The Undead Subject of Lost Decade Japanese Horror Cinema A thesis presented to the faculty of

169 Pages·2017·9.21 MB·English

The Undead Subject of Lost Decade Japanese Horror Cinema

A thesis presented to
the faculty of
the College of Fine Arts of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree
Master of Arts

Jordan G. Parrish
August 2017
© 2017 Jordan G. Parrish. All Rights Reserved.
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This thesis titled
The Undead Subject of Lost Decade Japanese Horror Cinema

by
JORDAN G. PARRISH

has been approved for
the Film Division
and the College of Fine Arts by

Ofer Eliaz
Assistant Professor of Film Studies

Matthew R. Shaftel
Dean, College of Fine Arts
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Abstract
PARRISH, JORDAN G., M.A., August 2017, Film Studies
The Undead Subject of Lost Decade Japanese Horror Cinema
Director of Thesis: Ofer Eliaz
This thesis argues that Japanese Horror films released around the turn of the twenty-
first century define a new mode of subjectivity: “undead subjectivity.” Exploring the
implications of this concept, this study locates the undead subject’s origins within a
Japanese recession, decimated social conditions, and a period outside of historical
progression known as the “Lost Decade.” It suggests that the form and content of “J-
Horror” films reveal a problematic visual structure haunting the nation in relation to the
gaze of a structural father figure. In doing so, this thesis purports that these films interrogate
psychoanalytic concepts such as the gaze, the big Other, and the death drive. This study
posits themes, philosophies, and formal elements within J-Horror films that place the
undead subject within a worldly depiction of the afterlife, the films repeatedly ending on
an image of an emptied-out Japan invisible to the big Other’s gaze.

Keywords: Big Other, Death Drive, Gaze, J-Horror, Japanese Cinema, Lost Decade,
Psychoanalysis.
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Dedication

To my family.
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Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank my teachers, Ofer Eliaz and Erin Schlumpf, my family, David,
Jeannie, Jaxon Parrish, and Judy Randolph for their feedback, advice, and support. This
thesis would not have been possible without them.
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Table of Contents
Page
Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 3
Dedication ........................................................................................................................... 4
Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................... 5
Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ 6
List of Figures ..................................................................................................................... 8
Introduction: Undead Subjectivity, J-Horror, and the Afterlife .......................................... 9
The Invisible Crisis of the J-Horror Movement ............................................................ 9
Daddy Issues ............................................................................................................... 16
A Lost Decade ............................................................................................................. 23
Chapter Overviews ...................................................................................................... 31
Chapter 1: How to Cure an Invisible Wound: Kiyoshi Kurosawa and the Cure for
Visibility ........................................................................................................................... 35
Ethereal Subjectivity ................................................................................................... 35
The Invisible Wound of Cure ..................................................................................... 40
The Detective’s Locked Room ................................................................................... 45
Cutting Language Open .............................................................................................. 51
The Invisible Emptiness of Pulse ............................................................................... 56
Face to Face with Facelessness ................................................................................... 62
Conclusion: The Bottled Message of Lost Decade Japan ........................................... 66
Chapter 2: False Histories and Guilt Complexes in Hideo Nakata’s Melodramatic Horror
Films ................................................................................................................................. 68
The Invisible Border between Horror and Melodrama ............................................... 68
Supernatural Guilt and Worldly Shame ...................................................................... 76
Removing the Boundary between Fiction and Reality in Ring ................................... 79
Breaking the Fifth Wall .............................................................................................. 85
Dark Water and the Return to Birth Trauma .............................................................. 91
Framing the Law ......................................................................................................... 98
Conclusion: The Invisible Gift of Shame ................................................................. 103
Chapter 3: The Screaming Point of History in Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-On: The Grudge 107
Aphasia and the Screaming Point ............................................................................. 107
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Atemporality and the Undead Father ........................................................................ 111
The Circularity of Space ........................................................................................... 116
The End of Time ....................................................................................................... 127
The Muteness of Speech ........................................................................................... 133
Conclusion: The Case of the Missing Mother Tongue ............................................. 138
Conclusion: Flight 7500’s Performance for the Blind .................................................... 141
The Transnational Flight of J-Horror ........................................................................ 141
The Invisible Passengers ........................................................................................... 144
No One is Watching .................................................................................................. 151
Embracing Emptiness ............................................................................................... 158
Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 165
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List of Figures
Page
Figure 1. Empty Japan in Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997). ............................................... 9
Figure 2. Deserted Tokyo in Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001). ....................................... 10
Figure 3. The Empty Road at the End of Ring (Hideo Nakata, 1998). ............................. 10
Figure 4. The Abdndoned Complex in Dark Water (Hideo Nakata, 2002). . ................... 10
Figure 5. The Invisible Japan of Ju-On: The Grudge (Takashi Shimizu, 2002). ............. 11
Figure 6. The Cover of Japan after Japan (Ed. Harry Harootunian, et. al., 2007). ......... 11
Figure 7. The Non-Space of Japan in Cure. ...................................................................... 44
Figure 8. The Separate Rooms of Cure. . ......................................................................... 47
Figure 9. Characters Trapped with the Frame in Pulse.. .................................................. 57
Figure 10. The Godlike Perspective in Pulse. ................................................................... 67
Figure 11. Seen by an Invisible Gaze in Ring. .................................................................. 83
Figure 12. “Don’t Look at the Camera.” (Ring). .............................................................. 85
Figure 13. The Gaze of the Complex in Dark Water. ....................................................... 95
Figure 14. Being Viewed by a Stain in Dark Water. ........................................................ 95
Figure 15. The Disembodied Gaze in Ju-On. ................................................................. 121
Figure 16. The Stairs of Time in Ju-On. ........................................................................ 123
Figure 17. The Spiral Stairwell in Tormented (Takashi Shimizu, 2011). ....................... 124
Figure 18. The Penrose Stairs in Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2011). ......................... 125
Figure 19. The Opening Shot of Flight 7500 (Takashi Shimizu, 2016). ........................ 145
Figure 20. Jake’s Selfie Video with the Upper Class Corpse in Flight 7500. ................ 158
Figure 21. Liz’s Empty Room in Flight 7500.. ............................................................... 163
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Introduction: Undead Subjectivity, J-Horror, and the Afterlife
The Invisible Crisis of the J-Horror Movement
A Japanese street, usually filled with people, now lies strangely empty, devoid of
all signs of life. The people who once inhabited it have disappeared from sight, but not
fully from sight; they are in-visible. Transparent and empty, translucent and invisible, these
beings appear neither dead nor alive and persist on the street in spite of their invisibility.
Subject to a historical era and social setting that cannot see them, these life forms
paradoxically emerge in turn-of-the-century Japanese horror films as new forms of the
living dead. These conditions crystallize a new type of subject at this particular historical
moment in Japan: one paradoxically defined by its inability to make itself visible through
determinate images, words, or actions, only able to distort indirectly the space around it.
Despite these images connoting the apocalypse, this thesis argues that the undead subject
of Japanese horror films illuminates new forms of life from the ruins of antiquated visual
structures on which society traditionally bases itself.

Figure 1. Empty Japan in Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997).
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Figure 2. Deserted Tokyo in Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001).

Figure 3. The Empty Road at the end of Ring (Hideo Nakata, 1998).

Figure 4. The Abandoned Complex in Dark Water (Hideo Nakata, 2002).