Japanese Ghosts, Demons, and Haunted Spaces

Strategies Description In my 10th grade world literature course, I will use Japanese cinema to teach students the ways in which setting can interact with character, plot, and symbolism in Japanese narratives in particular, and by extension, narratives in general. I will focus on ghost stories and other mysterious tales in order to capitalize on student interest in the macabre. Furthermore, by using kwaidanghost storiesas well as mysteries, students, will have to articulate elements of storytelling that they may have overlooked before, such as atmosphere. We will situate the stories and films within Japanese mythological and historical contexts, and pay particular attention to the symbolic meanings associated with the settings in the films. With this background, students will be able to analyze the effects that the different settings have on both intended Japanese audiences and themselves as viewers of the filmsand readers of the texts. Cultural Studies Approaches Our primary tool for exploring these films will be a cultural studies framework, or cultural analysis. According to Kathleen McCormick, a professor of writing who has used cultural analysis to great effect, "Cultural analysis asks you to relate the values, practices, or beliefs of a text you are reading to other, often different or seemingly unrelated ideas, beliefs, or practices from the same time period in which the text was produced.(1 ) " An example may be in order. The Japanese samurai tale Chushingura is the true story of a group of 47 samurai who, after a long period of exile, return to avenge their fallen lord. Occurring in 1703, after approximately 100 years of peace, this story reminded many Japanese of the ideals of the samurai. In the Hiroshi Iganaki version of this story (1962), we see a catalogue of daily practices and rules that revolve around the idea of honor. Samurai must not draw their swords in the capital, for it is dishonorable. Also, deferenceand bribesshould be paid to those who have knowledge you seek, for to fail in bribing them is to miss essential knowledge, and risk dishonoring oneself (this is, in fact, what causes the lord's downfall). We also see samurai who disband to preserve the honor of their lord, and many characters commit ritual suicide in order to preserve their honor. Through synthesizing these many practices and rules that involve the principle of honor, we can begin to form a rudimentary idea of what the Japanese consider to be honorable, and may even be able to figure out what is happening in the culture that is causing them to have these attitudes aboutin this casehonor. After having unearthed these beliefs, students should be able to identify the underlying assumptionsthe beliefs about the culture that are taken as true on face, with no questioningoperating in the culture. In our example, students saw a series of statements and beliefs about honor, including a suicide. An underlying assumption that goes unquestioned in this culture is the idea that one should die with one's honor, even if that entails death at ones own hand. At this point, students will likely start to look deeper: what beliefs did the Japanese have at this time that made them think honor was more important than life? Everyone who talks about honor in this way is a samurai. Is this a feature of the samurai class alone, or the Japanese people in general? Asking these questions will lead to the exploration of other texts and may even lead to the discovery of contradictory practices and beliefs, which students will have to resolve for themselves. Why should we use such an approach? Because students are much less likely to suggest simplistic, either/or answers to complicated questions of why people within a culture behave in certain ways. Also, because it is very rare that this type of analysis will produce a single answer, students must either learn how to negotiate their differences and find consensus or learn how to allow simultaneous, yet opposing, viewpoints to exist in the same place and time. Furthermore, students will inevitably connect their cultural analyses to their own culturethat of whatever United States communities to which they claim membership. At this point, the cultural analysis becomes intercultural, even if the teacher does not encourage it. For our purposes, we can extend our exploration to include those practices and beliefs that seem abnormal and supernatural as well. After viewing and reading throughout the unit, students should have enough observations about the worlds displayed in the narratives to sort out operative definitions of what appears normal and what myths may lie behind that normalcy. This list can be used by students to answer their third essential question: do different cultures have different definitions of the supernatural?