UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS - Digital Library

STAGE AND SCREAM: THE INFLUENCE OF TRADITIONAL JAPANESE THEATER, CULTURE, AND AESTHETICS ON JAPAN'S CINEMA OF THE FANTASTIC John E. Petty, B.M.

Thesis Prepared for the Degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS May 2011

APPROVED: Harry Benshoff, Major Professor George Larke-Walsh, Committee Member Timothy Wilson, Committee Member William M. Tsutsui, Committee Member C. Melinda Levin, Chair of the Department of

Radio, Television and Film James D. Meernik, Acting Dean of the

Toulouse Graduate School

Petty, John E. Stage and Scream: The Influence of Traditional Japanese Theater, Culture, and Aesthetics on Japan's Cinema of the Fantastic. Master of Science (Radio, Television and Film), May 2011, 189 pp., 42 illustrations, bibliography, 98 titles.

Although widely viewed in the West, Japanese films are often misunderstood, as they are built on cultural, theatrical, and aesthetic traditions entirely foreign to Western audiences. Particularly in regards to Japan's "fantastic" cinema ? including giant monster pictures, ghost stories, and "J-Horror" films ? what is often perceived as "cheap" or "cheesy" is merely an expression of these unique cultural roots. By observing and exploring such cultural artifacts as kabuki, noh, and bunraku ? the traditional theatrical forms of Japan ? long-standing literary traditions, deeply embedded philosophical beliefs, and even more recent developments such as the controversial dance form butoh, these films, including Gojira (1954), Daimajin (1966), Kwaidan (1964), Onibaba (1964), Testuo the Iron Man (1989), and Ju-On (2002), can be placed in their proper perspective, leading to a reevaluation of their worth not merely as commercial products, but as uniquely Japanese expressions of that society's unique place in world culture.

Copyright 2011 by

John E. Petty

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS......................................................................................................... iv

Chapters

1. INTRODUCTION: THE CULTURAL UNDERPINNINGS OF JAPANESE CINEMA ..................................................................................................................1 A Brief History of Japanese Cinema Eastern vs. Western Aesthetics Japanese Philosophical Traditions Yugen, Wabi-Sabi, and Aware Traditional Japanese Theater ? Noh, Kabuki, and Bunraku Traditional Japanese Theatrical Forms

2. GOJIRA (1954) AND DAIMAJIN (1966): DAI KAIJU EIGA AND THE INFLUENCE OF NOH, KABUKI, AND BUNRAKU ...........................................49 Ishiro Honda's Gojira (1954) Kimiyoshi Yasuada's Daimajin (1966)

3. KWAIDAN (1964) AND ONIBABA (1964): ONRYO "AVENGING SPIRIT" FILMS AND THE INFLUENCE OF TRADITIONAL JAPANESE LITERATURE AND THEATER ..........................................................................86 The Birth of Traditional Japanes Theater The Rise of Kaidan Storytelling Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan (1964) Kaneto Shindo's Onibaba (1964)

4. TETSUO THE IRON MAN (1989) AND JU-ON (2002): NEO-KAIDAN FILM AND ITS ROOTS IN BUTOH AND BEYOND .................................................132 Ero-Guro-Nansensu and Butoh Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo the Iron Man (1989) Takashi Shimizu's Ju-On (2002)

5. CONCLUSION....................................................................................................167

APPENDIX: GLOSSARY...........................................................................................................172

BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................184

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1: L ? Mona Lisa [c. 1503-1506] by Leonardo DaVinci; R ? The Great Wave Off Kanagawa [c. 1830-1833] by Katsushika Hokusai. ..............................................................3

Figure 2: A pair of Japanese B2 posters for Yokai hayaku monogatari [1968].............................24 Figure 3: Kenji Watanabe [Takashi Shimura] just prior to his death in Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru

[To Live, 1954]. ...................................................................................................................... 32 Figure 4: Ukiyo-e print showing a beautiful yet bizarre yokai-like snake-woman figure..............32 Figure 5: Gojira devastates Tokyo [Gojira, 1954].. .........................................................................33 Figure 6: This image, virtually in black and white, embodies the concept of yugen: a dark,

mysterious, sometimes disturbing beauty [Ju-On, 2002]. ...................................................34 Figure 7: Frederic Edwin Church. The Heart of the Andes, 1859. ..................................................39 Figure 8: Tensh Shbun. Reading in a Bamboo Grove, 1446. ......................................................39 Figure 9: The kabuki horse, from Yasujiro Ozu's Ukigusa monogatari [A Story of Floating

Weeds, 1934.] ......................................................................................................................... 44 Figure 10: This bronze Gojira statue proudly stands in the heart of Japan's Ginza district. .........50 Figure 11: Utagawa Kuniyoshi [1797-1861], Minimoto no Yorimitsu battles Tsuchi-Gumo. .....57 Figure 12: The "disguised face" of Majin.........................................................................................77 Figure 13: The "true face" of Majin. .................................................................................................77 Figure 14: A Kuro-beshimi mask. .....................................................................................................78 Figure 15: A tayu brings the story to life in a traditional bunraku performance. ...........................88 Figure 16: Puppeteers, dressed entirely in black, manipulate puppets in a bunraku performance.

................................................................................................................................................. 90 Figure 17: The samurai must pass through several gateways before reuniting with his wife. ....102 Figure 18: The personal decay that the samurai experiences in the "Black Hair" segment of

Kwaidan (1964)....................................................................................................................104

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Figure 19: The bizarre backgrounds that director Masaki Kobayashi uses to set the stage in the "Yuki-Onna" section of Kwaidan. ......................................................................................107

Figure 20: Trees line the forest path in "Yuki-Onna." ...................................................................107 Figure 21: The day after Minokichi's brush with death, the sky itself reflects the triumph of life.

............................................................................................................................................... 108 Figure 22: Yuki-Onna. Note the absence of hands, a typical characteristic of yurei. ..................109 Figure 23: Hoichi in the monastery. Note the dull, muted color palette in this scene. ................112 Figure 24: As Hoichi performs, the scene changes, with color adding life and vibrancy to the

proceedings. ..........................................................................................................................113 Figure 25: L- The processional from "Hoichi the Earless."...........................................................115 Figure 26: L ? A traditional hannya mask. R ? The hannya mask used in Onibaba. ..................122 Figure 27: One of the "pit sets" constructed for Onibaba. ............................................................127 Figure 28: Two images of butoh co-founder Tatsumi Hijikata from The Horrors of Malformed

Men........................................................................................................................................ 136 Figure 29: Images from the ero-guro tradition.. .............................................................................138 Figure 30: The first stage of the salaryman's horrifying transformation. .....................................144 Figure 31: The salaryman's dead girlfriend, now enshrined amidst elements of the natural world,

symbolizing his lost humanity.............................................................................................145 Figure 32: The beauty of this butoh performer's body is offset by the disturbingly dead

appearance she adopts ? particularly in the eyes ? thereby presenting an intriguing juxtaposition of life and death which forces the viewer to confront one in the face of the other.. ....................................................................................................................................148 Figure 33: Both the salaryman and the girl in the subway undergo the pain of transformation, dramatized through butoh-like movements. .......................................................................148 Figure 34: The salaryman, now fully transformed into Tetsuo. ....................................................149 Figure 35: The kanji for "house." Note the "roof" on top of the figure........................................152 Figure 36: L ? Onnagata kabuki actor.. ..........................................................................................158

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Figure 37: Ukiyo-e print [artist unknown] from the Meiji Period showing different hair styles of the Heian Period [L] and Edo Period [R]. ..........................................................................159

Figure 38: Kayako in Ju-On (2002) ................................................................................................160 Figure 39: L - Charles Ogle in Edison Studio's 1910 Frankenstein and the subway girl from

Tetsuo. ................................................................................................................................... 161 Figure 40: Kayako from Ju-On (2002) and a butoh performer.. ...................................................162 Figure 41: The Ghost of Oyuki by Maruyama Okyo, 1750............................................................163 Figure 42: L ? The Spectre, 1852, by Utagawa Kuniyoshi and hitodama in the "Hoichi" segment

of Kwaidan (1964) ...............................................................................................................164

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: THE CULTURAL UNDERPINNINGS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

To someone raised on the prevalent aesthetics and cultural background of the West, Eastern art ? be it the beautiful and minimalist rendering of a Chinese brush painting, the microtonal structure of an Indian raga, or the starkly realized look of the Japanese art of ukiyo-e, or woodblock print ? is often perceived as entirely alien. As much as we can appreciate the beauty and the craftsmanship of such works, we are largely kept at a distance from them due to a lack of understanding of the cultural precepts that underlie their origins. Worse yet, in an effort to embrace them, we tend to equate them to familiar, Western forms of art, which diminishes their unique outlook and artistry.

Indeed, cinema, like any other art form, is deeply entrenched in the larger cultural, political, and historical context in which it is made, and this context informs both the way in which a particular film is produced as well as the way in which its intended audience negotiates with and decodes it. Although meaning is ultimately subject to decoding and interpretation ? a highly subjective act ? it is important to examine, or at least understand, to the extent possible, the cultural and aesthetic coding, both conscious and unconscious, that underlies the text and its production. By examining the ideologies and assumptions upon which a particular film is based, that text can reveal new and hitherto unrealized meanings, leading not only to a better understanding of the work in question, but also to a better understanding of the culture or society that produced it. This approach is increasingly important in an ever-expanding international society, in which the unique nature of individual cultures can easily be overlooked in favor of a more global interpretation of culture in which physical accessibility equals cultural accessibility. In other words, many assume that because they can physically possess a DVD of a subtitled

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