A WILD SHEEP CHASE / AUDITION

                                         

J-HORROR

This book by Haruki Murakami is a Japanese narrative of the supernatural.  The author moves away from the serious style of Japanese writing and uses a more casual and humorous technique.  This story features fantasy, mystery, drama, mythology, and good versus evil.

Japanese horror focuses on psychological horror and suspense.  Ghosts and spirits are prevalent in these stories.  Eastern traditions focus on the nature of the world and the proper way of being in the world.  Symbolism is used in horror stories.  In this book, the spirit lives in the sheep which represents a symbol of reincarnation or life after death.  The spirit is capable of moving out of the sheep and possessing several characters in this book.  An example of this would be the "Boss", Sheep Professor, and the Ainu youth who were all possessed by the spirit.  It took possession of their minds to gain power.  Also, the girlfriend with the intriguing ears had special powers and could foresee future events.  The Asian culture has strong beliefs of tradition, honoring the dead and elderly.  They believe in karma, meditation and the acceptance that supernatural forces exist rather than intervene.

Western horror is very different.  It centers around characters who have external human experiences.  It usually features explicit gore, blood and splatter, torture, graphic violence and monsters.  Western horror is usually terrifying and the demons or monsters attack physically rather than psychologically. Supernatural is found to be strange, not natural and it only occurs in miracles or great shifting events.  In conclusion, Japanese horror is not as scary as Western horror.  Japanese horror makes a viewer think and draw their own conclusions to the story.  Western horror however, gives explicit visuals which most of the time are gory.

Movie:  AUDITION (1999)

I also viewed this movie by Dr. Takashi Miike.  I found this movie to be slow moving and creepy.  A young "good girl" dates a middle-age man.  It begins very innocently until the girl isn't who she appeared to be.  Deep inside her was a very disturbed person with homicidal tendencies and a fondness of metal garrote wires.  Weird!  The climactic scenes showed true darkness and were gruesome.