Paper short abstract:

Building on Anthony Vidler’s theory of the architectural uncanny and social histories of the modern Japanese home, this hybrid video/paper presentation examines the motif of the “haunted house” in Japanese cinema, with a particular focus on the 2017 film Watashitachi no ie (Our House).

Paper long abstract:

Anthony Vidler (1992) writes that the uncanny has always been concerned with “doubling,” often manifesting in stories of an “uncanny other” who is “experienced as a replica of the self” (p. 3). The 2017 film Watashitachi no ie (Our House) imagines this uncanny doubling as a doppelgänger house, depicting a world in which two pairs of women are living parallel lives in the same home. Though the film provides few definite answers, we can infer that both pairs exist in the same time period and in the same universe—they just happen to be living out their existences separately, in slightly different versions of the same living space. As directed by Kiyohara Yui, a student of renowned J-horror filmmaker Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Our House is also an exploration of the space of “home” as inhabited by women at different stages of life. All of these women move through both versions of the house and its domestic routines, their own uncertainties about who they are mirrored in the uncertainty of where one house/universe ends and the other begins.

Building on Vidler’s theory of the architectural uncanny and social histories of the modern Japanese home, this hybrid video/paper presentation examines the motif of the “haunted house” in Japanese cinema, focusing on the world of Our House in particular as a place where the boundaries of domestic space are constantly shifting. Through a videographic analysis of ghostly domestic spaces in Our House and other Japanese films, I hope to reveal the ways in which familiar spaces can quickly turn uncanny, and how even ordinary-seeming homes are “haunted” by shifting borders.