EA 116 Week 1a Outline:
CLASS STRUCTURE, REQUIREMENTS, ETC
CLASS LECTURE
Poll: Do you believe in ghosts?
I. What are
ghosts? How do you recognize them?
A. How do
you become a ghost?
1.
2.
3.
4.
eg. Ringu (1998, director Hideo Nakata)
B. What do ghosts look like? If you met one how would
you know it's a ghost?
C. Have
ghosts always looked the same?
D. What
causes the visual appearance of ghosts to change?
1. Genre (fiction, non-fiction, play, painting, film
etc.)
2. Historical context
a. Political
b. Religious
c. Social and Economic
1) includes natural disasters, such as epidemic illness, earthquakes, famine
Point of the Course: Ghosts and other supernatural beings enact on the public and private stage the anxieties and problems of their age (particularly political and social problems).
E. Ghosts as barometers of social
problems
I. When we see a ghost or other supernatural being we should wonder: what is going wrong in society?
II. Seven
main questions to ask in analyzing any ghost text (historical, fictional,
visual):
A. Who was
it written/created by?
1.
2.
3.
B. Is there a patron (individual or institutional)? Or is there a paying audience?
1.
2.
3.
C. Who is the intended audience?
1.
2.
3.
D. How is
the story or image supposed to affect that audience; i.e. what is the
purpose/goal of the story?
1.
2.
3.
D. What is the historical context? Are there any
political and economic issues at stake? Who might benefit from this version of
the story?
E. How might
the genre affect the representation of the ghost?
1. fiction or non-fiction?
2. written, performed, image?
In premodern Japan:
a. historical, non-fiction (diary, dream-vision, oracle)
b. fiction (novel, short story, didactic story)
c. theatrical (noh, kyogen,
kabuki)
d. 2-D image (painting of
dream vision, woodblock print)
F. Narrative issues:
1. How do narrative conventions
affect representation?
2. How do narrative constraints
affect representation?
a. eg. The Sixth Sense
III. How are
ghosts related to contemporaneous fears/anxieties?
POLL: Do you believe in ghosts?
A.
Contemporary examples
1. Slasher-horror
films and gender
a. who gets killed?
b. who survives?
c. why does that particular person make it when
stronger/more powerful folks don’t?
d. power of narrative convention versus the need to
surprise
2. Amabie (the pandemic yokai)
a. obscure Japanese monster who first appeared off the coast of Higo in Kumamoto prefecture in 1846
images
1) From the poster (kawaraban) of the original:
Every night something brightly lit would appear in the sea of Higo. When a local official
went out to take a look, something like what is in the picture here appeared and said, "I
live in the sea and am called Amabie. For the next six years, there will be abundant
harvests throughout the provinces, but disease will spread, so make haste to copy [an
image of] me and show it to the people." So saying, it returned back into the sea. The image on the right [actually on the left] is what was copied by the official and brought to Edo.
b. "Apotropaeic": having the power to ward off evil influences or bad luck.
(Images and texts reproduced for their apotropaic effects go back to the earliest period of Japanese religion.)
c. Mizuki Shigeru's 1986 image
Mizuki Productions posted on Twitter 3/17/20:
This is an “Amabie.” We took a photo of Mizuki Shigeru’s original drawing. It’s a being…closer in nature to a divine entity than a Yōkai. In the Edo Period, it appeared in the sea off of Kumamoto and instructed, “If pestilence spreads, draw my image and quickly show it to everyone.” With that, its figure disappeared back into the sea. May it rid us of the current pandemic.
https://twitter.com/mizukipro/status/1239818518536704001
d. Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare Twitter image posted 4/8/20
1) Warning; STOP! shiranai uchi ni, hiromechau kara (Because it spreads before you know it)
d. What anxieties and issues do images of Amabie address?
IV. Japanese
historical examples
A. Assumption: people in premodern Japan believed in ghosts and that belief was supported by religion which defined everyday reality
B. How do changes in religion affect the understanding of ghosts? That is, how does religion affect the explanation for ghosts?
1. Christianity (no explanatory
mechanism)
2. Japanese religions: Shamanism, Shinto, Daoism, Buddhism
B.
Political/economic issues:
1. Having a grudge in your heart can make you a potent political symbol of political rebellion or subersion
a. Sugawara no Michizane,
died 903, exiled by dominant political faction, returns as an angry ghost
b. Sakura
Sôgorô, an Edo period peasant martyr (probably didn't exist, but represents a combination of several peasant martyrs)
C. Social
Issues: Gender oppression
1. Discarded mistress (Rokujô)
from Tale of Genji
who kills other women
2.
Pregnant women who are murdered or die in childbirth
3. Maid (Okiku) who is thrown down a well
D. Difference between male and female ghosts
1. Two major correlates to power in ghosts:
a. level of political power in life
b. level of anger at death
