Matthew P. Bachand
We will situate the stories and films within Japanese mythological and historical contexts, and pay particular attention to the symbolic meanings associated with the settings in the films. With this background, students will be able to postulate the effects that the different settings have on both intended Japanese audiences and themselves as viewers of the filmsand readers of the texts.
Grasscutter:
Japanese Mythology in a graphic novel.
Stan Sakai's graphic novel
Grasscutter
is very engaging, and reading the four Prologues in it will allow students to gain a background in the Japanese creation myths of the
Kojiki
and the
Nihongi
, which explain some of the major gods and goddesses, as well as introducing students to the different aspects of Japanese spiritualism. For instance, many of the original Kami were born of the vomit and corpse of one Kami who died as a result of burnt genitalia after giving birth to a fire deity!(8) Here, we see a very different creation myth than one American students would be familiar with. Sakai meticulously researched his comics, and substantial endnotes exist to help teachers provide further context for students. Through use of these graphic novels, students can understand the ways in which Shintoism led to the primacy of place. This will help students understand the symbolism of both the literature and the films and literary symbolism more thoroughly.
Grasscutter,
and Hearn and Kobayashi's print and film verstions of "Mimi Nashi Hoichi."
The Fourth Prologue of
Grasscutter
tells one of the great stories in Japanese history: the defeat of the Heike clan by the Minamoto clan at the battle of
Dan-no-Ura
in 1185, which ushered in the Kamakura Shogunate. During this naval battle, when the Heike realized that they were to be defeated, legend has it that the 6-year-old emperor, Antoku, was drowned when his grandmother jumped overboard with him in her arms instead of surrendering to the Minamoto clan. Several hundred Heike warriors followed her. To this day, the Japanese do not eat the crabs found in the waters of Dan no Ura because they believe that the spirits of the fallen are embodied in the crabs. Supporting their claim is the "fact" that the faces of the Heike are visible on the shells of the crabs!
Here we see the significance of place and native religion in Japanese culture. Luckily, we can also point to
The Story of Mimi Nashi
Hoichi
and the story by the same name in Kobayashi's
Kwaidan,
which both retell this story. The battle scene in
Kwaidan
is an exceptional blending of traditional Japanese drama, beautiful color, and Japanese surreal set designs. The battle scene is filmed in a studio that has been painted: there is no realism in the western sense here, but Zeami's notion of
yugen
is thick in the frame. It looks and feels like a Japanese
N“
; the only music for this scene is a solitary biwa, or Japanese lute.
In "Mimi Nashi Hoichi," Hoichi is a blind flutist living in a Buddhist monastery who plays the songs that commemorate the battle of Dan-no-Ura so beautifully that the fallen Heike are brought to him, hoping to take him back to the ocean with them to soothe their pain. Because it incorporates Japanese history, it fits within a folk tradition; it may in fact be teaching us that even Buddhist priests have their limits when dealing with the ghosts of the world. This film and story both show the practices that Buddhist priests considered "normal" for dealing with a haunting.
Kwaidan: Stories by Lafcadio Hearn, Film by Masaki Kobayashi
Hearn's
Kwaidan
is a collection of strange Japanese folk tales. "Yuki-Onna," ("Snow Woman,") details the story of a bargain made with a ghost that is later forgotten. In the tale, a pair of woodcutters is caught in a snowstorm created by a Snow Woman, a ghost, who demands their lives. She kills the older, while allowing the younger to live as long as he promises never to reveal his secret. He, of course, forgets his promise later in life, and is reminded in terrifying, fatal form.
This story explores themes of material wealth, the ability of the supernatural to deceive people, and hubris. It, like all of the stories in this movie, is visually stunning and heavily influenced by painting.
"Black Hair"
in
Kwaidan
("The Reconciliation" is the name of the Hearn story that is the source. It is found in
Shadowings
), focuses on the karmic debt that people incur when committing a wrong. In this case, the tale is of a man whose desire for fortune and glory lead him to abandon one wife for another. However, the new, more lucrative, and loveless marriage is unfulfilling, and the man returns to his former wife completely unaware of the terrifying changes that have occurred.
Akira Kurosawa's
Rashomon
: Places Haunted by Evil Deeds
Rashomon (1951)
, the film that arguably introduced Japanese cinema to the world, is based on Akutagawa's stories "In a Grove" and "Rashomon."
"In a Grove" is a story told in several episodes, each of which is the testimony of a witness to an unknown judgethe reader. Because the reader is the judge, there is no resolution to the story. The settinga grove set back from a roadis an ominous one, for the story is set during the warring states period of Japanese history, where morality was in great flux. Three characters are present in the grove, which makes the choice even harderno either/or binary opposition that one might feel comfortable with. The lack of a resolution places the reader squarely in the author's sights, and the question, "how can we know what the truth is?" is unavoidable.
"Rashomon" asks us to consider the possibility of an absolute good and an absolute evil. Again, the author wants to force us into a situation in which the usual binary opposition is rendered moot by the plot itself, prompting serious questions about the nature of humanity.
The film is shot in beautiful black and white. The settingsthe Rashomon gate in the middle of a tumultuous storm, and the grove itself, underneath a sunny sky, are both shot with painstaking care. The initial entry into the grove by the woodcutter incorporates many shots, but the woodcutter moves from right to left while the camera moves from left to right, adding greater depth to the woods. This film and these stories lend themselves well to the question of adaptation, and, depending on how observant your students are, subtle dialogue shifts might give away some of Kurosawa's interpretations of Akutagawa's stories. Applying a cultural studies approach to the characters in these two texts is also interesting, as each of the three characters offers something a little different to the readers as to what their beliefs about the world are.
Hayao Miyazaki's
Princess Mononoke
: Old Spirits, Old places, and New Challenges
Hayao Miyazaki's animated classic
Princess Mononoke
will also be used. It is perhaps the most accessible film to students both because it is animated, and because it clearly articulates natural motifs that are based upon Shinto traditions and beliefs. Animals are gods, "unnatural" hatred leads creatures to change into demons, and people form adversarial relationships to the natural world without understanding the implications of their choices. Furthermore, there is a stark contrast between the twin protagonists of the filma boy from a strange, native tribe and a feral girland the antagonists, a modernizing, "progress" oriented pioneer community. This proves extremely useful for our cultural studies analysis.