The Encyclopedia of Japanese Horror Films

H-Japan Call for Authors: The Encyclopedia of Japanese Horror Films

Discussion published by David Wittner on Friday, September 26, 2014

Call for Authors: The Encyclopedia of Japanese Horror Films

Japan’s film industry is not only one of the oldest, but perhaps one of the more prominent in the world of motion picture production. Among its many genres, horror films have had a real impact on global popular culture. From the eerie storylines incorporating a fascination with violence and death like Suicide Circle and Ichi the Killer, to the science fiction terrors of Godzilla and Testuo, horror plays a major role among Japanese film genres. While some of these films are rather poor productions, others have been major hits in Japan and have, like the Ringu movies, influenced other horror productions in both Asia and United States.

This volume will be a comprehensive reference text for academics and general audiences alike. In addition to covering virtually every horror film made in Japan from the past century to date, this text will also include entries for notable directors, producers, actresses and actors. Although emphasizing horror as a general theme, this encyclopedia will also include other genres that are associated with this theme, inclusive of Japanese Comedy Horror, Science Fiction Horror, Hyper-violence, Japanese Cyber-punk Horror, Ero Guru (Erotic Grotesque), Tokusatsu Horror (live-action special effects) and Anime Horror.”

I have successfully negotiated a contract for this encyclopedia editorship with Rowman and Littlefield and I am now seeking authors.

For those of you that aren't familiar with these kind of essays, here’s how it typically works:

You choose a couple of entries (or as many as you would like) and compose an encyclopedic piece on the film. Three things that are fundamental to executing these essays are: (1) covering all of the journalistic questions (who, what, where, why, how, etc.); (2) meet the word count--or as close to it as possible; and (3) meet the deadline, which will be 20 January 2015. After that, it's up to me to do the editing and send it to press.

If you are interested, please send me an [email protected] and I’ll forward you the tentative list that I’ve been working with (there are still around 150 unclaimed entries).

Salvador Jimenez Murguía, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Sociology Akita International University Yuwa, Akita-city 010-1292 Japan [email protected] Email: [email protected] URL: http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=216487

Citation: David Wittner. Call for Authors: The Encyclopedia of Japanese Horror Films. H-Japan. 09-26-2014. https://networks.h-net.org/node/20904/discussions/43026/call-authors-encyclopedia-japanese-horror-films Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Japan