Japanese Ghosts, Demons, and Haunted Spaces: The Narratives (Filmic and Print) 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 postulate the effects that the different settings have on both intended Japanese audiences and themselves as viewers of the filmsand readers of the texts. Grasscutter: Japanese Mythology in a graphic novel. Stan Sakai's graphic novel Grasscutter is very engaging, and reading the four Prologues in it will allow students to gain a background in the Japanese creation myths of the Kojiki and the Nihongi, which explain some of the major gods and goddesses, as well as introducing students to the different aspects of Japanese spiritualism. For instance, many of the original Kami were born of the vomit and corpse of one Kami who died as a result of burnt genitalia after giving birth to a fire deity!(8) Here, we see a very different creation myth than one American students would be familiar with. Sakai meticulously researched his comics, and substantial endnotes exist to help teachers provide further context for students. Through use of these graphic novels, students can understand the ways in which Shintoism led to the primacy of place. This will help students understand the symbolism of both the literature and the films and literary symbolism more thoroughly. Grasscutter, and Hearn and Kobayashi's print and film verstions of "Mimi Nashi Hoichi." The Fourth Prologue of Grasscutter tells one of the great stories in Japanese history: the defeat of the Heike clan by the Minamoto clan at the battle of Dan-no-Ura in 1185, which ushered in the Kamakura Shogunate. During this naval battle, when the Heike realized that they were to be defeated, legend has it that the 6-year-old emperor, Antoku, was drowned when his grandmother jumped overboard with him in her arms instead of surrendering to the Minamoto clan. Several hundred Heike warriors followed her. To this day, the Japanese do not eat the crabs found in the waters of Dan no Ura because they believe that the spirits of the fallen are embodied in the crabs. Supporting their claim is the "fact" that the faces of the Heike are visible on the shells of the crabs! Here we see the significance of place and native religion in Japanese culture. Luckily, we can also point to The Story of Mimi Nashi Hoichi and the story by the same name in Kobayashi's Kwaidan, which both retell this story. The battle scene in Kwaidan is an exceptional blending of traditional Japanese drama, beautiful color, and Japanese surreal set designs. The battle scene is filmed in a studio that has been painted: there is no realism in the western sense here, but Zeami's notion of yugen is thick in the frame. It looks and feels like a Japanese N�; the only music for this scene is a solitary biwa, or Japanese lute. In "Mimi Nashi Hoichi," Hoichi is a blind flutist living in a Buddhist monastery who plays the songs that commemorate the battle of Dan-no-Ura so beautifully that the fallen Heike are brought to him, hoping to take him back to the ocean with them to soothe their pain. Because it incorporates Japanese history, it fits within a folk tradition; it may in fact be teaching us that even Buddhist priests have their limits when dealing with the ghosts of the world. This film and story both show the practices that Buddhist priests considered "normal" for dealing with a haunting. Kwaidan: Stories by Lafcadio Hearn, Film by Masaki Kobayashi Hearn's Kwaidan is a collection of strange Japanese folk tales. "Yuki-Onna," ("Snow Woman,") details the story of a bargain made with a ghost that is later forgotten. In the tale, a pair of woodcutters is caught in a snowstorm created by a Snow Woman, a ghost, who demands their lives. She kills the older, while allowing the younger to live as long as he promises never to reveal his secret. He, of course, forgets his promise later in life, and is reminded in terrifying, fatal form. This story explores themes of material wealth, the ability of the supernatural to deceive people, and hubris. It, like all of the stories in this movie, is visually stunning and heavily influenced by painting. "Black Hair" in Kwaidan ("The Reconciliation" is the name of the Hearn story that is the source. It is found in Shadowings), focuses on the karmic debt that people incur when committing a wrong. In this case, the tale is of a man whose desire for fortune and glory lead him to abandon one wife for another. However, the new, more lucrative, and loveless marriage is unfulfilling, and the man returns to his former wife completely unaware of the terrifying changes that have occurred. Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon: Places Haunted by Evil Deeds Rashomon (1951), the film that arguably introduced Japanese cinema to the world, is based on Akutagawa's stories "In a Grove" and "Rashomon." "In a Grove" is a story told in several episodes, each of which is the testimony of a witness to an unknown judgethe reader. Because the reader is the judge, there is no resolution to the story. The settinga grove set back from a roadis an ominous one, for the story is set during the warring states period of Japanese history, where morality was in great flux. Three characters are present in the grove, which makes the choice even harderno either/or binary opposition that one might feel comfortable with. The lack of a resolution places the reader squarely in the author's sights, and the question, "how can we know what the truth is?" is unavoidable. "Rashomon" asks us to consider the possibility of an absolute good and an absolute evil. Again, the author wants to force us into a situation in which the usual binary opposition is rendered moot by the plot itself, prompting serious questions about the nature of humanity. The film is shot in beautiful black and white. The settingsthe Rashomon gate in the middle of a tumultuous storm, and the grove itself, underneath a sunny sky, are both shot with painstaking care. The initial entry into the grove by the woodcutter incorporates many shots, but the woodcutter moves from right to left while the camera moves from left to right, adding greater depth to the woods. This film and these stories lend themselves well to the question of adaptation, and, depending on how observant your students are, subtle dialogue shifts might give away some of Kurosawa's interpretations of Akutagawa's stories. Applying a cultural studies approach to the characters in these two texts is also interesting, as each of the three characters offers something a little different to the readers as to what their beliefs about the world are. Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke: Old Spirits, Old places, and New Challenges Hayao Miyazaki's animated classic Princess Mononoke will also be used. It is perhaps the most accessible film to students both because it is animated, and because it clearly articulates natural motifs that are based upon Shinto traditions and beliefs. Animals are gods, "unnatural" hatred leads creatures to change into demons, and people form adversarial relationships to the natural world without understanding the implications of their choices. Furthermore, there is a stark contrast between the twin protagonists of the filma boy from a strange, native tribe and a feral girland the antagonists, a modernizing, "progress" oriented pioneer community. This proves extremely useful for our cultural studies analysis. ________________________________________ Lesson Plans Plan One: Teaching the Cultural Studies Framework Objective: To analyze a cultural myth that students recognize in order to define daily practices and beliefs. Exploration: Ask students to think about a belief that is widely held by small children in our culture that they have now grown out of: Santa Claus. Give students time to think of everything they can remember about Santa. Operation: We will discover how our culture influences our beliefs by diagnosing the sources of our beliefs about Santa Claus and identifying the ways in which our culture explains away our doubts about him. Define daily practices and ask students to provide examples of daily practices that support the idea that Santa is real. Daily practices may include seeing Santa at the mall, writing him letters, watching movies about him, staying on his "nice" list and off of his "naughty" list, singing songs that celebrate him, and the like. Have students think about the rules that govern Santa: You cannot see him while he is in, or he'll leave without giving you presents. He will leave you coal if you are bad. You must leave him cookies. Ask students what these practices and beliefs tell us about children: that is, what unquestioned beliefsmythsdo we hold about children? Good kids should be rewarded, bad kids should be punished, children are being watched and must do as they are told, etc. Independent Practice: Have students choose another mythical character, such as the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny and repeat the process. Continue this until they can identify enough practices and beliefs, and have an idea what a cultural myth that provides a foundation for those beliefs and practices is. Assessment: Can students articulate core values, practices, and myths about their fictional entity? Plan Two: Analyzing Setting in Princess Mononoke Objective: To provide a critique of the role setting plays in influencing character behavior by comparing and contrasting the practices and beliefs of characters from rural and urban settings regarding the land. Exploration: Students will be split into small groups of four or five students each. Half of the groups will share ideas about the practices and beliefs of San and Ashitaka towards the forests, while the other half will share ideas about the practices and beliefs of Lady Eboshi and the mining town inhabitants. Operation: The groups will articulate reasons why the members of their group might believe as they do. For example, San, raised by the Wolf Gods, would believe that nature is more important than human civilization. Ashitaka, who has befriended his elk mount, would believe that there is a shared relationship, because he works as his elk mount's partner through much of the film. Assessment: Do the students offer plausible, supported theories for why the characters have different perspectives at the same time (the heart of cultural analysis)? Plan Three: Director's Commentary for Kwaidan Objective: To explain how directors manipulate the means of telling a story in order to achieve a desired effect by writing our own director's commentary for a short film. Exploration: First, the students will be asked the question: how does Kobayashi use filmmaking techniques to enhance his telling of one of the stories in Kwaidan? After students offer some initial theories, follow up by asking the students what techniques did he have at his disposal? Operation: Students will be put into groups of four or five. They will then review the materials from the Yale Film Study Center at http://classes.yale.edu/film-analysis/ in order to refresh their memory about all the different elements of making a film. As a model, students should watch Donald Richie's commentary for Rashomon. While it will be unnecessary to watch the commentary for the entire film, the initial scenes of the Rashomon gate and at least one of the characters' testimony before the judge should be viewed so that students can create a list of possible comments to include. Students should then be able to generate a checklist of elements to include in a thorough discussion of the filmmaker's techniques: lighting, mise-en-scene, editing, and so on. These lists should be discussed in a whole-class setting in order to set the standards for the student projects. Application: Students should be given time to watch the appropriate sections of their film and to create their commentary. Because this could take some time, I suggest having this group project take place at the same time as an individual writer's workshop about some related topic, so that all groups are thoughtfully engaged while not watching film per se. The students should then create their commentaries in small groups, using both their notes from the film analysis website and their checklists generated from watching the commentary on Rashomon. Each member of the group should contribute to the oral recitation of the commentary, which they should give to the class while watching the film on mute. Assessment: Both students and teacher should assess the group's "director's commentary" by completing the checklist both during and after the presentation. Other group presentation criteria should also be established by the class, as well as group work criteria. ________________________________________ Content Standards Relevant to Unit The content standards discussed here are from the Connecticut State Department of Education. Listing these standards should provide prospective users of this unit with a frame of reference narrow enough to help teachers decide whether or not the unit is applicable to his or her goals while not being so broad as to seem applicable to all programs of study. While not all content standards listed here are not explicitly linked to each of the sample lesson plans included in this unit, each is implicitly linked to the activities and strategies discussed within the narrative sections of the unit. Content Standard One: Reading and Responding Educational experiences in this unit will assure that students: 1.1 describe the text by giving an initial reaction to the text and describing its general purpose; 1.3 reflect on the text to make judgements about its meaning and quality; 1.5 generate questions before, during and after reading, writing, listening, and viewing 1.8 use the structure of narrative, expository, persuasive, poetic, and visual text to interpret and extend meaning; 1.12 make inferences about ideas implicit in narrative, expository, persuasive, and poetic texts 1.13 interact with others in creating, interpreting, and evaluating written, oral, and visual texts. Content Standard Four: Exploring and Responding to Texts Educational experiences in this unit will assure that students: 4.3 evaluate the merit of literary texts on the basis of individual preferences and established standards; 4.4 examine the ways readers and writers are influenced by individual, social, cultural, and historical context; 4.6 demonstrate an understanding that literature represents, recreates, shapes, and explores human experience through language and imagination; 4.7 explore and respond to the aesthetic elements of literature, including spoken, visual, and written texts; 4.8 use literature as a resource to explore ideas and decisions, as well as political and social issues; and 4.9 identify the unique and shared qualities of the voices, cultures, and historical periods in literature. ________________________________________ Annotated Bibliography for Teachers Books Addiss, Stephen. Japanese Ghosts and Demons: Art of the Supernatural. New York: George Braziller, Inc. 1985. This book has many excellent prints of Japanese ghosts and other supernatural entities, several of which relate to the types of female ghosts found in Kwaidan. Erlich, Linda and David Desser. Cinematic Landscapes: Observations on the Visual Arts of China and Japan. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. 1994. This book offers several very good essays on issues in Japanese cinematic aesthetics, drawing on both the history of art and the contemporary decision-making and influence of prominent directors. Galbraith, Stuart IV. Japanese Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company. 1994. A very detailed description of 97 Japanese films that have been released in the United states between 1950 and 1992. The first film included is Rashomon. McCarthy, Helen. Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press. 1999. This book is accessible to strong high school readers, and gives background on Miyazaki's career in general and his major titles in particular. There are spoilers in this text, however, so be careful about the sections you choose for students before they view the film(s) you select. Reider, Noriko. Tales of the Supernatural in Early Modern Japan: Kaidan, Akinari, Ugetsu Monogatari. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press. This is an excellent resource for obtaining background information on the evolution of early modern ghost tales in Japan. Dissanayake, Wimal. Cinema and Cultural Identity: Reflection son Films from Japan, India, and China. New York: University Press of America. 1988. The section on Japan offers two essays on Japanese dramatic traditions that may be of interest. Also, two essays about genre in Japanese cinema, one focusing on Samurai films, are useful when considering the use of Japanese film as a cultural lens. McCormick, Kathleen. Reading Our Histories, Understanding our Cultures: A Sequenced Approach to Thinking, Reading, and Writing. New York: Longman. 2003. This text offers a lengthy review of cultural/historical analysis, with eight example unit plans that can help teachers understand the framework. This may be the only resource in the unit that cannot be replaced with alternative texts. Internet Resources Japan Guide. 2005. Japan-guide.com, Inc. 17 July 2005. www.japan-guide.com. This website acts as a clearinghouse for information on Japanese history and culture. Primarily a tourism site, it is useful for analyzing contemporary Japanese practices and folkways. Yale Film Studies Film Analysis Website. 2002. Yale University. 18 July 2005. http://classes.yale.edu/film-analysis/. This site provides ample information to introduce students to the discipline of film study. Still shots from a diverse range of films help explain the terminology.
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