Page 97 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

84 Nightmare Japan

and, in a particularly terrifying scene, frightens Reiko’s ex-husband to
death. Perplexed, Reiko reviews the recent events, discovering that the
tape her ex-husband viewed was a copy of her version. It soon becomes
clear to Reiko that the curse can only be avoided by creating a copy for
another person to view. Realising that her son has brought the curse upon
himself by viewing the tape while she was distracted, Reiko telephones
her father and informs him that she has a copy of a tape she would very
much like for him to watch.
Similar in subtle ways to Ringu, Nakata’s Dark Water immerses
viewers within the melancholy life of Matsubura Yoshimi, the mother of
a six-year-old girl named Ikuko and the former employee of a publishing
house for which she proofread what she describes as ‘extremely graphic
and sadistic’ fictions. Enmeshed in a divorce proceeding and a bitter
custody battle, Yoshimi is determined to provide for her daughter and
demonstrate her parenting abilities to attorneys hired to decide whether,
given her history of mental breakdowns and familial disruptions, Yoshimi
should continue to be Ikuko’s primary caretaker. After an exhausting
search for affordable housing, Yoshimi rents a small apartment in a run-
down block-style tenement located near the kindergarten her daughter is
scheduled to attend. Yoshimi and Ikuko move in, only to discover a
small, mysterious red backpack bearing the name of a missing child (a
kindergarten age girl named Kawai Mitsuko), as well as a rapidly
spreading water stain slowly bleeding its way through Yoshimi’s
bedroom ceiling. As the story progresses, Nakata builds a mood of quiet
dread tinged with a palpable sadness. Yoshimi, herself the child of
divorced parents, finds herself consistently reminded of her fear of
abandonment stemming from an incident when her own mother failed to
pick her up from school. Yoshimi’s own quest for a job to provide a
decent life for her daughter exacerbates the pain evoked by this memory,
especially when she arrives late to her daughter’s school, only to discover
that her soon to be ex-husband picked up Ikuko moments earlier. On the
verge of a mental collapse, Yoshimi meets a sympathetic lawyer, Kishida,
who assists her by asserting the legal pressures necessary to get the
dripping stain on her ceiling fixed. Yoshimi’s daily life appears to be
improving, but soon Mitsuko’s restless spirit reappears and viewers