J-Horror, Week of Sep 11

J-Horror, Japanese Horror, is a horror genre developed in an odd way. It was originally made without knowing the western horror basics. Yet the themes are coming in to the recent Japanese works.
Lafcadio Hearn collected old Japanese horror stories in his book, Kwaidan. The stories are not about an innocent versus an immortal foe like western European stories. Japanese horror stories are traditional more about balance.
The balance between man and nature. Normally featuring a working class protagonist who runs into a supernatural force by chance. The human character often wronging the super natural being and being punished for that. (Hearn)
These values are present in modern works but, not without American influence. In Haruki Morakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase, the author uses the working class call to action of the early Japanese works.
The lead is called to action on a mythical sheep that he is to find. It’s a real sheep and one of it’s own breed. There is no other sheep like it. The people who have seen it has a cosmic bond with it that cannot be explained. (Haruki)
            It takes a leap between Japanese horror and cosmic horror of the European/American genre. This is me trying to wrap my own American millennial mind around this novel.  It has an early 20th century American feel. In a way, like Edgar Allen Poe. The line between the supernatural and the real is odd because the supernatural is called unexplainable.  Without proof it’s hard to say that it ever actually  happens.

Cited Works
Murakami, Haruki. A Wild Sheep Chase. Vintage Books, 1982.


Hearn, Lafcadio. Kwaidan. Western Standard Publishing Company, 2013.

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