Page 116 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

Chapter Four:

A Murder of Doves:

Youth Violence and the Rites of
Passing in Contemporaray

Japanese Horror Cinema

Bloody Doves

In their invaluable resource, Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: Horror,
Fantasy, and Science Fiction Films, Thomas Weisser and Yuko Mihara
Weisser use the term ‘dove style violence’ to describe a trend within
contemporary Japanese cinema in which human beings coldly abuse one
another with a detached cruelty reminiscent of ‘certain species of bird’
who, when ‘a flock member is different or weaker…peck at the weakest
bird dispassionately until it’s dead’ (1997: 21, emphasis theirs). ‘Dove
style violence’, however, has yet to receive the critical attention it
deserves, especially in terms of its representation within Japanese cinema
in general and Japanese horror cinema in particular. This chapter seeks to
address this critical oversight by focusing upon, and hopefully initiating
future discussions regarding the bleak, nihilistic, and often graphically
rendered motif of ijime (bullying) and ‘dove style violence’ in Japanese
horror cinema. Of course, bullying is by no means a specifically Japanese
cultural phenomenon, nor is its visual representation limited to works of
filmic horror. Nevertheless, representations of ‘bullying’ and related