Japanese Mythology in Film by Yoshiko Okuyama: An Overview

 Japan's emergence as a global pop cultural behemoth is all thanks to the sudden popularity of Japanese cinema after the Second World War, led by phenomena like Kurosawa and Godzilla. In a few decades, terms like kaiju, ninja, harakiri, and samurai became familiar all around the world. The next big things coming out of Japan were manga and anime. The interest in Japanese popular arts laid the way for an interest in Japanese history and mythology.

Japan was, for most of its history, a closed country, and even today, it shies away from opening its doors, both literally and figuratively, to outsiders. The main imports to Japan from an outside country were Taoism and Buddhism, which permeated the indigenous religious beliefs, rituals, and mythology centuries ago. So we find a collection of mythological elements that are very varied and different from other parts of the world, though with direct and pronounced Taoist and Buddhist influence.

In her book Japanese Mythology in Film, Japanese professor Yoshiko Okuyama attempts to connect popular Japanese cinema with its mythology. She uses a semiotics approach, identifying the signs and symbols present in movies and interpreting them. Eight movies that are national and international hits are analysed in this book, and different aspects of these movies that mirror Japanese mythology are described.

The book is divided into two parts. In the first part, the writer provides a basic knowledge of semiotics. It describes how semiotics is an efficient, though not the only, tool for analysing art works like books, movies, or plays. Semiotics helps us identify the signs in movies and determine how symbolic meanings are coded into them and transmitted to the audience. We are made aware of the concept of intertextuality, which is an important part of the semiotic analysis of a text. Other important concepts with which the author familiarises us are tropes and motifs and how a shot, a piece of conversation, or a recurring background score can have coded associations with mythology.

Part two of the book is devoted to the analysis of eight popular Japanese movies. The author determines where, in Japanese history and mythology, each of them belongs. For example, the movie Onmyoji is set in the tenth-century Heian era and contains a wealth of cultural props belonging to that time. The movie, which deals with occultism, is loaded with imagery and motifs from Taoist mythology. The author explains the historic context of the movie and provides an intertextual reading of it based on Taoist mythology.

Likewise, the Shintoist aspect of Onmyoji 2, folklore motifs in Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, Buddhist motifs in Dororo and Departures, and other mythical symbolism present in Mushi~shi are explained in detail. The eighth movie that is analysed in the book is Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. Along with Japanese obsession with dolls and the mythical belief that even inanimate objects develop consciousness, the modern mythology of cyborgs overlaps in this movie to provide a deeply philosophic message that makes the audience ponder about the future of humanity.

The author writes about the loss of cultural and mythological subtexts when a movie is watched by international audiences. Only the themes with global relevance and significance are recognised by even the greatest movie critics who are unfamiliar with the original culture and mythology. So much is lost in translation while subtitling or re-dubbing that what we get is only the gist of the wealth of vocal subtexts. At the same time, some of the motifs, themes, and intertextuality get lost even for the natives due to over-familiarity. Thus, the semiotic reading of such popular and internationally accessible movies will open new windows to viewers who are interested in a deeper subtextual and intertextual exploration of cultural and mythological motifs.