American movies have always borrowed heavily from Japan. Star Wars is a space opera version of Kurosawa’s samurai movie The Hidden Fortress. The Magnificent Seven is the cowboy version of The Seven Samurai. It works the other way too. Throne of Blood is Kurosawa’s retelling of MacBeth with samurai instead of Scotts, and Ran is a samurai version of King Lear.
How would you compare Japanese ghost stories to those traditional ones from the West?
Kwaidanshu are subtle in ways that sneak up on you. Mire Uno once explained to me that you live with the ghosts in a daily sort of way, that the ghosts are hidden in everyday objects, the steam coming off of an umbrella. A face in a cup of tea. In The Color of the Moon, Shoji sees Lady Dainagon’s face for the first time in a bucket of water. In the movie The Ring (based on the Japanese movie “Ring-gu” which in turn is based on the ancient Kwaidanshu story “Okiku” about a young woman who is drowned in a well) the ghost comes out of a TV set. That’s very Japanese. Japanese culture has a thing of seeing even inanimate objects as having a soul and feelings. A rock isn’t just a rock. A tree isn’t just a tree. If you hate the car you drive, you hurt its pride and the car will run even worse. There are cemeteries where toy dolls are buried with markers. Everything has soul. The living and the dead communicate almost routinely through mundane objects. In Asian culture in general the ghosts live side by side with the living. They sit down and drink coffee with you and read over your shoulder. Kwaidan even have a vampire tradition in stories such as “Lady of The Snow.”
Asian stories take some getting used to, because they don’t follow that Aristotle line of beginning, middle and end and climax and finish. They’re usually Ray Bradbury-like vignettes. When you reach the end you usually go “Huh? That’s it?” There's no resolution. It’s the atmosphere, the presence of chaos which is spooky. Japan is an island packed with people for thousands of years. In a situation like that, cowboy manners don't work. Everything has to be orderly and socially disciplined and defined. Kwaidan are about order falling apart, a daughter-in-law who breaks a valuable plate, a blind musician who is called away to perform for someone he can't see. Little things that spin out of control.
Western ghost and horror is plot driven, a decent person in a scary situation. These stories have a beginning, middle and an end. Good wins, evil is vanquished. The monster always dies. Horror and science fiction tend to reflect the national nightmare of any given time. Most of the horror movies of the '50s and '60s were about nuclear weapons. Even the comic book movies today like Spiderman and The Hulk and Fantastic Four originated during the Cold War of the '60s, and they all got their superpowers from atomic radiation. That was the national nightmare in the '60s. Now the movies are variations of terrorism and maniacs who break in your house.
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