Paper short abstract:

I will analyze the ways in which pain and blood participate in gay erotic self-representation in post-war Japan. I will look back into Yukio Mishima's work touching eroticism as well as how violence is depicted in more recent gay erotic manga.

Paper long abstract:

When thinking of erotic works, there are a number of different ways of representing what is sexually arousing: the revelation of a scantily clad body, a full-frontal nude, or the depiction of sex as it is happening; but one might not immediately associate pain to eroticism. Of course, "pain" as associated with sexual practices is often mentioned in the context of marginal practices but remains still at a distance from typical conceptions of what makes a publication arousing.

In the case of post-war gay publications in Japan, it seems however that the aesthetics of pain and physical violence come to the forefront, and present themselves not simply as a marginal occasion, but rather as part of what makes the male body truly special and alluring. Pain, then, participates in the masculine beauty that is promoted in gay milieus in the second half of the 20th century.

I wish to focus on short extracts from different sources, from Yukio Mishima's graphic descriptions of sexual fantasies, to drawings published in early gay magazines, up to the point of more recent bara manga. Those references may seem disconnected, but my point is precisely to gather them as part of a tradition of depicting the male body in violence, passed on from one to the other throughout the years. I also want to examine the peculiar choice of drawing as a preferred medium for erotica: is it not part of a broader statement on the kinds of bodies that become alluring? Or rather, does it not reveal a specific understanding of visuality when it comes to sexual contemplation?

Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on a diverse group of Japanese experimental filmmakers who directed their attention to a thorough deconstruction and reexamination of the established cinematic practices in the 70s, abandoning - to a large extent - the ideological imperatives of the previous decade.

Paper long abstract:

After a period of political fervor that sparked a climate of collaborative, "romantic anarchism" in the 60s, experimental film authors of the following decade increasingly gravitated towards a more intimate cinematic expression and a conceptual reexamination of the basic principles of film as media - a sort of a "rediscovery" of the inherent mechanisms of cinema. Although partially resulting from the collapse of the New Left and the disenchantment with the revolutionary potential of art, this paradigm shift did not necessarily signify - as it's is often simplistically interpreted - a complete rejection of politics or resignation. It implied, above all, an abandonment of journalistic appropriation of daily politics in their art and a closer exploration of the complex relationship between the author/artwork/screen/observer - thus opening new possibilities for a critical reexamination of the relationship between an individual and the society as a whole. Leaving aside the broadly discussed avant-garde greats such as Matsumoto Toshio and Iimura Takahiko, this paper focuses on the cinematic practice of a group of experimental authors that received less attention outside of Japan - such as Okuyama Jun'ichi, Kota Isao, Nakai Tsuneo, Kawanaka Nobuhiro, Shuzo Seo and Usui Ranmaru. In some instances engaged primarily with the process of re-photographing and frame-by-frame animation - and in others practicing an almost schismatic deviation from the established approaches towards moving image making, their vitalism was reflected in an unimpeded creation of patterns that alternated between technical innovation and a return to primal immediacy, to an original state of beginning or "new" naming of "old" experiences. And for some authors, the disappointment with the "science of filmmaking" resulted in their shift from extreme positivism and a complete surrender to the possibilities of scientific and technical progress, towards the unrestrained irrationalism that projects all hope for advancement of art into experiment. And that means: a quest for the new - not just as one of the basic attributes of their rhetoric - but as an ultimate dream of integration of art and life.

Paper short abstract:

How is it possible for an unmoving cartoon image to convincingly convey the affects of fear, shock, surprise and terror that are essential to the horror genre? This paper explores the extent to which theories of cinematic horror are translatable to the caricatured worlds of Japanese manga.

Paper long abstract:

Theories of how the horror film effectively works to frighten audiences frequently hinge upon what cognitive film theorist Carl Plantinga has termed the 'direct affect' of the cinematic image (2009). In the case of the horror genre, direct affect concerns the ability to startle viewers with immediate, photorealistic moving imagery of monstrous and dangerous phenomena. As studies by Adam Kern (2006) and others have shown, the comic book and manga formats are largely translations of cinematic grammar to the page. This suggests that theories of how cinema operates on an affective level should be largely compatible with the medium of manga. However, horror manga faces two immense hurdles according to the 'direct affect' theory of cinema. The lack of the image's ability to move within time, and its caricatured, 'cartoonish' visual style, means that manga should, in fact, be incapable of eliciting a sense of genuine fear from its audience. And yet horror manga by authors such as Umezu Kazuo, Hino Hideshi, and Itō Junji enjoy over half-a-century's worth of popularity and praise from fans of horror.

How do these unmoving cartoon images convincingly convey the affects of fear, shock, surprise and terror that are essential to the genre? Close readings of passages from the works of Umezu, Hino, and Itō will demonstrate how Japanese horror manga overcomes the 'direct affect' problem via character design, an emphasis on the grotesque, and a strategic layout of panels and pages to maximize dread and suspense. Horror manga thereby closes the gap of the uncanny valley while simultaneously compensating for the still image's inability to move within time, translating the terror inherent in the direct affect of horror film to the drawn page. Thus will I demonstrate that the formal structures and apparatuses of the film medium and the manga medium are even more closely related than has been previously considered.