The difference of the western and eastern horror

There are many differences between the eastern and western cultures in terms of literature and art. The horror genre is definitely no exception. In many Japanese horror stories, this example being A Wild Sheep Chase, they often blend in magical realism and some mystery giving the reader a sense of anticipation and anxiety. In more western horror stories we are often introduced not to a specifically magical realism, but the idea of an afterlife and more often the idea of the undead. Western horror, although thrillers are a sub-genre of horror, do not always give the reader the same anxiety that an eastern horror story would. I personally believe that the reason for this is because you get a sensation of a calm dread in the characters of eastern horror and in most western horror stories the characters are usually always active and alert. This doesn't create the same type of anxiety as in eastern horror since the reader is already at the same energy level the characters in the story are. In eastern horror the reader is expecting something to happen yet they have no telling when the creature will appear or when something horrific will happen. In the story, A Wild Sheep Chase, The main protagonist is chasing mysterious powers and as he follows (for lack of a better word) the powers he starts to encounter bizarre people from his past. Not only this, but he is also seeing other people who have seen the sheep before. Contrasting this with western horror is actually rather difficult in part due to the fact that the author blended in some western elements of literature so there will be more similarities than usual.

Eastern horror also plays on the idea of good and evil. It plays with this idea for a western audience since we in the west have a very distinct idea of what evil is and in eastern horror its not so much evil as it is the nature of things and the forces of nature that drive things to do what they do. Meaning a spirit does not take life because it is evil necessarily, it takes life because it is its nature to. We in the west have a similar thought about the angel of death in that it takes life not for evil but because it must.

Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 17, 2018 at 8:01 AM

    It is a really interesting point, especially with the idea that eastern horror is nature driven. From my knowledge, they sometimes reference mythological beings and typically tell their tales with that, but it's not used the same way as western horror with demons.

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