日本のホラー映画とハリウッドのリメーク

１９５３年に公開された「雨月物語」という映画は小説をもとにして、ホラージャンルにとってかなり大切な映画だった。この映画は浪人と迫害された女がたくさんいたので、１９６０年代の江戸ゴシック映画に大きな影響を与えた。１９７０年代の怪談ピンク映画に恨みを持つ女の数が増えてきて、伝統的な幽霊のイメージは人気が出た。江戸ゴシックと怪談ピンク映画という二つのスタイルで四谷怪談やぼたんどうろうなどの有名な怪談が使われていた。１９８０のホラーは殆どスプラッター映画だった。スプラッターとは、暴力や殺害シーンが多い映画のことで、視聴者は男性が圧倒的多数だった。しかし、１９８０年代の後半にスプラッター映画は問題になって、このような映画を見る人は実生活で暴力犯罪を犯す恐れがあると思われるようになった。だから、１９９０年代に日本の映画産業は新しいスタイルを探して、もっと心理的に怖いホラー映画を作り始めた。初めはいろいろな「怖い話」のテレビ番組が公開されたが、このジャンルの一番有名な作品は「リング」という映画だ。
この心理的に怖い映画は「Jホラー」と呼ばれて、江戸ゴシックと怪談ピンク映画と同じような幽霊のイメージを使っているが、暴力の代わりにサスペンスが一番大切な要素だ。
以前の日本のホラーだけでなく、Jホラーは１９９０年代のアメリカのホラー映画と全く違った。そのとき、アメリカでスプラッター映画はとても人気があった。普通のアメリカのスプラッターはモンスターやストーカーがいてたくさん人々が殺される。しかし、モンスターにしろ人間にしろ、結局は負けるだろう。一方で、Jホラーは幽霊や見えないものを使って、この物の呪いなどは止まりにくい。例えば、「リング」の貞子という幽霊は呪われるビデオテープを作って、見た人は１週後死ぬ。自分の命を救う方法があるが、呪いを全く隠滅するのは無理だ。この呪いそのものは本当のホラーだと私は思う。

「The Ring」は２００２年に公開されて、Jホラーのリメークの最小だった。「The Ring」は作るのに４千万ドルかかったが、興行収入で２億ドルを設けた。
この映画は最も成功したホラー映画・成功したリメークの一つだといわれている。というのは、公開のとき欧米の視聴者にとって、「The Ring」はとても新しいスタイルだったのではないだろうか。
「The Ring」の話の筋は「リング」と大体同じだったが、日本の代わりにアメリカを舞台にして、俳優はみんなアメリカ人だった。「リング」と比べて、リメークは特殊撮影が多くてもっとはっきりした筋の説明があった。「The Ring」のあと、日本のホラー映画をリメークするのは大変人気になった。この日本の映画はアジアで大ヒットしたので、リメークの成功と利益が保証された。

しかし、日本の映画とリメークのどちらの方が怖いの？勿論、人によって意見が違うが、私は６０人の意見を調査することにした。半分は日本人で、半分は欧米人だった。
調査に日本の映画とリメークの写真があって、回答者は一番怖い映画を選んだ。映画の選択は「リング」、「回路」、「呪怨」、「ほの暗い水の底から」と「着信アリ」という５つの有名なホラー映画、そしてこの映画のそれぞれのリメークだった。
全体的には、日本人は日本の映画の方が怖いと思ったことがわかる。すべての映画で日本人の回答者の５０％以上は日本の映画を選んだ。いろいろな理由が挙げられたが、一位は「特殊撮影があまりないから」だった。化粧にしろCGIにしろ、リメークは特殊撮影が多くて怖くないということだ。二位は「日本の映画の方が心理的だから」だった。見えないものとサスペンスを通じて、多くのことが想像に任せられるということだ。三位は「日本の映画の画像の方が強いから」だった。一方で、リメークを選んだ欧米人が多かった。この主な理由は「リメークの特殊撮影のほうがいいから」だった。二位は「リメークの幽霊の方が怖いから」、三位は「無気味なシーンが多いから」だった。

次、「日本のホラー映画がリメークされるのはなぜか」と６０人に聞いた。
３０人は「日本の概念などが分かりにくい」という理由を挙げた。日本のホラーは民話、伝統的な信念や死生の概念が多いが、欧米でこのような概念の意味が失われる可能性がある。
１０人は「日本の映画は説明があまりないので、分かりにくい」という理由を挙げた。例えば、「ほの暗い水の底から」という映画で、幽霊が本当に存在するのははっきりしないが、欧米人は説明が好きで、もっと論理的な映画が欲しい。
９人は「欧米人は特殊撮影が好きだ」と思って、そして６人は「欧米人は字幕が嫌いだ」という理由を挙げた。

このような結果を見ると、日本の視聴者と欧米の視聴者の好みが全然違う。日本のホラー映画で曖昧さが多くて、特殊撮影を使わないのはいいことだと思われるのに、アメリカで他のスタイルが怖い。新しい視聴者の好みに合わせるために多くのことが変えられる。

The 30 Day Photo Challenge, Day 23: A picture of your favorite book

I don't really have a favourite book but I suppose this is as near as damnit. 

Introduction to Japanese horror? More like an introduction to most mispelt words EVER.

I'm currently reading this book for my dissertation. "Introduction to Japanese Horror Film" by Colette Balmain.
Not by choice, let me assure you! It's just thats theres not so many books on Japanese horror film around in this country.
Anyway, the useless and irrelevant rambling- I can overlook. But for a published book, its got more spelling mistakes than stories I wrote when I was 6.
Academics eh? They like to be so high and mighty, yet 90% of them can't even get their stuff spell checked.

Himeji Castle & Okiku's Well (番町皿屋敷) 18/2/10

Today.
We went to Himeji Castle.

The main reason for going there was to find Okiku's Well.
Which we did.
The well is described in a famous Japanese ghost story 番町皿屋敷 (Banchosarayashiki "Dish Mansion at Bancho') which I read about a long time ago. This is one of the ghost stories that Ringu has taken inspiration from.

It is said that around 1500, Tessan Aoyama (cheif retainer of the Lord of Himeji Castle) plotted against the said Lord. A maidservant of Aoyama's, Kiku, knew of the plot and warned someone of the Lord's danger. Of course, the plot failed. Aoyama and his follower charged Kiku falsely, with losing a valuable dish of which there were 9. They then killed her and threw her body down the well.
Every night her sad voice could be heard from the well, counting the dishes. "One.. two.. three.. four.. five.. six.. seven.. eight.." when she got to the ninth dish, which wasn't there, she would wail.
After Aoyama was defeated, Kiku was enshrined as a Goddess in Junisho shrine, and it is said that her voice has never been heard in the well since.

After this we went to the zoo next door.

But the animals were in very small cages and I didn't like it at all.

Then we had a beer with Fordy.

呪怨：白い老女 ・ 呪怨：黒い少女

So, these two new Ju-On films came out at the end of 2009. I watched Kuroi tonight.
Now obviously, had this been any standard Ju-On film, I would've been first in the queue to see it at the cinema. Reasons why this is not a standard Ju-On film:

1.) Neither were directed by Takashi Shimizu, the master.
2.) They are nothing to do with the original Ju-On story, despite a pathetic appearence from "Toshio" in Kuroi:

You call that Toshio? I call that TRY HARDER.

So.. it was... okay.
I mean, the storyline was fairly decent, if not a little predictable.
The ghost was.. meh. Not very good.
It was entertaining enough though.

Just got to watch Shiroi now.
Thought I must say I'm in no rush to do so, and heres why...

That's not scary to me.

I mean, what? Is she going to slam dunk it?

Not impressed!

Plans for spring break...

SO as of this coming Saturday I will be free until April.
YES.
Anyway I have some plans for spring. For once.

1.) Next week I have collaborated with my dear Ju-On buddy Emily to have a nice little Manchester Uni outing to Sunshine City in Ikebukuro. I just knew she loved our outings and wanted to go on some more.

2.) Entertain my dear old chum Smurf.
Yes, on February the 4th more of Manchester will invade Japan, as Smurf will arrive, and I will entertain her for a number of days.
I've got a few things up my sleeve DONT YOU WORRY.

3.) The day that Smurf leaves I'm taking the nightbus to Osaka to annoy Vivian, and make her accompany me to Nara to see the Deeeeers. Apparently we're also going to Kobe to celebrate Chinese New Year. Might even annoy Keaney for a bit. Not that he'll read this since the last time he used his own blog was 3 months ago. PATHETIC.

4.) I think I need to read. I mean, lookat all these books.
See, this is what happened: Cayley and I discovered BookOff when we came to Japan. For those of you that don't know, BookOff is a book shop, where most of the books are used, but for some bizarre reason they are all in really good condition, and extremely cheap. So as you can see I went overboard.
Half of these are folklore/ ghost story books for my dissertation and the other half are horror novels. I will read... I will...

5.) KOREA.
Fumie & I are planning a nice little trip to Korea at the beginning of March. We will probably go on a tour thingy. That's all I know at the moment.

6.) Ofcourse I will make time for my lovely horsey Northy amid all of this chaos. I took this week off work since I have exams. I have missed him ♥

Oh, and a totally unrelated article, the full document of our trip to the Ju-On house..

呪怨の家 Our trip to the Ju-On: The Grudge house!

So today me & Emily took it upon ourselves to go and find the famous house used in the Ju-On films.
The house is in Tokorozawa, Saitama. But we set out knowing only that it was roughly 5 minutes from the station, and with a crappy next-to-zero-use map and a couple of photos for reference.

The best moment on the train was when Emily asked me "is there like, a souvenir shop there?" LMAO.

We arrived at Tokorozawa and some how managed to go in the right direction despite the terrible map.

We eventually found the general area and the 'estate' the house was on.

But finding the house was NOT easy.

The place was a huge maze, with hundreds of little tiny streets and houses upon houses (most of which looked pretty similar.)

Eventually, however, we found the bridge used in Ju-On: The Grudge 2...

(^ 呪怨: The Grudge 2)

We were encouraged by this amazing find!

So we continued the search.

I even asked someone, but that wasn't much use LOL, the conversation:

Me:　すみません。あのう、ちょっと変な質問ですが、呪怨の家は...？

Random Unsuspecting Guy on street: えっ？じゅ...おん？

Me: そうです。ホラー映画です。

Random Unsuspecting Guy on street: わかりません...

LOL good to know people in that neighbourhood are aware of whats going on right under their nose!

I bet he's googling it as we speak.

So we carried on our search.

We had been searching for about two hours at this point.

We had this one photo of the house that someone had posted online, and in the background there are two skyscrapers. We were basically going around trying to get these buildings in the right position so we could match them to the photos. We tried so many times. In the end I came up with the world's most rubbish idea: count the number of floors you could see on the building in the photograph (the houses roof was covering the bottom of the building) and then try and match the distance.

The best thing about this rubbish idea, was that it more or less worked.

We had the distance spot on, but we still thought we couldn't find the house.

We were about to give up and said lets just look once more down this road.

So we walked down the street and spotted a very VERY narrow street.

We started walking down the street, and I was saying "This street sort of looks like the street the house is on in the film. There are probably tonnes of streets like this in this area though so we- IT'S THERE!"

Suddenly I spotted the house right infront of us LOL.  Best moment of our actual lives.

(^ 呪怨V1)

The gates of the house were locked and there was a sign saying CCTV IN OPERATION. So we couldn't go in (this time, atleast, since we didn't have disguises, but whats to say we wont go back some time ;))

I think we got some pretty good photos though.

Also stuck our camera over the 6 foot fence to get a nice shot of the back yard!

A seperate little building that was also used in one of the films:

(^ 呪怨V2)

So WE FOUND IT! Its a pretty nice area, and the house itself is nice- a bit run down. BUT ONE DAY I WILL BUY IT AND DO IT UP AND IT WILL BE GRAND.

Yay for Ju-On!

Oh and we heard some pretty strange noises in that backyard too. But, as you can see, nobody was there. CREEPY.

Click here for the full Photo Album

If you are Japanese, please help meeeeeee

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfty_X8M6Qo

Go on?
You know you want to :)

Don't even know why I'm up at 2am.

Right so the thing about the class being hard? Turned out I was kind of wrong. It's not that hard at all really. Apart from one of the teachers speaking majorly fast with her 関西弁, the grammar and kanji are pretty easy.
I also took this damn conversation class, which is the most ridiculously easy thing ever to walk this earth. But whatever, I don't want to move up because I need to learn some formal speech so I don't go around being rude to everyone LOL.

So
Me & Cayley might go to Osaka next weekend, if Vivian's 田舎 dorms permit! (YES VIVIAN, GET IT SORTED.)
It's Vivian's birthday, so we thought HEY, why not invite ourselves along for that? Hopefully we'll get a bit of Kyoto in too. (Pays having these Kansai Traitors amongst our Manchester class!)
We looked at transport, and everyone was all OH YES GET THE NIGHTBUS. But no. OH NO. Cayley, being the stig that she is, refuses to get the nightbus. And we are not paying for a Shinkansen, no we're not. So what are we doing? Well if we go we're getting a god damned 9.5 hour train with 6 frigging changes. Nice one JR.

The other night Keio had a nice little welcome party which actually finished in some absolutely random pub, where I got rather drunk on some strange concoction, and ended up having a year-long conversation with some random 50 year old Japanese guy who once lived in Middlesex. Crazy times.
OH and I have to get up at 6am for class, which is rather painful to say the least. I literally don't know whether to laugh or cry at the amount of people on the train at 7.30am weekdays. Think I'll laugh. LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.

And where is my post? MY MAIL BOX IS EMPTY. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

OH and we found out where the Ju-On house is. I'M SO THERE.

Class... JLPT... Horse... Yokai... BRAIN... HURTS.

Right, so firstly, my classes started on Friday.
The main one is the Japanese class. The placement test went okay and I got put in Level 7, which is the highest intermediate class. (There are 12 levels I think, 8-12 being mega fluent people's classes no thanks.) Anyway, so the class is quite... hard. Okay not like terrible, but challenging. At the moment anyway. But most people in the class seem to be feeling the same way (apart from ofcourse your few token geeks who 'simply must move up to level 12 because this is just so easy' types. Quit talking about it and do it then, mate.) The other classes I'm taking.. I've not decided yet. We have a week or so to try out different classes and see what we want to take. I technically only have to take one of these extra classes, but maybe I'll take 2 or 3 if I'm feeling academic. Theres all sort of different language aspects to choose from, but at the moment I'm thinking about a JLPT2 grammar class (got to be useful in December, right?) and a speaking class- because I need it. In second semester there was some international studies courses I want to take (Japanese Cinema, Geisha, Buddhism, Austrailian Studies... might have to narrow that down slightly because theres actually only 24 hours in a day.)
I already have a ridiculous amount of work though. Not only from university, but also because Cayley and I decided it would be an ingenius plan to take JLPT 2 this year, and now have heaps of books and crappy notes on HOW TO PASS and HERES 1000 KANJI YOU SHOULD LEARN and HERES 394839432 PAGES OF GRAMMAR POINTS- ENJOY. Maybe we are punishing ourselves too much. But bleh I just want to pass it and get it done.

In other news I am up to the letter F in my quest to find every Japanese Ghost & Yokai from A-Z. And I'm still hunting down the horses of Japan. Although we now have a list of every riding club in Tokyo and it's vacinity- so thats promising.
Oh, and Susan Atkins died in prison the other day, because American parole boards are bastards.
That is all.

23 days until Japan

On the 8th of September I'll leave for Japan. I'm going to Keio University for an academic year, to study Japanese, as part of my degree. So, from now this blog will probably be about though. Hmm I don't know maybe it will be useful for future people, and I probably should have started it sooner. But anyway, I'll record plenty of useful (?) shizz on here. Maybe it would have been nice to have something similar to read myself. I don't know.

Anyway, so I've done with my first 2 years of Japanese Studies at Manchester University, and I'm ready to go. My Japanese? Hmm, I'm pretty confident I can survive. My dictionary will probably come in handy at first! But I'm not particularly worried right now. My written is definitley better than my spoken, but no doubt that will all change soon.

This whole process started quite early on in my 2nd year at Manchester, when we had to start thinking about where we wanted to go. This being the first year for Japanese at the university, there was only 16 of us going, so there weren't that many universities on our list. There were 4 in Tokyo (Keio, Meiji Gakuin, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies & Rikkyo), two in Osaka (Osaka University & Kansai Gaidai), Kobe University and Kyoto University.

So four cities, but it wasn't a difficult decision- I decided long, long ago that I was going to Tokyo. I was determined.

We were given an application form and we had to number the Universities from 1 through 8, 1 being our top choice, 2 our second, and you get the picture. Keio was my first choice, followed by Meiji Gakuin, Rikkyo and TUFS (yes, you get the picture, it HAD to be Tokyo!) Then we all had to write an essay, explaining why we had chosen the university and the city in question. I waffled about all sorts of things: the reputation of the university, where I had friends in Japan, the fact my university had horse riding facilities, the fact the area was good for my dissertation research... You name it, I thought it up.

It was several months later, after Christmas break, that we got our placements. Our residence abroad tutor at Manchester allocated our places. It went off grades, attendance, and where he felt we would be best suited.

I got my first choice of university- Keio! So I was pleased. In most cases there were a few places at each university. It was only Kansai Gaidai and Kobe where there would be one student from Manchester placed. No body seemed to worried though.. everyone was pretty happy with their placements.

BUTTTT it wasn't that simple. Our tutor had chosen where he thought we should go, now all we had to do was apply to the actual university themselves. Ahh more paperwork. How I love paperwork.! /end sarcasm>
Each university had different forms, so once we got them it was just a case of filling them in. Grades, previous employment, reasons we wanted to go to the university.. And the first visa application form. This was just general details such as date of birth, address etc that would be sent to our university, so they could then send us the Certificate of Eligibility.

It took a while for all this stuff to be processed, and everyone waited with baited breath to see if they had been accepted. Ofcourse everyone was, so it was all fine! I was also chosen for a JASSO scholarship by Keio University. This is a sum of ¥80,000 on arrival, and then ¥80,000 per month- thats around £500- which will definitley come in handy in and around Tokyo!

The next thing I had to do was apply for accomodation. This was pretty simple- they sent a guide to all the different accomodations, and I chose a shortlist of 4 that I would be happy to live in. Most of Keio's accomodation is actually in Yokohama, the city that borders Tokyo (kind of like Manchester and Salford, I guess?) There was only one decent looking accomodation in Tokyo- a place with 35 international rooms in Setagaya-ku. I put this as my first option, but as expected I didn't get it. I did get my second choice though- Shimoda Student Village, in Kohoku-ku, Yokohama. I wasn't really bothered at all- Kohoku-ku is very close to the border of Tokyo. I'm sure it will be fine. It isn't TOO far from the university campus in Minato-ku. The accomodation is mosty international students, self-catered and ensuite. That will do me :D

Once this was done, all I had to was wait for the University to send the Certficiate of Eligibility. This certificate basically gives you the okay to get a study visa. The certificate arrived early August, and then it was off to London to apply. That only took a few minutes. Now I'm just waiting for the visa and my passport to be posted back to me. It only takes 3 days.

So moving on from all the hassley part. Hm, I don't really feel scared.
I mean I guess I will be a bit apprehensive at first. But whatever, it will be an adventure.
I guess I'm excited about all the different people I'll meet. And all the places I'll go in Japan.
And my dissertation research. Haha is that sad? I'm defintiley excited about doing that. Im going to be looking at how traditional Japanese ghost stories and folklore have influenced all the J-Horror films in Japan. I'm hoping I might be lucky enough to get an interview with Hideo Nakata (director of Ringu), as one of my tutors has contacts. I'm also making steps to contacting Takashi Shimizu (director of Ju-On/ The Grudge.) If I can get an interview with him, I will fricking SCREAM. The Ju-On/ Grudge series is my absolute favouite as far as Japanese horror goes, and I fear I probably do have a slightly unhealthy obsession with it. I don't know what it is about J-horror. I've never really been scared by horror films, and don't have much time for most of that American crap. Japanese horror is a whole different kettle of fish though compared to all that slasher rubbish. It doesn't really scare me, I just think its kind of fascinating. Is that weird? Sorry.

So what will I miss?
Obviously I'll miss family and friends and stuff. But I guess I'll be kind of prepared for that already, as I have been living away from home for two years now.
It will be weird to think that my university friends that aren't in Japan (ie my housemates over the past 2 years and othe friends I've made) will still be in Manchester, and graduating before me! But thats life, right?

I'll miss my friends from outside university too. I suppose I better mention good old LOUISE HOWARD, loyal commenter of this blog so far. And of course Rachel Taylor. What am I going to do when I can't be here to witness her prom? Known this lug since she moved in next door to me aged just SIX YEARS OLD. Oh my how she has grown ='] I'll miss our trips to Morrisons too. LOL. Most people go on days out to nice, quaint places. We go for a day out to Morri'z.

I suppose I'll miss Manchester.
YES MANCHESTER. With its rain and its grimey streets. I'll miss those random days out in Gorton, thinking we're up market! I guess I'll even miss Rusholme. Don't think I'll miss the pigeons though.

And what else? Well I think you can guess whats coming next.
I don't CARE what people say, I will miss this pony so much I don't even know what I'm going to do without her. Well someone better sure as hell take care of her.
I just pray to god shes there waiting for me next year when I get back! Even though she probably wont even notice I'm gone. Apart from the distinct decrease in carrots and polo mints, maybe ;) Special Little Pony ♥

Anyway I'm sure this is quite enough for now because I've been waffling for quite some time. I shall update again soon, I'm sure you're all so excited to follow my adventures!

Finally some research I can actually be arsed to do..

So I just started my research on Japanese ghost stories, folklor and J-Horror for my dissertation. Although the main bulk of it shall be done from September, in Tokyo. Anyhow, you better pray I don't get cursed, people :) And lets hope I get my interviews with Hideo Nakata and Takashi Shimizu! BYE.