Page 133 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

120 Nightmare Japan

Image 11: Chain-link emasculation in Matsumura Katsuya’s All Night Long (1992)

distance of one another. From an early depiction of schoolgirl ijime that
the film’s bespectacled main protagonist, Sawada Kikuo, surreptitiously
observes from behind the leaves of a nearby tree, to a slow tracking shot
of the numerous carnivorous plants that decorate Kikuo’s cramped
apartment, Matsumura immerses the spectator within an environment in
which the ‘strong’ (especially in groups) once again dominate the ‘weak’.
As a group of Japanese schoolgirls kick, shove and finally force a timid
classmate with horribly scarred legs to urinate on herself, Matsumura
weds the spectator’s gaze with Kikuo’s, forcing all who watch the film to
consider their complicity in, as well as their desire to continue, viewing
such spectacles. The director emphasises this spectatorial connection
through frequent cross-cutting between images of violence or pain and
Kikuo’s intense stare, a gaze amplified by Kikuo’s large round eye-
glasses and his stooped posture, the latter lending his physique the
appearance of perpetually peering in to get a better view. Additionally,
Kikuo’s voyeurism extends to his job at a local love hotel, an