Lugosi

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The Asian horror issue Vol.3 May 2016

L UG O S I

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What is horror? and why do we like it? Beyond a masochistic impulse, we are atracted to it as much as we are repulsed. We don’t really want to see it and yet we look between our fingers. Horror brings out an instinctive and primal response, we can not control how we react or feel when confronted by it. We even enjoy viewing boyeuristic videos of people being scared.But perhaps the most interesting fact about the genre of horror is that it brings out our deepest fears.

Horror opens up a discourse on what we are afraid of, why and how to confront that fear. We usually don’t talk about what lies in the darkness, but horror adresses those fears heads on. It asks important questions about humanity, sexuality and identity. Horror can feel unusually beautiful and even theraupeutic. As Carl Jung said, “To confront a person with their own shadow is to show them their own light.” Once we aknowledge our fear, it doesn’t disappear but we learn to live with it and we gain control and power.

In this issue of Lugosi we talk about asian horror, focusing on Japan and South Korea. In this number we take a look at some of the best products of this genre in Asia. We talk with Park Chan-Wook, analyze A tale of two sister’s and see Shintaro Kago’s work.

Genesis and Arabelle, Editors

TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S PARK CHAN-WOOK

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Interview with the famous korean director about his new film

ARE YOU CRAZY?

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Analysis of A tale of two sisters and its gothic themes, imagery and topography

GHOST FESTIVAL

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Every year China celebrates the famous Ghost festival where ghosts visit earth

URBAN TALES

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Four outlandish japanese urban legends

SLEEPLESS NIGHTS

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A selection of the best horror books that will terrify your nights and days

SHINTARO KAGO

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Recopillation of illustration s from the famous ero~guro japanese artists

STYLE DEFICIT DISORDER

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Yohji Yamamoto shows us the horror in fashion

A CINEMA OF GIRLHOOD

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Why are so many movies about students? and the role of girls

MUST SEE

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Five of the best classic horror japanese movies. From Kwaidan to Hausu

UZUMAKI

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This week’s graphic story is the terrifying Junji Ito’s masterpiece Uzuamki

P A R K

C H A N - W O O K

by Sophie Moran

“In the expierience of watching my film, I don’t want the viewer to stop at the mental or the intellectual. I want them to feel my work physically.”

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Best known for his disturbing revenge drama Oldboy (2003), Park Chan-wook‘s latest film Thirst, now released on DVD, is a subversive and original take on the vampire genre. Sophie Moran sat down with the director during the Korean Film Festival in November 09 to talk about priests, vampires, desire and revenge.

Sophie Moran: In classic horror films, priests and vampires are enemies by nature. What gave you the idea to turn one into the other?

Park Chan-wook: It goes back to my childhood memories. In the Catholic Church, a priest drinks red wine as a symbol for the blood of Christ, and in a way this always reminded me of vampirism. I actually wonder why nobody had thought of this before [laughs].

Thirst is not only a twisted vampire love story, but also a thriller, a horror film and a black comedy with a touch of film noir. How difficult was it for you to write the script?

I’d been planning Thirst for about 10 years, but I didn’t work on it consistently. For a long time I had only two scenes written. One is the scene in the beginning when the priest is being transfused with vampire blood, thereby becoming a vampire himself. The other was the scene in which the woman he falls in love with becomes a vampire too. That was it until I came across Emile Zola’s Thérese Raquin. I loved the style of the book, the fact that it’s not romantic or sentimental, which was similar to the approach I had in mind for this film. So, the book inspired me to start working properly on the script and to eventually film it.

Thirst offers a unique take on the vampire genre, and I wonder if there is a vampire myth in Korea that has influenced you?

I’m not an expert on Korean folklore, but as far as I’m aware, there is no vampire myth in Korea.

The Korean title of the film is ‘bat’, which symbolises vampires in the Western world, and it’s the stories about characters like Count Dracula that constitute some sort of modern vampire myth in Korean culture today. I wanted to tell the story of a character who doesn’t belong to one world but who is torn between these two different worlds, and about the dilemmas that creates. Sanghyun, the main character, is not just a vampire but also a priest, who wants to do something good but gets caught up in a twist of fate. He loses his ability to control his desires, but he is still trying to hold on to his identity as a priest, as well as grappling with his new identity as a vampire.

And I wanted to create a story that deals with this dilemma of identity.

On top of his own personal dilemma, Sanghyun falls in love with Tae-ju, the wife of an old friend. In fact, barring the horror elements that come into play, the film feels primarily like a love story.

Yes, from the very beginning it was always going to be a love story. I never conceived the film as a horror movie, and therefore I put in the most effort trying to develop the story between the two main characters. I spent a lot of time ‘shaping’ Tae-ju’s character and trying to find the right actress who would fit in perfectly with the two male leads, and who would have the right chemistry with Sang-hyun. Of course, I can’t deny the fact that there are scenes and elements in the film that you would associate more di-

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rectly with the horror genre. But these sequences are built into the story to serve as a hurdle or an obstacle to the romantic relationship between Tae-ju and Sang-hyun. So the horror elements exist to function in that way. But in the end, the last shot shows two burnt feet in that old pair of shoes from an earlier scene, which is probably the most romantic scene in the film. The film comes back to the pair of shoes as a symbol of their love finally coming together, and their two bodies becoming one.

Your previous film, I’m a Cyborg, also dealt with love, but in a very gentle way. In Thirst, the love scenes seem rather harsh and cold.

I decided to remove all the romance and clichés that classic love stories are based on because in Thirst I wanted to explore the real side of love. I mean the fact that love can give one not only the strength to survive, but that one can also achieve something through love, and that, to some extent, love is always selfish.

Although the film has a more realistic approach to the notion of love, it seems that there has been a shift from your revenge trilogy to more fantastical stories.

I have to agree that in the course of my films the fantastical or surreal elements have become more prominent. Since Thirst is by nature a vampire film, it cannot but have such fantasy elements in it. But at the same time, for a vampire film this is probably the most realistic vampire film that you can find. And this duality is what I like most about this film.It’s the most interesting thing. In Thirst, fantasies and realism are fundamentally in conflict with one another.

You said earlier that Tae-ju’s character was very important to you from the beginning in regard to her relation with the male leads.

Did you also think about how Tae-ju’s dubious character, and her own emotional journey, would be perceived by Korean female audiences while you were developing the story?

Her character may be seen as some sort of comment on contemporary society to female audiences in Korea, but I didn’t intend anything like this while I was writing the script. The idea of imprisonment within a family or a household is

already found in Thérese Raquin. It’s a story about a person who is trapped within these boundaries and who feels very much suffocated by the way the household is ruled by the mother and the husband. I wanted to explore that idea further on an existential level. But if you look at the terrible actions that Tae-ju takes as a vampire, for example, you have to consider the whole personality of this character who is as innocent as a child in a way. Children can be very cruel, for instance, when they play with small animals or insects. They tear them apart and rip off their wings and so forth. But they don’t realise that what they are doing is cruel. They don’t understand what they are doing but still, to us their actions are violent. It’s in that sort of context that

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you have to see her actions as a vampire. At the same time, this might come across to the audience as emancipation or liberation for the female character, but it was never intended as such [laughs].

What relates Sang-hyun to the main characters in your revenge trilogy?

All these characters are haunted souls in a way.

In Thirst, the desire for blood and the desire for sex are connected, but ultimately it’s a matter of life and death, and the drive for survival. And revenge is just a different desire in this context.

We all dream of vengeance sometimes, and it is something that stimulates our fantasies, something we need for our own personal wellbeing. At the same time, in real life revenge is

not honourable. But if we don’t give vent to our feelings, our desire for it increases proportionally towards those who offended us. It’s that kind of inner conflict that interests me.

These characters attempt to take responsibility for the decisions they make. Things may not always turn out well for them, but because they are at least trying to account for the consequences of their actions, they are able to achieve some sort of integrity after all.

Do you consider yourself a moral filmmaker?

I don’t see myself as a moral filmmaker, and I don’t like categorising myself. I am just very interested in characters who try to take responsibility for the results of their actions. I do think this is what I’m trying to deal with in my films.

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“I wanted to tell the story of a character who doesn’t belong to one world but who is torn between these two different worlds, and about the dilemmas that creates.”

PA R K C H A N - W O O K

Do you have a fascination with the genre?

What are your favourite films in this genre?

Nosferatu is my favourite vampire film out of all the classic films and even the modern ones too, with Herzog‘s remake. I’ve always had an interest in vampire films, not just Nosferatu, but there are many others that I have enjoyed; Abel Ferrara, Coppola, Neil Jordan.

What does it mean to you to be premiering at Cannes?

It’s a festival which can cause headaches, and which can be very picky and quite cumbersome, but after a week’s schedule, going through all this pain, its also a festival where in that 10 minutes after your screening, it can make you forget about everything that you had been going through before, just with the reaction of the audience after your screening, where they express their supreme respect for the filmmaker and the film.

Do you find that the European audiences react differently to your films than the Korean audiences do?

I do, but overall it’s not fundamentally that different. Even in Korea itself, depending on which screen it was shown at, which theatre you go to, which screen time you choose, there are different people in the audiences and so the reaction is always different.

So can you say that there is a range of difference found in domestic audiences when compared with the international audience?

It’s hard to say.

Do you think there is a bigger, more receptive, audience for Korean cinema outside of the country nowadays?

Yes there is. Korean films have been introduced to the Western and overseas audiences constantly in the past few years, so I find that they are increasing in popularity more and more.

Whereas, up ’til now, Western audiences had found Korean films through DVD releases or festivals or even illegal internet downloads, now I think the time is right for the audiences to see these Korean films through commercial distribution at a cinema whith and audience.

Is there more money in the Korean film industry because those international channels are widening?

I don’t think that we’ve reached a level where we can say that, but certainly there are incremental changes; for instance, with Thirst, Universal came on board as an investor. But not just with this film, there are more and more remake rights being sold and exported into other territories outside of Korea.

There are a lot of international directors going to Hollywood to make films, is that something that’s ever appealed to you, maybe even remake one of your own films?

When it comes to remaking my own films in the English language, I can only imagine that it is a very boring process, I wouldn’t ever dream of it. But much in the way that I have my radar on for a good script in Korea, if there is a good script coming my way from the US, of course I would go shoot a film there. Not just the US, but anywhere in the world.

Vampirism is a subject that has been covered in great length in cinema, books, music even, what did you want to bring to the mythology?

In this film, the biggest element is the moral downfall of the central character and the suffering that he goes through. So compared with other vampire works, it probably lacks the romanticism. In order to bring the moral aspects of the story to the fore, you need to remain very cold and approach it in a very realistic way, and that’s what sets it apart from other vampire films. Even if it’s not a vampire film, in a contemporary film, if the film is emphasising the moral aspects of the story, you may find that it’s old-fashioned. But somehow the moral emphasis and aspects make my films feel fresher. If you focus on morality not as and abstract concept but as a personal view you end up doing something rigid.

Can you tell us about your next project?

There isn’t a next film confirmed at the moment unfortunately. But there definiately will.

At the moment, all I can think about is taking some rest. ▪

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Shintaro Kago All images from “Cutting i n half”

by Marissa Perkins

Millions of tons of manga, in all shapes, forms, and colors, have been flying out of Japan every day forever. Are we getting really tired of it all even though we were once excited by it? Yep. And are we now even bored with hentai, the porno-snuff-scat-death-puke subgenre of manga?

Pretty much, believe it or not. The whole damn art form has been in need of a rejuvenating force for a few years now, and we think we’ve just found it in artist Shintaro Kago.

Kago is taking the manga comic form and breaking it open into little chunks of weirdness, self-reflexivity, and super-trippy formal experiments. He calls himself a kisou mangaka (“bizarre manga artist”—can’t get much more literal than that) and his wide-ranging activities include independent filmmaking and toy production as well as drawing. He manufactures, paints, and sells toy figures of turds, mutilated corpses, armless and legless people, and deformed babies, and you know what?

They are actually kind of cute!

S H I N TA R O K A G O

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S H I N TA R O K A G O

Me, myself and I, 2003 Opposite page: Condo syndrome, 2003

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S H I N TA R O K A G O

Delicious truth, 2007 Opposite page: The turning point, 2005

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S H I N TA R O K A G O

Crisis in age, 2007 Opposite page: The turning point, 2005

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Are you crazy?

Korean Gothic and psychosis in A tale of two sisters s

by Coralline Dupuy A Tale of Two Sisters is the product of a notably rich period in Asian horror cinema in which wider distribution of Asian films and the increasing globalisation of popular culture has meant such movies have a better chance than ever before of reaching a worldwide audience. Contemporary high-quality Asian horror films often explore family dynamics and update the paradigms of Gothic horror. Whereas the works of Japanese directors Hideo Nakata (Ringu, 1998, and Dark Water, 2005) and Takashi Miike (Audition, 2005) have been commercially and critically successful, the works of Korean directors such Kim Ji-woon, Park Chan-wook (Old Boy, 2004) and Joon-ho Bong (The Host,

2006) mark the emergence of Korea as a worthy and original contributor to the Asian horror boom. Kim Ji-woon has recently emerged as a director to be reckoned with, bringing to the screen subtly crafted and thought-provoking works such as A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) and, most recently, the gangster melodrama, A Bittersweet Life (2005).

As Fred Botting has suggested, the shocking opposition between reality and appearances is one of the central mechanisms of Gothic narration:”Throughout Gothic fiction terror and horror have depended on things not being what they seem”. South Korean Kim Ji-woon’s intriguing multi-layered film, A

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The house is the physical space where psychological tensions take shape; an illustration of ‘the nightmare topography of the mind.’

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Tale of Two Sisters (Janghwa, Hongryeon, or Rose and Lotus in English, 2003) provides a fitting illustration of Botting’s statement. Using a discourse of denial and the subject of family disintegration the film articulates several Gothic themes. Concomitant with these Gothic elements, the film may also be read as a modernisation of the fairy tale; most notably in its thematic focus on the figure of an evil stepmother and the vulnerable children under her “care”. A Tale of Two Sisters’ deft transmutation of fairy tale paradigms into a modern setting

“The ghost story reverts to a world in which imagination can produce physical effects, a world that is potentially within our power to change by the energy of our thoughts, yet practically alarming”

constitutes the first topic of this article. Specific attention will be paid to the symbolic locations of the film, especially the lakeside family home; in which an elaborate correspondence is made between family secrets and the house. The enclosure of the residence is a space in which transformation and terror are closely intertwined, aligning it with Rosemary Jackson’s seminal definition of the Gothic enclosure as a space of maximum transformation and terror, and clearly marking the lakeside home as a Gothic space. Family politics are intimately connected with the fate of the house, and this symbiosis between the house and the disintegrating family unit is the third theme dealt with in this article. Following on from this, will be an analysis of how, through the course of the film, identity and memory are undermined by our central protagonist’s, Su-mi, unreliable perspective. The last point under discussion

will be Su-mi’s unsuccessful repression of traumatic memories and how it impacts upon the viewer’s interpretative task A Tale of Two Sisters begins in a hospital with the interview of a female patient whose identity remains undisclosed. The narrative then move s to sisters Su-mi and Su-yeon’s return home after a non-specified illness. They are welcomed back to the family’s lakeside house by their distant father and their resentful stepmother, Eun-ju. Over three days, Su-mi and Su-yeon witness and experience unexplained occurrences, such as uncanny duplications, suffocations, and ghosts. The simmering resentment between the two girls and their stepmother escalates into physical violence. At this point, the hitherto self-restrained father angrily confronts Su-mi and reminds her that her sister, Su-yeon, is in fact dead. The viewer then understands that Su-mi’s subconscious has kept her younger sister, Su-yeon, alive. Her mental anguish and her desire to believe her sister is still alive are the result of her guilt over the untimely demise of her mother and her sister, both of whom died in a tragic accident that she feels she might have prevented, had she not been involved in an argument with her future stepmother, Eun-ju, at that fateful and tragic moment.

The details of the accident remain undisclosed throughout most of the film. They are as follows: the accident takes place in Suyeon’s bedroom, while Su-mi and Eun-ju are arguing downstairs in the lakeside house. Their mother, ill and depressed, has hung herself in Su-yeon’s closet. Frantically trying to pull her mother out, Su-yeon accidentally causes the closet to collapse and is smothered by her mother’s body. Eun-ju has seen the accident and could have helped Su-yeon, but following Su-mi’s outburst (in which she accuses Eun-ju of trying to steal her father’s affection) Eun-ju changes her mind, leaving Su-yeon to suffocate under the weight of the closest and her mother’s corpse. Despite Eun-ju’s wilful inaction in the matter, the film focuses more on Su-

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A R E YO U C R A Z Y ?

The house is the physical space where psychological tensions take shape; an illustration of ‘the nightmare topography of the mind.

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“The ghost story reverts to a world in which imagination can produce physical effects, a world that is potentially within our power to change by the energy of our thoughts, yet practically alarming”

mi’s part in her mother and sister’s deaths and the possibility that the double tragedy could have been avoided had Su-mi not lost her temper with Eun-ju at that fatal moment. While the suicide and Su-yeon’s accidental death are revealed in this scene, and Su-mi’s subsequent psychological instability has been established, all is not satisfyingly accounted for. Indeed, the theory of the “explained supernatural” in the film is undermined by two key scenes in the film. The first of these scenes involves an episode that occurs during a family dinner in which the girls’ aunt has an unexplained fit.

While writhing on the floor, she sees the figure of the younger girl (Su-yeon) covered in mud, lurking under the sink. This unexpected vision is one of the most terrifying images of the film.

The viewer sees Su-yeon from the choking woman’s perspective, but only in a frustratingly short glimpse. The impact of this image on the viewer is all the more profound as it is never explained. The second “unexplainable supernatural” moment in the film is in its secondlast scene, when Eun-ju is attacked by a female ghost crawling out of Su-yeon’s closet. These two female phantoms are the physical embodiment of the film’s resistance to a logically accountable ending. Thus the viewer is denied any attempt to explain away the uncanny episodes of the film.Director Kim Ji-woon acknowledges that his 2003 work is based on the

Korean fairytale Janghwa, Hongryeon. His film is just one of a number of Korean cinematic adaptations of the tale.

As a result, the Korean audience would undoubtedly be acquainted with the story of the two sisters, either from hearing it as a folktale and/or from watching earlier film versions of it. Western viewers, however, cannot be assumed to be familiar with the tale. In brief, it tells the story of Rose and Lotus, two dead sisters, whose ghosts visit a town official to explain to him how they met their untimely deaths. Planting a skinned rat in the girls’ bedroom, their jealous stepmother had tricked their father into

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believing that the elder sister had miscarried an illegitimate child. Cast away from home by paternal opprobrium, the accused girl drowns in a lake. Her sister’s distress is such that she also drowns on the same spot. After seeing the sisters’ ghosts, the city official investigates the case and reveals the stepmother’s guilt. The girls’ father remarries and his third wife gives birth to twin girls, whom he names Rose and Lotus after his two lost daughters. The Korean ghost story reaches a satisfying end, where retribution is meted out and where the ghosts succeed in expelling the malevolent element from the family unit. The film, on the other

hand, offers a modern transposition of the fairy tale that eschews such a well-ordered ending, as topical with fiary tales.

Of course another link between Kim Jiwoon’s film and the fairytale upon which it is based is the theme of the avenging ghost.

In the article, ‘The Ghost Story,’ it is explained that ghost stories are multilayered but despite their diversity, they all feature a challenge to the rational order and the observed laws of nature.

Ghost stories reintroduce “what is perceived as fearful, alien, excluded or dangerously marginal”. In her analysis, she locates the sou-

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A R E YO U C R A Z Y ?

rce of terror in the past and the dead or the untamed world of nature. Briggs insists on the creative aspect of dreams and imagination in the ghost story: “The ghost story reverts to a world in which imagination can produce physical effects, a world that is potentially within our power to change by the energy of our thoughts, yet practically alarming”. Keeping with the theme of revenge, which Briggs defines as “the most primitive, punitive and sadistic of impulses”, Kim Ji-woon traces the origin of terror in the familiar. For the viewer part of this familiarly is its modernity. As the director has himself explained, his aim was to try to give a modern meaning to the tale. He took the motif of the stepmother from the fairytale and added an element of horror to a modern setting, claiming he wanted to “express the distorted mind of people in the modern family.”

The film offers an ideal medium to translate and transform the dark and disturbing fairytale, particularly by emphasizing its modern Gothic elements. Heidi Kaye sees similarities between Gothic films and texts in their common use of images with a strong impact and the necessity of audience response.The continued success of the Gothic genre may be attributed to its adaptability of to modern concerns: “Gothic tales seem destined to be continually reborn to suit the fears and desires of each new period. The monsters, their creators and their victims are sufficiently malleable in their indefiniteness to allow them to convey ongoing human concerns and tensions”. Kim Ji-woon’s A Tale of Two Sisters is an excellent example of the Gothic’s malleability.

Topography plays an essential part in conveying the unsettling atmosphere of A Tale of Two Sisters. In the film, the house is under attack. Its very location, by a lakeside, is significant. The two sisters are seen sitting on the pontoon by the lake, dangling their feet in the water. This makes an obvious reference to the lake in which Rose and Lotus drown. The end credits show Su-mi in exactly the same place, wearing the same outfit, but by herself. ▪

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STYLE DEFICIT

DISORDER Decoding style through japanese horror All clothing from Yohji Kawakubo Photographer Marie Sama

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“Suspect the gods, suspect the demons.”

G H O S T F E S T I VA L

The Ghost Festival is a traditional Buddhist and Taoist festival held in Asian countries. In Chinese culture, the fifteenth day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar is called Ghost Day and the seventh month in general is regarded as the Ghost Month, in which ghosts and spirits, including those of the deceased ancestors, come out from the lower realm. Both Taoists and Buddhists perform rituals to transmute and absolve the sufferings of the deceased.

Ghost Festival

by Riamah Carey

One the first day of the month, people burn make-believe paper money outside their homes or businesses, along the sides of roads, or in fields. Sometimes, they go to temples for this task. On a trip to China during this time, you'll probably see people occupied with this activity or find the ghost money on the ground with ashes and remains. They want to give the ghosts the money they need during their special month. People also light incense and may make sacrifices of food to worship the hungry unhappy ghosts. People trust that the ghosts won't do something terrible to them or curse them after eating their sacrifices and while holding their money. They put up red painted paper lanterns everywhere including business and residential areas. The last day of the seventh lunar month is marked with a special festival too. This is the day that the gates of hell are closed up again. People celebrate and observe this day in various ways. Many burn more paper money and clothing so that the ghosts can use these things in their hell society. The pictures and tablets of ancestors may be put away back on the shelves or hung back on the walls where they were before.

In order to drive the ghosts away, Taoist monks chant to make them leave. The ghosts are thought to hate the sound, and therefore scream and wail.Many families float river lanterns on little boats in the evening. People make colorful lanternout of wood and paper, and families write their ancestors’ name on the lanterns. The ghosts are believed to follow the floating river lanterns away. In order to drive the ghosts away, Taoist monks chant to make them leave. The ghosts are thought to hate the sound, and therefore scream and wail.Many families float river lanterns on little boats in the evening. People make colorful lanternout of wood and paper, and families write their ancestors’ name on the lanterns. The ghosts are believed to follow the floating river lanterns away. In order to drive the ghosts away, Taoist monks chant to make them leave. The ghosts are thought to hate the sound, and therefore scream and wail.Many families float river lanterns on little boats in the evening. People make

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One the first day of the month, people burn make-believe paper money outside their homes or businesses, along the sides of roads, or in fields. Sometimes, they go to temples for this task. On a trip to China during this time, you'll probably see people occupied with this activity or find the ghost money on the ground with ashes and remains. They want to give the ghosts the money they need during their special month. People also light incense and may make sacrifices of food to worship the hungry unhappy ghosts. People trust that the ghosts won't do something terrible to them or curse them after eating their sacrifices and while holding their money. They put up red painted paper lanterns everywhere including business and residential areas.

The last day of the seventh lunar month is marked with a special festival too.

This is the day that the gates of hell are closed up again. People celebrate

“Suspect the gods, suspect the demons.” - Chinese popular idiom

Taboo’s

and observe this day in various ways. Many burn more paper money and clothing so that the ghosts can use these things in their hell society. The pictures and tablets of ancestors may be put away back on the shelves or hung back on the walls where they were before. In order to drive the ghosts away, Taoist monks chant to make them leave.

The ghosts are thought to hate the sound, and therefore scream and wail.Many families float river lanterns on little boats in the evening. People make colorful lanternout of wood and paper, and families write their ancestors’ name on the lanterns. The ghosts are believed to follow the floating river lanterns away. In order to drive the ghosts away, Taoist monks chant to make them leave. The ghosts are thought to hate the sound, and therefore scream and wail.Many families float river lanterns on little boats in the evening. People make colorful lanternout of wood and paper, and families write their ancestors’ name on the lanterns. The ghosts are believed to follow the floating river lanterns away. In order to drive the ghosts away, Taoist monks chant to make them leave. The ghosts are thought to hate the sound, and therefore scream and wail.Many families float river lanterns on little boats in the evening. People make colorful lanternout of wood and paper, and families write their ancestors’ name on the lanterns. The ghosts are believed to follow the floating river lanterns away. In order to drive the ghosts away, Taoist monks chant to make them leave. The ghosts are thought to hate the sound, and therefore scream and wail.Many families float river lanterns on little boats in the evening. People make colorful lanternout of wood and sun.

G H O S T F E S T I VA L

One the first day of the month, people burn make-believe paper money outside their homes or businesses, along the sides of roads, or in fields. Sometimes, they go to temples for this task. On a trip to China during this time, you'll probably see people occupied with this activity or find the ghost money on the ground with ashes and remains. They want to give the ghosts the money they need during their special month. People also light incense and may make sacrifices of food to worship the hungry unhappy ghosts. People trust that the ghosts won't do somethinscream and wail.Many families float river lanterns on little boats in the evening. People make colorful lanternout of wood and paper, and families write their ancestors’ name on the lanterns. The ghosts are believed to follow the floating river lanterns away.▪

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A cinema of Girlhood

A CINEMA OF GIRLHOOD

Sunyeo and the korean sensibility

by Coralline Dupuy

In the Whispering Corridors series, what needs to be protected is not kinship, but friendship. A threat to friendship causes the ghosts to exercise their supernatural powers. In Whispering Corridors, Jin-ju has been killed in an accident, but she resents the fact that her friend Eunyoung did not stand up for their friendship to the other girls of the school.

One may find an explanation for such a shift in terms of changing family relationships in contemporary Korean society. Friendship may be seen as a form of displacement from heterosexual or homosexual union in that these relationships demand “exclusivity” from a partner.

This friendship can only be shared by the two people involved, and thus is impossible to be extended to or replaced by another, as witnessed in the relationship between Shi-eun and Hyo-shin in Memento Mori or between So-heui and Jin-seong in Wishing Stairs. Such an exclusive relationship is portrayed as the key to enduring the hardships of the high school period, often depicted via metaphorical extremities — the life or death of a character. The sheer amount of time that students spend with their peers in high school and the pressures they

face from their parents to enter prestigious colleges or succeed in future career make students value friendship over family. Exclusivity is further secured by communication methods inaccessible to others: Shi-eun and Hyo-shin in Memento Mori keep a secret diary between themselves and read each other’s mind via telepathy while Sun-min in Voice can hear the voice of her deceased friend.

Situating the school as the prime location for plot development in the Whispering Corridors series has several narrative consequences. First, students are entirely removed from home, and the conventional divide between public and private space has broken down.

Both the school and the home become sites of oppression and cause psychological burden. The “private” spaces for students in these films are still to be found within the public sphere, often merely in the places neglected by or hidden from school authorities: a piano, a basement, a storage room, a rooftop. Jin-ju and Ji-oh find their own space in an abandoned building believed to be haunted. Hyo-shin and Shi-eun hang out on the rooftop. But these “private” spaces are soon invaded or become a

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place of haunting, as both Hye-ju’s basement art studio and Jin-seong’s dorm room in Wishing Stairs are haunted by So-heui’s ghost. Voice is the only film that shows a glimpse of characters’ home, but Young-eon’s crummy apartm Second, private space, or lack thereof, is replaced by and reduced to elements of the mise-en-scène, especially a character’s decorative impulse, as manifest in her personal belongings. When Ji-oh has a glimpse of Jin-ju’s diary, she finds it filled with girlie comic book characters — with big eyes and long curly hair — except the supposed portrait of Ji-oh. In Memento Mori, the pre-credit sequence is intercut

between a scene of Hyo-shin writing and decorating her diary and a scene showing Hyo-shin and Shi-eun clad in their school uniforms and sinking in a swimming pool with their legs tied together. Hyo-shin’s affection toward and obsession with Shi-eun is manifest in the excessive decoration of their exchange diary, while the imaginary swimming scene foreshadows the tragic ending to their relationship. As Minah traces the trajectory of the relationship between Hyo-shin and Shi-eun, Min-ah discovers the piano, the bottom of which is filled with presents and memorabilia of Shi-eun. The drawings in Hye-ju’s diary of Wishing Stairs not

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only show her being ostracized by her peers, but also represent her belief in the myth that the stairs near the dorm would fulfill her dear wish to be thin.

How is it, then, that the sonyeo sensibility represented transforms the generic norms of the horror genre? Female ghosts in the Whispering Corridors series may be regarded as monsters in terms of Noël Carroll’s definition: ghosts are supernatural, conceptually hybrid entities that threaten the community. Characters are portrayed as “aberrant” in that they challenge the norms. In a flashback in Memento Mori, the viewer learns that Hyo-shin became ostraci-

zed by her classmates after reciting her poem negating the binary oppositions between existence and non-existence and truth and lie. .

When Hyo-shin has a beer with Mr Goh, she also questions categorical imperatives such as “you shall not kill people.” She denies the absoluteness of such a dictum by recourse to a situational ground, claiming that one simply does not know unless one has the first-hand knowledge of such a situation.

Hyo-shin’s sexuality —homosexuality or bisexuality— further isolates her from her peers, and her kiss with Shi-eun in public is indeed a suicidal act that literally leads to her suicide

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A CINEMA OF GIRLHOOD

within the plot. Despite Hyo-shin’s deviance from, or violation of, social norms, she is portrayed as a victim rather than as a threat.

Andrew Grossman and Jooran Lee aptly note that the ghostly nature of homosexuality in Memento Mori “remains a method intensifying eros rather than stigmatizing it.” Furthermore, Hyo-shin’s affair with the male teacher helps underscore the fact that teachers as much as students are the victims of the same system.

Her sexual relationship with him should not be attributed to her attraction, or curiosity, toward him; rather, it resides in her sympathy toward him. In one scene in an empty classroom, we see Hyoshin stroking Mr Goh’s hair, underscoring the reversed relationship between the two: Hyo-shin acts like a caregiver rather than a student/lover.

Homosexuality is often linked to monstrosity in horror cinema in that both are deemed as “other,” and both diverge from the conventional norm (or “normality”). However, as Benshoff carefully traces out, the portrayal of the homosexual as “other” has been ambivalent throughout the history of Hollywood horror cinema — and this “other” can be portrayed either as a threat to the moral standards of a community, or a victim that can evoke a sympathetic response from the viewer. The homosexuality in the Whispering Corridors is portrayed more as an act of resistance to conformity rather than as a sign of monstrosity. The real monstrosity resides in the school itself and, more specifically, the Korean education system, which deprives students of their individual freedoms and happiness. In the first installment, So-young claims that her goal is to enter the top university in the country. Higher education loses its purpose; it is not a means to find and develop one’s dreams but becomes the end in and of itself. One way to survive within such a system is passivity, to remain “unnoticed” as the ghost Jin-ju wishes. She was not even recognized by her own teachers and was able to remain in school for nine years as a ghost. ▪

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U rba n Tales F o ur japane se u rb a n l e ge n d s

by Yumi Maruo

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Human dog The Human Faced Dog or “Jinmenken” is an urban legend from Japan about strange sighting of dogs with human faces. They have been a part of Japanese folklore for hundreds of years.

Jinmenjen are dogs with human faces. They are almost always seen at night in urban areas of Japan. Those who have seen them say they look just like an ordinary dog from afar, but when they turn around, you see that they have a human face. The Jinmenken are able to speak and often challenged witnesses in a weary voice, saying things like, “Mind your own business” or “I’m free to do whatever I want”.

In some reports, they are seen walking outside people’s houses, rooting through the

rubbish and in other reports, they are spotted chasing cars and frightening drivers on expressways or bars.

In one story, there was a restaurant that dumped its trash outside the back door. One night, the chef saw a stray dog rummaging through the rubbish for leftover food. He went out to get rid of the dog, but when he tried to chase it away, the dog looked back over its shoulder and said, “Leave me alone”.

In another story, a man was driving on the highway and noticed a dog in his rear view mirror. It was chasing his car as he drove at speeds over 100 miles per hour. The dog ran so fast that at one point, it was side by side with the car. The driver looked over and was shocked to see that the animal had a human face and it said, “Do not look at me”, The driver was so astonished that he veered off the road and sufffered a terrible accident.

The human-faced dogs are usually thought of as being a bad omen of things to come, and are often blamed for accidents, disasters and deaths.

Between 1989 and 1990, hysteria about the Jinmenken reached its height in Japan.

People were calling the police and demanding that they rid their neighborhoods of human faced dogs. Auto accidents involving a sighting of the Jinmenken were so frequent that the police had to investigate the possibility that the creatures actually existed.

U R B A N TA L E S

Kuchisake Onna Kuchisake Onna, also known as The SlitMouthed Woman, is a scary Japanese urban legend about a disfigured Japanese woman who brandishes large scissors and preys on children. She has an enormous slit mouth, which extends from ear to ear in a horrible, permanent smile.

The Slit Mouthed Woman walks the streets of Japan, wearing a surgical mask and hunting for children. If you cross her path, she will stop you and ask you a question. If you give her the wrong answer, there will be horrible consequences. Picture the scene.

You are walking home from school and your path takes you down a deserted city street.

Suddenly, you hear a faint noise coming from the shadows. You glance over and see a beautiful woman standing there. She has long black hair and is wearing a beige trenchcoat. A surgical mask covers the lower half of her face. In Japan, wearing a surgical mask is not uncommon during flu season, to prevent spreading germs.She steps out of the shadows and plocks your path.

“Am I beautiful?” she asks.Before you can answer, she tears off her mask, revealing a hideously deformed face. Her huge mouth is sliced from ear to ear and gapes open revealing rows of sharp teeth and a big red disgusting tongue twisting and twirling inside.“Am I beautiful NOW?” she screams.Terrified, you struggle to answer her. If you say “No”, she pulls out a huge pair of scissors and kills you immediately, chopping off your head.

If you say “Yes”, she takes her scissors and sliced your mouth from ear to ear, making you look just like her. If you try to run away, she will hunt you down and kill you, by slicing you in two.The only way to escape from Kuchisake onna is to give a non-committal

answer. If you say “You look average” or you look normal, she will be confused, giving you just enough time to run away.

There are many rumors about how Kuchisake Onna got her horribly disfigured mouth.

Some say that her slit mouth is the result of plastic surgery that went horribly wrong.

Other say that she was injured in a terrible car crash.

The Slit Mouth Woman’s reign of terror began in the spring and summer of 1979, when rumors began to sprad throughout Japan about sighting of the Kuchisake-onna hunting down children. The story spead like wildfire and actually created scares in many towns. Police increased their patrols and schools sent teachers to walk students home in groups.

In 2004, South Korea was plagued by reports of a red-masked woman who was chasing children.

In 2007, a coroner found some old records from the late 1970s about a woman whowas chasing little children, but was hit by a car, and died shortly after. Her mouth was ripped from ear to ear.

The USA has its own version of Kuchisake Onna. There were rumors about a clown who appeared in public bathrooms and accosted children, asking “Do you want death or a happy smile?” if they chose “happy smile”, he took out a knife and slit their mouths from ear to ear.

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Kayako Kayako is a scary Japanese urban legend about a woman who was murdered by her husband and came back as a vengeful ghost.

This story appeared in the famous movie The Grudge (or Ju-On in Japan).

When Kayako was a young girl, her parents neglected her. She spent most of her time feeling depressed and lonely. She didn’t have any friends and the other children at school thought she was creepy and made fun of her.

She had low self-esteem and cried a lot.

Kayako grew up and got married to a man named Taeko Saeki. She felt like he was the only person in the world who cared about her. They lived a happy life together and she gave birth to a little boy named Toshio. Kayako didn’t realize that she had settled with an ordinary man who didn’t deserve her. Her self-hatred had deepened as the years went by and she couldn’t see that she deserved much more and that she was actually really creative and if she had pursued it she would have been an excellent writer.

One day, her husband was snooping around in their bedroom because he didn’t respect her intimacy and found her diary. When he read it, he became convinced that she was cheating on him. He didn’t know that he was reading the writing journal of her wife, where she practiced creative writing. He implicitly thought that she was a part of his propierty and that he deserved loyalty and so when she came home from work and went upstairs, he was waiting for her, holding a knife. He attacked her, beating her and slashing her viciously in front of their young son.

Kayako tried to flee, but her husband chased her. He was almost out of his mind with rage. Covered with blood, she slipped and fell, breaking her ankle. Desperate to excape,

she crawled down the stairs, but when she reached the front door, her husband grabbed her. He took her head in both his hands and twisted it around, breaking her neck.

Kayako was still alive, but she was paralysed. The only sound she could make was a hoarse death rattle. Her husband dragged her upstairs, put her in a black plastic bag and left her in the attic to die. Then he got their son and drowned him in the bathtub and stuffed his body in a closet.

Because she died in such pain, anguish and rage, Kayako came back as a vengeful ghost.

She appeared to her husband and strangled him with her hair. He died the most painful death because as he was dying she made him understand that all his life he had been a foolish man who hadn’t respected woman and who didn’t value her. He was found lying in the street and the police thought he took his own life. Nobody came at his funeral.

Ever since then, Kayako’s ghost haunts the house in which she died. They say that if you go into that house and you are a man, you will hear Kayako’s hoarse, choked death rattle. Then you will see her crawling down the stairs, covered in blood and rolling her broken neck around with a sickening cracking sound. Sooner or later you will die because you are participant in society’s misoginy but if you’re a woman you will be safe, she will protect you and encourage you to pursue your dreams and escape from simple and stupid man.

U R B A N TA L E S

Licca Chan The Licca Chan Doll is a Japanese urban legend about a cute doll that is rumored to be cursed. According to the legend, if you throw it away, the doll will come back to exact a horrifying revenge.

The Licca Chan doll is a very popular doll in Japan. It is the Japanese equivalent of the Barbie doll. In fact, it was so popular that the company that manufactures the dolls decided to set up a phone line to promote their product to children.

Kids were able to call up and speak to Licca Chan. Actually, they just listened to a recorded mesage, but rumors began to spread that some kids had ehard Licca chan saying creepy things like, “I’m coming to your house to kill you”.

This gave rise to the following urban legend.

One day, a young girl was cleaning up her room. Going through her possessions, she found a Licca Chan doll she had cherished when she was a child. However, she had gotten too old to play with dolls, so she took it outside and threw it in the trash.

Some time later, the girl and her parents moved to a new city. One day, she came home from schoolas usual. Her parents were still at work. As soon as ashe came through the front door, the phone in the hallway began to ring.

When she picked it up, she heard a little voice ssay, “Hello this is Licca Chan. I’m on the rubbish dump. I’m filled with wrath and contempt. I was abandoned, but I’m coming to your home”.

The young girl hung up the phone, thinking someone was playing a joke on her. A little later, the phone rang again.

When she picked it up, the same voice said, “Hello, this is Licca Chan. I’m coming down

your street. Do you miss me?”

The girl hung up again. This time, she was scared. She wondred when her parents would get home. of course, a few minutes afterwards, the phone rang yet again.

The little girl heard the voice saying, “Hello, this is Licca Chan. I’m outside your house.

Open the door”.

Now the girl was terrified and she kept saying to herself, “Surely it’s just a joke...” She went over to the window and perred though the curtains, but there was nothing outside.

The girl was relieved.

The phone rang one last time and when she picked it up, she heard, “Hello, this is Licca Chan and I’m right behind you!”.

Since this urban legend spread in 2005 the company that manufactured the Licca Chan doll ceased its production because the doll stopped selling nationwide because all the children were afraid.

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Must s e e Five c l assic japanes e h o rro r mo v i e s

by Yumi Maruo

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MUST SEE

Ugetsu (1953) Legendary Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi’s masterpiece Ugetsu is the greatest of all ghost stories and is a cautionary tale on two characters who are consumed by greed and envy.

At a violent time of war these two selfish individuals will risk their families lives to pursue their obsessions and ambitions.

The films mysterious tone and elegant feel doesn’t try to hide the fact that it is a ghost story and one of the two ghosts that appear in the film is rather quite obvious. The second one isn’t quite so obvious and yet when it is discovered it brings a tragic and profound haunting power to the story. When most people think of the great Japanese directors they usually site Akira Kurosawa as number one and Yasujiro Ozu as number two. Kenji Mizoguchi is usually number three and is less discussed in film circles which is much unfortunate. He was loved by the French critics of Cahiers du cinema which included Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette and they described Mizoguchi as not only the greatest of Japanese masters but high in the ranks of the greatest filmmakers who have ever practiced the art. The great critic Jean Douchet has said, “Kenji Mizoguchi: Like Bach, Titian, and Shakespeare, he is the greatest in his art.” The French director Jean-Luc Godard declared him as “The greatest of Japanese filmmakers,” .

Mizoguchi was famous for the ‘one scene, one shot,’ technique.

His style avoids close-ups and instead links the characters to their environment which creates tension and psychological density. Consider a scene in Ugetsu where Lady Wakasa visits Genjuro as he is bathing in an outdoor pool, and as she enters the pool to join him, water splashes over the side and the camera follows the splash into a pan across rippling water that ends with the two of them having a picnic on the grass.

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi Writer: Matsutarô Kawaguchi (adaptation), Hisakazu Tsuji (idea), Akinari Ueda(stories Asaji Ga Yado and Jasei No In), Yoshikata Yoda(screenplay) Runtime: 96 minutes Argument: A fantastic tale of war, love, family and ambition set in the midst of the Japanese Civil Wars of the sixteenth century.ce and brutally murder the passing samurai.

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MUST SEE

Kwaidan (1964) Strange, ululating ghostly voices and spectral, rattling sounds that raise an image of dry bones clattering in a cosmic void are the major effects that stir the senses in the telling of three super-natural tales in the Japanese color picture, “Kwaidan,” which came to the Fine Arts yesterday. Couple these sound effects and voices with some remarkable pictorial images and the consequence is a horror picture with an extraordinarily delicate and sensuous quality.

One isn’t like to be startled in the ordinary way of horror films by any of these three ghostly fables based on stories by Lafcadio Hearn. The narrative structure of them is peculiarly flimsy and vague, and the snappers at the endings of all of them are achieved with a minimal accumulation of suspense.

For instance, the focus of interest in the first fable isn’t reached until it comes to what seems a casual climax, which is the return of an errant samurai to his long-neglected and presumably still doting wife. Up to this point the narrative has rambled in a sketchy telling by a singsong Japanese voice that is translated in English sub-titles. The dramatic action is played in limpid pantomime and masquerade.

Then, with the samurai returning to his spectral former home, and finding his poor wife still pretty and still working at her ancient sweat-shop loom, one’s interest is mildly lifted, the curiosity is piqued, just in time to give a chilling identification to the horror twist at the end.

But the eye has been quietly fascinated by a succession of tableau scenes that are exquisite color compositions, and the ear has been haunted by sounds —and by silences, which are as effective—into a mystical, other-worldly mood. Likewise the second story, which is the longest of the three, begins with a lengthy re-enactment of a sea battle centuries ago. It is done in a highly stylized fashion that resembles intercut scenes of the same historic battle from an ancient tapestry.

Director: Masaki Kobayashi Writer: Yôko Mizuki (screenplay), Lafcadio Hearn (as Yakumo Koizumi) Runtime: 183 minutes Argument: A collection of four Japanese folk tales with supernatural and fantastic themes.

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MUST SEE

Onibaba (1964) Onibaba feels like one of those quietly scary fairy tales that a parent might tell their child to warn them against certain behavior. You know the sort--the little, compact morality plays that are thematically underpinned by a simple black and white message: do something bad, and something bad will happen to you in return. That kind of karmic retribution is at the center of the film, which is basically a story of a mother and a daughter of sorts; eventually, however, the two eventually see a role reversal, which shifts the paradigm and explores the nature of fear, power, and control among humanity.

Adapted from an ancient Buddhist fable, it’s actually centered around a woman (Nobuko Otowa) and her daughter-in-law (Jitsuko Yoshimura). Living together in the midst of a dynastic war, they survive by killing unsuspecting samurai and trading in their weapons and armor in exchange for goods. One day, their neighbor, Hachi (Kei Sato), returns from the war alone, as the woman’s son/daughter-in-law’s husband perished. Bitter over these events, the mother is resentful, and even more so when Hachi begins to lust after her daughter-in-law.

Much of Onibaba is concerned with the resultant drama that unfolds between the three characters; the mother seems to be a bit sexually frustrated herself, and even attempts to seduce Hachi in her desperate attempt to halt his advances on the virtuous daughter-in-law. Her jealousy and fear are tangible, and the ugliness of these emotions drives the film--if you can call it that. A textbook example of a slow burn, one can hardly consider Onibaba to be forcefully driven, as it’s delivered with a measured calmness that doesn’t see much in the way of action for about an hour. Shindo’s direction is a masterwork of minimalism: locations are confined to a few sets, is sparsely scored, and the shot compositions often frame the characters against sparse backdrops.

Director: Kaneto Shindo Writer: Kaneto Shindo Runtime: 103 minutes Argument: Two women kill samurai and sell their belongings for a living. While one of them is having an affair with their neighbor, the other woman meets a mysterious samurai wearing a bizarre mask.

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MUST SEE

Kuroneko (1968) Kaneto Shindo is a filmmaker well-acquainted with ghostly folk tales (Onibaba, Akuto) but he has also made a career out of high drama (Children of Hiroshima, Sorrow is Only for Women, Ningen). Black Cat is a pensive combination of both camps. His horror, always thoughtful always deliberate, allows space to gather between moments of great dread. His approach is from a dynamic perspective; how one sequence leads to another, one scene prompting the next. The film is literally dark; an oppressive blackness pervades nearly every shot. Each character is surrounded by this indefinite space; a stifling miasma that is both felt and perceived.

Released in 1968, the film christens itself as a problematic unknown. In the midst of a civil war during the Heian period, a woman (Yone) and her daughter-in-law (Shige) are raped and murdered by a group of soldiers in Ezo. Their meager home, comfortably situated at the edge of a bamboo grove, is burned down in broad daylight. A black cat licks the wounds of their bodies as the militia ambles away. The women’s spirits become restless in that world and appear at the Rajomon Gate as ladies of refinement. In the night, samurai travel the roads and happen upon Yone who manipulates them into following her to the ashes of the fated house (now a hallucinatory mansion). The men die with tattered throats as the illusory mansion fades and they lie in the charred ruins or by the wayside drained of blood.

Bodies accumulate and the governor takes notice.

The classic tale of spectral revenge, it is a film of the early antiheroes of the written word and moving picture; spirits betrayed by fate, corrupted by fellow man. Amorality is denounced with biting condemnation as soldier after soldier dies, caught in a web of his own selfishness and greed. The soundtrack is spare but effective with erratic percussion and shrieking strings. Lyrical and mystically atmospheric in a way only Kabuki theatre can really be.

Director: Kaneto Shindo Writer: Kaneto Shindo Runtime: 99 minutes Argument: Two women are raped and killed by samurai soldiers. Soon they reappear as vengeful ghosts who seduce and brutally murder the passing samurai.

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MUST SEE

Hausu (1977) The story of Hausu was a radio hit following relentless promotion by writer/director Obayashi which persuaded Toho studio to adapt it into a feature film. It is often cited as a precursor to Evil Dead 2, but given that it was released in 1977 and the fact that it was almost never made makes this eclectic horror romp rather impressive and more than just a little influential to horror cinema in general. Really though, the comparison to Evil Dead is slightly inaccurate. The surreal comedy-horror bit is often trumped by absurdist melodrama with an incomprehensible plot encompassing demonic possession, ESP, telekinesis, and cannibalism. Obayashi was a director of TV commercials before this full-length feature and in many ways it shows. There is a glossy glow to everything and an obsessive attention to detail that allows even his greatest missteps to seem somehow intentional and (usually) technically sound.

The film was shot without a storyboard and used a plethora of low-budget optical effect techniques such as hyper-solarised backdrops, inexplicable fades, awkward freeze frames, incidental music scores (which often overlap each other), in addition to quaint narrative asides such as character interactions which defy normal human behavior (though portrayed in the film as being normal).

The film itself is a strange enigma: virtuosic at times then purposefully awful only to be followed by expertly-executed flair.

This isn’t to say that the film is flawless: it is very uneven and plot points are often either unresolved, ignored, or completely abandoned. There is purpose though, even if that purpose is to make the audience doubt their sanity. It’s a film that is as frustrating as it is enlightening; perhaps a misguided masterpiece, perhaps excessively self-indulgent, but more creative and comprised of more vision than most of the horror films made in the past thirty years.

Director: Nobuhiko Ôbayashi Writer: Chiho Katsura, Chigumi Ôbayashi (original story) Runtime: 88 minutes Argument: Seven girls on their summer trip pay a visit to a possessed house which plans to eat them in extremely bizzare and surreal ways.

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S L E E P L E SS N I G H T S Books that won’t let you sleep even in the most tiring nights of your life

by Yumi Maruo

Parasite Eve, is a novel filled with scientific acuity and existential challenges in the tradition of Ghost in the Shell and Frankenstein.

This medical fantasmagoria is a disorienting look into the consciousness and will have you questioning the future of human evolution.

When Dr. Nagashima loses his wife in a mysterious car crash, he is overwhelmed with grief but also an eerie sense of purpose; he becomes obsessed with the idea that he must reincarnate his dead wife.

Title: Parasite Eve Author: Hideaki Sena Publisher: Vertical Inc.

In Inspector Imanishi Investigates, the corpse of an unknown provincial is discovered under the rails of a train in a Tokyo station, and Detective Imanishi is assigned to the case.

In a police procedural by Japan’s foremost master of mystery, Inspector Imanishi Eitaro, a typically Japanese detective fond of gardening and haiku, must follow a killer’s trail across the social strata of Japan. The corpse of an unknown provincial is discovered under the rails of a train in a Tokyo station, and Detective Imanishi is assigned to the case.

Edge City begins with a massive and catastrophic shifting of the San Andreas fault. The fears of California someday tumbling into the sea. But even the terror resulting from this catastrophe pales in comparison to the understanding behind its happening, a cataclysm extending beyond mankind’s understanding of horror as it had previously been known. The world is falling apart because things are out of joint at the quantum level, about which of course there’s never been any guarantee that everything has to remain stable and in place.

Title: Inspector Imanishi Investigates Author: Seicho Matsumoto Publisher: Soho Press Inc.

Title: Edge City Author: Koji Suzuki Publisher: Gukiburu

SLEEPLESS NIGHTS

A serial cop-killer is running rampant in Tokyo’s Shinjuku ward and only one man has the connections and the courage to find and stop him.

Filled with volatile characters, each wiht his own unique ties, Shinjuku Shark is a masterpiece of nonstop tension.

Arimasa Osawa is one of Japan’s leading hardboiled novelists, influenced by American authors such as Elmore Leonard. His famous work, Shinjuku Shark (the first installment in a series) won the Eiji Yoshikawa Award for fiction and the Naoki Prize.

Death Sentences is the first novel by the popular and critically acclaimed science fiction author Kawamata Chiaki to be published in English.

Released in Japan in 1984 as Genshi-gari (Hunting the magic poems), Death Sentences was a best seller and won the Japan Science Fiction Grand Prize. With echoes of such classic sci-fi works as George Orwell’s 1984, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, William Gibson’s Neuromancer, and Philip K. Dick’s Martian Time-Slip, Death Sentences is a fascinating mind-bender with a style all its own.

Title: Shinjuku Shark Author: Arimasa Osawa Publisher: Vertical Inc.

Title: Death Sentence Author: Kawamata Shiaki Publisher: University of Minnesota Press

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N e x t Is s u e A me ri c an Ho rror

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Horror is fundamentally about boundaries, about the threat of transgressing them, and about the need to do so

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