Page 131 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

118 Nightmare Japan

intellectual acumen and Kensuke’s wealth, both factors that would have
carried significantly greater cultural weight in a pre-recession Japan,
Tetsuya and Kensuke signify Matsumura’s recognition of anxieties
surrounding a shifting social landscape. While far from ‘crummy little
worms’ writhing hopelessly at the very bottom level of the transforming
Japan, Tetsuya and Kensuke’s respective stations are by no means
guarantors of success.
Matsumura provides his audience with one initially promising,
albeit ultimately problematic and tragically doomed, relationship in the
connection between Shinji and Yôko, the young woman whose bike chain
Shinji severs as a means of initiating conversation and proving his
resourcefulness. Yet even this relationship’s foundation arises from
dishonesty and the hierarchical positioning of one person (the rescuer)
above another (the individual in distress). As well, Matsumura carefully
balances scenes of affection with unsettling instances of disaffection. A
date at a waterfront locale affords viewers with one of the film’s starkest
images, as Shinji witnesses an act of extreme cruelty. Lensed in an
extreme high angle long shot conforming with Shinji’s POV, a group of
young punks stomp upon, and then set fire to, what looks like the battered
carcass of a small cat or dog. In keeping with the theme of disaffection,
mere moments before Shinji and Yôko fall victim to a vicious assault by
the very same gang of miscreants, Yôko articulates her feelings of
emotional estrangement: ‘I don’t feel strong emotions anymore. I don’t
feel sad. I don’t feel mad.’ Yôko’s subsequent pronouncement, however,
that this sense of alienation has begun to ease further amplifies the cruelty
of the gang rape, a violation that Shinji, beaten and restrained, can only
watch helplessly.
Given the varying humiliations suffered by Tetsuya, Kensuke and,
finally, Shinji, one can certainly view the bloodbath with which the film
concludes as an act of revenge for the rape Shinji helplessly witnesses.
This is certainly the reading privileged by the designer of the film’s
‘uncut’ release from Japan Shock DVD; on the back of the DVD case,
amidst gory stills from some of the film’s more spectacular moments, is a
three sentence plot summary that reads: ‘When a female friend gets raped
by a gang of criminals, the boys [Shinji, Kensuke, and Tetsuya] decide to