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Infections, Transmissions, Cultures:
The AIDS Scandals of 1990s Japan and the
Genesis of “J-Horror”
Brian Bergstrom
Summer Institute 2006
Infections Then & Now: Infectious Diseases
Around the World
June 29, 2006
Infection （感染）
2004
Ochiai Masayuki
-- First in “J-Horror”
Imprint
-- Made in Conjunction
with Lion‘s Gate
-- Released in Japan
-- Produced with an Eye
Toward Marketability in
America
Infection（感染) 2004
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H.264 decompressor
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Infection（感染) 2004
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H.264 decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
A Genealogy of “J-Horror”
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Parasite Eve （パラサイト・イブ）Ochiai Masayuki, 1997
Ring（リング）Nakata Hideo, 1998
Rasen （らせん）Iida Joji, 1998
Ju-on / The Grudge （呪怨）Suzuki Takashi, 2000
Pulse （回路）Kurosawa Kiyoshi, 2001
Dark Water （仄暗い水の底から）Nakata Hideo, 2002
One Missed Call （着信アリ）Miike Takashi, 2003
Infection （感染）Ochiai Masayuki, 2004
Premonition （予言）Tsuruta Norio, 2004
(movies listed in yellow have been remade in America)
The HIV-Tainted Blood Product
of the mid-1990s
Scandals
• Part of a larger phenomenon of uncovered government
corruption touched off by changes in party leadership
• Revolved around the distribution of unheated blood plasma to
hemophiliacs during the early to mid 1980s that resulted in the
infection of almost half of the hemophiliac population in Japan
• Starting in 1995, lawsuits brought against the government and
pharmaceutical companies by hemophiliacs became prominent
in the public sphere
• In 1996, monetary compensation and formal apologies were
compelled from the defendants, and in 1997, three defendants
linked to both the government and the pharmaceutical
companies involved pled guilty to professional negligence and
were sentenced to jail terms in 2000
Distinctive Features of HIV/AIDS in the Japanese
Public Sphere
• The Role of Foreigners
• “High Risk” Groups
• Identity Politics:
• Hemophiliacs with HIV
• Hansen‘s Disease Sufferers
• Gay Movement
Reading Disease
• Metaphor
• Susan Sontag, AIDS and Its Metaphors
• The Politics of Reading “Against Interpretation”
• Anagram
• Ferdinand de Saussure
• “The anagram permits us to see how another outside
text, a hidden quote, can both organize and modify the
order of elements in a given text” -- Mikhail Iampolski,
The Memory of Tiresias: Intertextuality and Film
Anagramming Fear: The Patterns of J-Horror
• Infection
• The Body as Locus of Fear
• Haunting as Invasion
• Transmission
• Technologies and Networks
• Trauma as Origin
• Culture
• Innocence and Culpability
• Agency
• The End of the World
Parasite Eve （パラサイト・イブ）
1997
Ochiai Masayuki
-- Mitochondria as Foreign Agent
-- Corruption of Science
-- Violation of Agency
Parasite Eve（パラサイト・イブ ）1994
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One Missed Call （着信アリ）
2003
Miike Takashi
-- Technological Transmission
-- Sociality and Vulnerability
-- Violation of Agency
-- Violation of Bodily Integrity
One Missed Call （着信アリ）2003
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Ring（リング）
1998
Nakata Hideo
-- Technological
Transmission
-- Haunting as Viral
Infection
-- The End of the World
The Ring / Ringu （リング）1998
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Conclusions
• Metaphor and Meaning
• Ethics and Fear I: Reflection
• The Face of HIV
• Transnational Transmissions
• Remake / Reproduction
• International Systems / Foreign Agents
• Apocalypse and Pleasure
• The Viral Sublime
• The Extra/ordinary
• Ethics and Fear II: Projection
Apocalypse and Pleasure:
The End of One Missed Call （着信アリ）
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Selected Bibliography
Feldman, Eric A. “Blood Justice: Courts, Conflict, and
Compensation in Japan, France and the United States.” Law &
Society Review (34: 3, 2000) 651-701.
Iampolski, Mikhail. The Memory of Tiresias: Intertextuality and Film.
Harsha Ram, trans. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1998.
Japan Times. “Abe Pleads Not Guilty” Mar. 17, 1997.
Japan Times. “AIDS Expert Took Funds from Drug Companies.”
Mar. 11, 1996
Japan Times. “Green Cross Executives Guilty.” Mar. 1, 2000.
Japan Times. “Health Minister Apologizes to HIV Hemophiliacs.”
Oct. 23, 1995.
Rucka, Nicholas. “The Death of J-Horror?” Dec 2, 2005.
http://www.midnighteye.com/features/death-of-j-horror.shtml.
Sena, Hideaki. Parasite Eve. Tyrone Grillo, trans. New York:
Vertical, 2005
Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors.
New York: Picador, 2001
Suzuki, Koji. Ring. Glynne Walley, trans. New York: Vertical, 2003.