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Eugene Thacker
For Eugene Thacker's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 7, 2017
Defining J-Horror: The erotic, grotesque 'nonsense' of Edogawa Rampo
In Japanese literature, there is a type of horror story that centers on an individual's obsession with a single idea. It arises from the most innocent and everyday circumstances, but gradually this single idea becomes all-consuming, blurring the line between sanity and madness. In some cases, the transformations are not just psychological but physical, mutating a human being into something grotesque and unhuman.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 10, 2016
Defining J-horror: The terror of deep time
The horror genre is not typically thought of as a "slow" genre. In fact, horror films today often feel like stimulus-response tests where shocking events happen suddenly and without warning. However, Japanese horror directors take up another tradition, one where events unfold gradually. A case point is the director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, whose films "Cure" (1997) and "Pulse" (2001) have become J-horror classics. In them, everything happens slowly, as in a dream or a trance state. His characters are prey to the gradual and inevitable unfolding of strange events that will forever lay beyond the scope of their comprehension. The result is hypnotic: it's as if the horror is stretched out and experienced in slow-motion.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 5, 2016
Defining J-horror: Early encounters with the unhuman
The scene: It's night; someone is alone in a dimly lit room. There's an eerie stillness, a creeping anxiety. Then, behind them, you notice a strange shape: a hunched-over figure, lurking in a corner. It is standing deathly still. The head is obscured by what looks like tendrils of jet-black hair. A chill runs down your spine as you suddenly realize the person isn't alone. There's something in the room with them, something that shouldn't be there, something anomalous, incongruous ... menacing.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 2, 2016
Black Illumination: Zen and the poetry of death
On a winter morning in 1360, Zen master Kozan Ichikyo gathered together his pupils. Kozan, 77, told them that, upon his death, they should bury his body, perform no ceremony and hold no services in his memory. Sitting in the traditional Zen posture, he then wrote the following:
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 4, 2016
Black Illumination: Haruo Sato's lush, gloomy landscapes
Most of us, when we feel sad, assume there is a cause for our sadness. Often there is, and the feeling can then be addressed, diagnosed, resolved. But what about sadness without a cause? This is the terrain of melancholy and, while melancholy has a rich and varied history in the West, it takes on unique forms in Japan, imbued with a sense of the impermanence of passing time.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Apr 30, 2016
Black Illumination: the abyss of Keiji Nishitani
I've always felt there are basically two kinds of philosophers: those who begin in wonder and those who begin in despair. Though the philosopher Keiji Nishitani (1900-90) was arguably the latter kind, he struggled throughout his life to see the world with wonder.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 26, 2016
Black Illumination: the disqualified life of Osamu Dazai
The author Osamu Dazai committed suicide — several times. The first was on a cold December night in 1929, just before his school exams. But the overdose of sleeping pills he took was not enough; he survived, and graduated. The second was in October, 1930, on the barren sands of a beach in Kamakura — this time a double suicide with a young woman he barely knew. Tragically, she drowned, while Dazai was rescued by a passing fishing boat. He went on to marry and began a career as a writer. The third attempt was in the spring of 1933: He tried hanging himself from a beam in the mesmerizing stillness of his Tokyo apartment. Once again Dazai survived, though he was hospitalized and developed a morphine addiction. And the fourth was in the fall of 1936, when Dazai and his wife — with their marriage disintegrating — attempted a double suicide, but to their horror, they lived.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 30, 2016
Black illumination: the unhuman world of Junji Ito
We've all had sleepless nights. You toss and turn, get up and go back to bed, trying to ward off the claustrophobia of wakefulness. But what about the reverse? What if the problem is not that you can't go to sleep, but that you can't wake up? Gradually, the time you spend dreaming outstrips the time you are awake. The effects of this are not just psychological, they are physical: Your body begins to change in unsettling ways. Your senses withdraw inward, your skin becomes scaly and crystalline, your head elongates, and your nose, ears, and eyes gradually recede into a still living but barely human body. Attended by physicians at a hospital, your dreams get longer and longer, but the actual time you sleep is the same. These long dreams eventually span years, decades, centuries, millennia, and beyond, into an unhuman, timeless time. You wonder, "What happens to the person who wakes from an endless dream?" Finally, your alien body disintegrates completely, leaving behind only strange, unidentifiable crystals lying crumpled in a hospital bed. And then even this dissipates.

Longform

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