Page 22 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

Introduction 9

the reinvigoration of the kaidan as one of Japanese cinema’s most durable
and economically viable film genres. As Alex Zahlten and Kimihiko
Kimata likewise recognise, fans of contemporary Japanese horror cinema
should not underestimate Tsuruta’s role in the emergence of the so-called
‘J-horror’ boom.
In the 1980s, Japanese Horror was painted in bright streaks of
red, spurting from gashing wounds and blood-spouting intestinal
spillings, a far cry from the late 1990s films filled with young women
simply standing there with hair hanging over their face. The shift from
bloody spectacle to intense atmospheric tension based on showing less
was initiated by a barely-known director originating from Japan's straight-
to-video world, usually called V-Cinema. Norio Tsuruta not only turned
the horror methodology around by 180 degrees, but also established
extremely successful and resilient storylines and iconography, influencing
all the big names in Japanese horror film today (yes, all!), and ultimately
leading to the worldwide J-horror boom and spate of American remakes.
(2004-2005: para 2)
Of course, ‘booms’ and international ‘remakes’ in any film genre
fall prey to perhaps the most pernicious of economic stressors, namely the
desire on the part of producers and studio executives to produce more
‘product’ for ready mass consumption and, consequently, to dilute the
latest cinematic trends through the rapid creation of multiple shallow,
ultimately interchangeable regurgitations of fashionable plotlines and
clichéd images. Contemporary Japanese horror cinema is by no means
immune to such pressures, and if this tradition is to not only survive, but
thrive, directors must be willing to innovate rather than simply immitate.
In this sense, Tsuruta’s recent Premonition (Yogen, 2004), the second
instalment in a series of stand-alone feature-length films in the ‘J-Horror
Theater’ series, may very well provide the kind of visual and intellectual
energies necessary to cement Japanese horror’s reputation as a
consistently evolving genre. Hence, despite the emergence of numerous
films designed to mimic the structure and style of works by directors like
Shimizu Takashi, Tsukamoto Shinya, Miike Takashi, and other
filmmakers instrumental to establishing the genre’s current global status,
it may well be these very same groundbreaking visionaries that push