Abstract:
This thesis examines the figure of the adolescent female onryō within the Kaidan subgenre of Japanese horror filmmaking. I specifically analyse films from the late-1990s to early-2010s cycle of Kaidan horror filmmaking. My filmic analysis focuses not only on the adolescent female onryō’s characterization but also in significant part on the films’ socio-historic contexts. I provide in-depth socio-historical analysis of the late-1990s to early-2010s cycle of Kaidan horror films in tandem with analysis of the adolescent female onryō’s contemporary representation and historical roles. I do so because the adolescent female onryō is the result of a specific historical, socio-political juncture within Japan. In examining my chosen films’ characterization of adolescent female onryō according to specific socio-historical contexts, I argue that her quest for murderous vengeance against Japanese society as a whole, attacks the foundations of Japanese patriarchy. Furthermore, I investigate how the adolescent female onryō’s characterisation in my chosen Kaidan horror films offers a means through which Japanese society’s paradoxical desires and anxieties regarding patriarchal continuity can be expressed. In examining the adolescent female onryō within my chosen Kaidan horror films from the late 1990s to early 2010s I provide careful, in-depth analysis of her relationship with single mothers, water as well as the private and public spheres of Japanese society. I argue that the adolescent female onryō in my chosen Kaidan horror films destabilises and usurps control over the core socio-political Japanese institutions which uphold Japanese patriarchy and, in the process, challenge patriarchal ideals of Japanese womanhood as well as the way that such ideals are linked to conceptions of Japan’s future.
