Page 114 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

Ghosts of the Present 101

and popular character actor Bill Pullman, hail from the US, Shimizu
chose to lens many of the film’s scenes within the same eerie and
disheveled environments that lent his previous Ju-on films an air of
palpable dread. Clearly, this decision has notable benefits, not the least of
which is the ability to capitalise upon the familiar (for Shimizu)
geography of Japanese homes and thus, when possible, recreate specific
scenes without having to account for architectural differences specific to
Western abodes. Likewise, the lack of social and cultural familiarity with
which the main (Western) characters that populate Shimizu’s Hollywood-
backed ‘variation on the Ju-on theme’ must contend serves to heighten
their anxiety, turning simple walks into isolating and dread inducing
sojourns through crowded, labyrinthine streets and alleyways: ‘I went for
a walk,’ one of the US-raised female characters remarks while voicing
her unease to her sympathetic husband, ‘…and I got so lost and I couldn’t
find anyone who spoke English that could help me.’
Similarly, everyday events, from the removal of one’s shoes upon
entering a home (‘Even in your own house?’ a Western character inquires
with a tinge of disbelief) to the observation of an elderly Japanese couple
reciting Buddhist prayers, are transformed into exotic spectacles
accompanied by conspicuous exposition that, while useful for explaining
cultural particularities for many non-Asian viewers, simultaneously
functions to exacerbate the Western characters’ (and, thus, the Western
audience’s) sense of discomfort and alienation. This does not necessarily
make for a ‘poor’ or ‘ineffective’ re-visioning of the Ju-on conceit.
Indeed, maintaining a Japanese setting avoids the potentially irrevocable
alteration of mood and tone that may accompany the transposition of a
distinctly Japanese narrative, with its distinctly Japanese cultural
resonances, into a variously analogous filmic moment specifically coded
for Western audiences. In addition, reworking the source text by
populating the narrative with displaced US citizens allows the film to
function as a subtle, yet telling critique of US cultural hegemony. At the
same time, however, by re-imaging his narrative through the lens of
Western characters as ‘outsiders navigating their way through an
unfamiliar social sphere’, Shimizu risks opening his narrative to
Orientalist readings of Japan as a ‘monstrous other’, a strange and