Channels, Fall 2016

Channels • 2016 • Volume 1 • Number 1 Page 153 primarily physical fear, rather than a predominantly spiritual one, but they share a deep concern with change and the unknown. Both images demonstrate a fear of the passion of the individual. Further, both describe members of a weaker minority willingly transforming themselves to gain power over those who have harmed them, thus conveying a sense of doubt about the power of the social structure to restrain the evil of personal passion. In this way, the monstrous fantastic in Ishii’s film alludes to elements of traditional monsters but reinterprets the old into a contemporary unknown. The murdered yakuza who haunts Ayano’s solitary moments after Ayano inadvertently desecrates the dead man’s skeleton in the woods bears a striking resemblance to the oni , or demons, of Japanese myth. While he does not seem to share the tendencies of oni to eat people or to appear as part- man and part-animal, his essential behavior and function seem to be the same. As Foster explains, oni typically have “a fierce countenance” and “a large, muscular body stripped to the waist” and embody the antithesis of humane society in a human-shaped body. In his film, Ishii associates many of the visual cues of the oni with the activities of the contemporary yakuza through the figure of the ghost. In this way, he is able to incorporate the sense of a supernatural threat to society into his depictions of live yakuza later in the film. Even inanimate objects play a role in the monstrous fantastic as Ishii depicts it. Based on traditions of tsukumogami , or man-made objects that have in various ways become yōkai , there is perfect precedent for Ishii to frame contemporary items as members of the monstrous fantastic. For example, the commuter train that features prominently in Hajime’s experience has certain lifelike and frightening qualities. Like places described in traditional stories of kamikakushi , or divine abduction, it has a tendency to hide or reveal things and obscure consciousness, as in the brief scene in which Hajime wakes up to find his father across from him and has to ask how long he has been there. (Yoshiko Okuyama 29). Similarly, it often becomes part of the scene for strange encounters like Hajime’s experience with the cosplayers. Magical places can be just as alive as magical creatures in Japanese traditional stories, so the sense that the train has its own personality or meaning in the movie is entirely possible. Furthermore, the antithesis between the sleepy and surreal scenes in the train and the scenes in which Hajime seems to gain motivation by riding his bicycle or running emphasizes the idea that the train steals or possesses Hajime’s volition. Of course, some monsters portrayed in the film bear no clear ties to ancient manuscripts or traditional superstition. Yoshiko’s burrowing ogre and zombie-like flying superheroes are as grotesque and improbable as other elements of the fantastic, but they truly are “Yoshiko’s world, full on” ( The Taste of Tea ). Because of their position in relation to culture and the monstrous fantastic in their own work, artists in the film have the responsibility of mediating between the individual and the unease of Japanese culture. Yoshiko has the opportunity to control the symbolism and behavior of the monstrous fantastic through anime. The three-minute animation begins with a self-conscious opening sequence, in which a yawning Yoshiko works feverishly on a stack of papers with a timer counting down above her head. When the intro is over, the scene changes to an alien landscape of blue and purple rocks with an ominous red sky. Three unique, heavily-armed characters drop into the screen from above and strike grotesque poses for the camera. One hits another with a