Japanese Religion in Film

[Gavin Rees]

This is all fascinating stuff. Aaron's right, I am sure, about the need to
look at the category.

If I can just add my penny's worth to it. One of the conceptual problems
with all of this is the aversion in Japan to classifying spiritual beliefs
as distinctly religious. People go to temples, shrines etc, and they follow
particular rituals. Most people, though, when asked whether they are
religious, recoil in horror, and say of course not, this is just a practical
thing. Religion seems to be associated particularly with cults and
non-Japanese Christianity, and not with what one might call the spiritual
technology of daily life. And so anybody writing about religion in a fuller
anthropological sense has to ask whether they want to include things like
ancestor cults, belief in spiritual presences, ideas of the sacred etc into
their analysis.  If you take religion in the narrow sense that many people
take it - belief in God, set liturgical practice, a set of rules etc, then
many indigenous African religions would not be included.

It is a really tricky one when it comes to Japan. Is not something religious
going in those TV dramas when dead mothers come back to life to make sure
that their kids are doing their homework? (as in 1998 "Ghost Mama") I have
seen similar formats in the West, but Japanese ghost stories seem much more
pointed. Maybe Mama really is in the room.

Gavin Rees



> Some of the responses here bring up an interesting question.
> 
> Many have been citing cases in which religion (its institutions or
> symbols) is represented in film, like the sadistic nun films.
> Accumulating such a list is important if one wants to think about
> issues of representation, but one could argue that the issue of
> representing religion in film is different from the issue of embodying
> religiosity in cinema. For instance, we can cite hundreds of anime and
> horror films that use as narrative material ghosts or demons or other
> elements from Japanese folklore, but do those really embody a
> society-wide belief in such an animistic, spirit filled world? Just
> because Dawn of the Dead was popular, does that mean that people in
> America all believe in zombies? Can't we argue that many of the signs
> of religion that appear in Japanese film, especially much genre cinema,
> are less embodiments of religiosity (of the beliefs of filmmakers or
> audiences) than simple genre conventions--part of the system of
> suspending disbelief? Especially if we accept the claim that
> contemporary Japanese show a low commitment to religious belief,
> religion in Japanese film might serve other purposes (ideological,
> historical, political, etc.) than to manifest faith or belief.
> 
> If that is the case, which films can we cite that truly embody Japanese
> religiosity? What about those films distinguishes them from those that
> use religion merely as narrative fodder? (And just why do so many films
> seem to use religion as narrative material even if the filmmakers and
> audience might not necessarily believe in that religion?)
> 
> Aaron Gerow
> KineJapan owner
> 
> Assistant Professor
> Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
> Yale University
> 
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