2003.005.53.sC; sound saipt in English and French, NFB, Arthurd Lipsett production file61-205. "IIery Nke-Vely Nke:

21. Midlael Baker,~ [)ots.and-Loops to Cut-and-Paste: Arthur Lipsett's~ Nice. Ve1yNice,- www.synoptique.ca/core/en/print/bakec6psett/(14March2005). 2. ,

n. Ibid.. 4.

23. T5. Eliot, The Complete Poems ond Plays '909-'950 (New York: Harcourt. Brace: 1952),38. Eliot's line also sums up the opinlon of the more unsympathetic critics of Lipsett'sfilm. D.B. Jones, for example, called the film "a disordered f}.lm about disorder, a con­fused film about confusion,· 83.

24. Lipsett, 49.

25. Ibid. 56.26. "Thanks to Blaine Allan for identifying this obSQne source.

27. In the production files for Fluxes, an order for a trial print (dated 29 April 1969) indudesthe foUowing comment about the -music": -Stock from various services. May be subjectto copyright claims, but unable to KSentify at present.- Concerns about copyright infringe­ment are also addressed in memos by Tom Daty, Frank Spiller, and c.era(~ Bertrand inNovember and December 1968. NFB, Arthur Lipsett production file A-7G-fil, -Print ourifluxes").

28. See Segel! (4): -Even Very Nice,~ Nice was not well-accepted: explains GordonMartin who was in charge of the Board's Saeen Study program in film education"M_'People onty changed their attitudes when it was nominated for an Academy Award.''Generally, people in NFB Distribution thought the film was rubbish: recalls Mark Slade,who had just come to NFB Distribution at that time_- Slade, one of Lipsett's staunchestSUPp<lrters at the Film Board, also implied that the delayed release of Ruxes was due toantipathy toward lipsett's films among people in NFB Distribution (Siegel, 4).

29. Walter Benjamin. The Aroodes Project, Howard Eiland and Kevin Md..aughlin, trans.(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1999), 456 {N1,lJ.

30. Ibid. 459 (Nl. IOJ.

31. Ibid.. 475 [Nl0.3l.

32. Ib;d. 460 (N I•• 8J.:n. SUsan BUd.-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Waite- Benjomin and the Arcades Project

(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1989), 2n.34. Ibid.. 6.

35. Ibid.. 218.

36. Benjamin, 473 IN9, 7J.

WlLUAM C. WEfS is an Emeritus ProCessor of English at McGill University. He

is Editor of this journal and author of Vorticism and me English Avant-Garde (1972).

Light MOlJing in Time: Studies in tlte Visual Aesthetics of AIJiIIIl-Garde FUm

(1992). Recycled Imnges: The Art and fblitics of R1und Footage Films (1993). andnumerous articles and reviews chiefly on experimental!avant-garde film and video.

n WllUAM.t.WElS

MITSUYO WADA·MARCIANO

J-HORROR: New Media's Impact on

Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

Resume: les recents films d'epouvante japonaiSt connus colledivement sous Ieterme de II J-Horror ., exemplifient Ie phenomene de Ia dispersion transnationale

d'un cinema digital mufti-rmMiatique qui est, paradoxalement, determine par descontingences culturelles, industrielles et economiques r~ionales. le potentiel veri­

table du cinema digital ne se retr0':Ne pas dans les effets speciaux generes par ordi­

nateur qui apparaissent dans la serie Star WafS, mais plutOt dans les mouvementsregionaux, comme Ie II J-Horror ., qui renversent Ie courant traditionel des capitauxet de la c.ulture, cest-a-dire, Ie monopole hollywoodien. Ce phenomene n'est pasnouveau dans J'histoire du cinema. Ce qui Ie rend unique est Ie deploiement ver·

naculaire de sa specificite mediatique, temporelle et regionale.

The main objective of this essay is to scrutinize new media's effect on rontem­

I porary Japanese dnerna, especia1ly the horror film genre "J-Horror." In particular,

I want to examine the ongoing contestation and negotiation between cinema and

new media in contemporary Japan by analyzing the impact of lle\V media on the

transnational horror boom from Japan to East Asia. and finally to Hollywood. Asthe case oC contemporary J·Horror films exemplifies. the new, digitalized, multi­media form oC cinema is now-a dispersed phenomenon, both ubiquitous and

transnational as technology, yet regional in the economic, industrial, and culturalcontingencies of its acceptance. While academic discourses on the connectionbetween cinema and new media have been increasing, many of them are fol~

lowing the historical constellation oC hegemony and capital in cinema, namelyHollywood's place as production and dislribution center. From my perspective

the emerging possibilities of new media in cinema have less to do with theprogress of CGf (Computer Generated Imagery) effects in such Hollywood iran·chise. as the Star Wars series (USA, 1977-2005, George Lucas) than in the waysregional movements o.r genres such as Dogme 95, Chinese Sixth Generation

Films (typically low-budget films made outside the slate-run sludios). and J-Horrorhave challenged the long-standing flow of capital and cullure. i.e. the centralityof Holl)'\vood. I argue that sucb a phenomenon is not entirely new in the history

of the cinema, but what makes it most interesting is its vernacular staging withina specific time and locale and particular media. How did a Jow-budget B genre

CANADIAN JOUlNAl OF fiLM STUDIES' IEVUE CANADIEN"I D'hUDES aNlMA'IOc;lA..,H1QUlSVOLUME I' NO.1· FAU • AUTOMNE 1..7 • pp n...u

intrinsically linked to regional popular culture become a transnational film fran­chise? The answer lies in the contingencies of new media's influence at all lev·els of production, rext, distribution, and reception. Simply put, I frame J-Horror'semergence since the 19905 as a form of trans~med.ia commodity, ODe ~t is

based less on theatrical modes of exhibition than on new digital media.

THE SHIFT TO DIGITAl. PRODUCTIONThe first part of my essay focuses on the contemporary Japanese film industryand J-Horror's production processes, and examines how the J-HOrrof boom isconnected 10 digital or computer technologies. Beginning in 1989, the decline ofJapan's once-vaunted economy has ushered in widespread cultural change. Whatbas emerged in this period of the Japanese film industry is a reconfiguration "t alllevels of production. distribution, and reception. The role of film stud.i9s has shift­ed from actual filmmaking to the distribution of films in multiniedia lormats, suchas OVD and cable television. Within the industry's risk-adverse environment.most directors have become paradoxically~ as 61rnmakers, andincreasingly dependent on multiniedia financing and distribution by the majorfilm companies. The Japanese film industry has been mainly categorized into twotypes of filmmaking groups. "major" and "independent," and the former nowstands for three film companies: Toho, Shochiku. and Toei. with the rest of thefilmmaking productions more or less independenL l As Geolf King observes onAmerican cinema, "The term 'independent' has had rather different connolationsat different periods."2 In the case of the contemporary Japanese cinema, the dis·tinction of cinema being independent from the studios is rather meaningless giventhe current ubiquity of independent filmmakers. This is different from the case ofthe American cinema from the mid-1980s. which King describes as "the morearty/quirky, sometimes politically inflected, brand of independent cinema [that]

began to gain a higher profile and a more sustained and institutionalized base inthe broadly off-Hollywood arena."3 Writing on recenl Japanese cinema. Tom Mesand Jasper Sharp offer this description of the independent filmmakers: "Thesewere filmmakers whose attitudes and philosophies of cinema were entirely dif­ferent [rom those of the old studio period. They were independent in spirit: artistswilh nothing to lose, but with everything to gain. "4

However. given the current economics of filmmaking in Japan. "indepen­dent" no longer means independent production. During the studios' heyday ofproduction. the gap between the major companies' films and those of independentswas considerable in terms of budgets, production modes. and aesthetic outcome.In the current "post-studio' period, the dichotomy of major vs. independent has beenreconfigured to a symbiotic relationship of the former as financier and distributor,and the latter as divisions of production. Independent filmmakers often workwith the sponsorship of the major studios and/or produce within an organizedproduction company that is regularly engaged in the making of films and television

14 MITSUYO WADA-MAllCIAHO

programs. Conglomerates suc~ as the Kadokawa publishing company and FujiTelevision often support these independent filmmakers. whose objectives are sel­dom free from business constraints. in contrast to Mes's and Sharp"s idealizednotions. For instance. both J·Horror film directors akata Hideo and ShimizuThkashi are so·called independent filmmakers, and yet Ringu (Japan, 1998,Nakata Hideo) was produced by Kadoka'va and distributed by Toho, and }u-on:

The Grudge (Japan, 2002, Shimizu Thkashi) was produced by The! Video Co. Ud.Nakata. as one of the last generation of studio-trained. directors, started his careeras an assistant director in Nikkatsu Studios in 1985, then made his debut as anindependent director in 1992. His first directed. works were not films, but threesegments for the television series Hontpu ni atla kowai hanashi/ReaHife Scary

Tales (Japan, 1992, Shimizu Takashi, et aI.).' Shimizu started out with a shortvideo. produced as his film school project. and subsequently was offered thechance to direct his first horror program for Kansai TeJevision.6

The integration of major and independent has also served to maintain his­torical tactics employed by the major studios for releasing films in "series' thatinculcate audience loyalty. While the majors have steadily decreased their in­house productions, they have remained heavily dependant on so-<:a.lled ~pIOgram

pictures." typically a film series like Tara-san with fony--eighl episodes (Japan.1969·1995, Yamada Yoji) from Shochiku or the GodzilIa series (Japan, 1954-2004,Honda Ishiro, et al.) from Toho. Each company has nunured its brand associa­tions with its particular "program picture" built around a specific character andusually the same director. and it releases an installment once or twice a year duringthe high·profit holiday seasons. The "program picture" bas provided a measure

of economic stability to the production side. since it functions lhe same as agenre at fulfilling expectations in the triangular relationship of production, dis­tribution. and reception. J·Horror, like many of the films to come out of therecent independem production system. has often been molded from this patternof serialization as well. The independent film production company Ace Picrures,for instance, produced Ringu and distributed it with another horror film Rasen./Ring 2; Spiral (Japan, 1998, Iida Koii) as a special event; they then made it aseries. following the pattern of the "program picture," in the follOWing rears asthe "Kadokawa Horror Series." producing Ringu 2 (Japan. 1999. Nakata Hideo)and Ringu 0 (Japan, 2000, Tsuruta Norio) within three years. As these examplesindicate. J-Horror grew oul of the specific context of the contemporary Japanesefilm industry-the disintegration of the studio system and a leveling of competition.and increasing affiliations among "major" and "independent" film productions.

In the currem post·sludio period, many of me Japanese filmmakers are defacto independent,lacking the extensive 35mm training of many directors duringthe studio production period. These new filmmakers, however. have been quickto embrace new media. whether through digital video or computer editing, inorder to lrim their production budgets and schedules. For instance, the director

NEW MlDIK5 IMPACT ON CONTUIJOORAlY IAPJ1V\IESt HORROR CINEMA 25

Shimizu Thkashi shot his film Marebiro (Japan. 2004) in just eight days, betweenthe production of his Ju-on: The Grudge 2 (Japan. 2003) and the Hollywood

remake. The Grudge (Japan/USAjGermany. 2004).' J-Horror filmmakers' prollficproduction, both in speed and numbers, has been a significant cause of the cul­tura] phenomenon of the J-Horror boom. enabled. of course. by new mediatechnologies. More importantly, the prolific production was not simply related tofilm and its theatrical release. but also to an alternative venue for marketing,namely the DVO, another new technological influence since the lateJl990s. Whatthen. is the result of this technological conv_on to digital on the level of filnticor post-filmic texts?

NEW ICONOGRAPHIES AND THE RHETORIC OF NEW MEDIAThe appeaJ of J-Horror films can be seen in their textual elements drawn fromthe urban topography and the pervasive use of technology, elements which are,at once, particular and universal. In the current post-studio climate, the condi­

tions of low budget and studio-less production are imprinted. on new filmmakers'work, espedally regarding location shooting that freq~ently captures a sense ofTokyo urbanity. J-Horror has often effectively used this dense topography to rep­resent a uniquely urban sense of fear attached to th~ possibilities of the mega­lop-olis and its mythos. The images of Thkyo and surrounding locales tied to thecity dwellers' lives have been significant motifs in J-HoITor. Ringu uses mainlythree locales: Thkyo, Oshima island. and Izu peninsula. Oshima island is sixtymiles south of Thkyo. where the film's female "monster" Sadako was born, andlzu is south-west of Tokyo. where she is now confined in an old well and waitingto extend her reach. Both Oshima and Izu are usually considered weekend resort

areas for Tokyo dwellers. The mix of familiarity and relative remoteness of theseareas gives the film a sense of spatial and temporal reality as well as a m.ythicalunderCtUrenL related Lo the rentOants of pre-modern culture lurking in rural

locales. Besides Ringu, many of the J-Horror films use Thkyo as their spatialbackdrop and even as a causal aspect for a character's isolation. As one can seein Audition (Japan, 1999. Miike Thkashi). the female psychopathic AsaJnj's resi­dence is a cheap. drab apartment in Tokyo, and her isolation is suggested by thespace being largely unfurnished, excepL for a telephone. Audition also draws uponvarious lbkyo locales, such as the subterranean bar (in Ginza), where its ownerwas killed and chopped to pieces, and the former ballet studio (in Suginarni),where Asami. as a child, was molested by her stepfather. These spaces in Tokyocause both feelings of familiarity and repulsion in Julia Kristeva'~ sense o("abjection." here toward the archaic and the derelict.a In the case of the ]u-onseries, the film uses an abandoned and haunted house that conjures J-Horrar'sdual sensihiliLy of space that is ordinary and farniliar. yel isolated. neglected. anddreadful. A sense of clausrrophobia is created by the use of an actual house, with thecamera work dictated by the tight dimensions of a typical Japanese residence.

,

When the director Shimizu made the Hollywood version The Grudge, he evenbuilt a replica of the Tokyo house. with its compartments and alcoves. in orderto keep the sense of spatial ronstriction and claustrophobia.

It is reveallng to compare the aspect of locallty in Ringu and iLs Hollywoodadaptation The Ring (USA/Japan. 2002. Gore Verbinski). In the Hollywood versioo.geographical specificity is transferred from Thkyo to Seattle. The film demystifteslocations and does not use the dual sensibility of space to conjure familiarity andabjection. relying instead on more firmly established characters and narrativecausality. For instance. the "Moesko Island Lighthouse" IhaL Rachel (NaontiWatts) visits is a fictional name for a realligbthouse located in Newpon, Oregon;the seattle setting is actually Vancouver. 9 What the film creates with its locatesis not a simulation of an actual urban topography, but a geographic plot device(or the narrative development. Strengthening the characters and the narrativecausality makes The Ring more rational and expository than the original. andconsequently the film allows the audience to identify with the characters andtheir predicament)(); whereas Ringu pres~es a level of regional sophisticationon the pan of its audience, an understanding of the spatial and temporal logicunderlying the film's schemata. the time and the distance that the charactershave to travel in their attempt to ward off Sadako's curse. Still, Ringu's appeal to

international audiences rests on the realism of its depiction of locales. imagesthat resonate with a sense of Japan as a repository of the "antiquated" and the"mysterious." The independent distributor Rob Straight, for instance. points outthat the attraction of Asian horror films is their well-received original slOries andcullurally inflected images. "Many of the films that we've handled ...are terrify­ing in a cerebral kind of way. Asian cultures proVide supportiog mythologies of

spirits and demons that are new to us and that make the terror feel more root­ed, less arbitrary. They are not the usual kind of slash-and-cut horror films. andI think people were ready for a change. tOU

Despite the transformation of locale. The Ring accurately follows the origi­nal's use of technology as a medium for the horrific. 12 The indispensable gadgetsof urban life such as televisions. videos, cell phones, surveillance cameras. com­pute~. and the Internet augment the anxious reality that J-Horror films produce.Various J-Horror films. including Ringu and the Jll-Gn series. play with the conceitof technological fluency. A character often becomes the target of an evil spirit bya mistaken belief in his or her ability to read the texts emitted from electronicdevices that unexpectedly become conduits of spirits. Ringu's seose of the horrificderives from the idea that a curse is disseminated. through trans-media. such assadako crawling oui of a television screen, a notice of death via telephone, andvideotape functioning as a medium for transferring the curse (0 others. All ofthese cases have. as their basis in reality. the possibility of a destructive (orcespreading through media traffic like a computer "virus." Like an epidemic spiral,the more these everyday technologies are diffused. the more the horrific spreads

NEW MUlA'S IMPACT ON COHTUII"OaUY JAMNl5l Ho-aol aNEMA 27

along with them. In Ringu the frame of the television screen coincides with thatof the film itself when it displays the sequence of the cursed videotape. The gaze

of the character in the film is the same as the camera's gaze a.I\d then the audi­ence's as weD. producing a perfect identification between the victim and thefilm's spectalors. The whole scheme creates the illusion that the film itself is the

medium transmitting the curse.likewise, Kurosawa Kiyoshi's Kairo/Pulse (Japan, 2000) deploys the Internet

as a medium for transmitting a curse. U The film presents a succession of suicidesamong lnternet users, and subverts the subject-object relation between human

and computer by depicting lnternet images that persist in logging on even afterthe user shuls off the computer. Kurosawa broke through with'C~ (Japan, 1997),

so he has often been described as a forerunner of J-Horror. However, he has slat­

ed lhat his later film Pulse is the first and only work that he-consciously associ­ated with the J-Horror boom.14 Kurosawa points out that me boom of J-Horror

actually staned in the early 1990s, with so-<:alled "original video" (straight-to­

video) films by filmmakers such as Konaka Chiaki and 'Thuruta Norio. The distinctcharacteristic of these early J-Horror films, according to Kwosawa, was the cheap.Oat, home video aesthetic due to the faCi that they were o.riginally produced on

videotape_ Placing something extraordinary in those ordinary looking video

im~es, such as the image of a dead person appearing in one's home videotape,was the charm of the early makers of Japanese horror films. IS Their methods ofmaking a horror film were distinctly different from both Hollywood's more expen­

sive film productions and the pre-1970s Japanese classical horror films, such as

Tokaido Yorsuya kaidan/Glwsr Story of Yorsuya (Japan, 1959, Nakagawa Nobuo)and Kaidan/Kwaidan (Japan, 1964, Kobayashi Masaki), which used elaborate stu­dio sets and classical narratives.16 In this sense, Pulse shares the characteristic of

]~Horror's juxtaposition of the extraordinary with the ordinary in the device of

using the Imemet to present images of someone who is already dead.I have ctiscussed how new technologies have influenced J-Horror films in

terms of iconography, such as the Internet in Pulse. J-Horror films also take

advantage of digital editing to create new styles 00 the level of aesthetics andnarrative struclure. Many of the films use the rheloric of Dew media, and in thedialectical relationship between film and new media, the genre takes on the role

of a sloryteUer appealing to younger audiences who are already steeped in a vari­ety of digital technologies including computer games, DVDs, and home theatersystems. Moreover, they are used to repeated viewing made available by these

technologies. Ju--on: Th.e Grudge uses the concept of "modularity," in. which thenarrative is constructed of multiple modules or narrative segments, each onetitled with a victim's name. This structure simulates the "chapter" format of theDVD, which is typically used to cue an exaCi sequence, either for a repeal viewing

or to watch the text intermittently. The majority of home theater viewers tendtoward an interrupted pattern of spectatorship rather than watching a film

28 Mmuyo WADA-MAl.OAHO

straight through as in a movie theater. As TImothy Corrigan pulS it. watchingmovies at home becomes "'a combination oL.visuaJ 'grazing' and domestic

'cocooning,'"]' The fragmented format of the film Ju-on: The Grudge is perfectlysuited to this type of speetatorship, one predicated o·n the need. for immedialesatisfaction. fulfilled by the placement of a honific moment wilhin each shan

segmenL This structure was eliminated in the Hollywood remake, The Grudge, afact that reveals the shift of the targeted audience from the DVD home viewersto audiences in a movie theater.

The director Shimizu Thkashi is espepally keen to create horror films usingthe rh.etoric of new media, as in the aforementioned fibn Marebito (Figure 1).Digitally shot, edited. and distributed. il is one of the besl examples of the influ­

ence of new media rhetoric in its non-linear narrative structure and aesthetics

and the spatializing properties made possible by digital editing. The narrativeconcerns a freelance video cameraman working for television news programs

who is obsessed with finding the most dreadful horror one can possibly see. He

engages with the world largely through a video carnera, and the boundary

between the realily in his life and the reality captured by his camera is increas~

ingly blurred. One day, he discovers an entrance to the underground, where heencounlm mysterious creatures called Deros (delrimenlal robols). He lakes a

female Dems back home and confines it like a pet.

As in recent science fiction films with eGI such as The Mauix (USA. 1999.Andy and Larry Wachowski) and eXistenz (Canada/UKjFrance, 1999, David

eronenberg), this film deploys double layers in its narrative: a real world and anundenvorld. The doubling of spatial layers is deepened by a matching sense of

the prolagonist's double selves, one governed by his sane cognition and theother by emerging paranoia. The film deviates from a linear narrative develop­

ment, using instead fragmented time and space to develop its complex layers.

Time skips back and forth, following the oscil1ltion of his mental state. Thesequence of a seemingly dislurbed woman pursuing him is repeated; only later

is she revealed to be his ex-wife. The "'rhizomatic" narrative-the multiple and

non-hierarchical collection of narrative segments-represents narrative expansionwithin a temporal and spatial mesh. This multiplication of narrative is heavilydependant on digilal editing that allows more spatial extension than is typical of

aoalog editing. Laura U. Marks describes such digital editing as an "open form,·and nOles that the advantage of digital editing is "to multiply the opportunities

for flashbacks, parallel storylines, and other rhizomatic narrative techniques,

producing a story that is so dense il expands into space as much as it moves for­ward in time. ExperimemaJ video remains lhe pioneer of the ctigitaJ open form,as il is more free of narrative cinema's will 10 linearity. "111

The film also mimics so-called "digital errors," the now familiar innovations

of electronic musicians and video artists. They "intentionally mess with thehardware: lurning the computer on and off, or plugging the 'audio out' into Ihe

NEW MEDIA'S IMMCI' ON COHTEMPOII.QY JAlWr4ESE HOI.IOI ONEMA 29

Figure 1. Morebitt1 (Japan, '2004. Shimizu Taknhi. DVO. 2006).

'\-;deo m: hberaung the electrons to create random effects.. R'~ and Ihey I.ry to

sub,rerl or challenge already existing music or imolges wlm tecbruques SUdl dS

·slUller," repe.aung the same ound or Imdge as if llls c.1used. by a lechmcJI mi$'lake. .and Mbreakdown,- shurting down the sound or tl'l"ldge abrupl.1y. In MarebJlJ.~.

the latter technique IS used for the sequence called "the twelve-seconds' mys­

tery." The protagonist monitors the Oeros with two surveillance (:amer.1S whtr-n

he IS out. and on returnjng borne he finds that Ihe Dems is npJf dealh. He then

rewll1ds lhe surveillance tapes to find OUl what happened to it. However, once

both tapes reach Ihe same point, they lOexplic.a.bly show only blank scrt~ns.

Twelve st"Conds later, the monitoring Images come back., and th~e 15 the Derus

in convulsions. This breakdown of Images \Norks by extending the prol.1goru:)t-smner state to the dudlence. blurring the boundary bet\"'('en reality and the Video

world and threatening tum/us with the mghu:narish proposlUoll that there IS no

reahty when it IS not recorded. What Alarebuo dccomphshl"S 10 nearly poe-llC

symmelCy of narrative and form is an explorallon 01 the human tfndenq' 10

apprehend reality through thE;' prosthetiC of tt"Cbnology. As our dependence cntechnology increases and wh.:lt passes for reality consists of mediawd imJge~,

there is d corresponding loss of subjectivity. an inability 10 grasp .. the real," Thefilm's mgual rhetoric effectively imul.ues the prosthetIc connecuon belwa>n .iI

subject and oil camera . .1 \1eWer and a screen, the now pnvauzed $CelIe of expe·

rience that is charaetenslJc of dlgl1aJ and computer [echnology.

A surveillance ColJnera or its aesthetic IS often used IQ works lhat are dip­tally shot, whether they art" films or video an. Tun.ecode (USA. 2000. Mike FiW.,)

deploys four screens. continuously and slOlultaneously shol b~' fOUl dlgJlal cam­

eras. Dead EIUI Job (Canada. 2003. Ryan Stee) uses the aCIU,11 imag"" lrom sur·

veillance cameras and edits lhem into J halludnalory colldgl!. The d~Y14::e Jilowslor an exploration of real· lime recording, .llbelt to dIfferent effect Ihan j'Horror

Asignificant number of J·Horror films use surveiUaoclt cam.:ra images to creati'a moment of shock through the intruSion of so-metlung extraordmJry wuhm thebanaluy of the ordmary. In Ju-on. The Grudge .a sequence of d gbosl appeanng

in .a surveillance morular is killfuUy composed of conUnuous briel cUts UUIslowly lead the spectator's point of \!Iew 10 Lhe full Size of the monnor imagl?The chapler's victim. Huomi (Ito Misato). witnesses. first. tlle Image of an oUh..ehallway. p.utially WslOned with static interference on the scret"fl; then. J s€'Curity

gtIdIiI is gradually enveloped by Ule ghost's shadow, After the cut back '0 fhtolTU's

!Catlion (she freaks out and runs away). the last shot in thl' monitor dlSpldYS theusual image of the Mme ilallway. only now the guard ilas disappe.lft'd The film

deverly reduces Ihe visual infomlation in the sequence: firsl, reducing Us col-0t[0 black and white. which Ringu aJso used for t.hE' cursed 'I'ldeot.lJ)e, and, se(.ond.

lowering the visual rpsolubon by blowlDg up the Image of a small survetllance

tell!\fl5ton monitor to (ull screen siu. The- film undemunes our preconteJ}uc,nthai the Image of a surveiUance camera IS obJ«tive realilY, Jnd . .1:> lhl! dm."\.1' 'r

NEW MUlA'S UlIMa ON COHTf.MI'OtlMV MMHUE tfOQOfI OH.lMA ].

Kurosawa pointe'd out, il creates J4Horror's ldiosyncr.uic moment. in which Lhegbo.... ulIaaromary figure appears (through eGI in this case) III the mundane

space or lbe monilor.1Q Moreover, the prinaple of reduction in ordE."r 10 creat.e an

oye-«llching 'mage i. suong]y tied with the use of digJtal cameras. Wlth whichanyorh?' can lake a well-lil. focused image, and even with synchronous sound;thus. to create a distinctive image. one needs to bnd a way to reduce what th(l'

carneroa captures. Digital shooting represents aD aesthetJc regime of reduction

lhoal is markedly dtfferem from cOfl\:enuon.aJ filmmaking. in which one needs lOadd the necessary elemenls. such as enhanced lighting and sound, 111 order togrant the image a degrt?'e of verisimilHude,n

As.,) rt!5uJt of using digital video cameras and computer edj1jl\g. the con·

t£>mporary Japanese horror films have a OOnew Mlook. II is certainly l'Lot only in

1he case of horror. One can also see this stylistic 'LransJormation in other genrefilms. such as ti,e comedies Mayo,UIka no Yaj,·san Kua"an/Midnig/tJ YO/i·san andKWl'SM (Japan. 2005, Kudo Kankuro) and Tak£shis' (Japan. 2005. Kuano Takestu1.

and the drama DiSTance (Japan. 2OOt. Kare'eda Hllokazu). Yet only J·Ho"". hasm.maged broad commercial success with global aumences through lhe alterna·

live dislribuuon of DVD, rather .han depending on Internallonal thealricaJ

relea5e'. Both. Kore-°eda and Kilano, on one hand. brought therr films to the

Cannes Fl.Im Festival, and uied to exumd lheir distribution to tn1eroauonaJ mar­

kets. Kudo's comedy. on the other hand. was only 1argeted (or the domestic box

offi<:e by following the mdusrrial commonplace thaI comedy does nol cross culluralbound.mes well. It bears repealing 1hal the boom of J·Horror occurred alongsidethe eulruraJ contingency of independetll filJ1UJlaker.;· affinily wilh digita.llechnology.Moreover. J·Horror has been especially successful in tapping the aestheuc of newmedia-in parucular. lhe digilal regime of fragmenlary narrative. highlighled

anenIJon to lhe disrupted eJectronic im.lge. privatiz.ed spectalorship. and aes-­tltetic reduclinn, J-H.orror·, appeal to global audiences i' due to bolh lhi' ·new·

lool< and how Ihe filmic content b paclcaged and disrnbuted. as I will outlme in

lhe foUowlng secllon,

ow AND 11lE HEW PARADIGMS OF DIsntl1ll1l10H MID CONSUMPTION

J-Horror's emergence pazanels the nse of lhe DVD marker m Japan. The timingof its appearance was !ortuilous, Since the genre had both a sufficien1 mass o(ensting nanative content in novels. m.a.ngtl comics, and tele\1s1oD programs. and

speed in generating new ronteol. whelher SbOl on film or video. 10 meet the

demand of the growulg DVD markel. Indeed. one difficulty In discuSSlll8 J-Horroris due 10 tbe genre·s symbiotic relation Wllh new digilaltechnology. which teads­

1Il" film genre into a tangle of cross-media traffic. Simply pUI. the ceOlrality of

film as I..he pJU1l.lry medmm for production, dislribulion. a.nd consumption has

shifted with Ihe em.rgmg p!1!dominan<e of DVD. Consequenlly, a discussion ofJ-.1iorrot must be placed within Lhi!iluansilJon3.1 stage of cross·media consumpnon. Filur~ 2. J(H)IJ (Japan. 1999, Shimizu Talwm, video).

HEW MlPlA"S IMMCT ON CONT'UlllPOaAaT """"EStHO.~ C.IHEMA 13

Shimizu Takashi, for example, has serialized his original video Ju-on (Japao,1999), in a number of films aod videos, as well as Japaoese and Hollywood fea­

ture film versions (Figure 2). Shimizu has already directed six Ju-on videosj .

films: Ju-on (video), Ju-on 2 (Japan. 2000, video), Ju-on: The Gnu:tge (film),

Ju-on: The Grudge 2 (film), The Grudge (film), and The Gnu:tge 2 (USA, 2006,film). The seventh work Ju-on: The Gnu:tge 3 (Japao, 2008, film) is scheduled tobe produced in Japan, though Shimizu will not be the director.21 The multipleversions of la-on. whether originally video or film, are available as separate texts

in the DVD fannat. J-Horror's affinity with the extra-filmic products of DVD (and

television programming for the domestic Japanese audience) has, indeed. fueledthe J-Horror boom both inside and outside Japan. In other words, the genre isconstructed of a number of post-filmic productions, only one of which is in thetraditional form of a thealrically released feature film.

The profusion of horror omnibuses is the best example of J-Horror's high

compatibility with new media. especially DVD. They often circulate in the DVD'

market without depending on a theatrical release at all, and they are either re-<!ditedfrom aheady existing television programs Or produced straight-to-DVD. The DVD:

Nihon no kowoi yoru/Dork Tales of Japan (Japan, 2004, Nakamura Yoshihiro, eta1.). for instance, is an omnibus of five television programs that were originallybro",dcast in September 2004. Shimizu Thkashi directed one of the five episodes."Kinpalsu kaidan/Blonde Kwaidan." and in the narrative be mockingly intenex­lUalizes Hollywood's rush for adaptation of J-Horror films, including his own

The Grudge. These omnibuses function as a system for creating and sustainingthe J-Horror boom in three principal ways: 1) relatively young and inexperiencedfilmmakers can start making a short film as practical directorial training; 2) hor­

ror films on DVD find alternative distribution without the expense of theatricalrelease marketing; 3) it facilitates cross-media, intertextual references to con­temporary popular cultures. Distributing only on DVD makes sense, given the

contemporary dearth of theatrical venues. a shortage that bas caused the shelvingof maoy unreleased films. lis the film producer Kuroi Kazuo states, "Although

the mass media has been fussing by saying that the Renaissance of Japanesecinema has come, there are about one hundred films still unreleased and put upon the shelf .... There are a limited number of screens, and too many films."n

In terms of the third aspect, the practice of referencing or even adaptingfrom other media such as comics, television programs, and novels secures analready existing audience for both films and DVD. The orrmibus format in thehorror genre has a long history indeed. as we can see in various examples. Three

Tales of Terror (AustriajHWlgary, 1912, Jacob Fleck, et aI.) has three episodes

directed by Jacob Fleck, Luise Fleck, and Claudius Vel"e; Tales from the Crypt

(UK{US, 1972, Freddie Frauds) is based on the same-titled comic book series,

and the film has the omnibus format of five people trapped in a crypt aod showntheir futures; Due occhi diabolid/ThlO Evil Eyes (Italy/US, 1990, Dario Argenlo

and George A. Romero) is composed of lWo horror segments based on EdgarAllan Poe Slories: "The-Facts aboul Mr. Valdeman," directed by Romero. and"The Black Cat." directed by Argento. A5 evinced. by the omnibus format, thehorror film genre, in general, has developed under the influence of short storiesor comic book segments. This fonnat is even more suilable for the DVD mediumsince its chapter structure allows one to watch an individual segment or skip 10

another episode. In the case of J-Horror. one of the most significant intertextualreferences for those omnibus DVDs is manga. comics, as iUustrated by the horroromnibuses Hino Hideji kaiTci geTcijo DVD-BoX/Hino Hideji's Mystery Theater DVD­Box (Japan, 2005, Shiraishi Koji, et aI.) and Umezu Kazoo kyofu geTcijojUmezu

Kazoo's Horror Theurer (Japan, 2005, Kurosawa Kiyoshi. et a1.). The Umezuomnibus includes six shons. all based on the comic artisl Umezu Kazuo's hor­ror manga comics. While a few of those films had limited theatrical release in

Tokyo (Shibuya CinemaVera in June 2006) or at film festivals (Fukuoka Hero

Festival. November 2006; Sapporo Film Festival, November 2006), the series waspackaged for the DVD market. The Tomie series (Japan, six films from 1999 to

200S, Oikawa Atciru, et al.) is also based on the same title manga comics by theartist Ito Junji. This series has a television version as well. which is repackagedon DVD in the form of an omnibus, titled Tomie: Another Face (Japan, 1999,Inomata Tashiro). The original comic's narrative device for serializing a story,with the main character Tomie as a clone with an ability to regenerate her bodyeven after her murder, is not just timely as a topic, but also works for extendingthe series.

From the industrial point of view. the central force enabling J-Horror's enlIyinto the world markel has been its integration with the DVD format. The rise ofnew media, DVD in particular, has altered the trajectory of cultural flow world­wide towards a decentralized model of multiplied venues thal are less beholdento the theatrical screen. The concept of "global cineman has been changing along

with the distnbution of cinematic coment in multimedia formats. Fewer regionslike India or the U.S., where the film industry is still considered a thriving busi­

ness, can manage to sustain the hierarchical notion that theater screening is thecenter of cinema circulation. Even in the U.S.. the slate of cinema has been grad­ually changing with the improvement of the home thealer as the sleep curvecracking the numbers of DVD players indicates. As Barbara Klinger notes. "Risingfrom a 2 percent to a 30 percenl penetration of U.S. homes [rom 1999 to 2002,DVD players have inspired owners to upgrade their entenainment equipment sothat the superiority of OVD picture and sound can be fully realized. "~4

Film Studies itself is still struggling to assimilate the fact that film is nolonger simply represented by movies in theaters. David Bordwell writes that "arruly global cinema is one that claims significant space on theater screensthroughout developed. and developing countties.... The only global cinemacomes from America. Blockbusters like Independence Day (USA, 1996, Rolaod

HEW MEDIA'S IMMCT ON c:otfnMPOlI.UY JAPAHESl HOI:IOI ONEMA 3S

NEW MEDIA'S IMI"ACI' ON CONTEMI'OItARY JAPANESE HOIROR ONEMA :57

Figure 3. Tefsuwan Atom!Astro Boy (Japan, Fuji Television, 1962, Tezuka Osamu, et at; AsttoBoy-The Complete Series, DVO, 2005).

Emmeric1l) and Tilanic (USA. 1997. James cameron) are international mediaevents.... The Hollywood ol the East is Hollywood.·" While the Hollywood

blockbuster might still command such attention, it should be emphasized thatthe examples Bordwell cites here are films produced when DVD had onJy recent-.ly entered the market. Moreover. since the mid4 1980s, more people were seeing

Hollywood films at home than in theaters. 26 Titanic's gross for rentals in the U.S.(5324,425,520) is much higher than its box office sales, ($126,099,626) as olDecember, 1998).27

Japanese popular culture exports have had a profound influence in America(and indeed, throughout the world) in the decades since World War ll.

From Codzilla in the 1950s through Astro Boy in the 1960s, Speed Racer inthe 19705. and the more recent phenomena of the Mighty Morphin Power

Rangers. Hello Kitty. Nintendo. and Pokemon. creati.ons of the Japaneseimagination have been high profile and big business in the United. States.l9

JAPANESE CINEMA IN THE GLOBAL MARKETPLACfUntil the advent of J-Horror. Japanese cinema has never been a "global cinema"except for anime (Japanese animation) and some alUeur films that circulated via

various international film lestivals. J-Horror's border traffic represents a signifi­cant departure from the cinema's long-standing failure in foreign markets. The

history ol Japanese exported lilm (yll$hutsu eiga) has largely been a series of

misfires which. despite an often-favorable critical reception, failed to achievewide theatrical release and box office profits. Outside of the occasional art-house

film, there have been few attempts to export Japanese cinema in a commercially

viable way. much less create a global cinema. The influence of Japanese popularculture has. instead. largely been in the commodities aimed at children. such astelevision animations and video games (Figure 3). Anne Allison writes. -Japanese'cool' is traveling popularly and profitably aroWld the world and insinuating itself

into the everyday lives and fantasy desires of postindustrial kids from Taiwanand Australia to Hong Kong and France. "zs The historian William Thulsui agrees:

As Tsutsui's examples indicate, Japanese cultural exports to the U.S. have been

specifically in the categories of monster and animation products. but seldom inthe cinema. However, there were a few periods when the Japanese film industry

tried to intensively promote their films abroad. even pre·Worid War D.

The Japanese cinema was. arguably. first introduced in the U.S. in 1904.when the producer Kawaura Ken'ichi screened newsreels from the Japan-RussiaWar at the exposition in St. Louis, Missouri.XI Later. a number of ubunka eigaR

(cultural films}ll were shown at the New York Exposition, and most of the films

served. to introduce Japan to foreign audiences, as indicated by such titles asNarn Kyoro/Nara and Kyaw (Japan, 1933), Nilwn no millSUTi/Fesrivals in Japan

(Japan. 1934), Shiki no Nihon,lJapan in li:,"r Seasons (Japan, 1933) •. and Nilwnbekken,lGlimpses of Japun (Japan. 1936), all produced by the Japanese

International Tourist Bureau.32 Although the directOI Murata Minoru's gttempt to

promote his film Ma.chi no tejinashi/The Street Magidan (Japan, 192~) ill Europefailed in 1925. another director, Kinugasa Thinosuke. succeeded in marketing hisfilm Crossroads, Jujiro/Slladows of the Yoshiwara (Japan, 1928) in Germany. The

well-known producer Kawakita Nagamasa made two multi·national.,productionfilms Atarashii tsuchi/The New Emtli (Japan/Germany, 1937, Arnold Fanck andItami Mansaku) and 1byo heiwa no michi/The Road to the Eastern P"""e (Japan,

1938. 5uzuki 5higeyoshi). Naruse MOOo's film 15urna yo bam no fO ni/Kimiko(Japan, 1935) was shown in the U.S. and harshly reviewed by the New YorkTimes in 1937." The breakthrough of Kurosawa Akira's Raslwmon (Japan, 1950),

which won an award at'the Venice Film Festival in 1951, opened the way formany Japanese films. especially "an films." to be accepted at various interna­tional film festivals an~, hence, seen by potential foreign buyers.

One might argue that the overall resistance within the Japanese film industry

to produce more exportable commercial pJ?duets is based on an intrinsic conditionof Japanese cinema's co-existence with Hollywood in the postwar era: oilly those

Japanese films that were distinguished by culturally specific genres could COID*

pe!e with the dominant Hollywood films in the Japanese market, and due to thecultural specificity of those films the industry assumed that they were unsuitablefor export. J-Horror, exemplary of Japanese genre cinema, would change those

assumptions. Thanks to DVD distribution, it managed to traverse the historicalboundaries that shaped Japanese cinema as a fundamentally domestic product.

J-Horror thus foUawed the model of Japanese anime videotapes of the 19805.Anime crossed the boundaries between Japanese and global markets due to

its capacity tor modification on levels of both text and media. It is easily re-<lubbed

and re-edired to make it more universal, and it was highly mobile in the form of

videotape. As TSutsui's recollection indicates. the animations Tetsuwan Atom!Asrro Boy (Fuji Television, 1963, Tezuka Osarnu, et al.) in the 1960s, Mach Go Go

Go/Speed Racer (Television lbkyo, 1967, Yoshida Talsuo, et al.) in the. late 1960s,and Pocket Monster/Pokemon (Television lbkyo, 1997, Yuyarna Kunihiko) in the1990s foun.d success abroad in dubbed and re-edited versions on television

worldwide. and it is likely that the majority of the vi.ewers did not even recognizethat those animations were from Japan. Anim.e. at the same time, bas character­istics that are culturaUy specific, due to its jerky movement. typical of limitedanimation techniques. Still, it has managed to reach audiences of vFUYing age,gender, and culrure, primarily through its multitude of rexts. subject diversity,and variations in quality.

Similarly, J*Horror's assimilation of new digital technology enabled it to

cross market boundaries, despite its culturally specific images, such as a ghostwith a white painted body theatrically stylized like a Buloh dance performer or

H MITSUYO WADA-MAIlDMtO

a vengeful woman figure with long black hair. Such cultural specificities are, on ailehand, generally diminished in Hollywood remakes, reflecting the calculations of

marketing to a generic worldwide audience, and, on the other hand, highlighted

in the packaging of ]*Horror films on DVD aimed at a cull fan demographic withan appetite for the cuJturally authentic and macabre violence. With products thatrange from high to low quality, both anime and J·Horror demonstrate a formi­

dable capacity for variegated production aimed at diverse consumers. At one ofthe most popuJar Asian film Internet sites, HKFlix.com, one can, for instance,find one thousand anime DVDs and more than 350 ]*Horror DVDs by using com­binations of the key words "animation" and ...Japan" and "horror" and "Japan,"

DVD is inextricable from the enriched flow of cinematic commodities awayfrom the Hollywood-centered film distribution model to more region-oriented

models. Worldwide, DVD has extended th.e film industry's market models beyond

the theatrical release to address diverse. private, home-based reception patterns.The excessive price of going to a movie in Japan (approximately $17 (US) or

¥],800 per adult) and the industrial strategy for marketing certain B genre films

solely in DVD formats have spurred the tendency to purchase films on DVD. ltshigh information capaciry with multiple languages in dubbing and subtitling hasalso expanded the marketing potential of J-Horror across national boundaries.

The worldwide success of J-Horror is illustrative of how digital media have

extended cinema's reach as a global commodity through both official and unofficialchannels. such as downloading films from the Internet, file sharing, and piracy.

Indeed, the regional boom of the genre has been largely a marter of unplannedcultural contingencies, the intersection of digital media and mobile culture.

In the case of Ringu, for instance. the executive producer Hara Masatoattributes the unexpected success of the series to the technological fluency ofschoolgirl culture. Originally. the production side planned to market Ringu as.a

"date film," but it ended up that many female high school students carne to see

the film and the positive word·ot·mouth generated by their cell phone text*mes~

saging contributed to the success of the series. Ringu's gross sales were more

than ten million U.S. dollars, and the following years' Ringu 2 doubled its sales.'"The income 1s, of course, not only from theatrical release, but also includes videoand OVD sales. Ringu's release was especially timely, since it came right after

DVD was legally licensed in Japan in 1996. and the promotion of both DVD soft­ware and hardware encouraged the purchase of films. The same strategy wasused in the u.s. later. and The Ring sold more than two million DVD copies inthe first twenty-iour hours of' video release.3S

The global circulation of J-Horror has indeed depended on the less controlled

cultural contingencies linked to the rise of digital networking and film piracy con­current with th.e popularization of DVD since the late 19905_ As Shujen Wang

notes. "The rapidly changing spatiotemporal dynamics and configurations affordedby these new (digital] technoiogies have radically changed the nature of 'property'

NEW MEDIA'S IMPACT ON CONJEMPOAARY JAfl'AHESE HORROR CINEMA J9

and market, the balance of power, and the relations and means of production, dis­tribution, and reception/consumption."36 J·Horror, in its upending of the existinghierarchy of fibn distribution, is one of the best examples of this potential of newdigital technologies. Global audiences, who are more equipped technologicallythan ever before and bener informed about new trends in software and films

through instantaneous Web-casting, are no longer content to wait for the localrelease of films when they can purchase the film's DVD on the Internet or downloadit from a sharing file. While safeguards such as region codes exist, and officiallythey are supposed to prevent the cross-national flow of OVD from one region to theother, multi·region DVD players are cheap and widely available. An audience segmentof high techn<>-lilerates, then, creates a perfect market for such pirated products.Not only that, they directly promote local digital products, such as B-mov!e films

like J·Horror through their own Weblogs. The phenomenon of such alternativedistribution subverts the long-standing economic calculations of major studios ordistrihutors, especially by focusing on geqre films, which historically were notoften exponed to "central" markets, such as the U.S.

Digital nenYorking is much faster and more flexible compared with the con­tainment strategies of law enforcement or its legitimate counterparts (such asHollywood or other national film industries). J-Horror's regional boom is largelya maHer of the contingencies of OVD distribution in Asia, a model that is func­tionally different from Hollywood's traditional planned timing of its film releasedates. Such an exercise of global control has never been tenable for regional ornational cinemas, and yet digital networking enabled those cinemas to de-centerthe pattern of cultural globalization vis-a-vis Honywood. The newly emerginggeography of digital cinema thrives on its center·less quality. a dynamic that alsoallows for the uncontrolled circulation of its products. In the case of Ringu, thefilm was released in Japan on January 31, 1998. Intriguingly, in South Korea, thelocal Korean film production company AFDF produced the film's adaptation RingVinLS (South Korea, 1999, Kim Dong-bin) and released it 'on June 12, 1999-sixmonths before the original Japanese version appeared on December U, 1999. Ofcourse, the Japanese DVD had been available on the Internet in June 1998. and.moreover, the film had already been released in other East Asian markets. suchas Hong Kong in April 1999.

Such accelerated circulation of film (as content. whatever its form). causedby ubiquitous digital technologies bas started reshaping the flow of cult~ and

the balance of power in different media. As Wang points out in the case of AngLee's WO hu Cil1l8 long/Crouching Tiger, Hi.dden Drugon (Thiwan/Hong Kong!USA/China, 2000). this circulation reverses the usual directional flow of com­modities ftom Hoflywood to global regions: "This Hong Kong-1aiwan-Chinacoproduction was released in Asia five months before its U.S. premiere....[PJirated video copies of the film were circulating in the U.S. market long beforethe film's formal U.S. release in December 2000. -J7 10 another case of reverse

cultural flow. not only at the "illegitimate" level, but also as an act of "legiti­mate" global acceptance. J-Horror's circulation. which originat.ed in Japan.caused the subsequent horror boom in Asia and, ultimately, the exporting ofboth its adaptations and new filmmakers to HoUywood.

J-Horror is well suited to the circumstances of industrial transition and thenew economics of small screen movie viewing. The genre is aimed at youngeraudiences. who would rather rent or purchase OVDs than pay exorbitant ticketprices at mO\rie theaters in Japan. The tactics of emphasizing DVD sales alsosuits the current circumstances of the Japanese film industry, in which e<digitalcinema" has not grown as fast as DVO's popularization. Digital cinema refers tothe use of digital technology to distnbute and project films, and those films aredistributed through hard drives, DVOs or satellite, and projected using a digitalprojector instead of a conventional film projector. 3S In contrast to the rapidspread of DVD acceptance since lbe la,e 1990s, the Japanese film industry hasbeen having a difficult time digitalizing its distribulion and projection systems.Computerizing the system and purchasing the digital projector for each theateris about four or five times more expensive than the traditional film projectionsystem.39 For the majority of movie theaters, investing in digitalization technol·ogy guarantees neither an increase of audiences nor revenues. Moreover, theaterowners are hesitant to jump into digital systems until the fonnal and regulationof the system are standardized. T-JOY, funded by lbei in 2000, is one of the fewcompanies to accepl digital cinema, but it has only ten entenainment c~mpl~xesthroughout Japan.'"

CRmCAL RECEPTION AND THE LOSS OF FILMIC CONTUT

J·Horror's proclivity for crossing the borders of media and patterns of recep'tionhas made the genre fertile ground for airing problems in Film Studies' assimilationof the transitions occurring in cinema. The genre represents what I see as thedual potentialities of new media; on one hand. a greater access and multiplicityof texts, and. on the other, the power of digitalization to erase hislorical context.Due to the geme's affinity with the DVD lonnal. J·Horror has extended its reachthrough an enormous number of works and extended the parameters of thegenre as well. This reconstruction of the J-Horror genre as a pragmatic categoryin the DVD market has caused a shuffling of media (Le. the erasure of content­origin as films, straight·to-video films, and television programs are formattedinto DVD) and history (i.e. 1960s non-horror films repackaged as precursors toJ-Horror). The materiality of the geme-are we talking about film or DVD?-nowneeds to be spedfied, if one is to analyze the genre in the context of film history.The identification with each medium has become more crucial to the analysis of atext since the antiquated hierarchy among media-that film is the ultimate productand other post·filmjc products are simply spin·offs-has been subvened, espe­cially in J·Horrors case..

N£W MEDUl'S IMPACT ON CONJIMII'OIlARY IAPJlP.NESE HonOR OMENA 41

For instance, the anthology Japanese Horror CineTTUl, edited by Jay McRoy,displays a glaring need for clarification on horror cinema's matenality. As theantho,logy's "filmography" reveals, what the book considers as film is actually

DVD. and this substitution causes the reconfiguration of the horror genre itself.Although the act of analyzing a film in different formats has been indispensableto film scholars since the 19805. the critical problem here is that in blurring thedistinction betw'een those media, the anthology's contributors take an expansiveview of what constitutes Japanese horror cinema, far beyond the historic contextof the genre. Some films dealt with in the anthology, such as Ugetsu Monogatari/Ugetsu (Japan, 1953, Mizoguchi Kenji), Kuma no sU'jo/Throne of Blood (Japan,1957, Kurosawa Akira), Moju/BUnd Beast (Japan, 1969, Masurnura Yasuzo), Ai

no korida/ln the Realm of rhe Senses (Japan/France, 1976, Oshima Nagisa) ,Tetsuo [Japan, 1989, Tsukamoto 5hinya), Freeze Me (Japan, 2000, Ishii Takashi),and Barrie Royale (Japan, 2000, Fukasaku Kinji), were not associated with thehorror genre at all in either the films' production or distribution in Japan. Theywere distributed. and discussed within the regimes of the auteur (Mlzoguchi andKurosawa) or other genres. such as jidaigeki eiga (the period film), bungei-rrwno(the literary adaptation) in the case of Blind Beast, the porno film in the case ofIn the Realm of the Senses, the cyberpunk film in the case of Tetsuo, and the psy­ch9 thriller in the case of Freeze Me. or simply as a topical film in connectionwith bestseller novels as in the case of Battle Royale. Peter Hutchings is right

about the dilficulty of defining horror when he notes, "If one looks at the waythat fihn critics and film historians have written about horror, a certain imprecisionbecomes apparent regarding how the genre is actually constituted. "41 rdo not think.however, that the issue is solely a matter of genre cat.egorization in the case of

Japanese Horror Cinema, but rather that the connections among a text, its his·

toneal context. and the discwsive subject go unacknowledged. Such connectionsare ever more crucial in my view, given that new media have the tendency to

encompass and reposition old media, and the past as well.

If one goes into any Internet site promoting and distributing Japanese horrorfilms, he or she wiU -tind that the films mentioned above are actually categorizedas "horror." At HKFlix.com, for example, Battle Royale is in.cluded in both the

"horror" and "thriller" genres, and other keywords are "action," "children," and"teen[-pic].'''u DVD distributors and countless other Internet retailers categorizetheir products following~ their own marketplace imperatives. The difference

between film and DVD genre categories is also reflected by the shift of targetedaudience/consumer from the regional movie theater audiences to the global OVD

consumers. In the case of J·Horror, the dominance of DVD in the marketplacehas produced a new genre system in post-filmic distribution, a system with more

generic terms, but, at the same time, ODe resembling the genre categories ofHollywood cinema. Amidst this process, local generic terms such as jidaigekieiga have been erased. Rick Altman indicates that "the technological and

Figure 4. Onibaba'ojOnibaba (Japan, 1964, Shindo Kaneto. DVD. 2004).

NEW MmlA'S IMPACT ON COHTEMPOIlARY JAPANESE HDIROR ONEMA U

representational explosion of recent years only reinforces earlier panerp.s ofalienation and lost presence.... While genres are cenainly not as simple as.most

people think they are, many a placebo has provided a successful cure. Becausepeople see safety in the apparent stability of genre. they find genre films usefulas signs of successful constellated community communication.""U

This sbiiting of genres between film and OVD belps us realize the difficultyof connecting a filmic text with its historical cultural context.ln the period of dig·ita! technology, when visual content is released not only in multiple formats with

multiple layers of ownership rigbts, that content is often manipulated (fromblack and white to color, re-edited as a director's edition, etc.) and repackaged.Recently the director Shindo Kaneto's film Onibaba'ajOnibaba (Jap.n,,1964)

was released on DVD in region one. the U.S. and Canada. on March 16, 2004

(Figure 4). Althougb Criterion. one of the most representative DVD distributorsfor canonical classic films. makes no connection between "horror" and its newly

packaged Onibaba. one finds that "horror" has gradually insinuated itselI into

the marketing of the DVD. Amazon.com's editorial review, for instance. begins

its desaiption of the OVD. "IA] curse hangs over Kaneto Shindo's primaJ

Japanese classic like a looming storm cloud. but the supernatural has got noth­ing on the desperation and savagery of the human animal trying to survive the

horrors of war." and IMDb (International Movie Database) categorizes the filmas "'Drama!Horror" and includes a link to Amazon.com DVD shopping.44

Once analyses of the film appear in academic discourses in the U.S.• it is,

without any hesitation, categorized as horror, as we see in both Jyotsna Kapur's

essay "The Return of History as Horror: Onibaba and the Atomic Bomb" andAdam Lowenstein's chapter in his book Shocking Representation: Hisrorical

1h1uma. National Cinema, and the Modem Horror Film.. "Unmasking Hiroshima:Demons, Human Beings, and Shindo Kaneto's Onibaba. "4S Kapur "focuses on

haunting histories and regional gothics· and reveals "the traditional Japanese

horror film.. .is a radical reworking of this geme into a political allegory of sur­vival in conditions of scarcity amidst class antagonism ruled by war....f6

Lowenstein "examines Shindo's horror film Onibaba as a means of refiguring

how cinematic representations of Hiroshima are legislated theoretically. with

particular attention to the political issues of victim consciousness, war responsi·bility, and the construction of gendered models of Japanese national identity. "47

It has been a while since Frederic Jameson's allegorical reading on "numWorld literature'" was criticized due to its lack of specificity and its ahistoricaltendencies.48 I have no interest in directing the same criticism toward. these schol­ars' allegorical approach to Japanese cinema. but I must indicate the gap betweenthe regional. journalistic discourses following the film's release in 1964 and theirpost·DVD academic discourses. None of the advertisements. film reviews, andinterviews at that time connected the film with the horror genre. The generic cat·egories that these discourses associated with the film are either minwa-mono

(folk tale genre) or dDku.ritsu puro eiga {independent film).49 When Onibaba was

released on November 21. 1964. an advertisement for the film highligbted three

aspects of the film: it was direcred by Shindo Kaneto. who was already well

knO\"lIl as a realist filmmaker; it was submitted. to geijutsusai (Arts Festival). awide-ranging annual festival (including thealer. film. television programs. music.

dance. performance) sponsored by the government since 1946; it was distributednationwide by Toho, one of the country's major film companies.so Onibaba wasrecognized as one of the new independent films in the mid-l960s..9.

1964 was actually the turning point for both independent filmmakers and

major studios. As the film industry started declining in both revenue and thenumber oJ viewers in the early 1960s, the major studios dropped th.eir policy ofexcluding independent films from their distribution venues and decided to sup·

port them in order to reduce production costs and make a profit from their dis­

tribution. Onibaba was one of three independent films in that year {the othertwo were Suna no on'na/Woman in the Dunes (Japan. 1964, Teshigahara

Hiroshi] and Kwaidan) which were also distributed by Toho and made large prof~

its for the company. As a result, the regional discourses in both advertisementsand film reviews naturally focused on Onibaba's aspea as an independent film.Shindo himself commented on this: "It has become common knowledge that one

cannot make a film if he/she leaves a major film smdio. So the fact (hat I showedthat one can still make a film outside of the major studios, is some son of con­tribution of this film_"52

The history of Onibaba and Kwaidan (its OVD was also released in October

2000 in the U.S.A.) bas been reconfigured througb their OVD release within thecontext of the recent horror boom. Similarly. as other films that were otherwise

obscure are revived through DVD, an inflation of access to film has occurred; or,

put differently, the fact that the film medium has been subsumed within multi­

media has multiplied th.e connections between texts and their histories. As JanSimons indicates, "Multimediality in itself. however, [is] neither unique nor new,

and the novelt)' of new media mainly and most imponantly consisrs of a reposi­tioning and redefinition of old media...... He continues, "A film's content can be

redefined as 'information' that can be conceived of as a collection of data thal

can be organized in various ways. out of which a film's particular narrative is justODe possible choice."5) As a film is located as information \vithin the digitalizing

process. the notion of cinema-films shown in movie theaters-becomes only one

particular interface to that information. The concept of film as an immutable.superior material object may be preserved only in the specific nostalgic sense of"aura." as we now recognize in the sound of vinyl records. Adam Lowenstein'sallegorical reading of Onibaba is, after all. a result of his interfacing with the text,and while one may also view the film as a precursor of J·Horror, neither view is

.supported by the film's historical context. Such connections only seem plausibleonce the film is wrenched from its historical materiality.

NEW MEDIA"S IMPACr ON CONnMPOIAR'l' .lAP'f'H£SE HO.ltOR ONEMA 45

HlmS

I would like to thank my colleagues Andre Lo.iseIJe and Marc Raymond. whogave me valuable suggestions for improving this essay. Also. my gratitude goesto the two anonymous readers for their strong encouragement and productiveadvice for revisions.

1. lee Bong-Ou, Moon eigo wa soika dekiru [Can Japanese Cinema Revn-e?] (Tokyo:WaylS, 2003), a

2. Geoff King, Amenron Independent Cinema (Bloomington and Indianapolis: IndianaUniversity Press, 2005), 8.

3. Ibid.. 8-g.

4. Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp, The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film (Berkeley:Stone Bridge Press,. 2005), VrL Emphasis is mine.

5. "'Profile." Hideo Nakata Official Page, the latest update 2005, http://hwOO1.gateol.mm!hideonakatal (accessed August 21, 20(6).

6. -shimizu Hiroshi Profile,.- Shaiker's Official Page. the date of publication 2004.http://www.sh.i1<er.co~p/shimizuJ>.hlml (accessed August 21, 20(6). .

7. IrMa for Morebito: Intemational Movie Database (hereafter IMOb), the latest update2005, http://www.imdb.com{lnJe/tt0434179{trivia (accessed August 21,20(6).

8. Julia Krisreva. Power ofHorrot: An Essay ofAbjection, Leon S. Roudiez,. trans. (New York;Colombia University Press, 1982).

9. IrMa for The Ring," IMOb, date of publication 2002. http://WMV.imdb.com/title/. tt02913130/trivia (accessed August 21, 20(6).

10. Hollywood's version dosely follows the conventions of American horror films in thisregard; the charaders that -get ir' often seem to deserve their fate. The sexually promis­cuous, tne know-it-all, and anyone conspicuously upper class are frequent targets of themon5te(s rampage. Unlike a lot of J.Horror, the films assure us that this is, after all, amoral universe.

11. David Cnute. "East Goes West,- Voriety, posted May 9. 2004, nttp:/!www.variety.com!index.asp7Iayout==cannes2OO4&content=vstory&articleid=VR1117904412&categoryid=1713&cs--1 &queJY""david+andt<hute&display-=odavid+d1ute (accessed August 21, 2006).

12. It is ironic to sense The Rings outdated~ness regarding the videotape at the center ofthe dreadful curse in 2002; videotape was still popular at the moment when the originalJapanese film was released in 1998, but much less so in 2002,. when the remake cameout Needless to say, the obsoleteness of the tape medium stands out quite awttwardlyin The /bng Two in 2005.

13. Pulse's distribution rights were purchased by Magnolia, and the film was also remadeunder the same title by Jim Somero and released in August 2006. The remake rights toKurosawa's previous film, Cure, have also been acquired by United Artists.

14. The fonOW'ing jnformation provided by Kurosawa I(jyoshi in an interview with the authorin Tokyo, June 2006.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. TImothy Corrigan, A Cinema Without Walls: Movies and Culture After Vietnam (NewBrunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 27.

18. laura U. Marts. Touch: Sensuous Theoty and Multisensory Media (Minneapolis:University of Mifmesota Press, 2002), 233.

19. Ibid., 158.

20. Kurosawa, inteNiew with the author (see note 14).

21. Ibid. The idea of -reduction' and 'addition' is also pointed out by Kurosawa.

22. Shimizu has stated that he would not be directing Ju-on: The Grudge J. Interview withthe author in Tokyo, December 2006.

23. Kuroi Kawo and Hara Masato, 'Sokatsuteki taidan: Soredemo anata wa pu,odyusa ninarune ka (Summarizing InteMew: Do You Still Want to Become a Producer]),' &gaprodyusa no kiso chishiki: Eiga bijlnesu no iriguchi ko,a degudJi mode ~ Basic Guidefor tile Producer: From Entrance to Exit of the Movie Business] (Tokyo: Kinemajunposha,2005), 116-

24. Barbara Klinger, Beyond the Multiplex: Onemo, New Technologies, and the Home(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 23. .

25. David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong: Pbpulor Cinema and the Atf of EntertWnmeot(cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 82-83.

26. Janet Wasko, Hollywood in tile Information Age: Beyond the Silver Screen (Austin:University of Texas Press. 1994).

27. '"Business Data for Tltonic: IMDb, the latest update December 2003,http:/{www.;mdb.com{lnJe/t!OI20338!business(accessedAugust21.2OO6).

28. Anne Allison, MJ1lennioJ Monsters: Japanese T0)'5 and the Global lmogmation (Berkeley:University of california Pr~ 2006), S.

29. William Tsutsui, Godzillo 011 My Mind (New York: Palgrave Maanillarl. 2004), 7.

30. Tanaka Junidliro, Mhon eiga hattotsu $hi , katsudo shoshin jida; [The History ofJapanese Film Development ~ The Age of Motion Pictures]) (Tokyo: Chuokoronsha,1975), 117-116-

31. The term bunko (culture) came from the German term "kultJJ,,- and the film genre is usu­ally defined as the non-drama or non-news film; it is also known as kyoiku eigo (educa­tional film), kagaku eiga (science film), and kiroku eigo (documeotaryfilm). Fujii Jfnshidesaibes bunko eigo as a mere representation or a disQIISTve construction that can't: befulty quantified. Fujii Jinshi, ~nka suru eiga: Showa-l0 nendai ni okeru bunka eiga nobunseki (On Bunka Eiga: Anatyzing the Discourses of 'Culture Film' in 1935-1945,·fizogoku [ICONICS: Japanese Joumol of Image Arts and Sciences], 66 (2001): 5-22

32. Yamamoto Sae, ~ushutsu sareta Nihon no imeji: 193~en nyvyoku bankoku haku~

rankai de joei sareta Nihon eiga (The Export of Japan's Image: Japanese Films xfeenedat the New York World's Fair, 1939): Eirogalru (/CONICS: Japanese Journal of 'mageand Sdences], 71 (2006): 62-80.

33. Susanne Schermann, Naruse Mikio: Nichijo no kiromeki (Mikio Noruse: The Clitter ofEveryday Ufe) (Tokyo: Kinema Junpo-sha, 1997),82.

34. Hara Masato, £;go purodyuSQ go katofu hitW no tetsugaku [Philosophy to, Making 0 Hitby a Fifm Producer] (Tokyo: Nikkei BP, 2004), 193.

35. "Trivia for The Ring: IMob.

36. Shujen Wang. "Recontextualizing Copyright: Piracy, HolJ'(VIIOOO, the State, andGlobalization,- Q"nemo Journal 43.1 (2003): 38.

37. Ibid., 40.

38. -Digital Cinema: Wikipedia, date of publication July 2006. http;J!en.wikiped"'.org/wiki/Digitatcinema (accessed August 21, 20(6).

39. Sugaya Minoru and Nakamura K;yoshi, eds.. fao kontentsu sangyo--ron (VISUal ContentIndustry Studies) (Toq.o: Maruzen. 2002), 2ff1.

40. "Hoy: Wikipedia, http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%86%E3<lV82%A3%E3%83llbBBClbE3%82%B8%E3%83%A1%E3%82%A-U.E6.A6.82E8.A6.81 (accessed August 21, 2006).

41. Peter HutdUngs, The Horror Film (Essex: Pearson Education limited, 2004), 1.

42. -Battle Royale," HKAix..com, http;J/wNw.hktlix.com/xq!asp/fi1mIO.53129S!qx/details..htm(.=ssed August 21, 2006).

43. Rick Albnan, Film/Genre (London: SA, 1999), 194,

NEW MEDUl'S IMMCr ON COHTEMPO&MY IM'ftNIESE "OUOIt arUMA 41

44. -Dnibabo, Qiterion Collection (1965),- Amazon.com, www.amazon.com/gp/product/ "BOOO19JRSYIsr=o1-1/qkl_1155234743/ref..pc:Cbbs_1/1 04-0203025­43159741ie-UTF8&s=dvd and wwwJmdb.oom/titJe/ttOO58430j (accessed August 21,2006).

45. Jyotsna Kapur, "'The Retum of History as Horror: Onibobo and the Atomic Bomb,- inHorror International, Steven Jay SchneMier and Tony Williams,. eds. (Detroit: Wayne StateUniversity Press, 2005), 83-97. Adam Lowenstein. Shocking Representation: HistoricalTrauma, Nationol Cinema, and the Modem Horror Film (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 2005), 83-109.

46. Steven Jay schneider and Tony Williams,. 'ntToduclion.- in HOfTor International,Schneider and Williams, eds., 6.

47. Lowenstein. 83.4a Frederic Jameson, ...nird World literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism,.· Sodal

Text 15 (Autumn 1986): 65-88. For criticism of Jameson's approach see Aijaz Ahmad, InTheory:~ Norions" Literotures (tendon and New YOfIc V~, 1992), 95-122

49. "'Folk tale genre- ts cited from "Nihon eiga shokai, Onibaba'o" rJntroduction of JapaneseFilm. Onibabo'Oj, Kinema junpo, 379 (November 1964): eo. -Independent film- is citedfrom Itoya Hisao, -Onibaba'o seisaku no ki'olw [The Records of Onibooo'o FilmProduction),· in the special report of -oolwritsu puro: sono genjitsu to daikigyo to no!lanker [-Independent Production: tts Situation and Relation with Major Studiosj,Kinemo junpo, 387, (March 1965): 23-25.

SO. Kinemo junpo, 380, (December 1964): n.p.51. The first boom for independent films was 1951·1957. The major film studios started

exduding those independent filmmakers and their films from the film industry, once theyhad stabilized their production and distribution system in the late 19505. Many indepe~

dent filmmakers giNe up filmmaking in this period; Shindo Kaneto was one of the fewlemaining independent filmmakers. He oontinued filmmaking by either sending his workto international film festivals, as in the case of Hadokana shimo/The Island (Japan.1960), 'Nhich was ilVYa,ded the Grand Prix at the Moscow International Film Festival in1961, or negotiating with a very limited number of independent movie theaters toscreen his films.

52. InteNiew among Shindo Kaneto, Imai Tadashi, and Oaikoku Toyoji, -Imai Tadashi, ShindoKaneto shinshun taMian: orno ni eiga sakka no shutaisei 0 megutte- ["The New YearInterview, Imal Tadashi and Shindo Kaneto: About Filmmaker's Subjectivity"'], Kinemajunpo, 383, (January 1965): 56.

53. Jan Simons, "New Media as Old Media: Cinema,- in The New Media Book, Dan Harries,ed. (london: BA, 2002), 237.

MlTSUYO WADA-MARCIANO is Assistant Professor of Film Studies in the School

for Studies in An and Culture at Carleton University. She is the author of Nippon

Modern; Japanese CinemJl of the 1920s and 1930s (fonhcorning, 2008). Her

articles have appeared in a number of journals induding Asian Cinema... Camero

Obscuro. and loonies, She is also co-editor of Asian. Extreme: Changing Borders

of Nation and CuJrure in Asian Horror CInema (fonhcorniog, 2008).

• MmUYO WADA-MAIlOAHO

MICHELLE STEWART

THE INDIAN FILM CREWS OF CHALLENGE

FOR CHANGE: Representation and the State

Resume: Des ses debuts, en 1967, Ie programme. sodere nouvelle/Challenge for

change. s'est engage dans un processus continue de transformation sociale pour

Ies Amerindiens du canada. les films produits sous regide de ce programme ont

represente et participe it une modification politique et OJIturelle des rapports entre

les Premieres Nations et Ie canada. De plus, ils tracent I'Mlution du cinema direct

! rONF et demontrent leur influence ainsi que celie de deux programmes de for­

mation pour Amerindiens (1968-1970; 1971-1973). cette influence a rejoint un

large public au-dela des communautes amerindiennes.

In its fusl year, t967, the National Film Board of Canada's Challenge for Change

(ee) established what would prove to be a continuing commitment to social

change for Native peoples with the production of a series of films devoted to the

situation of the Indian within Canada.' These dialogue films, as they were called,represented and participated in a much larger political and cultural shift in therelationship between Native peoples and Canada. Contributing significantly to a

national debate over the politics of representation. the diaJogue films convinced

many of the need for community-controlled media and led to the establishment

of two national Indian training crews (1968-70, 1971-73). The Indian dialogue

films and the Indian training crews underscored the polential of film/video tech­

nology for community self-definition. shaped the way direct cinema developed

within CC, and influenced many who worked at the NFB.

Inaugurated with Colin Low's twenty-eight films about Fogo Island, CC was

hailed as a new kind of public film program that would promote participatory

democracy. The utopian hope emanating from the Board at the time was that

filmed communication could spur dynamic social change. Low's experiment rep­

resenled a more pointedly social interpretation of his direct cinema experience

as a filmmaker in the NFB's Unit B.1 Th a direct cinema practice of scriptless film­

making. non-intervention, minimization of voice-over commentary, and live synch

sound, Low added Raben Flaherty's ethical practice of screening rushes for sub­

jects and allowing them to decide how and if they wanted to appear on screen.

In early CC practice. this style of documentary filmmaking became the dominantmethodology for "giving voice" to the under-represented. For CC producers the

CANADIAN JOU.NAL Oil' RLM STUDIES· .£VUE CAHADIENNE IYmDES ClNtMAJ'oGRAPHrQUESVOLUME 1Ii NO.1' FALL' AUTOMHE lotl • pp 4""'1