Page 130 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

A Murder of Doves 117

Yoshiko: (Giggling and handcuffing one of Kensuke’s wrists to a chain-link fence.) We’re
just animals…You don’t have to pretend.

Kensuke: Wait! Don’t! You’ve got strange tastes.

Yoshiko: I like this kind of thing. (She pulls Kensuke’s pants down to his knees.) Are you
ready?

Kensuke: Shouldn’t we do this somewhere else and take our time?

Yoshiko: Shut up you pig! (She kicks Kensuke between his legs.) Listen, let me tell you
what I hate.

Kensuke: Er…what?

Yoshiko: I hate kids who smell like spent sperm, like an animal. Who don’t know what
they are doing. Sometimes I find this type here and there, And – did you learn something?
Eh? Would you like to learn something more? (She opens a champagne bottle and empties
its contents over Kensuke’s head.) Humans are not born equal, under-tand? Well, I’ll be
saying goodnight. Goodnight kid. Enjoy yourself. (Yoshiko walks away as Kensuke
screams with anger and shame. Matsumura cuts to an extreme long shot of Kensuke still
cuffed to the fence, a factory behind him, its techno-drone overwhelming Kensuke’s
screams.)

As much an act of self-defense as an act of aggression, Yoshiko’s assault
on Kensuke demonstrates the ‘animalistic’ qualities that humans often
either sublimate or strategically channel to obtain what they desire.
‘We’re just animals,’ Yoshiko reminds Kensuke as she cuffs him outside
of an anonymous factory, a convenient yet effective symbol of late-
industrial capitalism in action. Yoshiko, coded as very much in control
throughout this scene, never denies her own animalistic qualities as she
squarely positions herself as stronger than Kensuke, who has taken her
for a prostitute and, thus, a lesser entity in his estimation. Likewise,
Yoshiko at once infantilises and emasculates Kensuke: ‘I hate kids who
smell like spent sperm,’ she states, ‘like an animal.’ Similar to Tetsuya,
Kensuke represents the notion of conventional masculine identity in
crisis; the reference to the smell of ‘spent sperm’, reminiscent of
Tetsuya’s nervous vomiting over his potential date, suggests a kind of
premature ejaculation and/or impotence in the face of a strong(er)
woman, a concern that – as we have seen – informs much of
contemporary Japanese horror cinema. Thus, despite Tetsuya’s