Page 31 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

18 Nightmare Japan

How, then, might Japanese horror cinema differ from and/or
resemble its western counterparts? To what extent can we understand
images of corporeal cohesion and radical or ‘monstrous’ alterity in
Japanese horror films as allegories for larger socio-political concerns? To
answer these questions, we must first acknowledge the importance of the
body as a metaphorical construct in Japanese society. However, before
embarking upon such a discussion, it is important to note that the
following paragraphs are by no means intended to serve as an exhaustive
analysis of this complex discursive phenomenon. Such an exploration
would certainly constitute a valuable contribution to Japanese cultural
studies, but it is also an avenue of inquiry far beyond this chapter’s scope.
Rather, my object in the following paragraphs is to illustrate the presence,
within Japanese cultural and political discourse, of the consolidated and
fragmented body as an operative allegorical motif. By extension, the
subsequent paragraphs aim to provide a historical basis from which one
may understand contemporary Japanese horror cinema and the models of
embodiment that so frequently accompany conceptions of the horrific and
‘monstrous’.
In discussions of modern and contemporary Japanese society,
western sociologists and historians frequently articulate the island
nation’s often turbulent past via a discursive paradigm that foregrounds a
propensity for adaptability 1 and change in the face of socio-political
crises and transformation. However, since at least the mid-nineteenth
century and the Meiji restoration, numerous Japanese scholars have
imagined the construction and maintenance of a consolidated – and
distinctly Japanese – cultural and national identity in both implicitly and
explicitly physiological terms. Thus, the application of the body as
metaphor for larger socio-political formations is by no means the
exclusive domain of western culture. As scholars as varied in their critical
methodologies as Marilyn Ivy, Ramie Tateishi, Darrell William Davis

1
Such discussions of cultural adaptability as a particularly Japanese trait are, of course,
reductive in that similar claims can be made about most cultures, especially when studied over
many years or during periods of significant cultural, national or even ecological transition.