"Kwaidan" Response

Often times, before one reads a story, they approach the work expecting to see certain genre tropes that they themselves are already familiar with. When reading a story about superheroes, it is expected that the protagonist and antagonist will face off in an epic battle. When reading a murder mystery story, the reader expects to read through how the killer was able to get away with their crimes for so long, and to find out their identity. In general for all stories, it is expected that good will go against evil, what form these two forces take depends entirely on the scope of the novel. However, these assumptions and tropes can vary greatly depending on regional and cultural differences.

 For instance, the assumptions of Western and Asian horror differ greatly due to their cultural values. In Western gothic horror stories, often times the misfortunes and events unfolding are due to the main characters own mistakes or dark past. Exemplified in Mary Shelly’s, “Frankenstein”, the creature serves as a constant reminder to Victor Frankenstein of the consequences of his hubris in trying to create life. The creature follows him until the end of his days, killing those close to Frankenstein and leading him on a wild goose chase around the world. On the contrary, antagonizing elements in J-Horror do not necessarily come from the folly of man. These forces are more portrayed as coming from a force of nature rather than coming from any one specific source. In the collection of J-Horror short stories called “Kwaidan”, a running theme that the reader may notice is the absence of a strictly “evil” presence. Events simply seem to just happen to the protagonist, and the story involves them dealing with the good, or bad, that comes with it. 

In the segment called, “The Story of Mimi-Nashi-Hoichi”, the protagonist, Hoichi, is a blind man with a great talent for playing the Biwan. One night, what he believes to be a Samurai calls out to him and leads him to what he perceives is a palace, and is asked to play for an audience that sings his praises, and asks him to return every night for the next week. It is later revealed that this “audience” is in fact the spirits of the dead, risen from their graves. When he is called again, he does not respond, and is punished by having his ears ripped off. There is no real wrong-doing that Hoichi suffers his trauma for, he was simply approached and tricked by a force beyond his control, but was led back onto the right path by those of the Buddhist faith. Perhaps this signals a cultural difference between Western and Eastern horror stories. In Western tales, often times the protagonist fights kicking and screaming against the horrors that plague them, with differing success rates. In “Hoichi” the protagonist confronts the spirits plaguing him in a stance of meditation. While he is feigning his meditation, perhaps the stance itself symbolizes making peace with forces beyond your control. He does not fight back against the malevolent spirits, but stands his ground all the same. While he is injured, his ordeal stops then and there, never again do the spirits bother him after he is wounded. In fact, he is rewarded for his strange story! These elements symbolize a divide in how Western and Eastern stories approach spirituality. Western stories tend to say that you can control the forces afflicting you to an extent, yet Easter stories seem to say that you must make peace with all of nature, including the spirits surrounding you.