Page 129 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

116 Nightmare Japan

binary logics that inform the practices of ijime and ‘dove style violence’
in the first place.
As the brief plot summary above suggests, the first All Night Long
film engages transforming conceptualisations of masculinity during the
on-set of the economic recession that followed the bursting of the
Japanese economic ‘bubble’ economy in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Specifically, the themes of failure and impotence permeate the film’s
action. Each of the three central male characters – Saito Shinji, Suzuki
Kensuke, and Tenaka Tetsuya – represents a stereotype of Japanese
masculinity, presenting the audience with archetypal figures negotiating
their way through a generalised microcosm of contemporary Japan.
Moreover, the film’s opening sequence locates our three ‘heroes’ as
failures: Shinji is unsuccessful in his attempt to solder together two thin
metal bars; Kensuke misses a putt on his portable putting green; and
Tetsuya, rushing to make it to class on time, arrives at the subway
platform mere seconds after the train’s doors have closed and the cars
have begun to roll away. In addition, discourses of strength and weakness
dominate many of the conversations. Tetsuya’s obnoxious mentor,
Tamari, for example, states that being homeless, or even a worn-out
‘salaryman’, is an increasingly common status that, similar to being born
female, positions an individual as ‘lower’ and, thus, deserving of
exploitation. ‘They look like crummy little worms,’ Tamari says, peering
down from a second story window, ‘[t]hat’s why I use them. The weak
really shouldn’t inherit the world.’ Additionally, when Tetsuya expresses
reservations regarding Tamari’s casual remarks about ‘using’ others for
his own purposes, Tamari responds with, ‘[d]on’t worry, I only use
females’, a statement that reveals a misogynist agenda not surprising in a
series so widely cited for its persistently misanthropic content.
Tamari’s reference to the ‘crummy little worms’ to whom he feels
superior also provides an excellent example of the quasi-Darwinian
consumption of the perceived weak by those who are either physically
stronger, or who assume an air of entitlement because of their social or
educational status. Furthermore, although women are frequently
victimised throughout the series, they are by no means exclusively
passive, as Yoshiko, Kensuke’s date turned assailant, illustrates: