J-POP VS. J-HORROR

An exhibition curated by the artist Takashi Murakami at the Japan Society in New York, entitled “Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture,” posits that the birth of new forms of Japanese contemporary culture — distinguished by the kawaii (“cute”) motifs found in everything from Hello Kitty to Murakami’s own “superflat” art — can be traced to the trauma and generational aftershock of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

“In Murakami’s perspective, a resonant figure for Japan’s contemporary condition is that of the ‘little boy’–both the nickname for the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and an image of Japan’s infantalized culture.”

This lead us to wonder if Japan’s other phenomenally succesful exports, the recent wave of Japanese horror films, can be explained as manifestations of the same trauma that lead instead to more disturbing expressions of rage, anxiety and confusion?

In an article entitled “Horror, Japanese Style: Beyond ‘The Grudge’”, Stefan Lovgren writes, “Movies like 1954′s Godzilla grew out of Japan’s World War II experience with the atomic bomb and were concerned with mass destruction. The 1960s, though, saw a spate of artfully made ghost stories.

” ‘These were safe, distant fantasies for audiences that felt secure in their community,’ said Stuart Galbraith IV, a film historian who lives in Kyoto, Japan.

” ‘Since then I think horror movies have begun tapping into the unease many Japanese feel as the ills of the [outside] world have encroached on Japanese life.’ he said. ‘For instance, Japan is no longer the fantastically safe country it famously once was, and the slumping economy has destabilized the notion of lifelong job security.’

” In Japan this unease is impolite to express in public, Galbraith said, but the anxiety is reflected in Japanese horror movies.

“Today’s Japanese horror filmmakers, many of whom grew up in the 1980s, may not have the same connection to history. As a result, their movies deal more with the breakdown of reality, of families, and of the mind.”

Director Hideo Nakata of Ringu fame has a diferent perspective: “Since ancient times people in Japan have believed that ancestral spirits protect their descendants, and daily life is carried out in the belief that spirits naturally dwell in close proximity. Japanese instinctively feel that there is an unseen world existing all around us. This and other beliefs derive from Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan. Unlike monotheism, it is based on the animistic belief that myriad gods inhabit all natural phenomena. So the Japanese awareness of a spiritual world and the perceptions of ‘horror’ are vastly different from those in Western cultures.

Nakata, movie producer Roy Lee, and author Koji Suzuki, who wrote the 1989 novel Ringu, which spawned the Ring films, discuss the roots of J-Horror and America’s newfound fascination with the cinematic nightmares its bombs may or may not have spawned.
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