Page 117 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

104 Nightmare Japan

violence do share visual and narratological logics with popular works of
contemporary international horror cinema; indeed, considering horror
film’s predilection for depicting acts of explicit violence, psychological
torment, and revenge (a motivation central to numerous ‘slasher’ and
rape-revenge story arcs), this chapter’s examination of the deployment of
such physical and psychological persecution is one that is long overdue.
In the pages to follow, this chapter positions Iwai Shunji’s
beautiful (if brutal) meditation on ijime, All About Lily Chou-Chou (Riri
Shushu no subete, 2001), as a catalyst for a detailed exploration of
Matsumura Katsuya’s dark, ultra-violent, and highly controversial All
Night Long series (All Night Long [Ooru naito rongu, 1992], All Night
Long 2: Atrocity [Ooru naito rongu 2: Sanji, 1994], and All Night Long 3:
Atrocities [Ooru naito rongu 3: Saishuu-shô, 1996]). 1 As graphic
representations of postmodern alienation and the callous mistreatment of
others taken to their direst terminuses, both All About Lily Chou-Chou
and the All Night Long series approach ijime’s quasi-Darwinian
destruction of the weak by the strong(er) through variably intimate and
harrowing depictions of the shattered lives of desperate, often jaded or
disaffected young people who, as if abiding by the dictates of an
inescapable ‘animalistic’ or ‘human’ nature, perpetrate acts of deliberate
cruelty upon those least able to marshal a defense. In the process, Iwai’s
All About Lily Chou-Chou and Matsumura’s All Night Long series present
viewers with protagonists that embody the most destructive and extreme
consequences of an emerging cultural moment informed by, among other
social conditions: scholastic competition, economic recovery and
recession, and recent shifts in gender codes.
Building from these analyses of the politics of ijime and ‘dove
style violence’, this chapter concludes with a detailed consideration of the
‘sadomasochistic’ splatterfest, Ichi the Killer (Koroshiya 1, 2001), a film
by one of contemporary Japanese cinema’s most inventive filmmakers
and provocateurs, Miike Takashi. Among Miike’s better known films in

1
Since 2002, Matsumura has directed two additional entries into the All Night Long series: All
Night Long 4 (Ooru naito rongu R, 2004) and All Night Long 5: Initial 0 (Ooru naito rongu:
Inisharu O, 2003).