Page 183 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

170 Nightmare Japan

Of course, narratives of apocalypse are by no means limited to
Japanese horror film; most national cinemas have long-standing traditions
of such tales, and given these narratives’ function as barometers for social
and cultural anxieties, representations of ‘the end of the world’ should
continue to appear on movie screens across the globe. In terms of
Japanese cinema, it will be interesting not only to map the continuities
and discontinuities within this genre, but also to explore the way these
narratives provide insights into the transforming and increasingly
pluralistic body that is contemporary Japanese culture. As Kurosawa
Kiyoshi stated in a 2003 interview with noted Japanese film scholar Mark
Schilling, no one ‘can say for certain what kind of future awaits society as
a whole’ (para 24). However, though ‘the future for Japan and the world
may well be dark’ (para 24), individuals willing to envision the world in
new ways need not expire beneath a cloak of gloom and despair. Thus,
like the beautiful but poisonous jellyfish iridescently glowing as they
float through the rivers and streams in Kurosawa’s recent film, Bright
Future (2003), individuals living in contemporary Japan (or anywhere for
that matter) need not perceive the days ahead as irredeemably bleak or
ultimately doomed. As Kurosawa explains: ‘a bright future is something
you make for yourself…You can still have a bright future as an
individual, despite what is happening in the world’ (para 24).