3 posts tagged “japan”
The plot involves a reporter, Kyoko, (played by Ono Mayumi) who specializes in fluff pieces, reporting on "rumors". Her boyfriend, a photographer, Nishina, (played by my boy Sakai Masato) has a nightmare about her investigating an urban legend called "The Wall Man". Strangely enough, the next day, a letter arrives at her office telling her about the legend, a letter with an address, but no name.
BEWARE: SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT!!!
Kyoko decides that The Wall Man would make a good story for her show, so she goes to the address on the letter, only to find that it's the basement of an abandoned shopping center. The place is creepy, but she finds nothing substantial. However, she keeps running into people who have heard the legend and have leads to follow, so she continues with the story.
In the meantime, her boyfriend Nishina has become intrigued with the Wall Man story. He picks up the theme of walls for his next photography exhibition. His previous one, Inner/Outer, was all pictures of faces and hands. In a flashback, it is revealed that the Inner/Outer exhibition is where he met Kyoko. She was there as a reporter, and he took pictures of her. He was especially drawn to her right hand, which was scarred. Walls, Nishina thinks, are neither "inner" or "outer", but somewhere in between.
As Kyoko investigates the Wall Man, Nishina takes pictures of walls and examines them for traces of the Wall Man. Kyoko, however, becomes afraid. The story that she has reported has set off a media frenzy. The few real leads that she receives are disturbing. A man is supposedly injured by the Wall Man when his apartment wall collapses. The taxi driver who gives her the man's address is later injured in a car wreck. And Nishina is beginning to act very strangely.
Determined to contact the Wall Man, Nishina gives up taking photographs and puts up post-its of alphabets all over his walls, not only kana (the phonetic characters of the Japanese language), but Roman and Greek letters as well. To each letter, he attaches a bell. Kyoko leaves him, and he spends all his time in his room, waiting to hear back from the Wall Man.
It turns out that the original letter about the Wall Man was a hoax, made up by one of the cameramen who works for Kyoko. But the legend has taken on a life of its own now. A disturbed fan goes to the basement where Kyoko originally searched for the Wall Man and threatens suicide if she won't speak to him. She goes there, but gets no answers as the man is captured by the police as they talk. Later, she admits to her cameraman that she was relieved that the crazy man in the basement wasn't Nishina.
The cameraman (who was the guy who started the hoax) is on the verge of confessing, but then asks if Kyoko wants him to go with her to check on Nishina. They go, and find him laying on the floor, his head bashed into the wall. While the cameraman goes to get help, the bells on the wall start ringing. The letters spell out that Nishina is already dead, and when Kyoko asks who is ringing the bells, the answer is the Wall Man.
And then there is the trick ending, but it's difficult to explain. Suffice to say, the urban legend dies down, but the Wall Man remains, and Nishina is waiting for Kyoko to join him.
Again, creepy rather than scary, but a very interesting movie. The director managed to make ordinary walls seem ominous. The acting was great and the script was rather deep for a horror movie. There was a lot of examination of the concept of in-between and media. Urban legends have been used for fodder of horror movies before, but rarely in such a thoughtful way. In some ways, Kabe Otoko reminded me of Candyman, although not quite as gory.
I scanned in these examples for my friend Rhiannon from the Taiga Drama Komyo ga Tsuji. These are examples of the "patchwork" kosode. In the drama, the heroine, Chiyo, had to piece together new kosode because hers were ruined in a fire. Saionji-hime also speaks a bit about the subject on her excellent Kosode page, with some extant period examples towards the bottom of the page. I'd like to try to make one of these myself!
My only question is that the styling on these taiga costumes doesn't seem as symmetrical as the period examples I've seen?
Here are the scans. All of these are from NHK Taiga Drama Magazine.
Finally finished Everyday Things in Modern Japan, which was excellent. It really engrossed me in a subject matter (historical demographics) that usually comes out quite dry. The emphasis is on the Edo period (better records for that time), but the author transitions from the late Sengoku period and also brings in some early Meiji period as well, as her thesis is that traditional Japanese home life didn't really change all that much (from Westernization) until WWII, except among the very rich or the intellectual class. Highly recommended.
I had two books come in this week that I'm really looking forward to reading, both examples of Heian literature. (Wait, don't look at me like that, I know we're poor, but they were used ex-library copies and they were cheap!)
The first was The Changelings (Torikaebaya monogatari no kenkyu), translated by Rosette Willig. This is a story about a brother and sister who decide to "switch places" and each live as the opposite sex. Yes, it sounds like shoujo manga (wait, it IS shoujo manga!), but the story was actually written by an anonymous author sometime between 1196 and 1202. They're not sure if the author is male or female. The writing seems female, but evidently poorly done, so it may be a man imitating a woman, in the same way that Ki no Tsuriyuki did in his Tosa Diary. Anyway, I've been looking for this book for a long time, but just recently found it at a price I was willing to pay. It looks like it will be entertaining.
The second was one I stumbled across recently: The Poetic Memoirs of Lady Daibu (Kenreimon-in Ukyo no Daibu shu), translated by Phillip Tudor Harris. Set during the same time period as the Tale of the Heike, it features some of the Taira clan in a very different light. Lady Daibu's (not her real name, btw) birthdate is unknown, but scholars put it somewhere between 1150 and 1160. She is last heard from in 1232, when she is approached for a couple of her poems to be included in an imperial collection, the Shinchokusenshu. I lucked out on this one and only paid $5 (plus shipping, which made it like $9)! I've only read in about 50 pages so far (all introduction--there's like three introductory essays before the actual translation begins), but so far, so good. Great, concise information about the end of the Heian era, court life and how to put the work in its historical context. Also, the next SCA project I wanted to do (besides all the sewing, which comes with the territory) was a shu (poetry collection), and this book is exactly the format I wanted to emulate.
Damn, I'm such a geek!
