When I was thinking of ideas for this final project, I
wanted to explore on a topic that would be exciting. I recalled Mizenko sensei talking about his
encounter with ghosts and spirits during his stay in Japan. This sparked my
interest in the supernatural, and I knew I had to research on Japanese horror
films (J-horror for short). Those who
know me pretty well know that I’m a huge scaredy cat. I’m the kind of person who gets frightened
easily over so many different things. The
one thing that I especially can’t shake off is the feeling I get after watching
a haunting, supernatural horror movie. Especially J-horror films. These films definitely leave me feeling
unsettled and creeped out for days. Even
if I have my hands over my eyes, though I peak through my fingers at times, the
vivid haunting images remain forever etched in my memory. Replaying the scary scenes in my mind still
give me the chills. For this project, I
chose to analyze visual forms of J-horror films because I want to investigate
what it is that makes J-horror so unique and distinctive from western horror
movies. My interest lies in the
intersections that exist between Ringu and its American remake, The Ring, and
how J-horror is influencing western horror films today.
Over the past decades, horror film has been a substantial
component of Japanese popular culture. Influences
to these films originate way back from horror
and ghost stories of the Edo and Meiji period. These stories are referred to as “kaidan,” which is an old-fashion term relating to Edo
folktales. Kaidan involves ghosts
seeking vengeance for their untimely and undeserved deaths. A vengeful female
ghost is a key archetype to this genre (McRoy).
Reference to Kabuki theatre and Noh play is prevalent in J-horror
films. The female ghosts are usually characterized
to be insane. In Kabuki theatre, the
symbol of insanity is unkempt hair. These women, called “yurei,” are depicted
with long black hair, contrasted to a very pale and distorted face with large
staring eyes. Yurei ghosts are tied to
the world through strong emotions. Usually,
they are bound by sadness, or unfinished business.
One of the earliest kaidan J-horror film
and classic is Ugetsu (1953). This film has influenced modern creators of J-horror
films. Ugetsu is about a man
named Genjuro, who had abandoned his wife to have an affair with a wealthy
woman, who turns out to be a ghost. Ugetsu
isn’t exactly considered to be as frightening as the modern films. The female ghost named, Lady Wakasa, is a
yurei who appears to be normal, not disfigured in any way. As seen in the first image below, she is portrayed
as a beautiful noblewoman, dressed in a beautiful kimono and in formal makeup. It is seen in the second image that when Genjuro
attempts to leave her, the spooky element comes into play, and Lady Wakasa
becomes hungry for companionship. In this image, Lady Wakasa is portrayed differently
in a melancholic and distraught expression, with her hair a bit disheveled. Her makeup is accented with those bizarre black
eyebrows that are drawn in on the upper fore-head. Her makeup here is
reminiscent of the Noh masks, which were used in Noh theatre to portray different
expressions of female or nonhuman characters.
Ugetsu – Lady Wakasa
Noh play masks were
props used to convey changes in emotions.
When comparing American and Japanese
horror films, the structure and content are very different. There are so many prevalent elements in
J-horror that makes it unique and unlike American horror. First off, the
protagonists are mostly female. Females play a major role. The common structure is innocent women who
are victimized and brutally murdered, then coming back in the form of a murderous
spirit, cursing the living.
“crawling aspect”
in Ringu
The second element is the use of
tension. J-horror films focus on
psychological horror and tension building, the feeling of suppressed suspense
and anxiety. In the popular J-horror
film Ringu, the “crawling” aspect is
used to make the viewer feel extremely uncomfortable. The images above show the grotesque,
lizard-like body movements of Sadako, the ghost of a murdered psychotic girl. This spectacle is new to American horror, and
the same contorted figure crawling on all fours is replicated in its remake, The Ring.
The third element is the use of commonplace
technology as a means to transmit evil. This
ingenious trick is the Japanese approach to infuse technology so that we will
turn against the things that we rely on.
These items include television, cell phones, and internet. This then evokes fear to technology, and we
see those necessities as a threat. The
image below shows the television as a way of transmitting an “evil force.” The girl crawling out of the television is
the central image of technology that is commonly used in modern society, and turning
it into an unconditioned feared object.
There is another
scene in Ringu, where the television
is seen as a bad omen. This scene is
shown in the beginning of the film. The television turns on by itself, again, creates
that ominous and eerie effect that foreshadows something bad is bound to
happen.
The fourth element is the use of
contrasting colors—black and white.
J-horror films tend to characterize the ghosts with long black hair with
pasty-white skin. This revisits the “yurei”
ghost characters. Ringu sets and iconic image of a yurei. Yurei typically dress in white clothing that
looks like a nightgown. In Japan, the
color white is worn in funerals. This
type of clothing is a signifier of the dead. The long and unkempt hair is another
signifier of a yurei. Hair is a staple
element in J-horror films. In Japan,
hair is very important to women. It’s one of the recognizable elements of traditional J-horror.
The reason a woman's long black hair has become a major element in scary movies
and folklore, is that Japanese women were obsessive and meticulous about their
hair. Japanese women who have very long hair have spent a very long time taking
care of it. The long, black hair in
Japanese folklore has worked itself into modern films. This is seen in Ugetsu briefly when a woman is shown treasuring her hair, while
meticulously brushing it while watching herself in the mirror.
The long black
hair is another signifier of death because it was traditional for Japanese
women to grow their hair very long, but then it would be pinned up. It was tradition for women to let their hair
down in death.
White skin tone is part of Japanese
culture, and it is believed that white skin is considered beautiful. However, as it is unlikely that you will spot
a dark skinned Japanese woman in a J-horror film, the ghost characters are represented
as extremely pale, which serves as another reminder that these vengeful
characters aren’t living entities, but is a color of mourning in Japan.
The last element is emptiness. It is Japanese aesthetic tradition to balance
out the “empty and the full.” In Japan, it is embraced that “the view of
reality and life are structured around a notion of dualism, and advocating a
worldview that oppositional forces coexist and hold each other in balance and
order…the combination of light and dark in a single image, or the positioning of
a complex, three- dimensional image against a flat, empty space, reflects the Japanese
aesthetic tradition that values balance above all else. It is the combination of the empty and the
full which creates the aesthetic experience” (Wee 49). In Ringu,
it is the Japanese concept of mu, which “implies that empty space contributes
actively to a composition” (Wee 49). Ringu
uses the videotape as object that
allows the natural and supernatural world to coexist.
The images in the video are not explained, only emphasizing fear and
the inscrutability of the supernatural horrors. Again, this is a reflection of exploring ideas
and possibility beyond of what is known.
Japanese horror has influenced
American horror over the past decade. American horror cinema has been growing a
trend of remaking successful Japanese horror films, which include, The Grudge, One Missed Call, and Pulse.
These remakes all reflect the elements and structure of J-horror as
a foundation of a horror story.
References:
Visual
Aesthetics and Ways of Seeing: Comparing Ringu and The Ring, by Valerie Wee
