Kate: Book II of Hills of Silver Ruins introduces the “haunted house” nature of Asen’s court. A horror element creeps through these chapters.
Parts of Ono's books are rather like suspense meets
splatter-fest, especially considering Taiki's prequel (or "other-quel") The Demon Child. According
to the manga I read, Japan has both suspense and splatter horror. Does
the Hitchcock/Shyamalan suspense approach take precedence or gore? Do the two genres fall into
distinct categories as in the United States (high versus low art) or do the
folks who produced Godzilla have a more flexible view of horror?
Eugene: I don't know that any one horror genre takes precedence. There's something for everybody. When manga and anime started making waves outside of Japan a half century ago, the often explicit nature of the material quickly caught everybody's attention. The blood and gore has been there all along, with the "Pinky Violence" exploitation flicks taking off in the late 1960s. Anything Hollywood could do, Japanese filmmakers could do (on a fraction of the budget), except when they were actually forbidden by statute.
Observes Donalf Richie, "American pornography is kept forever on its elemental level because, showing all, it need do nothing else; Japanese eroductions [sic] have to do something else since they cannot show all."
On-screen violence wasn't prohibited so it flourished. Some
critics point to the last scene in Sanjuro by Akira Kurosawa,
during which a malfunctioning squib produced a spray of blood that afterwards
became de rigueur.
Then there's the trend of taking an established genre like magical girl or isekai and turning it dark. Puella Magi Madoka Magica did this to perfection, though Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha went there a decade earlier. I previously described Fruits Basket as Anne of Green Gables with every other chapter written by Stephen King. I think it'd be more accurate to describe Fruits Basket as dropping Anne Shirley into an early 19th century gothic romance, the crazy aunt in the attic and all that (but with a bunch of happy endings).
Hills of Silver Ruins comes across as late medievalism edging
into early modern, the time period right before what is classically
referred to as the Industrial Revolution, which anticipatory decades spawned Gothicism.
Is the Edo period Japan’s Gothic period? Like in England, was the Edo period evoking a mix of nostalgia and glorification towards a diminishing past? What is the connection between the Edo period and supernatural/ghost stories, the look/feel of classical horror?
Eugene: The Edo period roughly coincided with the Elizabethan through early Victorian. The civil wars were over, the political situation had stabilized, and a middle class emerged. As you put it, the people of the period saw themselves emerging from an age of medievalism, which evoked "a mix of nostalgia and glorification towards a diminishing past." The evolving roles of the samurai are a good example, as the once-warrior class quickly turned into a hereditary civil service, who now had money and time on their hands
They were eager to be entertained. So basically there were a lot of Hans Christian Andersens running around supplying material to keep the writers, artists, and playwrights busy. In the process, they fictionalized popular historical events, codified the folklore, and created many cultural institutions that remain to this day. Like Shakespeare, kabuki was once entertainment for the masses, with ukiyo-e artists producing pin-ups and prints that celebrated famous kabuki actors. Now both are considered high brow.
