Asian Gothic

   

    This topic was the first ever podcast I ever created, and was the reason why I began it. Thus, this topic really is rather dear to my heart. 

   Today, on this blog, I would like to share with you the original script, which unlike the others was handwritten. This won't just be a transcript, but a revisit of the topic, a bit more than a year later. 

  It all started in the summer of 2020, being a bit bored and wanting to find a platform where I could share my passion for literature, I decided to create this podcast. The name, I honestly can't remember whose idea it was, but it played with my English name Ann and the word 'annotations', which I believe to be a good one.

   As an A-level English Literature student, at the time, studying the Gothic, I was reading around the topic. This led me to the Cambridge Companion to the Modern Gothic, in which I found an essay titled 'Asian Gothic' by Katarzyna Ancuta. It was for me a great opportunity not only to further my studies, but also to reflect and reconnect with a culture that I have not had the chance to dive into, ever since I moved abroad. I was particularly excited to revisit some of my favourite stories to read: Asian Horror, their mythology and folklore. 

Asian Gothic

   This term is, in a way, new in the academic sphere - the accessible one that is. Try out the term in the key search engine and you will find very little, and if you do, its usually books that are like £70. This, I believe shows that this is a relatively new field of study, and arguably it is result of the historical focus on the Western world in this field. Indeed, the study itself was a concept that, as we know it today, emerged from the West. Therefore, it was their culture and history that shaped and developed this mode of writing. Although it has extended over to the Atlantic Ocean with the established Southern Gothic, this literary genre has not quite made a home in the Asia. 

   It is not to say that Gothic hasn't reached East Asia - it certainly has. Most visibly in Japan with its notorious street style of Lolita, one could argue that it is a sub-genre of the Gothic. In literature, it is notably present in and been focused on Japan Modernism and India post-colonial experience, in that they are the ones that are currently recognised in so far as the Gothic Studies are concerned. This is the result of, as mentioned above, the Western-centrism in this study, making it hard to localise this genre in Asia, in the same regard as it does in Europe and U.S. Moreover, I think, if there are Asian Gothic texts, they are firstly attributed to post-colonial literature, or are deemed more as 'Horror' rather than Gothic. For instance, like Junji Itou's works are categorised as 'horror', although I believe his work can be equally considered as Gothic based on the fact that the terror evoked in his works are very much psychological. 

Localising Gothic in Asia

   As I have previously stated, it is by Western standards that 'Gothic-ism' is attributed to different literary work, and "Gothic theory [has been] informed exclusively by Western philosophies" [1]. One such determining factor of how Gothic tropes function in narrative is the influence of the Christian teachings. The stronghold of Christianity is the first obstacle: its view on and relationship with the so called supernatural, or preternatural, is quite different from the popular religions and spiritual practices often found in Asia. This leads to the second obstacle: size. Compare to Europe, Asia is much more vast, and hosts a myriad of different ethnicities and tribes. It is linguistically, culturally and historically diverse. There is no one size fits all when it comes to the continent of Asia, even in post-colonial experience. 

  Moreover, the West's cultural relationship with the supernatural has also been influenced by their particular modernisation. As, actually mentioned in Amitav Gosh's 'The Great Derangement', the rise of the novel in the West, alongside scientific notion of evolution and the likes, there was an increase fixation with linear time. Time flows in one direction: and it is exactly because of this notion, that the theme of Regression is so potent in European gothic literature, especially during the Victorian Era or late nineteenth century. On the contrary, there is often more of a cyclical view of time in Asian cultures, a difference I will later on elaborate.

Living with spectres

   It is more prevalent, and this is mainly based on East Asia, the notion of living with the supernatural world. Not in an antagonistic relationship as often portrayed in the West, but a mutual kind. Even through modernisation,  the spirits are not to be disregarded. Ghost narratives easily adapted to the changing society, only they have taken on new forms: it is very much still present in people's day to day life. Although, I must admit, as I am writing this, currently this spiritual landscape is rapidly mutating in a few countries, so this assertion may apply less to them, and again this is nothing new considering the geographical area we are covering. 

   Nevertheless, as a result, the trope of rationality against irrationality, ghost, supernatural do not quite fit and can not be replicated exactly in Asian cultures as it would in the West. Factors that influenced this difference include the teachings of Buddhism (it is to be noted that there are so many sub-sector of Buddhism, just like Christianity, and their exact relationship with the supernatural varies) and the ancestral heritage that permeates still through almost everything in people's life. For instance, it is very natural for families in Vietnam to have an alter at home to commemorate their passed loved ones, and to the minor gods: you are sharing space with the 'Others', you are living together, in a way, in the same home. Thus, spirits can even be seen as protectors, and it is more often believed that spirits are neutral: not all are evil, and not all speak of trauma. 

   In regards to 'dealing' with these creatures, in Asian folklores for instance, which still has its mark in modern literature, it is often depicted as a negotiation. Sometimes, it is also shown that some spirits will eventually leave you alone, but this is decided by them: these spirits are not trapped, not traumatised but fully existing with agency to act on their own accord. For me, it seems to consider Spirits as more ancient than Man: they exist before we do. It is still common to hear that "You may not believe, but never offend the spirits"[2]

Female Ghost

    However, there are two tropes that can be easily identified in Asian Gothic: shapeshifters and the female ghost. Although, the female ghost status in the genre is more like vampires and werewolves in the West: they are arguably the icons of Asian Gothic, particularly the vengeful ones. Therefore, I would like to talk more about this aspect on this blog.

   This archetype of the vengeful female ghost can be found across East Asian literature: from Malay's Pontianak, to the Kuntilanak in Indonesia, to the Ubume in Japan. All of them have the three key characteristic: long black hair, white dress and being very pale, though there are slight variations such as the Pontianak having red eyes. Their backstories too also share similarities, not only amongst them but also with the Western counterpart of female ghost: rape, madness, death from childbirth and while they were alive, the were mere playthings to men. But what differs these tropes in Asia from the West is that these spirits' name are not exactly of an individual but of a whole type of spirit. This can either show that it was such a cultural phenomenon that it required such ghost to the named or it is just because of the cultural habit of naming and categorising spirits in Asia. It is only when, I feel, movies like The Grudge and The Ring came out that these folklore acquire a more individualised backstory. 

  I go in further depth in my second ever podcast: https://anchor.fm/annsannotations/episodes/Female-ghosts-in-Asian-narratives-ecuq37

A few recommended Asian Gothic texts

 I would like to end this blog with a selection of recommended texts (I know there are a lot more, but I've only been covering East Asian, Japanese Gothic)

- Uzumaki by Junji Itou

- Out by Natsuko Kirino

- Parasite by Hideaki Seka

- Ubume no Natsu (manga, mainly because it's really hard to find the English translation of it) by Natsuhiko Kyogoku

- No Man's Land by Duong Thu Huong

By the way, the author has her own website here: http://asiangothic.houseoftoyols.com - check it out!

Footnotes

[1] Hogle, J.E. Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Cambridge University Press, 2002.

[2] Katarina, A. "Asian Gothic". Cambridge Companion to Modern Gothic. Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp.208-233