Film

A Hellish Mirror
Edogawa Rampos strange, dark tales have been inspiring generations of filmmakers
and creating a genre all their own
By JASPER SHARP

grotesquerie rivalling anything published in the West at the time.

Imomushi (The Caterpillar) features a wounded war veteran who
returns from the frontline as little more than a bloody torso, a
pathetic broken doll whose limbs were cruelly torn off by the playful gods of war, helpless to defend himself against the increasingly
perverted caprices of an embittered wife. The Hell of Mirrors sees a
mans fanatical obsession with the reflection of his own image ultimately sending him spiralling into insanity. In Akai Heya (The
Red Chamber), in front of a secret society and its seven wealthy
but hopelessly jaded members, the sinister Tanaka confesses his
own cure for boredom by outlining the modus operandi by which
he has killed nearly a hundred complete strangers.
Rampos writing highlights the intriguing artistic synergy
that has always existed between East and West since Japan opened
itself up to the rest of the world at the dawn of the Meiji period in
1868. Here the Occidental literary style of the mystery short story
is appropriatedindeed wholeheartedly embracedand subtly
honed down to fit into the cultural landscape of Japan to create
something quite unique, a mirror image of Western culture that
gains much in the transformation.
Until this time the only tradition of mystery writing in Japan
had been fashioned along the lines of tales of old court trials
imported from China with Ihara Saikakus collection of criminal
cases called Records of Trials Held Beneath a Cherry Tree, first published in 1689, providing a typical example. After a couple of
hundred years this particular approach to detective fiction was

sk any person in Japan who the most influential writer of

mystery and detective fiction is and they will inevitably
reply with the name Edogawa Rampo. The author being
referred to is a certain Hirai Taro (18941965), whose love of the
Western detective story as practiced by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
Maurice Leblanc, and particularly the American master of the
macabre Edgar Allan Poe, led to his own vocation as Japans first
modern mystery writer and founder of the Japan Mystery Writers
Club. The nom de plume Edogawa Rampo is the Japanese phonemic
approximation of Hirais literary hero Edgar Allan Poe (180949),
who penned such seminal spinechillers as The Murders in the Rue
Morgue, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Tell-Tale Heart , and
the kanji used to spell the name Edogawa Rampo is also somewhat
of a pun for the Japanese, translating roughly into A stroll along
the banks of the River Edo).
Despite writing over 50 short stories, 31 novels, and numerous volumes of critical essays and books for children, Rampos
work is not widely available in the English language, though
French readers have fared a little better. Ten of his more horrific
tales were translated by James B. Harris and published in the
United States by Charles Tuttle Publishing in 1956 under the title
Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination, an obvious nod to Poes
Tales of Mystery and Imagination. However, despite numerous subsequent reprintings, this anthology seems to be pretty much the
sum of the authors literary acclaim outside of Japan.
In these short stories Rampo exhibits a spine-chilling sense of

impressionable artist
Just as Hirai Taros
favorite author, Edgar
Allan Poe inspired him
to write, Ishizuka
Kimiakis literary
heroes have inspired
him to create
portrait figurines

Moju rising Masumura Yasuzos Moju (The Blind Beast), 1969, is one of the most fascinatingly freakish of all Rampos adaptations. It explores the cloying, all-encompassing
relationship between the artist and his muse with an edgy, hallucinogenic intensity

popularity with the general public. A new movement in Japanese

literature had been born.

Adventures in the screen trade

Split screens Based on Rampos short story, The Twins, Tsukamoto Shinyas tale of sibling rivalry, Gemini, juxtaposes golden-age film language with exaggerated costume design

view for the magazine Akoya-gai. He was really well built. He

looked like a true sportsman type. However, he was not good at
sports at all; he was only good at drinking. Even if we drank right
through the night, he would be at his desk fresh as a daisy the next
morning.
Fortunately Hirais destiny lay neither in the office nor at the
barstool, and in 1923, the year of the great earthquake that laid
waste to the area around Tokyo and Yokohama, he found himself
in Osaka facing a period of unemployment. It was here that the
man who was later to famously write The world is a dream, the
dreams of night are reality, finally brought himself to put the
products of his own fervid imagination into more concrete form.
To his surprise, his first short story, Nisen doka (The Two-Sen
Copper Coin), was immediately accepted for publication by Shin
seinen and Hirai, adopting the Rampo pen-name for the very first
time, soon found himself in print alongside the translated works of
his literary idols. Encouraged by his publishers, he moved to
Tokyo to begin his career in earnest, and by the beginning of the
Showa period (192689), Rampos writing was enjoying great

beginning to get a little stale, and with the end of the long period
of self-imposed isolationism of the Edo period, Japanese readers,
eager for something different, began to hungrily devour these
newly translated tales of the fantastic from Europe and America.
Hirai was no exception, and from his high school years onwards
became an avid consumer of the short stories then being published
in Shin Seinen, the only magazine at the time devoted to foreign
mystery writing.

A writer in the making

Born October 21, 1894, in Nabari Town in the Mie Prefecture to
a merchant-lawyer father and raised for the best part of his childhood in Nagoya, Hirai entered Tokyos prestigious Waseda
University in 1912 to study economics. After graduating with
high honors four year later, he spent the next six years drifting
between such diverse occupations as a soba peddler, assistant newspaper editor and office clerk. A colleague at the Toba Dockyards,
where Hirai worked from 1918 to 1919 in the general affairs
department, described working with the writer in a 1966 inter-

Like Poe in the West, whose work has been adapted for the screen
on numerous occasions (most notably with Roger Cormans cycle
of 60s gothic classics with Vincent Price that included The Masque
of Red Death and The Pit and the Pendulum), Rampos stories have
provided rich pickings for the fertile imaginations of filmmakers
in Japan. From such early theatrical features as Hisamatsu Seijis
1946 production for Daiei, Paretto naifu no satsujin (The Palette
Knife Murder), TV serials, and even animated features, elements
from Rampos abundant literary oeuvre have graced the screens of
Japan for over 50 years, though only a handful of these screen
adaptations have ever been released outside the country.
One of the best known and certainly one the of most interesting of these is Kurotokage (Black Lizard), a relatively early work
for Shochiku from Fukusaku Kinji, a director who was later to capture the public imagination with his gritty reworking of the
Yakuza genre in the 70s and who only last year was still courting
media controversy with the boldly provocative Battle Royale.
Adapted from Rampos 1929 novel of the same name, Black Lizard
features Akechi Kogoro as its protagonist, a staple of Rampos
investigative fiction in much the same way Sherlock Holmes was
to Conan Doyles. Described as keen-eyed and debonair, Rampos
kimono-clad creation is a master of disguise, whose winning combination of judo, logic and reverse psychology led him to the heart
of literally dozens of his mystery narratives.
In Black Lizard, Akechi (played by Kimura Isao in this
instance) pits his wits against a notorious female international
jewel thief, the eponymous villainess of the piece, who sets out to
steal the priceless gemstone, The Star of Egypt, from under the
nose of its wealthy jeweller. She also has her beady lizards eye on
the jewellers daughter, for Akechis elegant adversary has a mania
for surrounding herself with beautiful objects. To this end she
stuffs the youthful maiden in a trunk and abducts her to her island
hideout with the intention of embalming and adding her to her
collection of living statues. The case gets a little more complicated for Akechi when both he and the Black Lizard find themselves
falling hopelessly in love with each other.
Shamelessly embracing all the gaudy excesses of late-60s popart culture, Fukusakus high-camp adaptation of Black Lizard
(which had already made it to the screen in 1962 under the direction of Inoue Umeji, with Rashomons Kyo Machiko in the title
role) is quite simply mandatory viewing for anyone with more
than a passing interest in Japanese cinema. While the film can be
enjoyed for its high-camp approach to the colorful set pieces, it is
the touching repartee between the two protagonists as they outline
their diametrically opposed philosophies that proves to be the
most memorable.

Cross dressing

Chiba (Chiba Shinichi) in a string of late-70s and early-80s blocbusters directed by Fukusaku. Sanada was but one of the many
actors to play Akechi in the numerous screen incarnations of
Japans Most Famous Detective. Former Toho star Fujita Susumu
took the role in Yamamoto Hiroyukis Kumo otoko (The Spider
Man) for Daiei in 1958, while Amachi Shigeru, whose keen-eyed,
elfin features pushed him to the forefront of a number of prominent horror films for pioneering director Nakagawa Nobuo during
the 50s (including Tokaido Yotsuya kaidan [The Ghost of
Yotsuya] and Jigoku [Hell]), matched Rampos description of
the detective perfectly. He played the role in a series of TV movies
produced by Shochiku studios in the late 70s directed by gun-forhire action director Inoue Umetsugu. This series included Hyochu
no bijo (Beauty in the Ice Chamber) based on the story Kyuketsuki
(The Vampire), and filmed by Hisamatsu Seiji for Daiei Studios
in 1950; Yokushitsu no bijo (Beauty in a Bathroom), taken from
Majutsushi (The Magician); and Shikeidai no bijo (Beauty on the
Gallows) from Akuma no monsho (The Devils Crest).
In Beautiful Fairie: Akechi Kogoro v. The Mysterious Lupin he was
also up against French author Maurice Leblancs gentleman thief,
Arsne Lupin (who first appeared in 1907 in the novel Arsne
Lupin, Gentleman Cambrioleur [The Exploits of Arsne Lupin],
and whose influence lives on strongly in Japan through the animated Lupin series, including Miyazaki Hayaos 1979 feature
Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro). Akechis arch-nemesis Kaijin niju
menso (The Fiend With Twenty Faces) even got his own series,
and when Rampos steadfast detective looked like he was ready for
retirement, he returned in an advisory capacity in a string of childrens books entitled Shonen tantei-dan (The Boys Detective
Gang), about an agency of juvenile amateur detectives who were
the subject of a number of films for Toei during the 50s and a
long-running TV series during the 60s.

Much of this can be attributed to the involvement of Japans foremost writer of the 20th century, Mishima Yukio, from whose 1956
stage play the screenplay was adapted by Narusawa Masashige, a
former screenwriter for Mizoguchi Kenji. Mishima actually turns
up in the film in a brief cameo as one of the Black Lizards preserved dolls. However, the main point of distinction in this
rendition lies in the casting of the drag-star Maruyama Akihiro
(here going under his female alter-ego of Miwa Akihiro) as the
Black Lizard herself. Maruyama (reputedly Mishimas real-life
lover) was a famous cabaret singer from the age of 17 with a career
track-record that leapt with consummate ease from theater, to cinema, to hit records and most recently to providing the voice of
Moro in Hayao Miyazakis animated smash hit, Mononokehime
(Princess Mononoke, 1997). From The Black Lizards very first
appearance, swathed in feather boa and a glitzy black sparkling
number, sashaying across stage of her nightclub lair to perform a
cabaret number against a luscious art-deco backdrop of Aubrey
Beardsley paintings, Maruyamas flamboyant presence dominates
the entire exercise.
Fukasaku was later to say: I remember talking with Mishima
about making this film with Maruyama Akihiro. He was very
happy that this actor was selected to play that role, rather than
great actresses; and even though Maruyama was not a veteran actor
on the stage, Mishima seemed very, very happy and felt closest to
his play through the performance of Maruyama. I too felt very
moved by Maruyamas performance in the stage production of
Black Lizard. I really enjoyed his performance far more than those
of any of the other so-called stars, female stars. The same team
were back together that year for Kurobara no yakata (The Mansion
of the Black Rose), though this particular film had nothing to do
with either Akechi or Rampo.

Love hotel In a Tokyo boarding house in the 1920s

voyeuristic landlord, Goda, roams the rafters, spying on
the bizarre sexual encounters that take place beneath his
roof. Tanaka Noborus 1976 adaptation of Yaneura no sanposha (The Watcher in the Attic) incorporates elements
from several Rampo stories and emerged out of nikkatsu
studios roman porno or high-class erotica.

Despite a successful reception in Japan, for those in the West unfamiliar with the work, Rampo
was met with slack-jawed bewilderment
Rampo the movie

From his first print appearance in the 1925 story D-zaka no

satsujin jiken (The D-Slope Murder Case), Detective Akechi
Kogoro proved an enduring success with the Japanese public. This
story was recently adapted for the screen in 1998 by Jissoji Akio (a
director best known outside of Japan for the 1987 realaction/anime hybrid Tokyo, Teito monogatari [Tokyo: The Last
Megalopolis]) and is a straightforward murder mystery in which
the detective sets out on the trail of uncovering the killer of his
close friends wife. Her body is discovered in a second-hand bookshop run by Akechis friend, with the title of the story referring to
the sloping street on which the shop is situated. The locale was no
doubt inspired by Hirais real-life experience working in a secondhand bookshop that subsequently went bankrupt under his
management.
Taking the role of Akechi in Jissojis film is Hiroyuki Henry
Sanada (Sanada Hiroyuki), recently seen in the first two entries in
The Ring horror series and a frequent co-star of Shin-Ichi Sonny

The Oriental private-eye played such a large role in Rampos fiction that when Shochiku chose to celebrate the centennial
anniversary of the authors birth in 1994 with Rampo (released outside of Japan as The Mystery of Rampo)a date that not only
coincided with the companys own centenary but also with the
birth of motion picture itselfit was inevitable that Rampos fictional alter-ego would play a major role in the proceedings.
Rampo was the talking point movie of 1994 in Japan, much of
this due to the media-courting showmanship of its producer
Okuyama Kazuyoshi and the fact that two versions were released.
When the films director Mayuzumi Rintaro turned in his version,
Okuyama thought the piece a little too prosaic for such a high-profile cinematic event, and subsequently re-shot 70 per cent of it.
Despite the magnanimous gesture of ensuring that both films
received theatrical release in order to let the Japanese public decide
which was the better, it was his second version that made the most

Fukusaku Kinjis Kurotokage (Black Lizard)

Shamelessly embraces the gaudy excesses of late60s pop-art culture, and is mandatory viewing

alter-ego Detective Akechi (Motoki Masahiro). As Rampos tale

begins to take a more solid form, the quest takes Akechi to a
remote mansion where Shizuko is now playing mistress to the
Marquis Ogawara, a twisted old sadist who seeks gratification by
dressing up as his dead mother.
Running the full gamut of cinematic wizardry, from animation, complicated optical effects and innovative CGI technology,
Rampo is undeniably spectacular, though as the above synopsis suggests, it is not the most conventional of films. However, this slick
surface sheen (which also includes archival
footage of Meiji-period Japan and clips taken
from Yugi Susumus 1954 three-part serialization of The Fiend With Twenty Faces) seems
intended as an investigation into the various
layers that exist between reality and art. The
narrative is similarly fragmented, weaving
between historic fact (Okuyama made great
issue of the fact that several of the props used,
including the hat that Takenaka wears
throughout the film actually belonged to the
author), and fictitious conjecture. The film culminates in a completely off-the-wall finale that
echoes Bob Geldofs mental collapse in Pink
Floyd The Wall, dissolving into complete
abstraction just before the end-credits roll as
Rampos escapist fantasies reach their irreversible conclusion in his union with the
pre-Oedipal figure of Shizuko.
Despite a successful reception in Japan, for
those in the West unfamiliar with the work of
the writer, Rampo was understandably met
with slack-jawed bewilderment, and tellingly,
though Okuyama adopted his new role in the
directors chair with great gusto, he has subsequently stuck to production. The film does,
however, serve to highlight the more graphically sado-erotic component inherent in the
authors work, which had reached fever pitch
in the 30s with a string of works that were
dismissed by the critics under the catchall cat egory of ero-guro-nansensu. (Short for erotic grotesque nonsense,
the ero-guro handle has been adopted by the cinematic world to
categorize films such as Fujiwara Keis Organ and those of Komizu
Kazuo, aka Gaira, director of such grim fare as Shojo no harawata
[Guts of a Virgin].)

money. However, as it was released on twice as many screens and

was the only version screened abroad, this is perhaps not too surprising.
Taking Osei tojo (The Appearance of Osei) as its starting
point, a novel of Rampos that had been banned at the of beginning of the Second World War, Rampo combines it with elements
from the authors own life story to weave a colorful blend of fact
and fiction that not only attempts to recreate the very essence of
the writers compulsive prose, but also evoke the cultural climate
under which he worked. The beginning of the
Showa period in 1926 marked an era of growing militarism under Emperor Hirohitos
ultra-nationalist government, with class divisions in Japanese society becoming increasing
polarized and the State actively intervening in
the private lives of its citizens. Rampos writing, which was not held in particularly high
esteem by the literary establishment of the day
was hugely popular with the lower orders, and
thus during the 30s found itself increasingly
falling foul of the government censors who
objected to some of the more graphic extremes
and aberrant moral content found in his work.
Rampo was a man who felt at odds with
the times and departed from it by creating his
own world, Okuyama stated at the time of the
films release. He found more value in things
he could feel or draw in his heart than objects
which could be seen or surrounded him. He
chased illusion and he stepped into the world
of the heart. He made a world of overwhelming reality which does not exist in the real
world. He created an inner utopia.
The suppressed Appearance of Osei, rendered
as an animation in Rampos opening sequence,
chronicles the story of a woman who locks her
ailing husband in an antique chest and leaves
him to die. After being rejected by the censors,
who also refused re-publication of his early
short stories, a disillusioned Rampo, played by
a rather sullen-looking Takenaka Naoto (an actor perhaps best
known for his astonishing turn as the frisky-footed IT-support guy
from Suo Masayukis brilliant ballroom comedy Shall We Dance?),
returns home to burn the manuscript of the banned story.
Later, when Rampos agent draws his attention to a clipping
in a recent newspaper in which a beautiful widow going by the
name of Shizuko (the screen debut of Japanese supermodel Hada
Michiko) is accused of her husbands murder, the details of the case
seem remarkably similar to his unpublished tale. Intrigued by this
uncanny turn of events, Rampo begins his own investigations into
this beautiful but inscrutable suspect, yet soon finds himself at a
dead end with this mysterious muse. Frustrated, he channels his
energies into writing, attempting to transcend the limitations of
real-life detective work in prose under the guise of his handsome

Freak show
A pioneering practitioner of ero-guro-nansensu during the 60s was
Ishii Teruo, the man behind the notorious Joys of Torture series,
an almost unbearably impassive succession of sex-and-sadism spectacles that depicted torture techniques throughout various periods
in Japans history with an almost clinical attention to detail. Ishiis
feature-length work in the horror genre, Kaidan nobori ryu (Blind
Womans Curse), 1970, has often been accused of the same emo-

Pulp Fiction Late 1980s Repackaging of Rampos injyuh-The Beast of Shade (1928), kyuhketsuki- The Vampire (193031), shinri-siken-The Psychological Test (1925), tsuki-to-tebukuro-The
Moon and Glove (1955)

she eventually reciprocates his intense tactile fixation on her body.

The two enter into a strange sado-masochistic relationship that
culminates in each of the models limbs being severed from her
torso. Yes, The Blind Beast really is as outlandish as it sounds, and
must rank as one of the most powerful and darkly disturbing horror films ever conceived.

tional detachment, and his 1968 Kyofuku kikai ningen (Horror of

the Malformed Men) is no exception. Based on the story of the
same name, Ishiis film melds in aspects of the authors
Panoramajima kidan (Panorama Island) to create a tale that echoes
HG Wells 1896 novel The Island Of Dr Moreau, in which a mad
scientist performs cruel experiments on the inhabitants of an isolated island so as to surround himself with a population of freaks
and hunchbacks, thereby diverting attention from his own ugliness. The film has never been widely available on video outside
Japan, though it did receive a theatrical release in the UK.
One of the most fascinatingly freakish of all Rampos adaptations is Moju (The Blind Beast). This outrageous 1969 film was
directed by the criminally underrated Masumura Yasuzo, director
of the lesbian love-triangle melodrama Manji (1964) and Akai
Tenshi (Red Angel, 1966), a wartime tale of a young nurse on the
Manchurian frontline during the Sino-Japanese War. Masumuras
early work and essays on film in the late 50s spurred a young
Oshima Nagisa and his peers at Shochiku Studios to radically
reconfigure the nations traditional cinema, giving birth to the
Japanese New Wave of the 60s in the process.
First serialized in the Asahi Shimbun between 1931 and 1932,
the original story featured Michio, a psychopathic blind sculptor
who, under the guise of an itinerant masseur, roams the land in
search of suitable female body parts to construct the perfect sensual
sculpture. In Masumuras hands the story is stripped down to its
basic atoms. There is only one victim here to form the basis of the
sculptors latest work, a shapely young model called Aki, abducted in the initial scenes. The rest of the action takes place in one
location, the artists cavernous studio in the basement of a secluded house, each wall covered in biomorphic swells representing
parts of the female anatomy-breasts, eyes, lips. The studio is dominated by two recumbent sculptures of male and female nudes.
Masumura depicts this claustrophobic milieu with an edgy,
hallucinogenic intensity that borders on hyperrealism to explore
the cloying, all-encompassing relationship between the artist and
his muse and the obsessive, closed world that the artist inhabits.
Akis initial attempts at escape are hampered by Michios mother,
a character not present in the original story whose addition to the
drama carries distinctly Freudian overtones. Later, as Michio maps
out the curves of his subject, the two engage in a continuous
stream of dialogue, and as Akis fear of her captor turns to respect,

Watching the watcher

Even more overtly erotic is Tanaka Noborus 1976 adaptation of
Yaneura no sanposha (The Watcher in the Attic) for Nikkatsu
Studios. During the 60s the studios had focused primarily on the
youth market, its output predominantly falling under the seishun
eiga (youth movie) or yakuza genres starring such popular matinee idols of the day as Kobayashi Akira and Shishido Jo. When the
companys flagging fortunes brought them close to financial ruin
at the end of the 60s, they decided to take advantage of the more
relaxed censorship environment at the beginning of the next
decade and put all their energies exclusively into a new line of
high-class erotica. The new product line, which they labelled
Roman Porno, featured a bevy of new fresh-faced young starlets
such as Tani Naomi and Miyashita Junko, the star of this particular film. The award-winning Tanaka is recognized as being one of
the most accomplished of Nikkatsus in-house directors and is
probably best known for Jitsuroku Abe Sada (A Woman Called
Abe Sada, 1975), based on the same true-life story of sexual obsession and castration as Oshima Nagisas better known Ai no corrida
(In the Realm of the Senses aka Empire of the Senses), made
the following year.
Set in a 1920s boarding house in Tokyo, the voyeuristic landlord Goda is the Watcher of the films title, roaming the rafters
and spying on the bizarre sexual encounters that take place beneath
his roof between such colorful figures as a girl dressed in animal
hides and an over-sexed Pierrot. Tanakas aesthetic sensibilities
lend a perverse and otherwordly atmosphere to what could have
amounted to little more than a string of titillating set pieces,
though the introduction of a murder plot introduces another
dimension to the narrative. Tanaka ends this hypnotic and beautifully shot film with the destruction of the boarding house by the
deus ex machina of the 1923 Tokyo earthquake, using archival
footage to portray the famous event that occurred in the same year
that The Two-Sen Copper Coin was published.

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kotoh-no-oni-Ogre in the Secluded Isle (1929), panoramatoh-The Eccentric Tale on Panorama Isle (1927), kage otoko- The Shadow-Man (1955), Idainaru Yume-The Great Ambition (194344)

Motoki Masahiro, the former boy-band member who had played

Akechi in Rampo takes the roles of the two opposing twins.
Geminis most distinctive feature is its curious visual style, with
Tsukamoto framing the action with the static long-shot approach
of traditional Japanese cinemas Golden Age of the 50s while drastically exaggerating cosmetic aspects such as hair, make-up, and
costumes to delineate the soberly restrained environs of the
wealthy middle-class doctor with that of the earthy, carnivalesque
atmosphere of the neighboring slums where brother Sutekichi was
raised. The result is idiosyncratic, if not entirely successful, with
the facade arguably bringing a plasticity to the screen that distracts
from the darker aspects of the tale.
Superficial aspects notwithstanding, Gemini at least demonstrates that Rampos writing still maintains a considerable hold on
the imaginations of both film-makers and audiences alike in Japan.
For the best part of the most turbulent century in the nations his-

Tanakas film incorporates elements from a number of

Rampos stories, the most evident being an eccentric coupling
scene lifted from the 1926 short story Ningen isu (The Human
Chair), which features an obsessive young man who fashions a
chair with a hidden compartment just large enough to secrete himself in so as to become closer to the object of his abnormal desire
whenever she sits upon it. This twisted tale was made into feature
in 1997, directed by Mizutani Toshiyuki who later helmed the
teen-horror flick Isola. The Watcher in the Attic was remade in 1994
by D-Slope Murder Case director Jissoji Akio, and the story also featured in a 1986 animated video compendium of his work alongside
A Psychological Test and The Red Chamber.
Most recently, using the short story The Twins as his starting
point, director Tsukamoto Shinyas Soseiji (Gemini, 1999) considerably fleshes out the source material to once again underscore
the enduring influence of Rampos early short stories. Set in 1910,

The dream-logic narratives of the horror and mystery genres touch on something far deeper than
their apparently straightforward intentions might suggest
tory, his fantastical stories have provided an immensely popular
form of escapism and shall no doubt continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Yet both Rampos writing and the films it has inspired maintain a degree of interest that spreads far beyond the confines of
Japans own unique cultural climate. The dream-logic narratives of
the horror and mystery genres, with their preoccupation with the
uncanny and irrational, touch on something far deeper than their
apparently straightforward intentions might suggest. Just as a
young Hirai Taro found his own form of escapism in the works of
his literary heroes from America and Europe, his mutation of the
very same styles and themes of these authors via a more traditionally Japanese aesthetic casts an affecting comment on the
underpinnings of the genre as a whole. Grounded as it is in subconscious and psychosexual fears, by its very nature it is both
humanistic and self-reflexive. If there is any apparent dissonance
between the differing approaches of East and West, it is merely
because we are looking at the same subjects from a different angle.

Dr Daitoku, runs a Tokyo clinic that sits uncomfortably close to a

neighboring plague-ridden slum. Symptomatic of the order of the
day, the wealthy protagonist of the piece places a considerably
higher precedence on treating the wealthier citizens of the area
than his mangy neighbors. Not long after, strange smells begin
exuding from his comfortable abode, the righteous physician
comes face-to-face with his lost twin Sutekichi, cast aside at birth
due to a prominent snake-like scar and raised by the neighboring
shanty dwellers. Daitokus doppelgnger is understandably irked
by his rather unfair share of the birthrights and promptly shoves
the doctor down the dried-up well at the bottom of the garden
before taking up with his waif-like wife Rin, overzealously pitching himself into his conjugal duties with the unknowing spouse
while his brother languishes in the pit.
Best known for his kinetic cyperpunk duet of Tetsuo: The Iron
Man (1989) and Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1993), Tsukamoto brings
a startlingly different approach to his first period piece, a modernist costume horror set during the Meiji Restoration in which

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