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Spiraling into Apocalypse 159

familial conventions, or the perfunctory perpetuation of conventional
gender codes.
This is not to suggest that Higuchinsky’s apocalyptic vision is
exclusively destructive or unremittingly pessimistic. Not all spirals are
necessarily downward in their trajectory. As Krafel posits, spirals curve
upward as well, and with each ascendant whorl of an ‘upward spiral’
comes the potential for infinite self-organising variability. As John Briggs
notes, ‘[a] chaotic system constantly mixes things up, creating new
directions in which the system can go. These moments of possibility are
called bifurcation points by chaologists’ (1992: 112). In Uzumaki, Kirie,
the film’s central protagonist and narrator, functions as perhaps the most
pronounced example of one such productive bifurcation. Initially,
Higuchinsky depicts Kirie as politely resistant to Shuichi’s frequent
suggestions that they ‘run away’ together, a cautionary position informed
by her desire to remain within the ‘comfort’ of familiar environs. Only
following Shuichi’s pronouncement that ‘[t]his town is finished’ – an
observation that, given Kurauzu Town’s role as a microcosm of Japanese
society, may be translated as ‘Japan is finished’ – does Kirie realise that
she must do something to escape the deadening cycles that threaten her
very life. When Shuichi finally succumbs to the vortex’s simultaneously
alluring and horrific force, his body and will twisting beyond his control,
Kirie leaves him and, as we are led to assume by her closing voice-over,
Kurouzu Town’s entropic disintegration for good. Thus, though we can
assume that Kirie will most likely adhere to some of the traditional
attitudes and practices that have informed her personal development, it is
ultimately her optimistic attitude and willingness to not only recognise,
but also to create change that allows her to avoid annihilation and quite
possibly begin her life anew. As her final words (‘[t]his is a story of
something that happened to my home town’) suggest, Kirie has survived
to tell her tale, be that story a narrative infused with the dread of
catastrophe or laced, if only in its final moments, with a thread of hope.