Capstone Rough Draft
There was a big interest in Japanese horror movies in America during the early 2000s after the success of the American remake of “The Ring”. America started to remake many famous Japanese horror movies like “Juon” (it is called “The Grudge” in America), “One Missed Call”, “Pulse”, “The Eye”, and many others. There is one main question that many people asked about this phenomenon, why did remakes of Japanese horror movies become very popular in America? Was it possibly that Japanese horror movies are really different than most horror movies? Does it cause new thrills that American horror movies could not provide? What are the differences between American horror movies and Japanese horror movies? According to the director of “Ringu” and “Ringu 2”, Hideo Nakata, “The difference between Japanese horror and Western horror can be traced back to the difference in religious beliefs.” (Tadayuki, 2005) If people want to understand Japanese horror movies and American horror movies, they have to know the influence of religious beliefs behind both. Religious influence on Japanese horror movies, religious influence on American horror movies, and comparing Japanese horror movies and American horror movies on how the religious influence affects both.
Many Japanese horror movies can trace their roots back to religious beliefs and classical Japanese literature. (Tadayuki, 2005) One of the main religions in Japan, called Shinto, has made a big impact on all horror stories and movies in Japan. Most of the beliefs of Shinto revolve around the belief that there is an unseen world existing all around us. (Tadayuki, 2005) People have believed that ancestral spirits protect their descendants, but there is the belief that spirits of those who die violently are unable to make their final passage to the world of the dead and they reappear before the living until they fully avenge themselves. (Tadayuki, 2005)
Japanese horror movies base their stories on these beliefs. For example, in the movie “Juon”, two spirits haunt a house because they were murdered there. Japanese horror movies play with the Shinto belief of that “the rules of the universe are beyond human understanding.” (Chris, 2006) Japanese horror movies use this belief to not explain some rules of a haunting. For example, “The Ring” never explained why a spirit is haunting a video tape. They also follow the belief that “the universe is governed by rules”. (Chris, 2006) This has always been a central theme in Japanese horror; this often means that there has to be a sequence of events that must happen before terror can be revealed. (Chris, 2006) There are several examples that prove this like in the movie “The Ring”, a person must watch the haunted video tape and they receive a phone call that tells them that they will die in seven days. Also in the movie “Juon”, people have to enter the house, the one that the mother and son died in, to be haunted and later on be killed by the spirits. Japanese horror movies not only use Shinto as an influence, but they also are influenced by some classic Japanese literature. “The Story of Okiku” was about a maid who is killed by the samurai family that she is working for because she broke a plate in an extremely valuable ten plate collection. They dump her body in an old well and every night afterwards, she rises out of the well and she causes the samurai family to go insane and kill themselves. (Chris, 2006) There are some Shinto beliefs shown in the story (Okiku is killed and her spirit haunts the place) and some Japanese horror movies even borrow story elements from this story. For example, the movie “The Ring” uses the story element that the antagonist, Sadako, was killed by her mother and dumped in a well. Japanese horror movies base the looks of the spirits from “The Story of Okiku” and several other stories (like the “Snow Woman”). The Japanese portray the spirits in white funeral garb with long dark hair and they are usually female.
Japanese horror movies are influenced by the religion Shinto, while American horror movies base the central themes on Christian religious concerns and have religious symbolism. (Stone, October 2001) Every genre of horror has them. Sci-fi horror has tons of religious concerns as themes like the power of God over matters of life and death, sciences that abused nature, and trespassing on the territory of God. (Stone, October 2001) For example, the movie “Frankenstein” was about a scientist who brings a dead man back to life. Zombie movies deal with the concerns of life after death and sometimes the supernatural. For example, in the movie “White Zombie” a man turns to a witch doctor to bring his wife back from the dead. Vampire horror movies usually have lots of religious symbols such as crosses, holy water, and Eucharistic wafers. Also, vampires symbolize the devil because they will fully embrace evil, violate institutions of family, religion, and law, and they lure married or engaged women away from their husbands. (Stone, October 2001) For example, in the movie “Dracula (1992 version)”, Dracula lures Jonathan Harker’s finance away. Exorcism movies deal with religion itself and it always deals with the main conflict of God versus Satan. For example, in the movie “The Exorcist” had the conflict of two priests who have to exorcize a girl who is possessed by a demon. Nature gone wild movies have the religious symbolism of that nature represents the turf of God and they attack humans who trespass on that turf. (Stone, October 2001) For example, in the movie “The Birds”, birds start attacking people in a town for no reason. The point is that American horror movies have Christian themes and symbolism.
There are a lot of differences on how religion affects both Japanese horror movies and American horror movies. One, Japanese horror movies use their religious beliefs as story elements. While in American horror movies they just use religious beliefs as themes of the movies. Two, Japanese horror movies leave some of the plot to the imagination like that most of Sadako’s back story is unexplained in “The Ring”.
On the other hand, American horror movies try to explain everything in the story making the movie less scary (there are some exceptions like “The Shining” and “The Birds”). (Chris, 2006)Third, “Both Buddhism and Shinto within the culture require the Japanese to accept a level of ambiguity about how the universe works. However, the Christian perspective tends to break the world down into good and evil categories.” (Chris, 2006) Fourth, these points can be proven by comparing the original Japanese horror movies and the American remakes. In the American version of “The Ring”, everything about Samara’s (in the Japanese version her name was Sadako) life was explained to help explain various details of the plot. While in the Japanese version, most of her life is never explained. (Chris, 2006) Fifth, in American horror movies, the main conflict is the good trying to destroy the evil. While, in most Japanese horror movies, the main conflict is to put the spirit to rest so it can pass into the realm of the dead.
Religious influence on Japanese horror movies, religious influence on American horror movies, and comparing how Japanese horror movies and American horror movies show the differences in both cultures; overall, both countries put a lot of culture behind their horror movies. They try to scare the audience in different ways. American horror movies try to scare the audience by having characters decent into the unknown while Japanese horror movies often have the unknown invading the known. (Chris, 2006) For example, the movie “The Descent” a group of women explores an unexplored cave and they get attacked by creatures inside the cave. The movie “The Ring” has a ghost that comes out of the television to kill people. Horror movies from different countries can show how different they are with the culture and religion shown in their movies.
