Film-Philosophy 14.

2010

Review: Jay McRoy (2007) Nightmare Japan: Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Juneko J. Robinson
State University of New York at Buffalo

Despite the ubiquity of Japanese and Japanese-inspired horror films in recent years, this genre has attracted surprisingly little in-depth critical analysis from scholars. With Nightmare Japan: Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema Jay McRoy, author of the only other book-length treatment of contemporary J-horror to date,1 has provided a much needed corrective to this dearth of scholarly attention. Nightmare forces us to reconsider a genre that many a jaded horror fan has accused of falling prey to the 'long-haireddead-wet-chick' formula and it does this by taking us on a tour through some of Japans most innovative horror films. In doing so, McRoy reveals a vibrant genre that is intensely experimental and rich in satire and allegory, despite what might seem like the overexposure of its most well known exemplars and their Westernised remakes. It is axiomatic that horror films act as barometers for social anxiety. However, the use of the body as a metaphor for larger socio-political formalisms is hardly unique to Western cinema. According to McRoy, as depicted in many J-horror films, the corporeal body represents the transforming Japanese socio-political body in its response to its particular historicity. Drawing from the works of thinkers such as Baudrillard, Deleuze, Bataille, iek and Brecht, McRoy systematically examines an impressive array of J-horror films, ranging from the notorious guinea pig or torture

McRoy, Jay (2005) Japanese Horror Cinema. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
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films to the traditional ghost story, and he does so while avoiding getting bogged down in too much plot detail. In addition, McRoy examines the apocalyptic horror tale and bleak, nihilistic films featuring dove-style violence, a term taken from the tendency of certain birds to peck to death those members of its flock who appear different or weaker (11-12). What emerges is an entertaining discussion of the horror film as a series of texts firmly situated within contemporary Japanese political discourse. According to McRoy, this discourse centres around shifting notions of collective identity, the trauma of abrupt social change in an era of globalisation, and the tension between the desire for social cohesion, and a return to origins with a growing discontent concerning the more pathological aspects of traditional conceptions of gender roles and social identity. For McRoy, the depiction of the body transformed and torn asunder in much J-horror is emblematic of the psychic transformations suffered by the individuals embodied psyche as well as Japans collective conscience. According to McRoy, J-horror represents a filmic way for the Japanese to deal with tremendous uncertainties associated with globalisation, the long economic recession and a concomitant loss of optimism about the future, as well as the shocking revelations of wartime atrocities committed by Japans imperial forces during World War II, which have only recently been revealed to the Japanese public. In addition, the legacy of Japans catastrophic defeat at the end of World War II and the dropping of the A-bomb continue to exert a palpable influence on Japanese horror. While many film genres are capable of tackling such issues, the horror genre in particular seems especially well suited to such critical introspection due to its preoccupation with boundaries and their violation. According to McRoy, the liminal physiognomies that frequently populate Japanese horror films - from traditional notions of monstrosity to phantom-like entities and dismembered bodies - are symbolic of the kind of cultural transformations the Japanese have been forced to confront in the post-capitalist era (4). By wrestling with Japans social and economic traumas through the symbolism of the physical body or haunted home as a metaphor for the national body and psyche, contemporary J-horror films depict a larger socio-political body
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in a state of cultural crisis (4). Images of the transformation, disintegration or dismemberment of the body reveal that traditionally held notions of stable, fixed or natural identities - whether national, cultural, or gendered are being seriously challenged within Japanese society. Given this, such films are deeply and inherently political, insofar as they concern Japanese identity at a historical point in time during which the artificiality of social, national, and physiological boundaries has never been more apparent, and during which the desire to re-inscribe these borders has never beenmore apparent due to changing gender roles, the decline of the extended family, and the reconfiguration of the very notion of national boundaries due to the pervasiveness of technology in the late-capitalist era (4). As was the case for many other societies, the Japanese national identity formed in reaction to forced encounters with Westerners and their nineteenth century imperialist notions of the nation-state. Hence, McRoy is quite right to point out that the idea of a distinctly and uniquely Japanese national identity is itself a product of modernity (19). Part and parcel of the development of a collective identity is a preoccupation with boundaries. Indeed, all forms of nationalism involve the idea of a special and unique people who possess a common memory of the past and a view of history, which holds a distinctive role for them at its centre (Kohn 1965, 61). Like many other societies, Japan has periodically embraced nationalism as a way to defy encroaching Western imperialism. Yet, nationalism paradoxically can also threaten the internal stability of a body politic. Because it entails the construction of a largely illusory homogeneity (i.e., a monolithic unitary identity that is shared by all), nationalism invariably involves the concomitant designation of some individuals as outsiders or a source of foreign contagion, often provoking calls for the cleansing or purging of the undesired. Under such circumstances, pressures to conform present individuals with few options for socially acceptable identities and personal fulfilment. J-horror films reveal tremendous ambivalence on the part of Japanese towards their contemporary predicament, exhibiting both

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nationalistic and critical stances toward Japanese society. The contemporary Japanese horror film resides in the very midst of such debates. Indeed, nowhere is such dialogue more apparent than in Japans notorious guinea pig films, which have been the source of moral panic on at least three different continents over the years. It is a testimony to the ingenuity of McRoy as a writer that he is able to discuss these films, which may very well be the most challenging form of cinema extant, in a manner that gives the reader some appreciation for what would otherwise be a singularly unpleasant viewing experience. McRoy convincingly argues that guinea pig or torture films, such as Satoru Oguras Devils Experiment (Akura no jikken, 1985) and Hino Hideshis Flowers of Flesh and Blood (Za ginipiggu: Akuma no jikken, 1985), both of which explicitly depict dismemberment and vivisection, provide insight into shifting conceptions of corporeal, social and national cohesion, as well as raise questions about the dynamics of film spectatorship and the power of cinema to represent reality (16). As McRoy shrewdly points out, these films both alienate the viewer and threaten to collapse the distinction between spectator and spectacle and they do so in an aesthetic manner that takes its cue from a curious mixture of the pink eiga or soft-core films and the traditional chanbara eiga or samurai films (24). With its lack of a traditional credit sequence and its attempt to simultaneously depict the action from both sadistic and sympathetic perspectives, Devils Experiment, in particular, is designed to blur audience distinctions between fact and fiction, thereby heightening the visceral impact generated by the experiments verisimilitude (27). According to McRoy, how this film goes about revealing its contents is as important as the content of what is revealed. What is revealed in Devils Experiment is undoubtedly misogynistic, according to McRoy. Its narrative both arises out of, and is a contribution to the popular tradition of sadomasochistic imagery in Japanese cinema, as well as being an indication of the nostalgic desire to contain and punish women in response to male anxieties about changing gender roles in contemporary Japan. However, according to McRoy, the film is more than simply misogynistic insofar as it also depicts the dissolution of the boundary
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between inner and outer, between the public and the private, and spectator and spectacle. In doing so, it replicates the very act of torture and, as such, must be understood as a complex study of power (30). Interestingly, however, McRoy fails to entertain other possible interpretations of guinea pig films, which might counter some of the misogynistic readings. For example, he overlooks the nationalistic tendency in both Asia and the West to conflate womens bodies with the body politic of the state. In this view, the enemy-as-outsider-invader of the body politic is almost universally depicted in propaganda not only as a barbarian, but as a rapist and defiler of womanhood, i.e., motherhood. Here, it is not the woman as sexual object who is threatened, but as nurturer, the guardian of home, hearth, and family (Keen 1986, 58). Films such as Devils Experiment might arguably be read in this manner as well, particularly in light of other guinea pig films that offer devastating critiques of contemporary male gender roles, such as Kuzumi Masayukis He Never Dies (Senritsu! Sinanai otoko, 1986), which depicts an unhappy young salarymans gruesome and vain attempts to end his unfulfilling life of deadening routine and virtual invisibility (43). Part of McRoys aim is to provide some insight into the historical basis for J-horrors preoccupation with Japanese cultural integrity, social cohesion and the body politic under siege. But for those unfamiliar with recent scholarship on critical geography and the primacy of space as a defining human experience, McRoys insistence on the depiction of the body transformed and torn asunder in J-horror as being emblematic of the transformations wrought upon the (embodied) Japanese psyche might seem a bit puzzling at first. Issues of space and place have moved to the fore in many critical analyses of society and culture in recent years (Herbert 2008, 145). According to Japanese philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro, our sense of self is primarily that of an embodied being that acts within space. We do not first think about the world, rather we first act within it. As a result, we seem to be intrinsically inclined toward thinking about complicated, abstract concepts in terms of maps with our embodied selves at the centre. Hence, because we are ego-centric beings as well as inherently physical and deeply social beings, we tend to think of abstract entities such as community,
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God, and country, in terms of their imagined geospatial relationships to us. This constitutes an atlas of what it means to be human (Olsson 2007, 9). This tendency to view the world in terms of its relation to the embodied self appears conceptually linked to our tendency to view the familiar and the comforting in terms of the body and the alien or unconventional as disease or as outside threats to the integrity of the bodypolitic. J-horror films play with this notion and, depending on which end of the political spectrum they stem from, depict the desire for the return to a homogenous, fully-integrated (mythic) past or imagine a radical departure from the present with the hope for new future. Themes concerning radical departure from, or the logical (generally bleak or grisly) extension of, the status quo form the focus of dove-style violence films such as All About Lily Chou-Chou (Riri Shushu no subete, 2001) and Katsuyas controversial All Night Long series, as well as popular apocalyptic films such as Sono Shions Suicide Club (Jisatsu saakuru, 2002), Kurosawa Kiyoshis Pulse (Karo, 1997) and Higuchinskys Uzumaki (Spiral / Vortex, 2000). In particular, Pulse and Uzumaki play with the notion that Armageddon while destructive and frightening, may in fact be necessary for spiritual and social rebirth. However, while personal transformation is often viewed as positive and necessary for achieving spiritual enlightenment, in order to achieve such a radical transformation, it is necessary to destroy ones current identity and become something very different (Robinson 2008, 25). Such transformation, then, constitutes a kind of metaphorical death, one which is viewed as either potentially redemptive or irrevocably damning, or both, depending on ones inclinations. Such ambivalence about change renders the horror genre especially effective at articulating our deep-seated ambivalence towards such transformation and the J-horror genre is no exception. My criticisms are relatively minor and hardly detract from the overall excellence of McRoys work. First of all, McRoys tendency to level assertions and then explain them by utilising quotes from other scholars gives short shrift to those who might be unfamiliar with those works. As a
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philosopher, I want more in depth analysis. Assertions should be backed by clear arguments, which systematically lay out the line of reasoning used by the work being cited. This is useful not only for an audience unfamiliar with the works cited, but also allows readers to critically assess the arguments being proffered. McRoys overreliance on quotes from other authors to buttress his assertions in the absence of greater explication often devolves into appeals to authority. In addition, because of the cursory nature of some of McRoys analyses, promising threads of discussion are abruptly cut off. For example, although McRoy notes recurring motifs in Japanese horror, such as the staring eye and long black hair, he fails to explicate the origins of these motifs. Perhaps most glaring is the scant attention paid to the impact of Shinto on the Japanese worldview, particularly regarding notions of cleanliness and decay. McRoy relegates Shintoism to the chapter on the traditional ghost story, but there is much regarding this religion that could be applied to other chapters as well. For example, recurring motifs of abject physicality', as in the tasting party of physical flesh in Devil Woman Doctor wherein a catered buffet of dishes featuring assorted body parts are presented for human consumption, are illustrative of a deeper more widespread, yet taboo fascination with death and decay. Under feudalism, a rigid class hierarchy dictated that those whose occupations brought them in contact with death, such as butchers, undertakers, and executioners, were greatly stigmatised. This was partly due to the fact that Shinto views blood and death as evil pollutants, as evidenced by the emphasis on ritual cleanliness to keep any evidence of decay at bay, and partly due to Buddhisms proscriptions against killing. Just as McRoy locates the pervasive visual rhetoric in J-horror of black out restrictions on the depiction of genitalia in Japanese soft-core, so too can one trace the connection between the preoccupation with hiding signs of decay with its vivid depiction in J-horror films, and the apparent fascination Japanese gothhorror fans have with wearing bloody bandages and sullied medical uniforms.

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In addition, the consumption of body parts as depicted in Devil Woman Doctor,2 also lends itself to contemporary philosophical writings on disgust. Hence, some reference to the works of Aurel Kolnai, Julia Kristeva, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Noel Carroll, William Ian Miller, or Winifred Menninghaus would have been most welcome.3 Also missing is any overt reference to Japanese psychology, which would have acted as a nice corollary to the emphasis on Japanese sociology, particularly in light of most Westerners ignorance about such topics. For example, McRoys discussion of the protagonists unsuccessful attempts at suicide, including

disembowelment, dismemberment, and self-decapitation in He Never Dies and the connection of these actions to the body would have benefitted from some analysis stemming from the cultural tendency to somaticise or convert emotional pain to physical pain. Finally, while mention is made of remakes in the introduction and chapter on Nakata Hideos Ringu (1998) and Dark Water (Honogurai mizu no soko kara, 2002) and Shimizu Takashis Ju-On: The Grudge (2002), there is little effort to theorise their implications and one suspects that McRoy views such films as merely derivative. However, the phenomenon of the remake and its relation to nihilism and existentialist themes deserves a bit more attention and, hence, some reference to the work of Scott A. Lukas and John Marmysz would have been welcome. To be fair, McRoy himself clearly states that the book is meant to be an introductory text rather than a comprehensive analysis of the J-horror phenomenon, therefore serving merely as a point of departure for further discussion. Nonetheless, some readers might wish for a bit more, particularly about issues and topics that are culturally embedded and whose origins are unknown to most Westerners. In this manner, Nightmare teases the reader and makes him or her wish for more. Regardless, Nightmare Japan has much to offer. It is both timely and relevant and the fact that it is the only book-length work to deal with this

Tabe, Hajime (1990) Devil Woman Doctor (Za ginipiggu 6: Peter no akuma no joi-san). Japan. 3 See, e.g., Aurel Kolnais On Disgust, Kristevas Powers of Horror, Korsmeyers Delightful, Delicious, Disgusting, Carrolls The Philosophy of Horror, Millers The Anatomy of Disgust, and Menninghauss Disgust.
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genre makes it essential reading. McRoys observations are important for understanding how film both interprets and is a product of globalisation. As McRoy points out, the very notion of a distinct national and cultural identity is itself the product of modernisation. What such an identity means in this age of globalisation is an issue with which all societies must grapple. Indeed, the recent films such as Babel (Constanza Perales, 2005), Crash (Haggis, Paul 2004), Les Battiments dAiles du Papillon (The Beating of a Butterflys Wings aka Happenstance, Laurent Firode, 2000), The Butterfly Effect (Eric Bress, 2004), Six Degrees of Separation (Fred Schepisis, 1993), Traffic (Steven Soderbergh, 2001), 21 Grams (Alejandro Gonzlez Irritu, 2003), Syriana (Stephen Gaghan, 2005), and 13 Conversations About One Thing (Jill Sprecher, 2002) with their depictions of individual acts having far reaching ramifications reveal that the West is also struggling to make sense out of our new sense of interconnectedness. The salient question is what it means to have a national identity in an age where the very experience of space has become decentred, due to the emergence of virtual worlds, a space in which frontiers and boundaries have become permeable (Herbert 2008, 146). In other words, how it is that an identity concept can retain its uniqueness and decide on its constituent parts and core characteristics in the face of constant challenges while still allowing for some flexibility so as to meet the challenges of the postmodern world. The J-horror film can be viewed as constituting part of a larger sociopolitical discourse concerning identity, its representation and as such it is worthy of our consideration.

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Bibliography Carroll, Noel (1990) The Philosophy of Horror: or Paradoxes of the Heart. New York: Routledge. Herbert, Daniel (2008) Trading Spaces: Transnational Dislocation in Insomnia/Insomnia and Ju-On/The Grudge in Fear, Cultural Anxiety, and Transformation. Eds. Scott A. Lukas and John Marmysz. Lanham, Maryland (U.S.): Lexington. Keen, Sam (1986) Faces of the Enemy: Reflections of the Hostile Imagination. San Francisco: Harper and Row. Kohn, Hans (1965) Nationalism: Its Meaning and History. Malabar, Florida: Robert E. Krieger Publishing. Kolnai, Aurel [1929] (2004) On Disgust. Ed. Barry Smith and Carolyn Korsmeyer. Chicago: Open Court. Lukas, Scott A. and John Marmysz (2008). Fear, Cultural Anxiety, and Transformation: Horror Science Fiction, and Fantasy Films Remade. Lanham, Maryland (U.S.): Lexington. McRoy, Jay (2005) Japanese Horror Cinema. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Menninghaus, Winifred (2003) Disgust: The Theory of the History of a Strong Sensation. Albany: State University of New York Press. Miller, William Ian (1997) Anatomy of Disgust. Massachusetts/London: Harvard University Press. Cambridge,

Olsson, Gunnar (2007) Abysmal: A Critique of Cartographic Reason. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. Robinson, Juneko (2008) Immanent Attack: An Existential Take on The Invasion of the Body Snatchers Films in Fear, Cultural Anxiety, and Transformation. Eds. Scott A. Lukas and John Marmysz. Lanham: Lexington.

Filmography Bress, Eric (2004) The Butterfly Effect. U.S.A. Firode, Laurent (2000) Le Battiment dailes du Papillon (The Beating of the Butterflys Wings aka Happenstance). France. Gaghan, Stephen (2005) Syriana. U.S.A.
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Haggis, Paul (2004) Crash. U.S.A./Germany. Higuchinsky (2000) Uzumaki, (Spiral and Vortex). Japan. Hino, Hideshi (1985) Flowers of Flesh and Blood (Za ginipiggu: Akuma no jikken). Japan. Iwai, Shunji (2001) All About Lily Chou-Chou (Riri Shushu no subete). Japan. Kurosawa, Kiyoshi, Pulse (Karo, 1997). Japan. Kuzumi, Masayuki (1986) He Never Dies (Senritsu! Sinanai otoko). Japan. Matsumura, Katsuya (1992) All Night Long (Ooru naito rongu). Japan. Matsumura, Katsuya (1994) All Night Long 2: Atrocity (Ooru naito rongu 2: Sanji). Japan. Matsumura, Katsuya (1996) All Night Long 3: Atrocities (Ooru naito rongu 3: Saishuush). Japan. Nakata Hideo (1998) Ringu. Japan. Nakata, Hideo (2002) Dark Water (Honogurai mizu no soko kara). Japan. Ogura, Satoru (1985) Devils Experiment (Akura no jikken). Japan. Perales, Constanza (2006) Babel. France/U.S.A./Mexico. Schepisi, Fred (1993) Six Degrees of Separation. U.S.A. Shimizu Takashi (2002) Ju-On: The Grudge. Japan. Soderbergh, Steven (2001) Traffic. Germany/U.S.A. Sono, Shion (2002) Suicide Circle (Jisatsu saakuru). Japan. Sprecher, Jill (2002) 13 Conversations About One Thing. U.S.A. Tabe, Hajime (1990) Devil Woman Doctor (Za ginipiggu 6: Peter no akuma no joi-san). Japan.

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