This looks fun (and more suggestions): Roppongi Hills Halloween parade

Roppongi Hills Halloween parade

I've never been to the Roppongi Hills Halloween parade, but I'm in favor of most Halloween-related events, especially ones that call for participants to dress in costumes (this year it's "famous movie characters," certainly a fun choice).  There's another Halloween parade in Kawasaki, as well.  Universal Studios Japan in Osaka has "Halloween Horror Nights," which started back in September and runs until November 9th this year.  With the addition of "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter," this would be a fun Halloween destination.  Tokyo Disneyland's Halloween celebration actually ends on October 31st, but you can still enjoy the Haunted Mansion's "Holiday Nightmare" until January 4th, 2015.  These are not free like the two parades, though, so watch out!

Last year, we visited Hamamatsu Flower Park's Halloween display.  Seasonal pumpkins and scarecrows and a fun photo opportunity complete with costume elements provided some gentle afternoon fun on a very sunny, cool day.  That's always an option if you're in the area and in need of some budget-friendly Halloween entertainment.  Assuming they do it again this year.  And why wouldn't they?

If you want an even cheaper alternative, you can always eat Halloween candy and chill out with some spooky Japanese horror flicks.  Many candy companies have seasonal bags to get you in the mood.  Here are some recommendations:

1) Battle Royale.  The all-time coolest Japanese cult flick.  A junior high class find themselves trapped on an island with no way off for anyone... except for the lone survivor.  Turns out the government has chosen them to participate in the yearly "Battle Royale" event where armed kids kill each other off until only one remains.  Gross-out violence, a hard-working cast and some knock-out sequences make up for some of the plot holes and the central premise's ridiculousness.

2) Uzumaki.  Director Higuchinsky adapts Junji Ito's disgustingly fun, Lovecraftian manga into a silly romp.  The story involves a coastal town plagued by spirals.  Enjoy a dish of escargot while you watch for maximum impact!

3) The Happiness of the Katakuris.  Takashi Miike is at it again, this time with a sickly hilarious flick about a luckless family trying to run a bed and breakfast.  Their guests have the bad habit of dying on them, which leads to complications and singing and dancing.

4) Ju-On.  The original TV drama version, with several inter-connected segments.  Chiaki Kuriyama of Battle Royale appears in the third one.  This is part of the Ju-on franchise, which gave the world Sadako.  You know Sadako, right?  Long black hair in her face, white dress, tendency to climb out of televisions?

5) Tomie:  Unlimited.  The most recent in the nine-film (so far) Tomie series, adapted from Junji Ito's manga about a girl who is so beautiful she drives her lovers to madness and murder.  But every bit of Tomie can grow into a complete Tomie.  The Tomie stories share a loose continuity, with the tale of Tsukiko, an unscrupulous member of a high school photography club, as the protagonist of the most cohesive narrative.  As with the first  theatrical Tomie, that story serves as a starting point for the movie's plot.  I haven't seen it yet, but I'm planning to.

October Is Still Spookey Month: Happy Halloween!

Here are a few more of those delightful Tales of Terror videos. First up: a spooky sleep-over!



Looks like another of those ubiquitous school trips. Japanese students go on these excursions each year. Some stay within Japan, like these unfortunate girls, and others go abroad. Do you think this experience will cure Yuki of her school trip insomnia?

Here's yet another school trip.



Most school trips are meant to be educational experiences. From this one, I learned that if I leave my lip cream in the bathroom, I should just wait until morning to retrieve it.

Of course, terror doesn't confine itself to creepy old ryokan in the middle of the night. Sometimes it sneaks up on you around lunchtime in ordinary city apartments.



That was a lovely little flat. Didn't the sister decorate it nicely? Love the dot motif, but it's too bad about the visitor problem.

Well, there are dozens of those Tales of Terror on YouTube. But there are very few Spookey ones. Here's a favorite of mine:



Happy Halloween!

October Is Still Spookey Month: Everyone seems to love Kuchisake-onna!

Why? I'm not not sure. All I know is, this blog gets a lot of Google hits for "slit mouth woman" or "kuchisake-onna," and Youtube features a surprisingly large number of videos describing her legend. As it turns out, she's not only freaky, she's also incredibly popular.



I also find her very tragic, but that's not saying I particularly want to meet her.  One of the most disturbing and therefore effective aspects of a lot of these Japanese horror tales is the arbitrary victim selection.  Few of these people deserve their fates, unlike in most Western horror stories.  You know-- the philandering lover, the know-it-all jerk, the greedy relatives, the kids who willfully ignore societal mores and go skinnydipping in Crystal Lake all receive their comeuppance.



But what about the kid who's just hanging out at home when a ghost comes to call?  Or the young woman who finds herself running a little late and gets stuck in an elevator?  Or the poor woman with the coughing fit in the park, and her child?  When Kuchisake-onna catches up to you, it doesn't matter if you're a nice person or not. And speaking of nice, here's another performance by Toy Missile, outside Shinjuku Station. This is where I saw them way back in August, 2007. Their official website seems to have gone dark, so it may be they live now only in my memories. And on Youtube.

October Is Still Spookey Month: "Three People Are Coming" and a couple more Japanese horror shorts...

That's a pretty lousy elevator. I don't think I'd enjoy riding that one, either. I rode some creepy elevators during my time in Japan, but I was lucky in that I never had that poor girl's experience. Nice job with those English subtitles by "montecristo73returns," though. What else can we find? How about this one?




Lesson learned? Cram school sucks! Again, great job on the subtitles. But if you stay out of elevators and cram schools, you're completely safe, right?



Yikes! That looks a lot like my old apartment! Nice job, KuljeetChauhan. I have no idea where these short films come from. Shown on television? From a DVD? They're pretty cool and there seem to be dozens of them. Now... here's a movie I made. You may have seen it before!

October Is Still Spookey Month: At last-- Tsukiko versus Tomie in the new movie!

While we're on the subject of Japanese horror, the Tomie film series is apparently as unkillable as their eponymous villain. Tomie Unlimited is the newest offering from Toei Company, LTD. and it seems to be at least loosely based on the "Tsukiko" stories from Junji Ito's manga. This makes me happy, because I'm a big fan of those particular Tomie stories and of the character Tsukiko, the cheerfully amoral purveyor of candid photos of cute guys she sells to the girls who have crushes on them.

While the movie Tsukiko eschews her comic book counterpart's pixie cut and happy-go-lucky capitalist demeanor, Miu Nakamura makes quite a convincing Tomie.  Several of the scenes from the trailer look astoundingly like panels from Ito's stories.  It would be too much to ask for a completely faithful adaptation-- here, Tsukiko is Tomie's little sister rather than simply a classmate.  However, the publicity materials promising a Tomie who "reveals her true face only when she is with Tsukiko" make this the most intriguing series entry in quite some time.

In the comic, Tsukiko makes a fun and vivacious enemy for Tomie, and Tomie's position as the head of her school's Public Morality Committee provides a bit of ironic counterpoint to Tsukiko's scheme.  Just as Tsukiko abuses the privileges that come with being a member of the photography club-- access to a dark room and materials to make her illicit yet lucrative prints-- Tomie soon has her own club lackeys pursuing her unfortunate enemy.  And it becomes apparent that Tsukiko's crimes pale in the face of Tomie's monstrous true self and the bloody murders she causes during their personal war.

The stories also benefit from a unity of setting, unlike the other Tomie tales which are only loosely connected.  The idea of a beautiful yet thoroughly evil young woman who drives her lovers to madness and murder-- and yet cannot be killed herself, no matter how hard everyone tries-- is good for a few chills here and there, and benefit from Ito's trademark gross out scenes.  But by grounding her in a specific locale and taking some time to develop her victims Ito creates a cycle of stories that have no problem standing alone.  If character development is Ito's weak point as a writer, with the introduction of Tsukiko he solves this problem, and it helps bring Tomie herself into focus.

Even if you probably won't want to see what develops as a result.  Isn't that right, Tsukiko?  Tsukiko?  Oh yeah, the school officials suspended her.  Oh well.  That gives her plenty of time to get to know her new best friend, Tomie.  Here's Toy Missile, one of my favorite Japanese bands!

October Is Still Spookey Month: Here's Chiaki Kuriyama in an early horror role!

This is a scene from the original direct-to-video Ju-on (2000) that spawned the movie series, the American remake and its sequels.  I have no idea about the Ju-on mythology or back story, but I do know the American release of the first theatrical movie has a redundant title, and the Japanese release of the American version has a silly one.

While we tend to like our ghost stories set in the fall during Halloween season, Japanese culture favors the late summer during Obon time.  This scene establishes mood early with the oppressive cicada static in the background; that's the soundtrack of summer there in Japan.  They still ring in my ears and the I last experienced Japanese summer two years ago.  The school bell briefly heard brings back a lot of memories for me as well.  The cellphone is a neat plot device-- a more modern conduit for mysterious messages and voices from the other side, but its size and simplicity instantly date this movie.  It's a period piece.

The message with the repeating 4s may not seem particularly chilling to Americans like myself, but the Japanese word for 4 is "shi," which also means death, so this is a pun commonly used in J-horror.  Come to think of it, it might not be all that frightening even for a Japanese audience, because it's probably cliche by now.  Remind me to ask!

Still, four is just not an auspicious number; I used to go get check-ups at a local hospital that had examining rooms numbered 3 and 5, but not 4.  But it must be Kuriyama's lucky number, because she also appeared in a movie called Shikoku, the name of one of Japan's main islands (which uses its more benign meaning), but can also mean "land of the dead."

At least in that one, she gets to play the ghost rather than its victim.

Chiaki Kuriyama is one of the coolest people on earth.  Unfortunately, I don't find the little kid ghost anywhere near as creepy as Sadako from the Ringu series, or even Tomie. Heeeeeeeeerrrrrrre's Sadako:

Spookey Month: Kuchisake-onna, the Slit-Mouthed Woman

I love urban legends, and I especially love them when they deal with ghosts.

A while back I did an entry about Toire no Hanako-san. You know, the tale of the ghost Hanako, who haunts a particular bathroom stall in a school somewhere here in Japan. With Halloween coming up this month, I want to write a few entries about supernatural Japan and with Hanako-san already out of the way, it's time to turn to Kuchisake-onna, the woman with the big smile.

About a week ago, during a discussion of Halloween and ghost stories, a student laughingly reminded me of Kuchisake-onna. While it's fun to read about Japanese ghost lore, it's even more fun to have someone here actually tell you a story. Somehow that makes it seem more authentic, more real. And, like all good Japanese ghost stories, there's a movie version:



Kuchisake-onna is a strange apparition-- according to lore, on some foggy night she may approach you wearing a surgical mask. That in itself isn't so strange. People wearing surgical masks are a common sight here, especially these days when everyone's talking about the "new influenza."

But you can tell you're dealing with Kuchisake-onna when, instead of merely passing by and going about her business, she stops you and asks you, "Am I beautiful?" The correct answer, of course, is, "Yes!" To make absolutely certain, Kuchisake-onna will then remove her mask...

Revealing a grinning mouth that stretches from ear to ear, full of wickedly sharp teeth.

"Am I beautiful, even like this?" she'll ask. And here's where it gets tricky.

Obviously, you don't want to say, "No." This is Kuchisake-onna and she will rip you to shreds instantly. You might think to answer, "Yes" again. But this only buys you a short reprieve. Because the Japanese word for pretty is kirei, which sounds a bit like kire, meaning "to cut," Kuchisake-onna will follow you home and slice you into little pieces right in front of your own house. You also shouldn't try to run away without answering, because Kuchisake-onna is a sprinter who makes Usain Bolt look he's like running underwater. She can cover 100 meters in 3 seconds!

What you want to do is say, "Ma-ma," which is Japanese for "so-so." Or tell her she's average. This pleases her enough for her to let you go. Another strategy is to ask her if she thinks you're beautiful as well. That really confuses her and gives you time to flee to safety, and perhaps you can exchange keitai information and go shopping together one day and maybe have crepes or om-rice in some cute little restaurant. You might even toss her some fruit. Carry some blueberries or a pineapple whenever you take a walk alone at night as a safety precaution. If you meet her in Shizuoka prefecture, try strawberries-- they're especially popular here.

While this story may date back to the Edo period-- Kuchisake-onna began as an ordinary woman, punished horrifically by her samurai husband for infidelity-- the modern take became popular around 1979, in a version where Kuchisake-onna preyed especially on children. In other versions, an inept plastic surgeon caused her disfigurement, or a motorcycle gang, or an auto accident. She may not kill you, but may instead simply cut you in the same way she is. And she might possibly attack you if you smell of pomade.