Monday, April 24, 2017

Week Three J-horror

The three recurring themes in the Japanese and Asian horror genre are vengeful spirits, protagonist's personal or environmental existential crisis, and a sense of emptiness of contemporary life. In Of a Mirror and a Bell, the most stunning theme incorporated into this genre was the vengeful spirit.

The language this text was simple and similar to the translated texts I read as a practicing Buddhist. The story is folktale-like, where the writer makes connections to Japanese myth and ancient stories. A spirit in J-horror can tangibly affect its environment, and vice versa as well.

This text demonstrates vengeful and tangible spirits in a multitude of ways. The inciting incident was when the to-be spirit who gave her heirloom mirror to build the temple's bell, began to regret her offering so much so that she "longed for some chance to steal the mirror, and hide it." This paragraph foreshadows the anger and regret that drives her spirit to trap itself inside the mirror. The writer emphasizes that because of this, her "selfish soul [remained] attached to the mirror, [keeping] it hard and cold in the midst of the bell's furnace. The most obvious injection of this theme is when the woman leaves her suicide note promising wealth to someone who breaks her spirit's connection with the heirloom. This 'spell' affected those who participated in breaking the bell as well as similar objects that people broke for wealth. An example of how spirits interact with their environment is when a woman beat on a representation of the bell until it broke. When it shattered, a man came up to them and asked what the racket was. When he found out why he gave them 300 ryo in gold.

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