Week 3: Asian Horror

   Reading Kwaidan introduced me to the Asian horror genre, that I was originally unfamiliar with, besides a very few films I might have seen over my lifespan. Asian literature is much more new to me, especially the structure of their culture and take on morality, whereas Western culture is almost on a completely different spectrum. Rather than just viewing good and evil as black and white, their idea of morality covers the grey. 

   In the one of the short stories found in Kwaidan, Jikininki, a priest named Muso was travelling alone in the mountains and lost his way. Along his path he comes across a hermitage where an aged priest lives. When Muso begged for lodging, the priest refused him, but redirected him to a nearby village where he may obtain food and lodging. At the village, he encounters a funeral and decides to perform the service for this death to express his gratitude for hosts' generous hospitality. Overnight, as he performs the service, he encounters a flesh eating monster that consumes the deceased body. After this event, Muso learns from his host that the priest he encountered earlier does not actually exist. He then returned o the hermitage and found the priest once more and discovers that he is actually a jikininki -- an eater of human flesh. Due to his greed and selfishness during his life as a priest he was reborn this way and cursed to feed off all the deceased of that district. He then seeks Muso's pity to pray for him and release him from this state, which Muso does.

   This short story is a good example to demonstrate the difference between Asian horror and Western horror. Here, the jikininki is a pitiful monster that isn't truly evil yet also not truly good. He only feasts upon the deceased and when Muso first asked for shelter, rather than killing (or eating) him, he kindly redirects him to where he may find lodging and food. He even begs for Muso to free him from his state, his only sin is that he was greedy and selfish. In the end, it is suggested that he finds peace thanks to Muso's services. In a more Western take, the jikininki would have leaned much more towards evil on the morality scale and appear less pitiful and more grotesque, especially since our sense of morality is highly influenced by Christianity, which is more strict in those rules.