Page 14 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

Introduction: ‘New Waves’,

Old Terrors and Emerging Fears

Japan’s Screaming

In his compact primer, ‘An Exquisite Nightmare: New Asian Horror
Sprays the Screen’, Todd Wardrope notes that contemporary Asian horror
cinema is ‘well on its way to becoming a staid film studies expression
like “French New Wave”’ (2004: para 1). Concentrating almost
exclusively upon the genre’s most popular cinematic offerings, from the
stylish gut-wrenching Audition (Ôdishon, 1999), helmed by Japan’s
hyper-prolific Miike Takashi, to Hong Kong director Herman Yau’s
brutal thriller, Ebola Syndrome (Yi bo la beng duk, 1996), Wardrope
remarks briefly upon ‘New Asian Horror’’s similarities to and differences
from Western horror film traditions and motifs. In the process, he
reiterates casual observations about the films’ cross-cultural appeal,
commenting perfunctorily upon the filmmakers’ seemingly paradoxical
reliance upon atmosphere and restraint over gore on the one hand, and
‘juicy violence and sexual perversion’ (para 23) on the other. Of course,
the often thought-provoking content and arresting visual styles that
comprise works of ‘New Asian Horror’ come as no surprise to veteran
horror film aficionados, many of whom would undoubtedly argue that the
narratological and visual tropology on display in these works has long
been a primary component of cinematic traditions that are only now
getting the critical attention (and international distribution) they have so
long deserved. However, as an increasing number of university syllabi