Chapter Six: New Terrors, Emerging Trends and the Future of Japanese Horror

Repetition, Innovation, and ‘J-Horror’ Anthologies

The following pages constitute not only this book’s final chapter, but its conclusion as well. I adopt this structural and rhetorical manoeuvre for two reasons. Firstly, the arguments advanced in this chapter provide a critical assessment of the state of the horror genre in Japanese cinema at the time of this writing. As a result, this chapter examines not only the rise of a self-reflexive tendency within recent works of Japanese horror film, but also explores how visual and narratological redundancy may compromise the effectiveness of future creations, transforming motifs into clichés and, quite possibly, reducing the tradition’s potential as an avenue for cultural critique and aesthetic intervention. As one might suspect, the promise of quick economic gain – motivated both by the genre’s popularity in Western markets, as well as by the cinematic tradition’s contribution to what James Udden calls a ‘pan-[east-]Asian’ film style (2005: para 5) – inform the fevered perpetuation of predictable shinrei mono eiga (‘ghost films’). Secondly, by examining the emergence of several visually inventive and intellectually sophisticated films by some of Japanese horror cinema’s most accomplished practitioners, this chapter proposes that the creative fires spawned by the explosion of Japanese horror in the 1990s are far from extinguished. As close readings

172 Nightmare Japan of works like Ochiai Masayuki’s Infection (Kansen, 2004), Tsuruta Norio’s Premonition (Yogen, 2004), Shimizu Takashi’s Marebito (2004), and Tsukamoto Shinya’s Vital (2004) variably reveal, the future of Japanese horror cinema may be very bright indeed. Given Japanese horror film’s appeal in East Asian and Western markets, it should come as little surprise that producers eager to cash in on the genre’s popularity would soon produce both feature length works and collections of short films, many originally intended for television broadcast. After all, such market inundation has obvious precedents. Consider, for instance, the glut of slasher films that flooded US theatres in the wake of the success of John Carpenter’s Halloween (USA, 1978) and Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th (USA, 1990). Largely conforming to the general tropology informing what Vera Dika and Carol Clover call the ‘stalker cycle’ or the ‘teenie-kill pic’ (1987; 1992), virtually every major Western holiday soon marked an occasion for mayhem and carnage. In the majority of such texts, the gory dispatching of randy young people is followed by the inevitable ‘cat-and-mouse’ conflict between the masked killer and the ‘final girl’, whose combination of virginal purity and willingness to resort to violence ensures her survival. Setting aside the copious sequels spawned by Halloween and Friday the 13th, a glimpse at the following titles reveals a formula stretched to its breaking point: Prom Night (CAN, 1980); New Year’s Evil (USA, 1980); the New Year’s Eve themed Terror Train (CAN/USA, 1980); Happy Birthday to Me (USA, 1981); My Bloody Valentine (CAN, 1981); and Silent Night, Deadly Night (USA, 1984). Such market glutting is by no means exclusive to horror films; nevertheless, the preceding list proves at once instructive and cautionary when one considers the recent deluge of Japanese horror tales that have found their way on to Japanese television and have surfaced in the West as anthologies of short films. In 2005 alone, ‘J-horror’ collections like Dark Tales from Japan, Kadokawa Mystery & Horror Tales, volumes 1-3, J-Horror Anthology: Underworld, and J-Horror Anthology: Legends were released in the US. When many of these narratives recycle the same tropes that viewers have seen time and time again, they risk alienating the very segment of their audience that once found the genre a refreshing alternative to Western horror film