introduction to japanese horror film

JAPANESE HORROR FILM INTRODUCTION TO Colette Balmain JAPANESE HORROR FILM INTRODUCTION TO 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-scène. 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 John’s 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 hor ror • 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 barcode Colette Balmain Colette Balmain Edinburgh J APANESE HORROR FILM INTRODUCTION TO 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 identified 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  Analyses of Japanese Cinema  Genre  Theorising Horror  Origins/Themes/Conventions  Part 1: Origins  Laying the Foundations  The Studio System  From Stage to Screen  Transformations  Japanese Cinema as National Cinema  Global Flows   Horror after Hiroshima  Post-Occupation Cinema  From the Ashes  Ghostly Returns  Deadly Obligations  Pre-Modern Monsters  vi  contents  Edo Gothic: Deceitful Samurai and Wronged Women  The Background  Deceitful Samurai  The Sacred Maternal  Wronged Women  Conventions of Edo Gothic   Ghosts of Desire: Kaidan pinku eiga  Vengeful Cat Women  Tragic Lovers (Kitagawa Utamaro) and The Virgin Bride  The Cuckolded Husband  Suicide Ghosts  Ghosts of Desire  Part 2: Genre  The Rape-Revenge Film: From Violation to Vengeance  Victimisation  Violation  Anti-Modernity and the National Body  Vengeance  Sex and Violation   Zombies, Cannibals and the Living Dead  Resurrection  Invasion  Commodification  Feminisation  Consumers   Haunted Houses and Family Melodramas  Monstrous Mothers  The Vengeful Foetus  Domestic Violence and the Monstrous Father  Domestic Disruptions   Serial Killers and Slashers Japanese-Style  Serial Killers: Between Fiction and Fact  The Collector  The Slasher Film: Japanese-Style  A Japanese Chainsaw Massacre?  Japanese Monsters from the Underground    contents  vii  Techno-Horror and Urban Alienation  Repression  Eruptions  Isolation  Disconnection  Annihilation  Dystopias  Conclusion  Select Filmography  Bibliography  Index  List of Figures . Godzilla’s rampage, Godzilla  . The first meeting between Genjuro and Lady Wakasa, Tales of Ugetsu  . Victim as violator: Yone (Nobuko Otawa) in Kuroneko  . The Monstrous Mother: Shige (Kiwako Taichi), Kuroneko  . Asami, the epitome of idealised womanhood, Audition  . Mother and child, Dark Water  . Takeo corners Rika: domestic violence in Ju-On: The Grudge  . Sole survivors: Ryosuke and Michi, Pulse  . Spaces within spaces, Pulse  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. That’s because the Japanese don’t regard spirits only as enemies, but as beings that co-exist with this world of ours. (Suzuki ) W ith the exhaustion of American horror cinema, as evidenced by the recent trend towards remakes of classic  films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Nispel: ), The Amityville Horror (Douglas: ) and The Hills have Eyes (Aja: ), it is not surprising that both American studios and Western audiences have been looking elsewhere for inspiration. There can be little doubt that Nakata’s Ring () 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 Nakata’s Ring, Shimizu’s Ju-On: The Grudge () and the American remakes, Tōhō announced in  the establishment of J-Horror Theatre, a series of six horror films from noted Japanese directors. The fact that Lion Gate Films obtained worldwide distribution rights to the films (with the exception of Japan) testifies to the increasing popularity of the Japanese horror film. The proliferation of remakes of Japanese films continues, with the most recent, Pulse (Sonzero: ), based upon Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s extraordinary technological horror of the same name (). However, the centrality of isolation, alienation and emptiness that defines 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 (). 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 [...]... by the newly burgeoning Japanese pink film industry And it is significant that many third-generation Japanese directors, including Nakata, gained their training within the pink film industry Therefore an understanding of the intersection between the pink film industry and Japanese horror is important to any history of Japanese horror film Although most contemporary Japanese horror is modelled along... which is so important to the horror film (2002) As the theoretical approaches to horror film criticism, as we have seen, operate almost exclusively using the form of American horror cinema as the paradigmatic example, it becomes difficult to adapt these wholesale to Japanese cinema without erasing historical, cultural and racial difference In the ‘Preface’ to McRoy’s Japanese Horror Cinema, Sharratt... the first horror film (1996: 13) However Newman does point to the hybrid nature of horror film, and its overlapping with the genres such as science fiction 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 horror s similarity to nightmares as constitutive of horror as genre... 10) 2  introduction to japanese horror film These qualities were not confined 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. .. (1986: 8) 6  introduction to japanese horror film Theorising Horror In Horror Film and Psychoanalysis: Freud’s Worst Nightmare, Schneider emphasises 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... 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 8  introduction to japanese horror film 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,... pre-modern and the modern, communalism and individualism, Japanese 12  introduction to japanese horror film tradition and Western democracy This conflict 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 influenced as much by Japanese traditional theatrical forms, including Nō and Kabuki,... people went to the cinema, not to see the film, but to listen to the benshi’s interpretation of the film The benshi became so powerful that Japan was later than other countries in introducing sound to film Silent film also used male actors in female parts (onnagata), as did Kabuki and Nō, although this practice had been abandoned by 1923 McDonald argues that the three characteristics of early Japanese. .. 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 contextualises 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. .. 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 . Balmain Edinburgh J APANESE HORROR FILM INTRODUCTION TO Introduction to Japanese Horror Film This book is dedicated to my parents David and Peggy Balmain Introduction to Japanese Horror Film Colette Balmain Edinburgh. JAPANESE HORROR FILM INTRODUCTION TO Colette Balmain JAPANESE HORROR FILM INTRODUCTION TO This book is a major historical and cultural overview of an increasingly. designed to provoke horror (Newman : ). In the simply titled Horror Films, Frank points to horror s similarity to night- mares as constitutive of horror as genre (: ). For Wells in The Horror