Download or read book Reiko A Japanese Ghost Story written by James Avonleigh and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2012-02-27 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was a story that shocked Japan.In the remote village of Izumi five high school friends died within the space of a fortnight.The circumstances were never explained.Four years later a British paranormal researcher travels to Izumi in an attempt to unravel the mystery.There he encounters much more than culture shock.He encounters the dark side of Japanese culture - the side they don't talk about in guidebooks.He encounters Reiko.
Download or read book A Gathering of Spirits Japan s Ghost Story Tradition written by Patrick Drazen and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Prepare for a sampling of Japanese ghosts and spirits, from sources that include the worlds oldest novel, the urban legends of contemporary Japanese schoolchildren, movies both classic and modern, anime, manga, and more." For hundreds of years Japan has lived in a reality consisting of the real world and the spirit world; sometimes the wall between the two worlds gets thin enough for spirits to cross over. In such a reality, ghost stories have been popular for centuries. Patrick Drazen, author of "Anime Explosion", looks at these stories: old and new, scary or funny or sad, looking at common themes and the reasons for their popularity. This book uses one Japanese ghost story tradition: the "hyaku monogatari" (hundred stories). In the old tradition, people tell each other one hundred ghost stories in one sitting. These hundred tales run from folklore to cartoons, but all are designed to send chills up the spine ...
Download or read book Novelist as a Vocation written by Haruki Murakami and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2022-11-08 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • An insightful look into the mind of a master storyteller—and a unique look at the craft of writing from the beloved and best-selling author of 1Q84, Norwegian Wood, and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. "Murakami is like a magician who explains what he's doing as he performs the trick and still makes you believe he has supernatural powers" —New York Times Book Review A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK: Esquire, Vulture, LitHub, New York Observer Aspiring writers and readers who have long wondered where the mysterious novelist gets his ideas and what inspires his strangely surreal worlds will be fascinated by this engaging book from the internationally best-selling author. Haruki Murakami now shares with readers his thoughts on the role of the novel in our society; his own origins as a writer; and his musings on the sparks of creativity that inspire other writers, artists, and musicians. Here are the personal details of a life devoted to craft: the initial moment at a Yakult Swallows baseball game, when he suddenly knew he could write a novel; the importance of memory, what he calls a writer’s “mental chest of drawers”; the necessity of loneliness, patience, and his daily running routine; the seminal role a carrier pigeon played in his career and more. "What I want to say is that in a certain sense, while the novelist is creating a novel, he is simultaneously being created by the novel as well." —Haruki Murakami
Download or read book The Encyclopedia of Japanese Horror Films written by Salvador Jiménez Murguía and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-07-29 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the horror genre has been embraced by filmmakers around the world, Japan has been one of the most prolific and successful purveyors of such films. From science fiction terrors of the 1950s like Godzilla toviolentfilms like Suicide Circle and Ichi the Killer, Japanese horror film has a diverse history. While the quality of some of these films has varied, others have been major hits in Japan and beyond, frightening moviegoers around the globe. Many of these films—such as the Ringu movies—have influenced other horror productions in both Asia and the United States. The Encyclopedia of Japanese Horror Films covers virtually every horror film made in Japan from the past century to date. In addition to major and modest productions, this encyclopedia also features entries on notable directors, producers, and actors. Each film entry includes comprehensive details, situates the film in the context and history of Japanese horror cinema, and provides brief suggestions for further reading. Although emphasizing horror as a general theme, this encyclopedia also encompasses other genres that are associated with this theme, including Comedy Horror, Science Fiction Horror, Cyber-punk Horror, Ero Guru (Erotic Grotesque), and Anime Horror. The Encyclopedia of Japanese Horror Films is a comprehensive reference volume that will appeal to both cinema scholars as well as to the many fans of this popular genre.
Download or read book A Darkly Beating Heart written by Lindsay Smith and published by Roaring Brook Press. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A troubled girl confronts her personal demons in this time-travel thriller alternating between present day and 19th century Japan. No one knows how to handle Reiko. She is full of hatred; all she can think about is how to best hurt herself and those people closest to her. After a failed suicide attempt at her home in Seattle, Reiko's parents send her to spend the summer with family in Japan, hoping she will learn to control her emotions. But while visiting Kuramagi, a historic village preserved to reflect the nineteenth-century Edo period, Reiko finds herself slipping backward in time into the nineteenth-century life of Miyu, a young woman even more vengeful than Reiko herself. Reiko loves escaping into Miyu's life . . . until she discovers Kuramagi's dark secret and must face down Miyu's demons as well as her own.
Download or read book Japanese and American Horror written by Katarzyna Marak and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-11-14 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Horror fiction is an important part of the popular culture in many modern societies. This book compares and contrasts horror narratives from two distinct cultures--American and Japanese--with a focus on the characteristic mechanisms that make them successful, and on their culturally-specific aspects. Including a number of narratives belonging to film, literature, comics and video games, this book provides a comprehensive perspective of the genre. It sheds light on the differences and similarities in the depiction of fear and horror in America and Japan, while emphasizing narrative patterns in the context of their respective cultures.
Download or read book Horror Films FAQ written by John Kenneth Muir and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Horror Films FAQ explores a century of ghoulish and grand horror cinema, gazing at the different characters, situations, settings, and themes featured in the horror film, from final girls, monstrous bogeymen, giant monsters and vampires to the recent torture porn and found footage formats. The book remembers the J-Horror remake trend of the 2000s, and examines the oft-repeated slasher format popularized by John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980). After an introduction positioning the horror film as an important and moral voice in the national dialogue, the book explores the history of horror decade by decade, remembering the women's liberation horrors of the 1970s, the rubber reality films of the late 1980s, the serial killers of the 1990s, and the xenophobic terrors of the 9/11 age. Horror Films FAQ also asks what it means when animals attack in such films as The Birds (1963) or Jaws (1975), and considers the moral underpinnings of rape-and-revenge movies, such as I Spit on Your Grave (1978) and Irreversible (2002). The book features numerous photographs from the author's extensive personal archive, and also catalogs the genre's most prominent directors.
Download or read book Horror written by Brigid Cherry and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this Routledge Film Guidebook, audience researcher and film scholar Brigid Cherry provides a comprehensive overview of the horror film and explores how the genre works. Examining the way horror films create images of gore and the uncanny through film technology and effects, Cherry provides an account of the way cinematic and stylistic devices create responses of terror and disgust in the viewer.
Download or read book The Graveyard Apartment written by Mariko Koike and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover what lurks in the shadowed corners of The Graveyard Apartment, and brace yourself for a literary experience that you won't forget. This psychological horror unravels the unsettling experiences of a young family, innocently enticed by the seemingly idyllic vistas of their new apartment. Situated beside a graveyard, the building quietly harbors an insidious evil, nudging them down a path of inexplicable, panic-inducing occurrences. With each passing day, the walls of this pristine apartment close in bit by bit, trapping them against the bygone souls that echo from beyond the grave. With the complex interplay of nail-biting suspense and thrilling horror, this masterpiece will challenge the bravest of readers. Its haunting narrative, intricately woven around the domestic and psychological aspects of horror, intensifies with each page turn, culminating with a conclusion that will make you think twice before ever going into a basement again.
Download or read book Norwegian Wood written by Haruki Murakami and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-08-11 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of Kafka on the Shore: A magnificent coming-of-age story steeped in nostalgia, “a masterly novel” (The New York Times Book Review) blending the music, the mood, and the ethos that were the sixties with a young man’s hopeless and heroic first love. Now with a new introduction by the author. Toru, a serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. As Naoko retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman. Stunning and elegiac, Norwegian Wood first propelled Haruki Murakami into the forefront of the literary scene.
Download or read book Fear Itself written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are fear, horror, and terror? This question, central to our endeavour, cannot be answered by one unified voice. It always cracks, falters, and fades before it can fully enunciate its proclamation. We, the authors, know this and have planned accordingly. This volume presents meditations on this issue springing from the four corners of intellectual inquiry. Each author provides a distinctive approach with which to address the issue at hand. Literary theory, psychoanalysis, media studies, political science, and many more disciplines occupy the same space between the covers of this book. We hope that through the cacophony of our diversity we will fill in the inevitable gaps when our voices fall short.
Download or read book The Scary Screen written by Kristen Lacefield and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-17 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1991, the publication of Koji Suzuki's Ring, the first novel of a bestselling trilogy, inaugurated a tremendous outpouring of cultural production in Japan, Korea, and the United States. Just as the subject of the book is the deadly viral reproduction of a VHS tape, so, too, is the vast proliferation of text and cinematic productions suggestive of an airborne contagion with a life of its own. Analyzing the extraordinary trans-cultural popularity of the Ring phenomenon, The Scary Screen locates much of its power in the ways in which the books and films astutely graft contemporary cultural preoccupations onto the generic elements of the ghost story”in particular, the Japanese ghost story. At the same time, the contributors demonstrate, these cultural concerns are themselves underwritten by a range of anxieties triggered by the advent of new communications and media technologies, perhaps most significantly, the shift from analog to digital. Mimicking the phenomenon it seeks to understand, the collection's power comes from its commitment to the full range of Ring-related output and its embrace of a wide variety of interpretive approaches, as the contributors chart the mutations of the Ring narrative from author to author, from medium to medium, and from Japan to Korea to the United States.
Download or read book Horror Comes Home written by Cynthia J. Miller and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-07-04 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Home, we are taught from childhood, is safe. Home is a refuge that keeps the monsters out--until it isn't. This collection of new essays focuses on genre horror movies in which the home is central to the narrative, whether as refuge, prison, menace or supernatural battleground. The contributors explore the shifting role of the home as both a source and a mitigator of the terrors of this world, and the next. Well known films are covered--including Psycho, Get Out, Insidious: The Last Key and Winchester House--along with films produced outside the U.S. by directors such as Alejandro Amenabar (The Others), Hideo Nakata (Ringu) and Guillermo Del Toro (The Orphanage), and often overlooked classics like Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger.
Download or read book Japanese Horror Culture written by Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-11-17 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary Japanese horror is deeply rooted in the folklore of its culture, with fairy tales-like ghost stories embedded deeply into the social, cultural, and religious fabric. Ever since the emergence of the J-horror phenomenon in the late 1990s with the opening and critical success of films such as Hideo Nakata’s The Ring (Ringu, 1998) or Takashi Miike’s Audition (Ôdishon, 1999), Japanese horror has been a staple of both film studies and Western culture. Scholars and fans alike throughout the world have been keen to observe and analyze the popularity and roots of the phenomenon that took the horror scene by storm, producing a corpus of cultural artefacts that still resonate today. Further, Japanese horror is symptomatic of its social and cultural context, celebrating the fantastic through female ghosts, mutated lizards, posthuman bodies, and other figures. Encompassing a range of genres and media including cinema, manga, video games, and anime, this book investigates and analyzes Japanese horror in relation with trauma studies (including the figure of Godzilla), the non-human (via grotesque bodies), and hybridity with Western narratives (including the linkages with Hollywood), thus illuminating overlooked aspects of this cultural phenomenon.
Download or read book Flowers from Hell written by Jim Harper and published by Noir Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past decade, Japan has become a key player on the contemporary horror scene, producing some of the most influential and critically respected genre movies of recent years. Whether it's the subtle chills of Ring, the graphic brutality of Audition or the zombie-fuelled mayhem of Versus, leading Japanese horror has had a major impact throughout the world. From its origins in the mid-80s to the multi-million dollar franchises of today, Flowers from Hell traces the evolution of this consistently inventive and influential horror phenomenon.
Download or read book Imitation and Creativity in Japanese Arts written by Michael Lucken and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea that Japanese art is produced through rote copy and imitation is an eighteenth-century colonial construct, with roots in Romantic ideals of originality. Offering a much-needed corrective to this critique, Michael Lucken demonstrates the distinct character of Japanese mimesis and its dynamic impact on global culture, showing through several twentieth-century masterpieces the generative and regenerative power of Japanese arts. Choosing a representative work from each of four modern genres—painting, film, photography, and animation—Lucken portrays the range of strategies that Japanese artists use to re-present contemporary influences. He examines Kishida Ryusei's portraits of Reiko (1914–1929), Kurosawa Akira's Ikiru (1952), Araki Nobuyoshi's photographic novel Sentimental Journey—Winter (1991), and Miyazaki Hayao's popular anime film Spirited Away (2001), revealing the sophisticated patterns of mimesis that are unique but not exclusive to modern Japanese art. In doing so, Lucken identifies the tensions that drive the Japanese imagination, which are much richer than a simple opposition between progress and tradition, and their reflection of human culture's universal encounter with change. This global perspective explains why, despite its non-Western origins, Japanese art has earned such a vast following.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Spirits and Ghosts in World Mythology written by Theresa Bane and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-03-24 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of all the anomalous phenomenon reported, ghost sightings are by far the most common. The words "ghost" and "spirit" are used interchangeably in American English but in other cultures the lingering souls of the departed are not to be confused with ancestral spirits, demonic spirits, numens or poltergeists. This encyclopedia lists hundreds of entities of the spirit realm--from aatxe to zuzeca--from world mythology and folklore.
