Ladies' night

A recent discussion on the Coursera forums started me thinking about Japanese folklore and horror movies and the concept of the monstrous feminine. We came to the conclusion in the discussion that many female monsters are dichotomous: beautiful human/hideous monster. Lamia, Sil from Species: there are many examples of this. It's true of some Japanese folklore too: there's Otsuyu from Botan Dōrō, Kuchisake-onna, Yuki-onna. 

But the dominant figure of horror in Japanese cinema is for sure the onryō - the vengeful ghost. Usually she is  female; definitely the most memorable examples have been. Sadako from Ringu, Katsuya from Ju-On, Mitsuku from Honogurai mizu no soko kara (Dark Water). They're not exactly beautiful, either, these ghosts: clad in costumes which take their cues from kabuki, they wear white burial shifts, dead-white faces, long black hair hanging down, and shadowed eyes. They have their origins in folklore, most famously Oiwa in Yotsuya Kaidan. Here she is:

Pretty creepy. You can trace the lineage to the famous film onryō - here's (although this is almost guaranteed to prevent me sleeping tonight) Sadako:

I think there's a good chance that she is the scariest thing of all time. The onryō are echoed in the West, too, in the various White Ladies and Grey Ladies that haunt old manors and manses. They're significantly less terrifying, though - they suffer their wrongs with patient forbearance, and go sighing up and down corridors like maiden aunts. Sadako and her ilk do not go gentle into that good night: they rage all over the place, seemingly determined to take as much of humanity down with them as possible.

So Japan's ghosts are largely female, and there are many female demons too, like the aforementioned Kuchisake-onna, the "split-faced woman", who - masked - lies in wait for the unwary and asks them "Do you think I'm beautiful?" If they say no, she kills them. If they say yes, she takes off her mask to reveal her mouth split wide, says "And now?" and kills them anyway. The best modern female demon I can think of is Tomie, from the film series of the same name. Tomie is a preternaturally beautiful young woman, who drives every man who sees her wild with desire. Unfortunately for her, this usually ends up with them killing and dismembering her out of spite or jealousy. Fortunately, she possesses amazing regenerative powers. When we first meet her, she's literally just a head in a bag:

But she soon sprouts a shapely body and is off causing havoc again. She's definitely more sinned-against than sinning: like Helen of Troy if Paris and Menelaus had decided to take it out on her instead of each other.

What struck me most about Tomie was how female-centric it was. Tomie, the antagonist, is female, and can drive men to insanity with her beauty, but it doesn't seem to be them she's really after. She seems to be doing it, really, to get a rise out of Tsukiko.

There are definitely Sapphic overtones to this last lakeside scene.

Almost all of the protagonists of these films are female, too: thinking about it, I'd have to say that overwhelmingly the dynamics of Japanese horror films play out in a female-female dyad. There's Sadako and Reiku in Ringu (although Reiku's character was male in the novel and manga); Yumi and Marie in Chakushiri ari (One Missed Call); Yoshimi and Mitsuko in Honogurai mizu no soko kara.

I can't speculate as to why this might be, just observe that it is so. And to take us out, here is "Robby's Song" from the Tomie soundtrack, one of the creepiest songs I have ever heard.