Page 171 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

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on Stone Age structures around the world’; an historical detail echoed by
Tamura’s research in Uzumaki. As John Briggs notes, anthropologists
have long probed the metaphorical potentialities of these fractal images,
understanding them as symbolic of ‘activity in the life-giving boundary
between order and chaos’ and as ‘the ancient symbol for the labyrinth, the
twisted pathway to a journey to the core of being’ (1992: 113).
How, then, does Higuchinsky mobilse the image of the vortex in
Uzumaki? In Seeing Nature: Deliberate Encounters with the Visible
World, Paul Krafel argues that an expansive dialogue between ‘upward
spirals’ (or self-similar, scaling fractals that encourage creativity,
multiplicity and regeneration) and ‘downward spirals’ (vortexes whirling
inevitably towards entropy, dissolution, death) constitute much of the
natural world (1999: 63). Such a conceptualisation intersects productively
with Higuchinsky’s film, especially given Uzumaki’s abundance of
natural, supernatural, and narratological vortexes. Most of Uzumaki’s
vortexes seemingly conform to Krafel’s notion of ‘downward spirals’, as
do the institutions and characters most spectacularly destroyed by the
apocalyptic plague of whirling patterns. In particular, certain socio-
cultural practices – education and the apportioning of gender roles being
the most conspicuous examples – are rendered entropic in their numbing
repetition (that is, in their cyclical constancy), as well as through their
resistance to significant change. Part of Higuchinsky’s social critique,
then, targets those deadening socio-cultural systems and ideological
continuities that, if left unchecked or unchallenged, may stifle the
potential for meaningful, or even necessary, modification. In other words,
reading the nightmarish vortexes permeating Higuchinsky’s text as
metaphors for institutions and practices linked with the maintenance and
perpetuation of social and cultural power reveals Uzumaki as not only a
visually and structurally complex film, but also as a nuanced critical
project. Consequently, rigid conformity in Uzumaki can be understood as
a type of vortex, as can the unquestioned adherence to scholastic and

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Japanese art is no exception. Consider, for instance, the ‘eddies and whorls’ permeating
works like Hokusai Katsushika’s engraving, Great Wave (1823-9).