WEEK 3: J-HORROR: ASIAN SUPERNATUARL NARRATIVES

For this week’s reading, I read Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. I think the biggest difference between Japanese horror and that of western horror is the fact that in western horror it is usually always very clear who the villain is, or what the wrong doing or theme being portrayed is. However, in the short stories there really isn’t this take of good or evil at all. Just because there isn’t anyone being portrayed in this light. I believe the stories mostly bring about a feeling of some sort instead of a clear portrayal of opinion on something of dark matter.

For example, a great feeling of regret and loneliness is apparent after reading the stories. I think this portrayal of that numb feeling is a common theme that I notice in the stories. They put the characters in a situation they don’t have any control over and in the end, bad things happen to them just because. It is almost so truthful to situations in life that makes it all the more scary. Because at the end of the day in real life if we were to encounter spirits like this (if they were real) what would we do? We all probably thought about this once or twice before, I know I have.  

I do really enjoy the empty feeling I get from reading the short stories, I think it is a type of isolation that is special to these sorts of stories just because the main character is always alone dealing in the matter. Alone with the spirit that is. it is creepy because usually they just wind up in a bad situation and it’s portrayed as they really just went out of luck. For example, The Story of Mimi-Nashi-Hoichi, Hoichi didn’t even know he was dealing with spirits, they tricked him into it and almost trapped him for good. If it wasn’t for the priest he wouldn’t have been able to escape. But just thinking about the fact that some dark energy toying with your life has you running around and you not even knowing it is pretty scary to me. He was so unaware and even had to sit in the spirit’s presence and brave it out to actually get out of the situation.