J-Horror Rising

[yoloswegmaster]

Vengeful ghosts returning from beyond the grave, young women with supernatural abilities, investigative narratives, a terror of technology, and an ominous aura of urban alienation and isolation mark the wave of horror and mystery films that emerged in Japan at the turn of the millennium, collectively labeled as "J-Horror". Remastered from the best available elements and packed with a host of new and archival extras, J-Horror Rising presents seven of the genre’s most distinctive titles.

In the ghostly pastoral horror of Shikoku, a young woman returns after many years to her rural birthplace, only to find her best friend from childhood has died by drowning when just sixteen. The dead girl’s mother, the local Shintoist priestess, has embarked on the region’s famous pilgrimage – but why is she walking backwards? The aftermath of the devasting Kobe Earthquake of 1995 creates fissures in the already fractured mind of a high-school girl in Isola: Multiple Personality Girl, allowing an unwelcome intruder to set up home in her head and leaving a volunteer worker with psychic powers to determine which of her personas is the fake one. Shikoku also provides the mystical backdrop to Inugami, as a teacher from Tokyo finds himself drawn to a local papermaker, only to find himself the subject of some hostility from her extended family, who have long ties to the region and are rumored to be the descendants of the guardians of ancient evil canine spirits.

Megumi Okina (Ju-On: The Grudge) plays the art designer for a horror-themed videogame in the innovative St. John’s Wort, who is forced to confront her childhood traumas when her colleagues ask her to gather visual materials from the creepy gothic mansion she has inherited from her estranged artist father. Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman features the titular predatory murderess drawn from urban legend, where it turns out home isn’t the safest place for her potential child victims in this disturbing supernatural horror. A new craze for wearing ceramic masks sweeps the students of a high school, unleashing a wave of anonymous juvenile delinquency amongst the literal fashion-victims of Persona, which boasts early appearances from Battle Royale stars Tatsuya Fujiwara and Chiaki Kuriyama. Last but not least, the chilling Noroi: The Curse adopts a pseudo-documentary format as an investigative reporter into paranormal phenomena is forced to confront horrors beyond his wildest imagination after learning about an ancient folkloric demon.


LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS

High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentations of all seven films
Original lossless 5.1 and lossless stereo sound options for Shikoku, Isola: Multiple Personality Girl, Inugami, St. John’s Wort, Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman and Noroi: The Curse, and original lossless stereo audio for Persona
Optional English subtitles for each film
Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by Eugene Thacker, Jasper Sharp, Anton Bitel, Amber T., Mark Player, Jim Harper and Sarah Appleton
Double-sided foldout poster featuring newly commissioned artwork by John Conlon
Limited Edition packaging featuring newly commissioned artwork by John Conlon

DISC ONE: SHIKOKU / ISOLA: MULTIPLE PERSONALITY GIRL
Brand new audio commentary on Shikoku by Japanese cinema expert Tom Mes
Brand new audio commentary on Isola: Multiple Personality Girl by critics and Japanese cinema experts Jasper Sharp and Amber T.
The Aftermath, Tom Mes discusses J-Horror at the turn of the millennium
Something in the Water, a brand new interview with Shikoku director Shunichi Nagasaki
Archive interviews with director Shunichi Nagasaki and actors Chiaki Kuriyama and Yui Natsukawa on Shikoku
Archive interview with actors Yoshino Kimura and Yu Kurosawa on Isola: Multiple Personality Girl
On-set footage of the filming of Shikoku
Original trailers and TV spots for both films
Image galleries

DISC TWO: INUGAMI / ST. JOHN'S WORT
Brand new audio commentary on Inugami by Japanese cinema expert Jonathan Clements
Brand new audio commentary on St. John’s Wort by Japanese cinema expert Amber T.
Dog Days, brand new video interview with Inugami director Masato Harada
The Making of St. John’s Wort, archival featurette
Archive interviews with St. John’s Wort actors Megumi Okina, Koichiro Saito, Reiko Matsuo and Koji Okura
On-set behind-the-scenes footage of the filming of St. John’s Wort
Original trailers and TV spots for St. John’s Wort
Image galleries for both films

DISC THREE: CARVED: THE SLIT-MOUTHED WOMAN / PERSONA
Brand new audio commentary on Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman by Japanese folklore expert Zack Davisson
Why So Serious?, a brand new interview with Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman director Koji Shiraishi
Weapon of Choice, a brand new video essay on Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman by Japanese horror specialist Lindsay Nelson
Confessions of a Mask, a brand new interview with Persona director Takashi Komatsu
Image galleries for both films

DISC FOUR: NOROI: THE CURSE
Brand new audio commentary by film critic Julian Singleton
Director’s POV, a brand new video interview with Noroi: The Curse director Koji Shiraishi
The Man in the Shadows, a brand new interview with Noroi: The Curse producer Taka Ichise
Changing Perspective, a brand new video essay on Noroi: The Curse by Japanese horror specialist Lindsay Nelson
Ectoplasmic Worms, a brand new video essay on Noroi: The Curse and Japanese cosmic horror by Japanese cinema expert Amber T.
How to Protect Yourself Against Curses
Urgent report! Pursuing the Truth about Kagutaba!! TV Special
Over half an hour of deleted scenes
Trailers and TV spots
Image gallery

[colinr0380]

Great news! A few of these films appeared in the early 2000s on DVD in the West (I know I have the DVD of Inugami somewhere around, though I seem to recall that it was not one of the titles released by Tartan at the time), but I have not had a chance to see many of these as yet. I did get the impression that compared to the very 'contemporary Japan' horrors like Ring and Ju-On that a number of these titles were considered a harder sell since they were getting into more specifically Japanese mythology areas, but that should be helped by extra features giving some more context to them. And it is exciting to hear that a pre-Battle Royale (and Kill Bill Vol 1) Chiaki Kuriyama appears in two of these films, with both Persona and Shikoku!

The big draw for me is that we are getting two films directed by Koji Shiraishi, with The Slit-Mouthed Woman and especially his documentary-styled Noroi: The Curse from 2005. Shiraishi would go on to do a few more films in the same style with the fantastic Occult from 2009 (we had a bit of a discussion about Noroi: The Curse and Occult here) and 2013's A Record of Sweet Murder (which Unearthed Films put out on Blu-ray in the US a few years back). More notoriously, at least in the UK, Shiraishi has had the rare recent honour of having one of his films banned outright by the BBFC, with the torture porn (and throwback to something like the Flowers of Flesh and Blood entry in the Guinea Pig series) film Grotesque, which is a fate that even Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) did not suffer! Though I suppose Shiraishi was asking for trouble in the UK by cheekily (spoiler) climaxing his film with a spectacularly gorily ironic decapitation scene set to a celebratory rendition of Land of Hope and Glory! I could just imagine the Examiners in the BBFC screening room having a long list of cuts to make in order to pass the film as acceptable before reaching that ending and then out of sheer annoyance just stamping "Rejected" onto their report!

[ryannichols7]

excited to see the extras for this, may take a swing on it. Radiance, Criterion, and Arrow all announced Japanese horror titles as part of October, pretty impressive!

[MichaelB]

Probably worth adding that the overall project was supervised by Jasper Sharp, who's very much in his element here.

I could just imagine the Examiners in the BBFC screening room having a long list of cuts to make in order to pass the film as acceptable before reaching that ending and then out of sheer annoyance just stamping "Rejected" onto their report!

You've never actually met a BBFC examiner, have you? I doubt they've employed anyone with that mindset since the 1930s. If anything, they'd consider something like that a significant satirical plus.

[colinr0380]

That was the joke. I'm sure the reality was much more boringly humourless pearl clutching, as confirmed by the BBFC report linked to.

[MichaelB]

I doubt it was "pearl clutching". For all the knee-jerk caricaturing, BBFC examiners have a lot more in common with the likes of us than you might imagine (and my own first-hand experience of dealing with them goes back nearly three and a half decades), and I suspect their reaction to what sounds like overt satire would be far more likely to assess whether or not that was a defence that could be applied to the whole film. For instance, far from reacting in absolute horror to Peter Jackson's Braindead, as many assumed would be the case, it turns out that they thought it was so obviously played for laughs that they even considered giving it a mere 15 certificate - and this was back in 1992!

But from their write-up, it seems pretty clear that they deemed Grotesque to be unsalvageable well before they got to the end - the graphic eroticising of sexualised violence and the lack of any narrative or psychological point to the film besides offering an endless parade of torture and murder being the key issues. (In which respect, they also took the trouble to distinguish it from the likes of Hostel and Saw.)

The write-up doesn't mention this, but a piece of legislation that isn't often evoked with regard to film but which may well be relevant for something like this is the 1959 Obscene Publications Act, which defines as "obscene" a work "which has a general tendency to deprave and corrupt" - for instance, graphic rape porn presented purely as masturbation material, with the victim(s) being completely dehumanised. There's a famous "artistic merit" loophole in the OPA that often isn't present with other pieces of content-related legislation, but whether or not Grotesque ticks it would heavily rely on a sympathetic jury, and it would be an expensive gamble on the part of the distributor.

[colinr0380]

But from their write-up, it seems pretty clear that they deemed Grotesque to be unsalvageable well before they got to the end - the graphic eroticising of sexualised violence and the lack of any narrative or psychological point to the film besides offering an endless parade of torture and murder being the key issues. (In which respect, they also took the trouble to distinguish it from the likes of Hostel and Saw.)

It is rather a shame if they did make a decision before the end (and they do not appear to have been aware of the relationship to Flowers of Flesh and Blood that Grotesque appears to be alluding to, which I get the sense really would trouble the BBFC if it ever darkened their doors), since that final decapitation is so amusingly ironic because the girl's head being liberated from its body allows her to use the very last possible opportunity to latch onto the killer and tear his throat out! That is something I would be curious to see whether it is a regular Shiraishi theme by seeing more of his work, since the theme of the real world being amost irretrievably corrupt with the only retribution coming in another world, and with the antagonist achieving their goals but it not working out entirely to plan feels very similar to the suicide bomber carrying out his plans successfully in Occult, yet instead of paradise only finding horrific purgatorial damnation awaiting him.

That's actually my big issue with Grotesque by the way: there is that cathartic climax where the doctor has 'won' but then had both his throat ripped out by the girl and is stabbed by the boy, which leaves them all lying in pools of blood on the floor, and we then get that final moment between the boy and girl as they are both dying but with the knowledge that they have taken their torturer with them. Throughout the film the thing that has made Grotesque stand out from particularly Flowers of Flesh and Blood, but also Hostel and so on, is that there was a couple going through the suffering together, and who have been 'trading off' the tortures between them when things are getting too much for the other. In their own way they stand defiant in the face of the pathetically single figure of the doctor, because whatever suffering he puts them through, they go through it together as a couple. And eventually die simultaneously as well, almost as the ultimate affirmation of their bond in the face of anyone who may try to (literally) tear them apart. Its a surprisingly moving climax.

... but then there's the coda showing the doctor having buried the bodies and heading off to kidnap his next (single this time) female victim. I can understand in some ways the film doing this, especially if it was intentionally alluding back to Flowers of Flesh and Blood (which takes the form of a faux-snuff film video that was mailed to Hideshi Hino, which shows the systematic dismemberment of a single woman, and then ends with the video taping of the next victim on the streets. By the way, that's the film that famously in its unsubtitled bootleg VHS version somehow ended up being seen by Charlie Sheen, who in his horror apparently reported it to the FBI as an actual snuff film), but there was that absolutely perfect and cathartic climax there which would have allowed Grotesque to end with a truly unique, hard-and-barely-won moment of triumph for the victims, and it unfortunately ran past that for your standard 'stalking the next in the cycle' ending instead.

[Mr Sausage]

I haven't seen Grotesque, but reading through the wiki article, I see the director's response to the BBFC decision was to be "delighted and flattered by this most expected reaction from the faraway country, since the film is an honest conscientious work, made sure to upset the so-called moralists." So according to him, anyway, the film is strongly ethical, while it's the BBFC and I guess MichaelB who are merely performing bourgeois morality while having no real moral sense. That's...quite a take, and hard to square with both MichaelB and wikipedia's description of the movie.

But his defense of his movie does remind me of Eric Griffith's description of the grotesque extremes of later Jacobean revenge tragedy:

...the main part of the pleasures of these plays is that they provide lots of 'beautiful wickedness', as The Wicked Witch of the West calls it in The Wizard of Oz, while at the same time amply supplying moralistic alibis to salve the consciences of author and audience as they revel in sleaze and gore

I also like his dig about the expected reaction of faraway countries given that Japanese censorship will allow the most grotesque and pornographic depiction of sexualized violence, but will take special care to blur out any visible genitalia, lest the sensibilities of the Japanese citizenry be unduly upset in their viewings of said pornographic sexualized violence. Japanese censors seem far more upset about basic human anatomy than they are with what actions might be done with it.

[MichaelB]

I have a feeling I might have to watch Grotesque over the next few days, because the BFI (I initially wrote "BBFC"!) has commissioned a ten-film list-piece about major UK censorship cause célèbres, to tie in with the cinema release of the new cut of Caligula, and I definitely want to include at least one 21st-century example - although I suspect it'll probably be A Serbian Film, if only because I've seen both the uncut and BBFC-approved versions.

[Dr Amicus]

Perhaps going off topic, but in the early 2000s I went to a screening of Baise Moj in Brighton where a member of the BBFC was there. IIRC, she was an older woman who had argued against the cuts to the film, arguing they damaged it.

She did go on to say much of their viewing was porn, which she found really dull. Except for some American gay porn which could be very artistic!

[colinr0380]

I also like his dig about the expected reaction of faraway countries given that Japanese censorship will allow the most grotesque and pornographic depiction of sexualized violence, but will take special care to blur out any visible genitalia, lest the sensibilities of the Japanese citizenry are unduly upset in their viewings of said pornographic sexualized violence. Japanese censors seem far more upset about basic human anatomy than they are with what actions might be done with it.

That is what makes all of Nikkatsu's run of "Roman Porno" films from 1971-1988 so astonishing because perhaps due to not being allowed to show any more than softcore nudity due to censorship restrictions, that meant that that the films went absolutely wild in every other area almost to compensate for not being able to be explicit. So you get every conceivable fetish and metaphor explored throughout the course of seventeen years, including what is probably going to seen as totally unacceptable now sexual assault-themed series of Angel Guts films, to provide the transgressive aspect instead, and all done with Studio-backed high production values as well. As long as those censorship blurs and protective knickers stayed firmly in place, the films seem to have been otherwise encouraged to explore any number of taboo subjects.

She did go on to say much of their viewing was porn, which she found really dull. Except for some American gay porn which could be very artistic!

It wasn't California Big Hunks was it?

[MichaelB]

Perhaps going off topic, but in the early 2000s I went to a screening of Baise Moj in Brighton where a member of the BBFC was there. IIRC, she was an older woman who had argued against the cuts to the film, arguing they damaged it.

If I remember rightly, there was only one brief cut, reinstated when Arrow resubmitted the film a decade or so ago.

She did go on to say much of their viewing was porn, which she found really dull. Except for some American gay porn which could be very artistic!

The early 2000s was when the floodgates opened, following the de facto legalisation of hardcore porn at the R18 category. Which is why BBFC examiners suddenly had to deal with the resulting flood, and she wasn't the only one to find it excruciatingly dull.

[colinr0380]

I have a feeling I might have to watch Grotesque over the next few days, because the BFI (I initially wrote "BBFC"!) has commissioned a ten-film list-piece about major UK censorship cause célèbres, to tie in with the cinema release of the new cut of Caligula, and I definitely want to include at least one 21st-century example - although I suspect it'll probably be A Serbian Film, if only because I've seen both the uncut and BBFC-approved versions.

For my money the very best proto-'torture porn' film (and long banned by the BBFC until recent years) is 1994's Boy Meets Girl, which handily is also a British film! That does some really impressive narrative re-framing twists throughout its entire course, up to and including its coda! As in (major spoilers):

SpoilerShow

The film beginning with a guy being picked up by a sexy woman and drugged into unconsciousness. Then it is revealed that the sexy woman and her dowdier companion are there to teach those darn sexually aggresssive men in general a lesson. Then it becomes more specific as it is revealed that the two women have specifically been targeting this one man, and have done a lot of research into him and how he treats his family, and have decided to 'teach him a lesson'. But before this gets too far into "Promising Young Woman" territory, once the sexy woman has had her fun sexually and verbally humiliating the guy for being a lecherous cheater and a bad dad and abusive husband to boot, and is about to let the cowed into submission man go, she herself is killed by her companion who isn't about retributively righting gender wrongs... and then things get really nasty. Which after the main event is over (which ends up going into weirdly transcendent territory), we get the coda of the next victim in the chair being a black woman, and are left wondering what particular angles of attack the torturer is going to use with this next victim now that the racial, gender and sexual boundaries have been completely shifted.

But along with its torture theme, I think the big specific no-no that film committed was that it actively goaded the BBFC's guidelines by ensuring that all of its torture implements were household ones - although as pointed out by the director in their commentary, you cannot actually cut a hole in a microwave to stick someone's hand into and have it still work, since there are apparently failsafe mechanisms built into the device itself to ensure it cannot do that!

[The Curious Sofa]

The first wave of J-Horror films of the late 90s/early 00s was genuinely exciting, Audition, Ring, Pulse, Ju-on, Dark Water and few others deserve their reputations as instant classics. I remember importing Chinese DVD releases of many of these as they were they most affordable option of seeing them. But there was a sharp drop in the quality in the films that followed and after St. Johns Wort, Inugami and a few others, I stopped importing them, I just found them very dull. I guess these are all lesser movies of the genre. Anybody who can make a case for any of these?

[Robin Davies]

Anybody who can make a case for any of these?

I thought Noroi was impressively creepy at times.

[beamish14]

Anybody who can make a case for any of these?

I thought Noroi was impressively creepy at times.

Noroi is hugely creative and entertaining

[The Curious Sofa]

Kairo (Pulse) is among the best of these films, but I don't think I've seen Noroi and would be happy to check it out. Of the films in this set it also appears to be the most hight profile in terms of reputation.

[colinr0380]

May Leitz has just done a video on Shiraishi's found footage series Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi (specifically episode 6), which is another of his faux-documentary works (including another adaptation of the "Slit-Mouthed Woman" legend years after the 2007 film). It would be great to see that get a wider release some time. Although as May mentions, there is currently an English subtitled playlist of all ten entries on YouTube at the moment, which shows the series adapting lots of classic Japanese legends (The Ghost Story of Yostuya, the Snake Woman, and so on) into Shiraishi's inimitable comic-horrific style! Plus a unique Japanese take on the Ouija board stuff, which shows that if you are angry enough you can punch a ghost back into its own domain!

[dadaistnun]

Mondo Digital review.

[colinr0380]

Serendipitously I have finally begun playing through the videogame Ghostwire: Tokyo, which is a kind of open world horror game (apparently it was going to be a sequel to The Evil Within 2 before it 'grew into its own thing') which involves using magic to battle against spirits that are taking over modern day Tokyo. As usual for these open world games there is a main thread of story to follow but also a lot of minor quests and collectibles scattered around the world as well, which are working to give a very interesting crash course in Japanese mythology, from Kappas to Hanako-san (who is apparently an urban legend of a woman stalking high school bathrooms for victims), which I have found has been nicely combining both with this set and that Koji Shiraishi series mentioned above in a fun way. One particular collectible pick up gives a description of the "Inugami" spirit, which fits in with the film in this set and is a particularly horrific one for dog lovers:

[Mr Sausage]

If you're really enjoying that aspect, I can recommend Michael Dylan Foster's The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore.

[colinr0380]

I still have yet to really dig into this set but to briefly continue with the off topic tangent regarding Koji Shiraishi's Grotesque (because where else are we going to get the opportunity to discuss this film) I picked up an early Christmas present of some of the "Frightfest Guide" volumes, and the one devoted to films about "Mad Doctors" is written by an actual doctor! Dr. John Llewellyn Probert, who has this to say in his brief write up of Grotesque from his unique perspective:

...This is as good a place as any to take a moment to talk about human intestines are rarely, if ever, accurately depicted onscreen. Grotesque makes the mistake found in many gore films. In reality, the small and large intestines are attached to the gut wall by a robust structure known as a mesentery, which helps to keep everything in order. It is therefore impossible to pop your hand into someone's abdomen (as out torturer does here) and pull out somethhing akin to fifty feet of skipping rope, because the anatomy just doesn't work like that. Oh, and real bowel is a lot more delicate, so it won't support the weight of a human body, in case anyone was wondering. To add hilarity to the inaccuracy, in Grotesque the torturer puts on 'Land of Hope and Glory' while conducting his inaccurate eviscerations, adding a surreal edge and raising a smile in anyone familiar with Spike Milligan's TV series Q...

Where was that criticism in the BBFC's extended content description! Although both the good Doctor here and the BBFC remain amusingly blinkered to the dramatic core of the film by not being able to see the wood for the trees - or the star cross'd lovers for the skipping rope intestines!