Japanese Horror Culture

Japanese Horror Culture
Author: Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2021-11-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1793647062

Contemporary Japanese horror is deeply rooted in the folklore of its culture, with fairy tales-like ghost stories embedded deeply into the social, cultural, and religious fabric. Ever since the emergence of the J-horror phenomenon in the late 1990s with the opening and critical success of films such as Hideo Nakata’s The Ring (Ringu, 1998) or Takashi Miike’s Audition (Ôdishon, 1999), Japanese horror has been a staple of both film studies and Western culture. Scholars and fans alike throughout the world have been keen to observe and analyze the popularity and roots of the phenomenon that took the horror scene by storm, producing a corpus of cultural artefacts that still resonate today. Further, Japanese horror is symptomatic of its social and cultural context, celebrating the fantastic through female ghosts, mutated lizards, posthuman bodies, and other figures. Encompassing a range of genres and media including cinema, manga, video games, and anime, this book investigates and analyzes Japanese horror in relation with trauma studies (including the figure of Godzilla), the non-human (via grotesque bodies), and hybridity with Western narratives (including the linkages with Hollywood), thus illuminating overlooked aspects of this cultural phenomenon.

Introduction to Japanese Horror Film

Introduction to Japanese Horror Film
Author: Colette Balmain
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2008-10-14
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0748630597

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 explores 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-scene. 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.The emphasis is on accessibility, and whilst the book is primarily marketed towards film and media students, it will also be of interest to anyone interested in Japanese horror film, cultural mythology and folk-tales, cinematic aesthetics and film theory.

The Encyclopedia of Japanese Horror Films

The Encyclopedia of Japanese Horror Films
Author: Salvador Jiménez Murguía
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 423
Release: 2016-07-29
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1442261676

Although the horror genre has been embraced by filmmakers around the world, Japan has been one of the most prolific and successful purveyors of such films. From science fiction terrors of the 1950s like Godzilla toviolentfilms like Suicide Circle and Ichi the Killer, Japanese horror film has a diverse history. While the quality of some of these films has varied, others have been major hits in Japan and beyond, frightening moviegoers around the globe. Many of these films—such as the Ringu movies—have influenced other horror productions in both Asia and the United States. The Encyclopedia of Japanese Horror Films covers virtually every horror film made in Japan from the past century to date. In addition to major and modest productions, this encyclopedia also features entries on notable directors, producers, and actors. Each film entry includes comprehensive details, situates the film in the context and history of Japanese horror cinema, and provides brief suggestions for further reading. Although emphasizing horror as a general theme, this encyclopedia also encompasses other genres that are associated with this theme, including Comedy Horror, Science Fiction Horror, Cyber-punk Horror, Ero Guru (Erotic Grotesque), and Anime Horror. The Encyclopedia of Japanese Horror Films is a comprehensive reference volume that will appeal to both cinema scholars as well as to the many fans of this popular genre.

Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes

Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes
Author: Valerie Wee
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2013-10-23
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1134109628

The Ring (2002)—Hollywood’s remake of the Japanese cult success Ringu (1998)—marked the beginning of a significant trend in the late 1990s and early 2000s of American adaptations of Asian horror films. This book explores this complex process of adaptation, paying particular attention to the various transformations that occur when texts cross cultural boundaries. Through close readings of a range of Japanese horror films and their Hollywood remakes, this study addresses the social, cultural, aesthetic and generic features of each national cinema’s approach to and representation of horror, within the subgenre of the ghost story, tracing convergences and divergences in the films’ narrative trajectories, aesthetic style, thematic focus and ideological content. In comparing contemporary Japanese horror films with their American adaptations, this book advances existing studies of both the Japanese and American cinematic traditions, by: illustrating the ways in which each tradition responds to developments in its social, cultural and ideological milieu; and, examining Japanese horror films and their American remakes through a lens that highlights cross-cultural exchange and bilateral influence. The book will be of interest to scholars of film, media, and cultural studies.

Japanese Horror and the Transnational Cinema of Sensations

Japanese Horror and the Transnational Cinema of Sensations
Author: Steven T. Brown
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2018-02-05
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 3319706292

Japanese Horror and the Transnational Cinema of Sensations undertakes a critical reassessment of Japanese horror cinema by attending to its intermediality and transnational hybridity in relation to world horror cinema. Neither a conventional film history nor a thematic survey of Japanese horror cinema, this study offers a transnational analysis of selected films from new angles that shed light on previously ignored aspects of the genre, including sound design, framing techniques, and lighting, as well as the slow attack and long release times of J-horror’s slow-burn style, which have contributed significantly to the development of its dread-filled cinema of sensations.

Japanese and American Horror

Japanese and American Horror
Author: Katarzyna Marak
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2014-11-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0786496665

Horror fiction is an important part of the popular culture in many modern societies. This book compares and contrasts horror narratives from two distinct cultures--American and Japanese--with a focus on the characteristic mechanisms that make them successful, and on their culturally-specific aspects. Including a number of narratives belonging to film, literature, comics and video games, this book provides a comprehensive perspective of the genre. It sheds light on the differences and similarities in the depiction of fear and horror in America and Japan, while emphasizing narrative patterns in the context of their respective cultures.

The Monstrous-Feminine in Contemporary Japanese Popular Culture

The Monstrous-Feminine in Contemporary Japanese Popular Culture
Author: Raechel Dumas
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2018-06-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3319924656

This book explores the monstrous-feminine in Japanese popular culture, produced from the late years of the 1980s through to the new millennium. Raechel Dumas examines the role of female monsters in selected works of fiction, manga, film, and video games, offering a trans-genre, trans-media analysis of this enduring trope. The book focuses on several iterations of the monstrous-feminine in contemporary Japan: the self-replicating shōjo in horror, monstrous mothers in science fiction, female ghosts and suburban hauntings in cinema, female monsters and public violence in survival horror games, and the rebellious female body in mytho-fiction. Situating the titles examined here amid discourses of crisis that have materialized in contemporary Japan, Dumas illuminates the ambivalent pleasure of the monstrous-feminine as a trope that both articulates anxieties centered on shifting configurations of subjectivity and nationhood, and elaborates novel possibilities for identity negotiation and social formation in a period marked by dramatic change.

Japanese Horror Cinema

Japanese Horror Cinema
Author: Jay McRoy
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2005
Genre: Horror films
ISBN: 9780748619948

A much-needed critical introduction to some of the most important Japanese horror films produced over the last fifty years, Japanese Horror Cinema provides an insightful examination of the tradition's most significant trends and themes. The book examines the genre's dominant aesthetic,cultural, political and technological underpinnings, and individual chapters address key topics such as: the debt Japanese horror films owe to various Japanese theatrical and literary traditions; the popular "avenging spirit" motif; the impact of atomic warfare, rapid industrialisation andapocalyptic rhetoric on Japanese visual culture; the extents to which changes in the economic and social climate inform representations of monstrosity and gender; the influence of recent shifts in audience demographics; and the developing relations (and contestations) between Japanese and "Western"(Anglo-American and European) horror film tropes and traditions.Extensive coverage of the central thematic concerns and stylistic traits of Japanese horror cinema makes this volume an indispensable text for a myriad of film and cultural studies courses.

Nightmare Japan

Nightmare Japan
Author: Jay McRoy
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2008-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9401205329

Over the last two decades, Japanese filmmakers have produced some of the most important and innovative works of cinematic horror. At once visually arresting, philosophically complex, and politically charged, films by directors like Tsukamoto Shinya (Tetsuo: The Iron Man [1988] and Tetsuo II: Body Hammer [1992]), Sato Hisayasu (Muscle [1988] and Naked Blood [1995]) Kurosawa Kiyoshi (Cure [1997], Séance [2000], and Kaïro [2001]), Nakata Hideo (Ringu [1998], Ringu II [1999], and Dark Water [2002]), and Miike Takashi (Audition [1999] and Ichi the Killer [2001]) continually revisit and redefine the horror genre in both its Japanese and global contexts. In the process, these and other directors of contemporary Japanese horror film consistently contribute exciting and important new visions, from postmodern reworkings of traditional avenging spirit narratives to groundbreaking works of cinematic terror that position depictions of radical or ‘monstrous’ alterity/hybridity as metaphors for larger socio-political concerns, including shifting gender roles, reconsiderations of the importance of the extended family as a social institution, and reconceptualisations of the very notion of cultural and national boundaries.

Japanese Visual Culture

Japanese Visual Culture
Author: Mark W. MacWilliams
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2014-12-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317467000

Born of Japan's cultural encounter with Western entertainment media, manga (comic books or graphic novels) and anime (animated films) are two of the most universally recognized forms of contemporary mass culture. Because they tell stories through visual imagery, they vault over language barriers. Well suited to electronic transmission and distributed by Japan's globalized culture industry, they have become a powerful force in both the mediascape and the marketplace.This volume brings together an international group of scholars from many specialties to probe the richness and subtleties of these deceptively simple cultural forms. The contributors explore the historical, cultural, sociological, and religious dimensions of manga and anime, and examine specific sub-genres, artists, and stylistics. The book also addresses such topics as spirituality, the use of visual culture by Japanese new religious movements, Japanese Goth, nostalgia and Japanese pop, "cute" (kawali) subculture and comics for girls, and more. With illustrations throughout, it is a rich source for all scholars and fans of manga and anime as well as students of contemporary mass culture or Japanese culture and civilization.