Page 57 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

44 Nightmare Japan

extreme and, at times, so clumsily constructed that its appeal initially
seems limited to audiences composed of spectators longing for over-the-
top displays of blood and gore. It is precisely this inconsistent and
amateurish approach, however, that renders the film’s politics practically
transparent. Consider, for instance, the film’s central protagonist,
Hideshi. Both ineffectual in his coworker’s eyes and the continued target
of his employers’ ire, Hideshi withdraws from his exploitative office job,
but his absence goes largely unnoticed. Sequestering himself within his
cramped apartment, Hideshi fantasises about his superiors’ disgust and
worries that he may disappoint his father. In short, he chafes against his
position as little more than a superfluous cog in a larger capitalist
machine, a status confirmed by an error message that flashes on his
computer screen: ‘no value’.
Images of impotence recur throughout Hideshi’s daily attempts
at physical self-destruction, wedding his feelings of uselessness inside
and outside of the work place with a larger perceived crisis in
masculinity. In an especially revealing sequence approximately half-way
through the film, Hideshi imagines a discussion between three young
women who work in his office. Lensed as if responding to off-camera
questions and choreographed to intensify their comic impact, the women
muse about waning notions of traditional Japanese masculinity in a
culture dominated by business and industry, as well as the rigid corporate
hierarchies such convoluted interpersonal relationships may engender:

Girl #1: You know? How can I say this? It will not be of interest to a person
without talent.

Girl #2: There are no attractive men in this company. No men good for
anything. I’ll never marry a man who works for the company.

Girl #3: But I don’t feel good in Japan, do you? It’s, how should I say, the
complicated human relationships.

Taken together, these comments (whether we understand them as a part
of the ‘real world’ of the film or as a figment of Hideshi’s ‘imagination’)
paint an unflattering portrait of life during the height of the Japanese
‘bubble economy’. They suggest that the social climate produced by the