes ever more empty, the colour palate shifts into
greyish-green, as if technology were somehow responsible for sucking the life
out of nature.
The use of predominantly medium and long shots, and deep focus,
throughout the narrative efectively mirrors the feeling of quiet despair that
exists between the main characters. The following scene, in which Michi goes
to see what is happening with a co-worker, Taguichi (Kenji Mizuhashi), whom
no one has heard from for a week, foregrounds the increasing disconnection
between people. Michi takes the bus to Taguichis apartment. She seems to be
the only passenger, which pregures the gradual disappearance of people from
the real world. Long shots cross-cut with medium shots are used to track Michi
as she walks across a deserted street and up the stairs to Taguichis apartment.
Fig. 9.2 Spaces within spaces, Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001, Th / Magnolia /
The Kobal Collection)
voice-over at the end, in which Michi states that she had gained happiness
through her relationship with Ryosuke, articulates the continuance of a desire
for connection between individuals, the ending is typical of Japanese fairy tales
and the sense of mono-no-aware that we have seen is an integral component of
them.
DYSTOPIAS
Techno-horror constructs a dystopian view of society, whether in the present or
in the future. Death, both symbolic and literal, is omnipresent, as the eventual
outcome of technological progress. Monstrous mothers are superseded by
their demonic daughters and adolescent angst leads to mass suicides, while
ghosts from the Internet take over the world and no one seems to notice or care.
In the wake of the bursting of the Japanese economic bubble in the 1990s, it is
not surprising that dystopian visions of the future would dominate Japanese
culture. Napier writes, In the 1980s this image of Japan as a technological and
social Utopia came increasingly under attack from both inside and outside
(1996: 182). And yet one has to wonder whether, walled into their own worlds,
the consumers of keitai culture will even notice.
Conclusion
S
ince the success of the remake of Nakatas Ring, as The Ring, a growing
number of Japanese lms have been remade for Western audiences. These
include Ju-On: The Grudge, Dark Water and Pulse, which have been remade
respectively as The Grudge (Shimizu: 2004), Dark Water (Salles: 2005) and
Pulse (Sonzero: 2003), with varying degrees of success. Pulse is, perhaps, one
of the least successful, as the horror in Kurosawas version is not so much
thematic as cinematic, as we have seen. As in Ring, the adaptation reworks
Pulse to t in with the structure of the slasher lm, but not as efectively as in
the former. Nakatas own adaptation of Ring Two (2005) clearly points out the
problems with EastWest adaptations; the complexity of Ring 2 is reduced to
a simple supernatural possession lm, which bears little relation to its source.
In terms of Iwabuchis concept of cultural odour, it would seem that racial
and national borders have been erased through the process of adaptation. In
order to clarify this, I have chosen to conclude this study of Japanese horror
by comparing the denouement in Ju-On: The Grudge with that in The Grudge.
This begins when the central female character, Rika (Megumi Okina) in the
former lm and Karen (Sarah Michelle Geller) in the latter, comes face to face
with her nemesis, the monstrous Kayako.
In my analysis of this scene in Chapter 7, I suggested that Kayako (Takako
Fuji) transforms from vengeful yrei to the more sympathetic archetype of
the wronged woman. In The Grudge, there is no Takeo, and rather than going
to rescue a friend, as is the case with Rika, Karen goes to save her boyfriend,
Doug (Jason Behr). Here it is possible to interpret Kayako as working with
stereotypes of the dangerous Orient, in her role as iconic fatal femme who is
a threat to white masculinity and therefore the very foundations of American
society. Indeed, the manner in which she bends over Doug visually suggests
the rape of the Self (Doug/America) by the threatening Other (Kayako/
Japan) (Balmain: 2007a).
conclusi on 189
In addition, unlike the passive respectable femininity of Rika in Ju-On: The
Grudge, Karen is the typical nal girl of American horror lm in that she
defeats, if only for a short time, the monstrous Other. The casting of Sarah
Michelle Geller, known to Western audiences for her role as Bufy in the long-
running television series, Bufy the Vampire Slayer, meant that not only was
the character of Karen associated with strength, determination and power, but
also that it would not be good publicity for her character to die, unlike her
counterpart Rika in the original. However, Karen is killed of in Shimizus
sequel and her role in the narrative is taken over by her sister, Audrey (Amber
Tamblyn), who succeeds where Karen fails and defeats the murderous
Kayako.
In Ju-On: The Grudge, Rika is situated, at both a visual and thematic level,
as the double of Kayako, two women in an oppressive patriarchal world. Just
before Kayako crawls down the stairs, Rika looks in the mirror and sees, not her
own reection, but that of Kayako staring back at her. And Rika, like Kayako
before her, becomes a victim of male violence; Takeo reaches his bloody hand
towards Rikas face and the screen fades to black. In The Grudge, however,
Karen remains separate to the monstrous Kayako; when Karen looks in the
mirror she sees, not Kayako as Rika does, but her own reection. As such, this
maintains rather than subverts binary distinctions between Self (America/
good) and Other (Japan/evil), reproducing Western fears around the oriental
Other which can be traced back to the discourse of Yellow Peril which emerged
in the 1920s and 1930s. China (and other East Asian nations) were constructed
as a place of mystery and danger that threatened the stability of the democratic
order in the West. The archetypical gure of Fu Manchu is the literary and
cinematic embodiment of the Yellow Peril. First appearing in the novels of
British writer Sax Rohmer, Fu Manchu was a popular gure both in silent and
sound lms, including Don Sharps lms of the 1960s and 1970s in which the
character was played by Christopher Lee.
In the nal scene of The Grudge Karen is in hospital, where her dead
boyfriends body is awaiting identication. As she stands by the body, which
is obscured from view by a white sheet, long black hair falls over the rail of
the trolley. Then we hear a loud noise, as a white arm comes out from under
the sheet and the murderous Kayako appears behind Karen. The nal shot of
the lm is a close-up of Kayakos eye, her hair obscuring her features, as seen
from the point of view of Karen. This image is very similar to that of Sadako
in Ring, constructing perhaps a deliberate relationship between the two lms
and, as such, conforming to Western expectations about the vengeful ghost in
the Japanese horror lm.
In Ju-On: The Grudge, the nal image is that of Kayako as wronged
woman, her broken body leaning against a wall in the attic. As the camera
pans in, Kayakos eyes suddenly open, staring straight towards the extra-
190 i ntroducti on to japanese horror fi lm
diegetic spectator. While this look can be considered a signier of the threat
she continues to pose, it can also be seen as requiring an empathic response
from the audience Kayako is situated as the wronged woman of traditional
Japanese mythology. In The Grudge, however, the nal look is both horric and
threatening, and the corresponding fragmentation of the female body can be
seen to act as a fetish, or disavowal, of the power of the gaze of the Other.
In these terms, Ju-On: The Grudge can be seen as working within the
conventions of Japanese horror, with its message of female oppression and
violent men, articulated through reference to the archetype of the wronged
woman that has dominated Japanese horror from its earliest days. It is also
slower, more episodic and less structured than the remake. As such, it could be
argued that the diference between the lms is structural and stylistic rather
than thematic.
Just as the West has rewritten the script of Japanese horror, so has Japan
adapted Western horror, bringing its own cultural mythology to bear on the
iconic gure of Dracula in Legacy of Dracula (1970), Lake of Dracula (1971)
and Evil of Dracula (1974), all of which were directed by Michio Yamamoto.
Further, Hirai Tar (18941965), a famous Japanese writer of mystery and
detective ction and one of the countrys most noted authors, was better
known as Edogawa Rampo, a pseudonym which paid homage to Edgar Allan
Poe. It was the opening up of Japan to the West at the start of the Meiji Era
that inaugurated a new age of Japanese crime ction, which, up until then, had
been based around old court trials (Sharp 2006: 26). There have been many
lm versions of Rampos work, including Blind Beast, The Mystery of Rampo
(Mayuzumi and Okuyama: 1994) and, most recently, Rampo Noir (Jissoji et
al.: 2005) lms which themselves have arguably inuenced Western horror
cinema.
It is clear, therefore, that global ows and cultural exchange between the West
and Japan have led to the cross-fertilisation of contemporary horror cinema,
both in Japan and the West. The concept of fusion, based on equality rather
than dominance, can provide a way of interpreting this cultural exchange. As
Said writes:
Rather than a manufactured clash of civilizations, we need to concentrate
on the slow working together of cultures that overlap, borrow from each
other, and live together in far more interesting ways that any abridged or
inauthentic mode of understanding can allow. ([1973] 2003: xxii)
Select Filmography
Many of the lms are available in the UK, although some are still to be released in either the UK
or the USA. These titles are available from reputable on-line companies, including Amazon
(www.amazon.co.uk). The main on-line company that I used for difcult-to-nd DVDs was
YesAsia (www.yesasia.com).
A Certain Nights Kiss (Aru yo no seppun, Yasuki Chiba: 1946).
Ambiguous (Toshiya Ueno: 2003).
Angel Dust (Enjeru dasuto, Sogo Ishii: 1994).
Angel Guts: High School Co-Ed (Joksei: tenshi no harawata, Chusei Sone: 1978).
Angels Guts: Nami (Tenshi no harawata: Nami, Noboru Tanaka: 1979).
Angel Guts: Red Classroom (Tenshi no harawata: Akai kyshitsu, Chusei Sone: 1979).
Angel Guts: Red Dizziness (Tenshi no harawata: Akai memai, Takashi Ishii: 1988).
Angel Guts: Red Lightning (Tenshi no harawata: Akai senk, Takashi Ishii: 1994).
Angel Guts: Red Porno (Tenshi no harawata: Akai inga, Toshiharu Ikeda: 1981).
Another Heaven (Anazahevun, Jji Iida: 2000).
Audition (dishon, Takashi Miike: 1999).
Band of Ninja (Ninja bugei-cho, Nagisa shima: 1967).
Battle Royale (Batoru rowaiaru, Kinji Fukasaku: 2000).
Bedroom, The (Shisenjiyou no Aria, Hsayasu Sato: 1992).
Black Snow (Kurio Yuki, Tetsuji Takechi: 1965).
Blind Beast (Mjuu, Yasuzo Masumura: 1969).
Bride from Hell (Botan-dr, Satsuo Yamamoto: 1968).
Carved: A Slit-Mouthed Woman (Kuchisake-onna, Kji Shiraishi: 2007).
Ceiling at Utsunomiya, The (Kaii Utsunomiya tsuritenjo, Nobuo Nakagawa: 1956).
Children of Hiroshima (Genbaku no ko, Kaneto Shind: 1952).
Crazed Fruit (Kurutta ka, K Nakahira: 1956).
Crazy Lips (Hakkyousuru kuchibiru, Hirohisa Sasaki: 2000).
Cursed (Ch kowai hanashi A: yami no karasu, Yoshihiro Hoshino: 2004).
Dark Tales of Japan (Kumo Onna, Takashi Shimizu et al.: 2004).
Dark Water (Honogurai mizu no soko kara, Hideo Nakata: 2002).
Daydream (Hakujit sumu, Tetsuji Takechi: 1964).
Discarnates, The (Ijintachi tono natsu, Obayashi Nohuhiko: 1988).
Dolls (Takeshi Kitano: 2002).
Double Suicide (Shinj: Ten no Amijima, Masahiro Shinodam: 1969).
Eko Eko Azarak: The Birth of the Wizard (Eko Eko Azaraku II, Shimako Sato: 1996).
Eko Eko Azarak: Misa the Dark Angel (Eko Eko Azaraku III, Katsuhito Ueno: 1998).
Eko Eko Azarak: Wizard of Darkness (Eko Eko Azaraku, Shimako Sato: 1995).
Embryo Hunts in Secret, The (Taiji ga mitsuryosuru toki, Koji Wakamatsu: 1966).
Empire of Passion (Ai no borei, Nagisa shima: 1978).
Empire of the Senses (Ai no Corrida, Nagisa shima: 1976).
Entrails of a Beautiful Woman (Bijo no harawata, Kazuo Gaira Komizu: 1986).
Entrails of a Virgin (Shjo no harawata, Kazuo Gaira Komizu: 1986).
Evil Dead Trap (Shiryo no wana, Toshiharu Ikeda: 1988).
Evil Dead Trap 2: Hideki (Shiryo no wana 2: Hideki, Iz Hashimoto: 1991).
Evil Dead Trap 3: Broken Love Killer (Chigireta ai no satsujin, Toshiharu Ikeda: 1993).
Evil of Dracula (Chi o suu bara, Michio Yamamoto: 1974).
Face of Another (Tanin no kao, Hiroshi Teshigahara: 1966).
Face to Face (Casey Chan: 2002).
Floating Weeds (Ukigusa, Yasujiro Ozu: 1959).
Freeze Me (Takashi Ishii: 2000).
Frightful School Horror, A (Kyoufu Gakuen, Yamaguchi Makoto: 2001).
Ghost Cat of Otama Pond, The (Kaibyo Otamagaike, Yoshiro Ishikawa: 1960).
Ghost Story of Yotsuya (Tokaido-Yotsuyakaidan, Shozu Makino: 1912).
Ghost Story of Yotsuya (Tokaido-Yotsuyakaidan, Nobuo Nakagawa: 1959).
Ghost System (Gosuto shisutemu, Ikazu Nagae: 2002).
Ghosts of Kagama-Ga-Fuchi (Kaidan kagamigafuchi, Masaki Mori: 1959).
Ghosts of Kasane Swamp, The (Kaidan Kasanegafuchi, Nobuo Nakagawa: 1957).
Godzilla (Gojira, Ishir Honda: 1954).
Go Go Second Time Virgin (Yuke yuke nidome no shjo, Koji Wakamatsu: 1969).
Grudge, The (Takashi Shimizu: 2004).
Guard from the Underground, The (Jigoku no keibn, Kiyoshi Kurosawa: 1992).
Haunted Lantern (Otsuyu: Kaidan botan-dr, Masaru Tsushima, 1998).
Haunted School 1 (Gakkou no Kaidan 1, Hirayama Hideyuki: 1995).
Hell (Jigoku, Nobuo Nakagawa: 1960).
Hellish Love (Seidan botan-dr, Chusei Sone: 1972).
Howls Moving Castle (Hauru no ugoku shiro, Hayao Miyazaki: 2004).
Ichi the Killer (Koroshiya 1, Takashi Miike: 2000).
Illusion of Blood (Yotsuya Kaidan, Shir Toyoda: 1966).
Infection (Kansen, Masayuki Ochiai: 2004).
Inugami (Masato Harada: 2001).
Isola (Isola: Tajuu jinkaku shj, Toshiyuki Mizutani: 2000).
Japanese Horror Anthology II: Horror of Legend (Kiyomi Yada et al.: 2002).
Junk: Evil Dead Hunting (Junk: Shiry-gari, Atsushi Muroga: 2000).
Ju-On: The Curse (Ju-On, Takashi Shimizu: 2000).
Ju-On: The Grudge (Takashi Shimizu: 2003).
Ju-On: The Grudge 2 (Takashi Shimizu: 2003).
Ju-Rei The Uncanny (Koji Shiraishi: 2004).
Kuroneko (Yabu no naka no Kuroneko, Kaneto Shind: 1968).
Kwaidan (Kaidan, Masaki Kobayashi: 1964).
Lake of Dracula (Noroi no yakata: Chi o s me, Michio Yamamoto: 1971).
Legacy of Dracula (Yreiyashiki no kyfu: Chi o suu ningy, Michio Yamamoto: 1970).
Living Hell: A Japanese Chainsaw Massacre (Iki-jigoku, Shugo Fujii: 2000).
Locker, The (Shibuya Kaidan, Kei Horie: 2003).
select fi lmography 193
Locker 2, The (Shibuya Kaidan 2, Kei Horie: 2003).
Lucky Dragon No. 5 (Daigo Fukuryu-Maru, Kaneto Shind: 1959).
Lunch Box (Tamamono, Shinji Imaoka: 2004).
Mail (Iwao Takahashi: 2004).
Mansion of the Ghost Cat, The (Borei kaibyo yashiki, Nobuo Nakagawa: 1958).
Manual, The (Jisatsu manyuaru, Osamu Fukutani: 2003).
Marebito (Takeshi Shimizu: 2004).
Mystery of Rampo, The (Rampo, Rintaro Mayuzumi and Kazuyoshi Okuyama: 1994).
Naked Blood (Nekeddo burddo: Megyaku, Hisayasu Sat: 1995).
One Missed Call (Chakushin ari, Takashi Miike: 2003).
One Missed Call 2 (Chakushin ari 2, Renpei Tsukamoto: 2005).
Onibaba (Kaneto Shind: 1964).
Only Son, The (Hitori musuko, Yasujiro Ozo: 1936).
Organ (Kei Fujiwara: 1996).
Original Sin (Shinde mo ii, Takashi Ishii: 1992).
Parasite Eve (Parasaito Ivu, Masayuki Ochiai: 1997).
Persona (Kamen gakuen, Takashi Komatsu: 2000).
Pitfall (Otoshiana, Hiroshi Teshigahara: 1962).
Please Rape me Again (Mo Ichido Yatte, Giichi Nishihara: 1976).
Premonition (Yogen, Norio Tsuruta: 2004).
Pulse (Kairo, Kiyoshi Kurosawa: 2001).
Punishment Room (Shokei no heya, Kon Ichikawa: 1956).
Rampo Noir (Rampo jigoku, Akio Jissoji, Atsushi Kaneko et al.: 2005).
Rape! (Okasu!, Yasuharu Hasebe: 1976).
Reincarnation (Rinne, Takashi Shimizu: 2005).
Resident Evil (Paul W. S. Anderson: 2002).
Resident Evil: Apocalypse (Alexander Witt: 2004).
Resident Evil: Extinction (Russell Mulcahy: 2007).
Ring 0: Birthday (Ringu 0: Bsudei, Norio Tsuruta: 2000).
Ring (Ringu, Hideo Nakata: 1998).
Ring 2 (Ringu 2, Hideo Nakata: 1999).
Rusted Body: Guts of a Virgin III (Gmon kifujin, Kazuo Gaira Komizu: 1987).
School Day of the Dead (Shisha No Gakuensai, Shinohara Tetsuo: 2000).
School Mystery (Hanako-san, Joji Matsuoka: 1995).
Shadow of the Wraith (Ikisudama, Toshiharu Ikeda: 2001).
Shikoku (Shunichi Nagasaki: 1999).
Sky High (Ryuhei Kitamura: 2003).
Souls on the Road (Rojo no Reikon, Minoru Murata: 1921).
Spiral (Rasen, Jji Iida: 1998).
Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi, Hayao Miyazaki: 2001).
St Johns Wort (Otogiriso, Ten Shimoyama: 2001).
Stacy (Naoyuki Tomomatsu: 2001).
Suicide Circle (Jisatsu saakuru, Sion Sono: 2002).
Sweet Home (Suito Homu, Kiyoshi Kurosawa: 1989).
Tales of Terror From Tokyo and All Over Japan: The Movie (Akio Yoshida et al.: 2004).
Tales of Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari, Kenji Mizoguchi: 1953).
Tandem (Chikan densha hitozuma-hen: Okusama wa chijo, Toshiki Sato: 1994).
Three Hundred and Sixty Nights (Sambyaku-rokujugo Ya, Kon Ichikawa: 1948).
Toilet Hanako-San: New Student (Shinsei Toire no Hanako-san, Tsutsumi Yukihito: 1998).
Tokyo Psycho (Tky densetsu: ugomeku machi no kyki, Ataru Oikawa: 2004).
Tokyo Story (Tokyo monogatari, Yasujiro Ozu: 1953).
Tokyo Zombie (Tky Zonbi, Sakichi Sat: 2005).
Tomie (Ataru Oikawa: 1999).
Twenty-Year-Old Youth (Hatachi no sei sieshun, Yasushi Sasaki: 1946).
Vengeance is Mine (Fukush suruwa wareniari, Shohei Imamura: 1979).
Versus (Ryuhei Kitamura: 2000).
Village of Eight Gravestones, The (Yatsu haka-mura, Nomura Yoshitaro: 1977).
Violated Angels (Okasareta hakui, Koji Wakamatsu: 1967).
Vital (Shinya Tsukamoto: 2004).
Watcher in the Attic, The (Edogawa Rampo Ryoukikan: Yaneura No Sanposha, Noboru Tanaka:
1976).
Woman in Black Underwear, The (Raigyo, Takahisa Zeze: 1997).
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Index
abandonment, 32, 44, 467, 54, 68, 74, 1389,
1413, 1456, 148, 1746, 178
abject, 5, 58, 62, 11011, 1324, 147, 178
Abominable snowman, The, 51
Aldrich, Robert, 163
Alien, 5, 160
alienation, 32, 53, 867, 101, 107, 125, 139,
143, 149, 157, 168, 170, 175, 181, 183
Allied Occupation, 7, 11, 21, 235, 2931,
356, 62, 70, 104, 111, 168
Allison, Anne, 212
Altman, Rick, 4
Ambiguous, 183
American popular culture, 6, 24, 115, 119, 126
Amityville Horror, The, 128, 143, 147
Anderson and Richie, 11, 13, 24
Anderson, Joseph L., 11
Anderson, Paul W. S., 113
Angel Dust, 150, 165
Angel Guts (The Series), 97101, 103, 1059,
11112, 119, 150, 156, 1601
Angel Guts: High School Co-Ed, 98101
Angel Guts: Nami, 98, 103
Angel Guts: Red Classroom, 98, 1012, 119
Angel Guts: Red Dizziness, 98, 105
Angel Guts: Red Lightening, 98
Angel Guts: Red Porno, 98, 1024
angura, 1067, 140, 162
Another Heaven, 150, 1656
anti-modern spirit, 106
anti-pornography movement, 96
anti-Westernisation, 356, 42, 53, 82, 87, 111,
133, 149, 153, 165
Apartment 1303, 136
apocalyptic lm, 8, 41, 49, 11314, 116, 127,
143, 168, 175, 1845
Argento, Dario, 115, 1601
Arkush, Allan, 117
Art Theatre Guild (ATG), 1415
Atomic bomb victims (hibakusha), 7, 31, 49,
59, 137
Audition, 13, 978, 10710, 112
avenging spirit (onryou), 43
Bad Place, 1312, 144
Band of Ninja, 15
Barrett, Gregory, 47, 545, 59, 61, 846, 128
All-Sufering Female, 778, 801
Weak Passive Male, 801
Battle Royale, 122
Bava, Mario, 99
Beast from 20,000 fathoms, The, 32
Bedroom, The, 70
Benedict, Ruth, 27
benshi, 1920
Biohazard, 2, 11; see also Resident Evil
Black Snow, 71
Blade Runner, 120
Blind Beast, 72, 84, 147, 153, 190
body (nikutai), 22, 24, 50, 58, 85, 89, 98102,
104, 1068, 11012, 135, 140, 147,
149, 152, 158
and nation, 49, 71, 76, 106, 168, 171, 190
body-horror, 5
bszoku, 99, 119, 123, 127
Brando, Marlon, 118
208 i ndex
Bride from Hell, The, 79
Brophy, Phillip, 5
Buddhism, 7, 28, 46, 52, 54, 601, 72, 89,
1302, 140, 162, 166
Bufy the Vampire Slayer, 189
Bunraku, 1520, 24
Burton, Tim, 117
bushid, 50, 534, 68
Bush-warblers Home, The, 634
Cannibal Holocaust, 114
Carmilla, 73
Carpenter, John, 121, 153, 157
Carroll, Nel, 45, 31, 42, 155
Carved: A Slit-Mouthed Woman, 8, 128, 130,
1336
Casting of the Runes, The, 170
Ceiling at Utsunomiya, The, 54
Censorship, 213, 70, 845, 99, 104
Certain Nights Kiss, A, 24
Charlies Angels, 126
Chiba, Yasuki, 24
Chikamatsu, 1516, 85
Child abuse (also neglect), 8, 97, 102, 110,
144, 173, 1767, 179
Children of Hiroshima, 59
Civil Censorship Division, 23
Civil Information Service (CIE), 23
class, 23, 31, 42, 45, 50, 55, 745, 77, 79,
801, 116, 119, 1513, 166
class system during the Edo Period, 36
as durable form of the ie, 82
Clover, Carol, 6, 99100, 121, 1312, 158,
164
Cohen, Larry, 160
collectivism, 36
comfort women, 111
Confucianism, 11, 23, 367, 52, 102, 111, 149
consumerism, 47, 82, 114, 11617, 119, 120,
124, 144, 168
cool (kakkoii), 11618
Corman, Roger, 51
Craven, Wes, 99
Crazed Fruit, 118
Crazy Lips, 11112
Creed, Barbara, 56, 73, 78, 1323, 179
Cremator, The, 155
Cronenberg, 5, 160, 186
Crying Game, The, 117
Cultural odour, 4, 289, 188
Cunningham, Sean, 157
Curse of Frankenstein, 51
Curse of the Demons, 170
Cursed, 122
Daiei Studios, 14
black lms, 51
daikaijueiga, 32
Dark Water (Nakata), 2, 128, 13743, 145, 188
Dark Water (Salles), 2, 188
Dawn of the Dead, 11416, 1201
Day of the Dead, 1212
Daydream, 71
de Palma, Brian, 179
death by overwork (karoshi), 129
Deep River Savages, 114
degenerate schoolgirl (daraku jogakusel), 123
Demme, Jonathan, 150, 156
Demon mother (Bukimina haha), 130, 134,
136
Deodato, Ruggero, 114
Deranged, 150
Desser, David, 26, 127
Discarnates, The, 8, 72, 869, 113
Dolls, 16
Domestic violence, 8, 1448, 168
Dont Look Now, 140
Double Suicide, 16
double suicide (shinj), 79
Douglas, Mary Ann, 39, 60
Dracula, 5
Dracula: Prince of Darkness, 51
Dworkin, Andrea, 96
Earthquakes, 1712
Edo Period, 18, 36, 53, 65
education mother (kyiku mama), 129, 136
EIRIN, 70, 119
Eko Eko Azarak: Wizard of Darkness, 122
Embryo Hunts in Secret, The, 71, 153
Empire of Passion, 8, 72, 836, 89
Empire of the Senses, 22, 834
Enokizu, Iwao, 14950
Entrails of a Beautiful Woman, 159
Entrails of a Virgin, 150, 15860, 162
eroductions, 15
Evil Dead, The, 115, 122
Evil Dead Trap, 150, 158, 1602
Evil Dead Trap 2: Hideki, 161
Evil Dead Trap 3: Broken Love Killer, 161
i ndex 209
Evil of Dracula, 190
Exorcist, The, 86
Face of Another, The, 589
Faiola, Anthony, 176
Fairy tales, 7, 38, 49, 63, 68, 77, 89, 124, 130,
187
Fall of the House of Usher, The, 51
Fallen, 166
family, 34, 367, 45, 47, 49, 50, 62, 86, 889,
97, 125, 1289, 135, 1426, 148, 152,
159, 1623, 165, 168, 1736
fantasy, 97, 1014, 111, 125
fatal femme, 110, 188
femininity, 24, 35, 59, 602, 734, 78, 87, 89,
1034, 108, 111, 1213, 126, 135, 1378,
1556, 159, 1634, 1701, 179, 186, 189
femme castratice, 179
feminism, 61, 79, 978, 11011, 126, 136, 158
radical feminism, 96
second wave, 96
Final Fantasy (videogame), 2
nal girl, 121, 156, 158, 160, 165, 189
Fincher, David, 114
Fisher, Terence, 51
Foster, Michael Dylan, 1335, 137
Freeze Me, 978, 1079, 112
Freud, Sigmund, 6, 1334
Oedipus Complex, 99, 150
The Death Drive, 734, 889
The Uncanny, 65: vagina dentata, 134
Friday the 13
th
, 157, 160
Friday the 13
th
Part Two, 157
Fujii, Shugo, 150, 1623
Fukasaku, Kinji, 122
Fukutani, Osamu, 169
Fulci, Lucio, 115, 120, 161
Gans, Christophe, 128
Garnett, Tay, 83
gendaigeki, 13, 31
gendaimono, 15, 19
gender, 6, 8, 22, 24, 74, 77, 82, 111, 117, 121,
123, 1345, 145, 152, 156, 158, 167
ghost cat (bakeneko), 656, 724
as a genre (bakeneko mono), 73
Ghost Cat of Otama Pond, The, 1617, 54,
647, 72, 83
Ghost Story of Yotsuya, The, 8, 16, 5464,
68, 79
Ghost System, 169
Ghosts of Kagama-Ga-Fuchi, 54
Ghosts of Kasane Swamp, The, 54
giallo, 1601
gigaku, 40
Gillen, Jef and Alan Ormsby, 150
giri, 367, 57, 656, 75, 77, 7980, 82, 182
Go Go Second Time Virgin, 71
Godzilla, 14, 24, 3144, 49, 51, 66, 88, 129,
133, 172
Godzilla: King of Monsters!, 32
good wife, wise mother (rysaikenbo), 61,
73, 78, 110, 1246, 128
gorenography, 97, 159
Gosha, Hideo, 50
Gssmann, Hilaria, 12930, 1367
gothic ction, 5, 502, 56, 128, 138
Great Kant Earthquake, 13, 172
Groupism, 174
Grudge, The, 2, 18890
Guard from the Underground, The, 150, 165
Guest, Val, 51
gunguro, 181
Hair symbolism, 678, 81, 1778
Halloween, 121, 157, 160, 164
Halloween 2, 157
Hanakuma, Ysaku, 113
Hani, Susumu, 50
Hantke, Stefen, 98
Harada, Masato, 89
Hardy, Thomas, 56
Hasebe, Yasuharu, 95
Hashimoto, Iz, 161
Haunted Lantern, The, 79
Heba, Gary, 151, 158, 162, 166
Hell, 54
Hellish Love, 46, 72, 7982, 84
Hello Kitty, 2
Herz, Juraj, 155
Hide and Seek, 128
Highlander, 115
historical trauma, 7, 312, 51, 589, 66, 68,
134, 137, 184
Hitchcock, Alfred, 117, 150, 153, 164
hitodama, 47, 60
Hoblit, Gregory, 166
Hollywood Cinema, 3, 4, 1113, 201, 25,
29, 31, 96
Honda, Ishir, 14, 32
210 i ndex
Hooper, Tobe, 113, 128, 150, 1623
Horeck, Tanya, 97, 112
Horie, Kei, 142
Hoshino, Yoshihiro, 122
Howls Moving Castle, 14
hubris, 56
Humanism, 3, 20, 70
I Spit on Your Grave, 98101, 112
Ichi the Killer, 13, 1345
Ichikawa, Kon, 118
ie, 8, 21, 27, 36, 43, 46, 52, 62, 82, 106, 128,
146, 148
Iida, Jji, 98, 150, 165
Ikeda, Toshiharu, 103, 150, 1601
Iles, Timothy, 1689, 181
Illusion of Blood, 60, 64
Imamura, Shohei, 8, 71, 149
Imaoka, Shinji, 70
incest, 88, 157, 164
independent lm, 1415
individualism, 8, 11, 27, 31, 42, 44, 87, 119,
125, 150, 165, 179
Inugami, 89
Irigaray, Luce, 126
Ishii, Sogo, 150, 165
Ishii, Takashi, 979, 104, 107
Ishikawa, Yoshiro, 16, 64
Its Alive, 160
Iwabuchi, Koichi, 4, 279, 188
Iwasaka, Michiko and Barre Toelken, 28, 48,
689, 1412
Japans Gross National Cool, 2, 181
Japanese New Wave, 14, 214, 50, 701, 85,
127, 147, 1523
Japaneseness and national identity (Nihon-
jinron), 26, 53
Japonaiserie, 1
Japonisme, 12, 11
Japoniste, 2
jidaigeki, 13, 15, 19, 24, 31
Jissoji, Akio, 190
Jordan, Neil, 117
Junk, 113, 115, 11921, 127
Ju-On: The Grudge, 2, 8, 32, 89, 128, 133,
1437, 150, 18890
Ju-On: The Grudge 2, 128, 143
Kabuki, 7, 1213, 1520, 235, 32, 40, 54, 57,
65, 72, 79, 81, 83, 134
Kabuki-za, 1213, 79
Kadokawa Herald Pictures, 14
kaijueiga, 14
Kamir, Orit, 945
Kannon, 61, 1302
Kara, Juro, 140
Kariteimo, 131
karmic cycle, 72, 11516
Kawai, Hayao, 7, 52, 634, 767, 1301, 147
keitai culture, 176, 180, 187
King Kong, 38
King, Stephen, 115, 1312
Kitamura, Ryuhei, 113
Kitano, Takeshi, 16
kogal, 1216
Komatsu, Takashi, 134
Komizu, Kazuo Gaira, 150, 159
kono-yo, 48
Kristeva, Julia, 5, 1323
Kubrick, Stanley, 128, 140, 144
Kuroneko, 18, 729, 81
Kurosawa, Akira, 3, 13, 43, 70, 93
Kurosawa, Kiyoshi, 2, 17, 128, 150, 165, 169,
183, 188
Kwaidan, 18, 23, 46
Black Hair, 54, 67
Hoichi the Earless, 18, 46, 83
Lafond, Frank, 98
Lake of Dracula, 190
LaMarre, Thomas, 34, 28
Last Cannibal World, 114
Last House on the Left, The, 99100
Last Samurai, The, 28
Legacy of Dracula, 190
Legend of Mount Fuji, 1723
Lenzi, Umberto, 114
Living Hell: A Japanese Chainsaw Massacre,
150, 158, 1625
Locker, The, 142
Locker 2, The, 142
Lolita Complex (Lolicom), 122
loss of face (tatame), 37
Louri, Eugne, 32
Love hotel, 102
Love Suicides at Amijima, The, 16
Love Suicides at Sonezaki, The, 16
Lucky Dragon No. 5, 59
Lunchbox, 70, 112
i ndex 211
ma, 389, 49
McRoy Jay, 7, 1434
Mansion of the Ghost Cat, The, 54
Manual, The, 169
Market of Flesh, 71
Mars Attacks, 117
Masaki, Kobayashi, 18
Masaki, Mori, 54
masculinity, 24, 31, 38, 44, 47, 87, 89, 99,
11718, 129, 138, 1434, 1467,
1523, 1557, 160, 188
behave like a man (okoko rashiku shinsai),
117
daikokubashira, 152
masks, 1718, 57, 134, 157
Masuyama, Hiroshi, 124
Matrix, The, 115
Mayor of Casterbridge, 56
Mayuzumi, Rintaro, 190
Media efects theory, 97
Meiji Era, 17, 24, 53, 61, 123, 162, 190
Meiji Restoration, 26, 87, 169
Memoirs of a Geisha, 28
metamorphosis, 723, 75, 125
Miike, Takashi, 13, 97, 107, 109, 134, 169, 175
Military tales (gunki monogatari), 18
Miller, Laura, 123, 127
mind (seinshin), 50
Miner, Steve, 157
Minoru, Murata, 20
Mishima, Yukio, 534
Miyazaki, Hayao, 14
Mizoguchi, Kenji, 8, 434, 50, 70
modernisation, 8, 26, 31, 53, 98, 106, 136,
140, 147, 169
modernity, 3, 8, 23, 28, 39, 41, 44, 47, 49, 51,
85, 87, 106, 111, 127, 133, 158, 166,
169, 1701
moe, 122
mono-no-aware, 501, 64, 66, 68, 147, 187
Monstrous-feminine, 5, 78, 132, 179
Morse, Terry O., 32
Mother complex (mazo-kon), 129
Mother lm (hahamono), 41, 78
muenbotoke, 47, 85
Mulcahy, Russell, 115
Mulvey, Laura, 6
Mummy, The, 5
Murakami, Takashi, 11, 11617
Muroga, Atsushi, 113
Music, 13, 1617, 32, 40, 77, 81, 101, 115,
182
Mystery of Rampo, The, 190
Nagae, Toshikazu, 169
Nagaishi, Takao, 95
Nagasaki, Shunichi, 89
Nakagawa, Nobuo, 8, 16, 54
Nakahira, K, 118
Nakata, Hideo, 2, 32, 128, 1378, 170, 188
Naked Blood, 11314, 127
Napier, Susan, 37, 42, 47, 49, 723, 83, 122,
127, 16870, 187
Naruse, Mikio, 50
national cinema, 26, 29
Neale, Stephen, 6
Night of the Living Dead, The, 11415, 120
Nikkatsu Studios, 1315, 712, 989, 111,
11819
ninj, 367, 54, 57, 66, 75, 77, 79, 87
Nishihara, Giichi, 95
N, 7, 12, 15, 1719, 32, 40, 65, 72, 76, 134
Nohuhiko, Obayashi, 86
OBannon, Dan, 120
Obayashi, Nobuhiko, 8
Obon, 48, 82
Obscenity, 212, 70, 84
Occidentalism, 3, 13
Ochiai, Masayuki, 120
Oikawa, Ataru, 136, 149
Folktale of Oiwa, 21, 172
Folktale of Okiku, 64, 172
Okuyama, Kazuyoshi, 190
On, 37, 489, 52, 174
One Missed Call, 169, 17580, 182
One Missed Call 2, 179
oni, 601
Onibaba, 18, 59
nin War, 74
Onnagata, 13, 16, 19
Orientalism, 34, 27, 145
complicit Orientalism, 27
self-Orientalism, 4, 27, 117, 145
Original Sin, 98
shima, Nagisa, 8, 14, 22, 50, 712, 75, 83
otaku, 1025, 108, 122, 154, 1567, 183
otaku murders, 149, 155
Other, 45, 26, 34, 42, 47, 49, 512, 71, 128,
145, 162, 164, 18890
212 i ndex
Ozu, Yasujiro, 1213, 25, 29, 43, 50
Parallelism, 45, 556, 125, 146
Parasite Eve, 120
Patriarchy, 6, 16, 18, 22, 36, 52, 58, 86, 94,
98, 101, 1056, 119, 121, 122, 1257,
12930, 136, 140, 145, 150, 152, 159,
189
Patriotism, 53
Peeping Tom, 114, 164
Peony Lantern, The, 72, 79
Persona, 134
pink cinema (pinku eiga), 15, 22, 702, 89, 95,
111, 156
pink globalisation, 2
Pit and the Pendulum, The, 51
Pitfall, 23, 93
Plan 9 from Outer Space, 117
play (asobi), 117, 119
Please Rape Me Again!, 95
Pokmon, 2
poison woman (Dokufu), 136
Pollution, 34, 39, 42, 55, 5860, 623, 67, 85,
134, 13940, 171
Polson, John, 128
Poltergeist, 113, 128
pornography, 84, 967, 111, 122
sadomasochistic pornography, 110, 138
Postman Always Rings Twice, The, 83
post-modern, 87, 116, 124, 155, 157, 175,
180
Powell, Michael, 114
pre-modern, 8, 11, 21, 25, 30, 33, 37, 40, 44,
49, 54, 83, 85, 98, 108, 126, 133, 140,
147, 1589, 162, 166, 175, 1789, 182
Prokino, 23
Psycho, 117, 150, 1645
Psychoanalysis, 67, 150, 166
Pulse (Kurosawa), 2, 169, 1838
Pulse (Sonzero), 2, 188
Punishment Room, 118
purity, 345, 39, 42, 58, 60, 85, 162
Rabid Dogs, 99
racial identity, 34, 188
Raimi, Sam, 115
Rajomon Gate, 745
rakuga, 79, 87
Rampo, Edogawa, 72, 190
Rampo Noir, 190
rape, 8, 44, 71, 734, 84, 939, 1005,
11011, 132, 153, 161, 181, 188
Rape!, 95
Rapeman, 95
rape-revenge lm, 78, 93, 978, 105, 10710,
112, 159
Rashmon, 74, 935, 108
Ray, Nicholas, 118
Rebel Without a Cause, 118
Resident Evil, 113
Resident Evil (video game), 11, 113, 116, 128
Resident Evil: Apocalypse, 113
Resident Evil: Extinction, 113
Return of the Living Dead, The, 120
Richie, Donald, 1, 25, 47, 501, 73, 93
Ridley-Scott, 5, 120, 160
Ring 0: Birthday, 170
Ring, 2, 8, 32, 61, 89, 137, 150, 16975,
1778, 1889
Ring 2, 170, 175, 188
Ring, The, 188
Ring Two, The, 188
ritual suicide (seppuku), 37, 53
Rock and Roll High School, 117
Roeg, Nicholas, 140
Rohmer, Sax, 189
romance, 24, 423, 50, 81, 85, 101, 126, 156
romantic pornography (roman porno), 13,
702, 98, 105, 112, 119
Romero, George A., 11416, 120
rnin, 20, 50, 545, 79
Rosenberg, Stuart, 128
Rosenthal, Rick, 157
Ruben, Joseph, 128
Rusted Body: Guts of a Virgin III, 159
Sagawa, Issei, 149
Said, Edward, 27, 190
St Johns Wort, 169
Salaryman (sararman), 8, 36, 1289, 137, 146
Salles, Walter, 188
samurai, 18, 28, 36, 434, 50, 535, 57, 64,
668, 747, 7980, 93, 95, 115, 129
Sasaki, Hirohisa, 111
Sato, Hisayasu, 70, 113
Sat, Sakichi, 113
Sato, Shimako, 122
Sato, Toshiki, 70
Satoru, Kobayashi, 71
Schneider, Steven, 6, 156
Inside, the apartment seems deserted and unlived-in. The camera remains
mainly static and there is only silence. The use of deep focus and the plastic
curtains that divide the room into two separate spaces function to create a
visual distance between Michi and Taguichi, who suddenly appears in the
background against the wall. In a later shot in the sequence, Michi is shown
with her back towards the camera, giving the impression that she is being
watched. However, a reverse shot shows that the space occupied by Taguichi
is now empty. This disruption of the shotreverse shot structure generates
an overwhelming feeling of quiet dread, as well as isolating characters within
a generalised emptiness. When Michi looks for Taguichi, she nds his body
hanging from the ceiling. This suicide anticipates many of the later deaths in
Pulse. By doing so, the motif of suicide, omnipresent in many contemporary
Japanese horror lms, is used to imply that the subsequent deaths can be seen
as a consequence of suicidal impulses which allow the ghosts in the machine
to seep into the world of the diegesis. This is foregrounded in a conversation
between Michi and her friends at a caf later that day, in which they attempt to
understand why Taguichi committed suicide. One of them responds: Maybe
he just suddenly wanted to die, I get that way sometimes.
In many ways, Pulse is similar to Cronenbergs Videodrome (1983), with
Internet technologies replacing the televisual screen in the latter. The dead,
who appear within cyberspace, are shown with black plastic bags over their
heads, providing a direct visual link to Videodrome. The relationship between
Ryosuke and the beautiful computer lab worker, Harue Karasawa (Koyuki), is
analogous to that between Max Renn (James Wood) and Nicki Brand (Deborah
Harry) in Videodrome. At the start of Pulse, Ryosuke is shown as being almost
computer-illiterate, having to use a guide to the Internet in order to operate
his computer. Harue is the opposite, procient in Internet technologies. As in
Videodrome, femininity is aligned with technology, as Harue becomes Ryosukes
guide (as does Nicki Brand in Videodrome) to the Internet, which eventually
leads to his death. Unlike Ryosuke, Harue embraces the deathly technology
that she discovers as a result of the pairs investigation into the mysterious
disappearances of friends and colleagues. Ryosuke actively resists the seductive
techno logies of death but, because he is already isolated, and Harue provides
the only contact for him with the world outside his self-contained isolation, her
eventual death must lead to his. This again draws a line of connection between
Videodrome and Pulse, as in Videodrome Nicki Brands death pregures that of
Max Renn. As Bukatman comments in relation to Videodrome, Image is virus;
virus virulently replicates itself; the subject is nished (2004: 234).
Only Michi and a few others survive the viral plague of the ghosts within
the machine. Michi survives because she retains her ability to connect with
others, unlike Ryosuke, who, when he rst meets Michi, cannot remember his
name or indeed who he is. While Iles (2008) suggests that the purpose of the
index 213
Second World War, 78, 13, 201, 23, 303,
33, 37, 39, 41, 467, 589, 111
Sengoku Period, 74
Se7en, 114
shakiamono, 31, 51
Shapiro, Jerome F., 29, 389, 43, 49, 51
Sharp, Don, 189
Shikoku, 89
Shimizu, Takashi, 2, 32, 128, 1434, 1889
Shimoyama, Ten, 169
Shimpa, 19
Shind, Kaneto, 18, 59
shingeki, 13
Shining, The, 128, 140, 1434, 147
Shint, 7, 22, 30, 347, 39, 44, 47, 52, 59, 72,
84, 133, 162
and the state, 11, 30, 36, 62
creation myth, 623, 84, 162
deities (kami), 37, 623, 67, 72
Shinth Studios, 14
Shiraishi, Kji, 8, 128
Shchiku Studios, 1315, 71
Shogun, 16, 36, 87
shjo, 1216
shjo bunka, 121
shomingeki, 13
Shunga, 162
Silence of the Lambs, The, 150, 156, 165
Silent Hill, 128
Silent Hill (video game), 11, 128
Simpson, Philip L., 155
Sisters, 179
Slasher lm, 144, 150, 15862, 1656, 188
Slater, Jay, 11314
Sone, Chusei, 46, 72, 989, 103
Sono, Sion, 8, 169, 180
Sonzero, Jim, 2, 188
soto, 34, 42, 100, 129
Souls on the Road, 20
Spiral, The, 170
Spirited Away, 14
Stacy, 113, 115, 1216
Stalker lm, 153, 155, 1578
Standish, Isolde, 234, 31, 35, 42, 51, 53, 71,
119, 153
Stendhal Syndrome, The, 115
Stepfather, The, 128
stereotypes, 3, 28, 123, 188
sufering woman, 49, 58, 130
Suicide Circle, The, 8, 122, 169, 1803
Summer Amongst the Zombies see The
Discarnates
super-at aesthetic, 11, 11617
Suspiria, 161
Suzuki, Koji, 1378, 170
Sweet Home, 17, 113, 128, 1303, 136
Sweet Home (video game), 113
taiyozoku, 11819, 123, 127, 153
Takechi, Tetsuji, 71
Takeuchi, Tetsuro, 113
Tale of the Genji, The, 64
Tale of the Heike, The, 18
Tales of Moonlight and Rain, 43
Tales of Terror, 51
Tales of Ugetsu, 8, 17, 24, 312, 4350, 57, 61,
68, 74, 142
Tanaka, Noboru, 98
Tandem, 70
Tanizaki, Junichir, 34
Terrible Place, 1313, 136
Teshigahara, Hiroshi, 23, 50, 93
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The, 150, 1625
Three hundred and Sixty Nights, 14
Tei Studios, 14, 712
Toelken, Barre, 48
Th Studios, 1314
Tokugawa Period, 15, 79
Tokyo Psycho, 149, 1548
Tokyo Zombie, 113
Tourneur, Jacques, 170
Toyoda, Shir, 60, 64
tragic lovers (kitagawa utamaro), 8, 15, 77,
7980, 82, 102, 125
Tsuruta, Norio, 170
Tsushima, Masaru, 79
Tumor with a Human Face, The, 34
Twenty-Year-Old-Youth, 24
Two Kannons, The, 130
Ubume stories, 141
Kosodate-Yrei, 141
uchi, 34, 42, 57, 82, 100, 129
Ueda, Akinari, 43
Ueno, Toshiya, 183
Ukiyo-e, 12, 41, 43, 7980, 184
Utagawa, Kuniyoshi, 60
Vengeance is Mine, 8, 14953, 1568
Vengeful foetus, 128, 1413, 146, 162
214 i ndex
Vengeful ghost, 8, 30, 48, 512, 54, 60, 64,
66, 689, 72, 86, 89, 133, 136, 138, 147,
1778, 189
Versus, 113, 11517, 119, 1201, 127
victim consciousness (higaisha ishki), 51
video games, 2, 11, 113, 116, 128
Videodrome, 5, 160, 186
Violated Angels, 71, 1534
wa, 389, 48, 54
Wachowski, Andy and Larry Wachowski, 115
Wakamatsu Kji, 712, 1534
West, 14, 8, 1112, 13, 212, 249, 32, 36,
37, 44, 52, 67, 70, 83, 98, 109, 113,
115, 120, 122, 145, 149, 154, 166, 189,
190
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, 163
Wild Zero, 113, 115, 11722
Williams, Linda, 6, 96, 111
Williams, Linda Ruth, 734
Witt, Alexander, 113
Woman in Black Underwear, The, 70, 112
Woman Who Eats Nothing, The, 130
Women against Pornography, 96
Woo, John, 115
Wood, Edward D., 117
Wood, Robin, 4, 158
wronged woman, 8, 21, 54, 64, 67, 69, 72,
75, 98, 128, 143, 1467, 1745, 179,
18890
Yamamoto, Michio, 190
Yamamoto, Satsuo, 79
yama-uba, 130
yank, 119, 127
Yasaki, Yasushi, 24
Yasuzo, Masumura, 50, 72, 153
yellow peril, 189
Yoshimoto, Matsuhiro, 3, 26
yrei, 47, 54, 83, 85, 1202, 127, 143, 147,
174, 1789, 184, 188
Zeze, Takahisa, 70
Zombie Flesh Eaters, 115, 120

Introduction To Japanese Horror Film

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