Page 207 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

194 Nightmare Japan

Vital poses crucial questions regarding the motivating forces behind
paradigms that invest the biological with the transcendental, ultimately
asking why people conflate these seemingly antithetical realms. As such,
the film investigates the plurality of narratives we tell ourselves to sustain
and perpetuate this illusion. Two moments from Vital emerge as
especially noteworthy in this regard. The first is the scene when Hiroshi
and his classmates initially encounter their anatomy class cadaver. The
anatomy instructor’s words reveal a culturally inscribed respect for the
dead and their posthumous contributions to the advancement of human
knowledge:

Medical history stems from wanting to understand the body’s mechanism. Dr.
Sugita Genpaku was amazed by the similarity between Dutch anatomical texts
with his texts. So he worked on translating them. Eventually Kaitai Shinsho
was published in 1774 in Tokyo. Trust your own eyes. This is a key point,
whatever the century. The truth is there for you to see. You must embrace this
concept. As students of medicine you are very privileged. You have the
opportunity to explore the bodies before you. Treat them with respect at all
times, We owe thanks to them and their families.

For the anatomy instructor, the inert flesh through which the students
learn their craft remain entities deserving dignity and ‘respect’; at the
same time, he understands the cadavers as ‘bodies’ ripe for exploration.
Indeed, it is through a meticulous understanding of the body’s geography
and ecology, the instructor posits, that one ‘may come to know the body’s
mechanism.’ Additionally, Tsukamoto uses this moment to advance the
theme of vision and its inherent subjectivity: ‘Trust your own eyes. This
is the key point, whatever the century. The truth is there for you to see.
You must embrace this concept.’ Of course, as we shall soon discover,
differences in vision can be greater than previously imagined. Vital’s very
narrative twists and turns upon this relativist axis. That said, reducing
Vital to a treatise on relativism compromises Tsukamoto’s larger
cinematic inquest into the tensions between modernist, holistic notions of
‘human’ embodiment and an emerging postindustrial technoscape in
which moving beyond simple dichotomies like ‘human’/‘mechanical’ and
‘living’/‘dead’ may reveal new ways of imagining identity in a world that