Page 91 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema
P. 91
78 Nightmare Japan
Image 7: Sadako’s furious gaze in Nakata Hideo’s Ringu (© Tartan Video)
Monstrous Transformations: Single Mothers, the Return of the
Oppressed, and the Fear of National Disintegration
In his edited volume, Japan Pop!: Inside the World of Japanese Popular
Culture, Timothy J. Craig notes that in Japan, ‘[e]conomic development’
has produced ‘new social conditions’, including ‘urbanization, consumer
cultures, changing family structures and gender roles, and lifestyles and
values that are less purely traditional and more influenced by outside
information and trends’ (2000: 16). One could safely articulate a similar
observation regarding many of the world’s nations, but one of the more
interesting aspects of contemporary Japanese culture is the varying
degrees to which US ideologies and popular aesthetics, especially in the
years following the end of World War II, have had a deeply rooted and
curiously expansive impact upon Japanese social formations. From the
profound influence of late capitalist economic philosophies, to the
sometimes difficult reassessments of long-held ontological categories of
