Page 195 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

182 Nightmare Japan

what do we do in those moments we are alive? Do we act despite the
myriad consequences? Do we remain passive?
Tsuruta directs Premonition’s most explicit cultural critique,
however, towards the transforming structure of the ‘typical’
contemporary Japanese family in general, and towards the possibly
misguided priorities that frequently characterise the role of the father in
particular. Conforming to the stereotype of the excessively overworked
Japanese male pressured to achieve material success in the midst of a
lingering economic recession, Hideki rarely looks up from his laptop
during the film’s opening sequence, abstaining from the family ‘sing
along’ much to his daughter’s dismay. In keeping with the film’s various
allusions to the universe as a ‘protean’ and chaotic system in which every
action or ‘chance occurrence’ can ‘bring about macroscopic
transformation’ (White 1991: 263), Hideki’s inability to defer his
academic labours initiates the chain of events that leads to his discovery
of the scrap of cursed newspaper, his daughter’s death, the dissolution of
his marriage, and the vocational and financial collapse that, in three years,
finds him living alone in a tiny cluttered apartment and working at a job
he despises. What’s more, Hideki’s guilt over his daughter’s death is
perhaps best exemplified by one of Premonition’s most unsettling
moments. Haunted by the increasing tide of premonitions, as well as his
regret and guilt over the actions (and inactions) that resulted in the
dissolution of his immediate family, Hideki awakes, albeit within a
dream, to the sound of his deceased child’s voice calling out ‘Daddy!
Daddy!’ He stumbles out of bed and follows the sound of his daughter’s
voice to his apartment door, behind which he encounters Nana’s horribly
charred form reaching out for him with an unearthly scream. This scene’s
connotations are obvious: Nana’s smoking corpse is the embodiment of
Hideki’s battered conscience, the nightmare personification of his tragic
hamartia. It is only through Ayaka’s assistance that he is able to engage
with the influx of premonitions and come to terms with the trauma of
their shared loss. This reconciliation both forms Premonition’s emotional
core and propels the narrative forward. Fittingly, the film’s climactic
series of alternate pasts, through which Hideki repeatedly attempts and
fails to save his family from roadside tragedy, functions as a kind of