“The clock on the desk caught his eye. 9:48. He put the receiver to his ear and waited for Mai to come to the phone. His head suddenly felt unbearably itchy. He put his hand to his head and scratched furiously, and felt several strands of hair come out. On the second ring, Ryuji lifted his face. There was a horizontal mirror on the chest of drawers in front of him, and he could see his face reflected in it. Forgetting that he had the phone
wedged between his shoulder and his head, he brought his face closer to the mirror. The receiver fell, but he didn’t care; he just stared at his face in the mirror. Somebody else was reflected.
The cheeks where yellowish, dried and cracked, and hair was falling out in clumps to reveal brown scabs.”

RING, Koji Suzuki¹

Being a long time fan of the Asian horror and the recent wave that swept over genre fans, re-vitalising Asian horror in the Western world in the last few years, I quite often have to respond to two questions about the Eastern Horror Genre referred to as J-Horror.

The first question I commonly get asked is: “How can you like those movies? They take forever to get started and then nothing really happens!” After replying that I like the slow build, and that they possibly aren’t paying enough attention if they are missing out on the mind games most Asian directors are playing on us during that slow build, I usually get the response “Yeah but then when something does happen, it’s always the same, the long, matted hair hanging over the face showing nothing but that staring bloodshot eye! Surely they must be able to come up with something new.” But of course it’s the same thematic imagery that reoccurs time and time again, and there’s a darned good reason for that too, just as most of our western horror movies follow the same line of iconic imagery and themes. How many times has Victor Frankenstein re-animated the “Monster” since J. Searle Dawley directed his 1910 adaptation of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus? How many times has the reaper ignored his victims’ pleas for mercy since Victor Sjöstrom directed Körkarlen (a.k.a. The Phantom Carriage) in 1921, and how many times have Vampires been set on celluloid since F.W. Murnau directed his 1922 classic Nosferatu?²

You could narrow it down to one simple basic theme that lays the foundation for the entire horror genre, generic or innovative, Eastern or Western, good or bad. It’s that same familiar key element which always feeds the driving force behind the narrative of horror; the struggle to survive certain death.

So why do we keep seeing the same imagery in Asian horror?

I would claim that the answer to the themes and iconography of the majority of Asian horror movies have their roots in the Japanese cultural history. More specifically, the Noh and Kabuki theatre which dates back to the 14th Century, and have always dealt with folk lore and legends. Many of the J-Horror elements, like the disgruntled ghost taking revenge from beyond the grave, deception and bold heroic protagonists are big parts of some of the Noh and Kabuki genres. In Noh you find these themes in the shunen (revenge) and shuramono (ghosts) plays, and the Kaidan (ghost / horror / mystery stories) of Kabuki. Kabuki obviously utilises a wide variety of themes, genres and techniques too like Noh, but in this case I’d like to point out the Kabuki genres wagoto, a more gentle style often focusing on romantic and comedic themes, and aragoto, the rougher style which frequently deals with demons, ghosts, vicious gods and fearless warriors. Obviously these themes and styles where used individually and sometimes mixed together.

The definitive Kabuki ghost story that blends the two wagoto and aragoto styles is Tōkaidō Yotsuya Kaidan (Ghost Story of Yotsuya) written in 1824 by Tsuruya Nanboku. It is possibly one of the most filmed Japanese ghost stories with something in the vicinity of thirty versions set on celuloid to date, the earliest being Japanese film pioneer Shozu Makino’s silent version from 1912.

The story focuses on the married couple, Oiwa and Iemon and builds of the themes of murder, betrayal and avenging spirits. Iemon betrays Oiwa and in a failed attempt to murder her with poison, she is left devastated and terribly disfigured. This is also what makes her die, as she looks into her mirror and sees what she has become. A hideously disfigured creature with one eye bulging out of her scarred distorted face. Later as Iemon prepares to marry his new bride, the disfigured face of Oiwa reveals itself instead of the face of his beautiful wife to be, which slowly drives him insane and results in him beheading what he believes to be the ghost of Oiwa. Of course it isn’t and realising that he just killed his future spouse too, a series of murders and deaths mastered by the ghost of Oiwa is set in motion before she finally has her vengeance taken and can laid to rest.

The most famous depictions of Oiwa in Japanese art, Kabuki and cinema, feature her droopy eye and partial baldness, both side effects to the poisoning. Also in the some of the Kabuki there is a scene just before the poison starts to have effect where Oiwa sits combing her hair in front of a mirror, and with every stroke a large amount of hair comes out. I think by now you will see where I’m going with this, Oiwa is without a doubt a major influence on the way Hideo Nakata portrayed both Sadako [Rie Inou] and her mother Shizakuko [Masako] in the Ringu films (1998-2000), the way Takashi Miike shot Asami Yamazaki [Eihi Shiina] in his 1999 Ôdishion, with her hanging hair and staring eyes, the dramatic stylised stance of Kayako Saeki [Takako Fuji] in Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-On movies (2000-2006) and the avenging teenager Tomie [Miho Kanno] from Ataru Oikawa’s initial instalment to the Tomie franchise back in 1999.

Earlier I pointed to the wagoto and aragoto styles, and I did this because a lot of early Japanese horror films use both of these themes, and blended them with success, just like the J-Horror directors of today. Films like Nobuo Nakagawa’s Kaidan Kasane-ga-fuchi 1957 [The Ghosts of Kasane Swamp], and his interpretation of the previously mentioned, Tōkaidō Yotsuya Kaidan 1959 [The Ghost of Yotsuya] could possibly be the finest interpretation of Tsuruya Nanboku’s Kabuki play ever set on celluloid, Masaki Kobayashi’s Kaidan 1969 [Kwaidan], Kaneto Shindô’s Onibaba 1964 [Devil Woman] and Yabu no naka kuroneko (a.k.a Kuroneko) 1968 [The Black Cat] all use the main themes of the two styles with their avenging female ghosts returning to right what has been done wrong to them, and I’m sure that they all to some extent have been influences on the way Koji Suzuki crafted his antagonist when writing Ringu and the choices Junji Ito made when drawing Tomie in his original Manga.

I’ll even go as far as claiming that the dramatic freeze frame and negative inversion of the image every time Sadako claims a victim originates from Kabuki. There is a position in Kabuki called mie, which has the actor pose in a very dramatic way and keep it for some time, hence creating a real time freeze frame.

So even if we see new twists, themes and imagery coming out of Asia, I’m just as sure that every few years there will be a new movie featuring Frankenstein’s Monster, blood thirsting Vampires and Death carrying his victims to their early graves, it’s safe to say that we definitely haven’t seen the last of the long haired girls with their pale skin and staring eyes claiming their revenge on western and eastern audiences. Just last year Japanese director Sion Sono released his Ekuste (a.k.a. Exte: Hair Extensions) where hair taken of the head of a murdered woman and turned into extensions carry on the grudge its previous owner. This just goes to prove that the iconography and themes deeply rooted in history and culture will always be around, and are reliable sources to build from; all you need to do is find that unique twist on them and craft that memorable story to keep your audience awake at night.

1 RING © Koji Suzuki 2003. Published by Vertical, Inc., New York. Originally published in Japan as Ringu by Kadokawa Shoten, Tokyo, 1991

² I chose not to refer to Robert G. Vignola’s 1913 short, The Vampire as the first vampire movie as the vampire of this early movie is a woman who seduces her victim for his wealth and not his life force.