Page 132 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

A Murder of Doves 119

hunt them down and revenge the girl’ (Japan Shock, 2001). However,
although Shinji’s murderous rage apparently stems largely from the
assault on Yôko, Kensuke’s and Tetsuya’s roles in the violent attack on
the ‘gang of criminals’, the spectacular event that propels the film to its
gruesome finale, seems less an act of focused vengeance than a panicked
re-assertion of a specific notion of masculinity, with Kensuke’s rifle
providing a deadly, if somewhat over-determined, double-barreled phallic
symbol. Rather than constituting a moment of retribution, Shinji’s rape of
the gang leader’s drug-addicted girlfriend (who was not present during
the assault on Yôko) represents an attempt at violently imposing his
masculine dominance over her – a power buttressed by his membership
within the more powerful group and her now vulnerable, outsider status.
Ultimately, however, when the massacre is over, only Tetsuya, the most
conventionally awkward and docile of the trio of characters with whom
audiences are asked to identify, remains alive. He exacts a horrible
revenge upon the duplicitous Tamari and then wanders through the urban,
postindustrial Tokyo streets with a crazed expression, his ‘innocence’
clearly ‘vanished to make way for more disturbing instincts’ (Mes 2001,
para 3). In the world of Matsumura’s initial All Night Long film, ijime and
‘dove style violence’ dominate social interactions; in the final analysis,
the dominant imperative is one in which everyone must fend for her- or
himself.
A related, albeit far more complicated, cultural critique
underscores Matsumura’s third installment of the All Night Long series.
Accompanied by a post-colonialist soundtrack of US jets taking off and
landing at a local air base, All Night Long 3: Atrocities likewise explores
alienated, nihilistic youth struggling to survive in a post-recession Japan.
Having crafted a film far bleaker in tone than its predecessors,
Matsumura deploys a repeatedly claustrophobic mise-en-scène dominated
by close-ups and tightly composed medium shots. Interior settings are the
norm, and as such most of the film’s action transpires in small, cluttered
rooms apparently located within walking