Page 196 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema
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New Terrors, Emerging Trends 183
metaphorical remasculinisation. Far removed from the workaholic
archetype Hideki’s behaviour evokes at the film’s outset, he sacrifices
everything, including his own life, for his family. Thus, though the film’s
final shot recuperates the Japanese horror film premise of inescapable
Image 20: The horror of knowing. Tsuruta Norio’s Premonition (Movies Online)
curses, Hideki’s selfless recapitulation, made possible through a radical
re-appraisal and re-ordering of his priorities, advances a much needed
corrective to, or variation upon, constructions of masculinity in
contemporary Japanese culture, especially as they relate to negotiating the
often incongruent demands of the social and domestic spheres.
