Nowadays, J-horror is an interesting genre of movie. You may know some of the titles such as “Ring”, ”Ju-On”, “One missed call”, etc. However, what you might not know about J-horror is that telling horror is deeply rooted in Japanese culture and tradition. I will show some of those backstories:
1: Long tradition of telling horror
In ancient Japan, horror stories were not distinguished from fairy tales or even myth. This reason is due to the religious perspective of the Japanese. Traditionally, Japanese people have never distinguished concepts of ‘gods’, ‘monsters’ and ‘ghosts’ in Shinto religion. So, fairy tales and myths told that angry ghosts are just one aspect of gods.
One of such kind of story is about “Izanami”. In Kojiki, that is the oldest book about Japanese myth. Izanami was a wife of Izanagi. They were parents of gods and goddess in Japanese myth as well as Gaea and Ouranos in Greek mythology. When Izanami had a baby called Kagutsuchi after having a lot of gods and goddess, she got injured by heat and died because Kagutsuchi was a god of fire. However, her husband Izanagi missed her and traveled Yomotsukuni (the land of death) to bring back his wife. Finally, he found Izanami but she has already became a resident of land of death. Her body was decayed and maggots were living in her body, causing Izanagi to become fearful and run away as Izanami screamed and chased him.
In this old story, the mother of gods became a demon or zombie. Such a kind of story involving a god that becomes a demon, zombie or, vice-versa, an evil spirit becoming a god is quite a common story in Japan.
2: Test of courage
A test of courage is the belief that people go to a place that evil spirits are living (at least, commonly believed) to show their bravery. This custom has been practiced since the 10th century, with the first record of such a “test of courage” being mentioned in ‘Okagami’, a book about history documented and written in the 11th century.
One night, an emperor spoke with young noble boys. It was a rainy day in June and people felt something unusual. The emperor then ordered three boys to go to the deserted mansion which was believed to be the home of a demon, in order to show their bravery. Only one of three boys achieved accomplished the emperor’s order and he became the great ruler of his palace.
This test of courage became increasingly popular in the age of the Samurai. Even in modern days, young people still do this to show their bravery.
3: Climate
Summer is a season to tell horror stories in Japan. This is a widely shared consensus among Japanese people. One reason is that whenever we experience or hear creepy things, we feel a chill on our back. Telling a horror story is a way to cool down our body during the hot and humid Japanese uncomfortable summer before the modern age of air conditioning systems.
So, still people are telling horror stories to survive the summer night and show their courage on the long tradition of the Japanese horror story. Still many horror tales are told by almost everyone. If you meet your Japanese friend, how about asking for a horror story that he or she experienced?