By Joe Gibson
Introduction
According to David
Kalat’s film commentary on the Arrow release of The Snake Girl And The Silver
Haired Witch, this film melds together the genre conventions of Japanese horror
throughout the century (from the Classic ghost tales to middle of the century
monster horror), but the most important genre influence comes from manga artist
Kazuo Umezu, who wrote the source material for this film: Reptilia. While Kalat
argues that this is not a children’s film due to the dark subject matter and
frequent scares but instead a slipstream horror that only appears childish
because it stars one and was made by childish director Noriaki Yuasa, I would
argue that books/films such as Coraline prove first that children’s media can
carry dark subject matter and second that subgenre classification is usually
still possible for those works. Because it draws so much from Umezu’s works in
the manga medium, this film corresponds to the tropes of Shojo horror. (And
this extends to Kalat’s reasoning for his classifications since Snake Women are
frequent in Classical Japanese horror but also in Umezu’s shojo horror…).
If you are unaware of
the different types of manga, the simplest way I can explain is that intended
audience often is the name of each genre (Shonen manga is intended for young
boys, seinen for older boys). Shojo manga is manga directed towards young
girls, and Shojo horror would be a subset of that. As Elliot Michel
Weber’s thesis defense from the Florida State University Libraries (https://repository.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu:854133/datastream/PDF/view) argues, Shojo manga
mostly utilizes themes pertaining to the life and development of women, with
the horror reflecting body dysmorphia during puberty and the influences that
mothers have on their children. The Snake Girl And The Silver Haired Witch,
starring two young girls whose rivalry begins from developmental beauty and
ugliness while also contrasting two different types of mother figures, is a
near perfect fit for this. (Coincidentally, Coraline, a portal fantasy story,
also stars a young girl figuring out her place and role in society while
encountering two different types of mother figures, and the difference in end
result is something I would attribute to cultural differences between the
creatives. This is also why I resist the recent pop culture push to
classify any culture's Other World stories under the similarly vague Japanese
term Isekai, since neither shojo nor portal fantasy seemed to cross the sea in
popular discourse.)
Disclaimer
I have an ulterior
motive for discussing this particular fine example of Japanese Shojo horror: it
has the potential to be the missing piece in my ongoing Jungian analysis of
Gamera vs Guiron (Link here: https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2024/04/a-jungian-exploration-of-gamera-vs.html). Indeed, from
what sources analyzing it I could cite when I wrote that previous article, this
seemed to interplay uniquely with the pieces of my argument, but I still could
prove no outright connection between Noriaki Yuasa, Christianity, Jung or
portal fantasy (despite the textual analysis of Gamera vs Guiron that seemed to
imply such connection). Much of this review will be devoted to furthering
that connection. However, this film is so unique (to my Western
sensibilities where a film like Coraline is designated as portal fantasy not
Shojo horror), surprising, etc. that this review will also have to go over the
film on its own merits.
The Film (on its own
merits)
This is a very well-directed
film, to start. Noriaki Yuasa is seen as a lesser director of a lesser series
compared to Ishiro Honda and Godzilla, but the major issues that affected the
directorial quality of Yuasa's first Gamera film were inexperience and creative
differences with Daiei over if the film should be more adult or more
childlike. By the third Gamera film onward, Yuasa and his team crafted a
consistent tone and consistent acting until the budgets ran out. The
Snake Girl and The Silver Haired Witch shows us Yuasa adapting a more serious
subject matter focused on horror, so the acting is less comedic. The
atmosphere needs to be just as meticulously Gothic as it previously was goofy,
so from the opening scene casting Tamami's murder of the house servant in
darkness, this film is noticeably effective in building suspense.
Tamami is, of course,
the titular Snake Girl, mostly masked through dream sequences or obscured by
scenery at the beginning of the film, with some snakelike characteristics.
The film is unclear and
contradictory on a few key details, namely if Tamami is actually a snake woman
outside of the dream sequences, if the silver haired witch is actually magic
and capable of turning invisible and what age relationship Sayuri, the lead,
has with Tamami. The ambiguity is effective because your reading of the
film and its themes will be different depending on what you pay attention
to. Most importantly for right now, Tamami has a facial deformity
directly proportional to the evil in her heart, and some of the most
interesting imagery of this film is the idea of her skin mask being just a very
thin veneer to hide her monstrousness (though the degree of her affliction
depends on the focus of the scene).
Ultimately, the main
point of this story is to contrast lead Sayuri Nanjo, a paragon of good spirit
with the unfair world around her, best exemplified through Tamami, the Snake
Girl, the Silver Haired Witch, unfair housekeeper Ms. Shige and inconsistent
mother Yuko Nanjo. None of this would work if Yachie Matsui could not
adequately sell Sayuri’s good nature as she gains the family she had wanted for
so long being within a Catholic orphanage and then loses it piece by piece
(first, her father is called away for his snake research, and then Sayuri loses
the attentiveness of her mother when Tamami starts her plan, loses the support
of secondary guardian of Ms Shige and even loses her bedroom to Tamami, having
to sleep in the attic where the witch and some animals accost her). Once
Sayuri first sees her room in the Nanjo household, she says, “God, if this
happiness is all a dream, please don’t ever let me wake up!” and from that
point on, the film proceeds as a warped dream, where scenes connect more
through the feeling and tone than strict cause and effect (a clever metatextual
layer to put on a horror film, since that is the point of the direction of the
genre). There are very many dream sequences in this film, distinct for
their swirling imagery and more overt supernatural happenings, but some of these
dream sequences occur during the day in the middle of scenes. Let us put
a pin in what the supernatural ambiguity means for the themes of the film.
Before we proceed, it
may be important to clarify what separates a paragon from a simple one-dimensional
character, so that we all view this movie in the best possible faith
interpretation. One-dimensional characters (for whatever reason two-dimensional
characters are described the same way even though I feel there should be a
gradient between one and three dimensions) are generally flat characters that
do not undergo growth or development. I would submit that if we are
following the name, one-dimensional characters, as they lack complexity, we
should regard as a straight line, acting based only on one or so impulse,
theme, trait, etc. at any given moment. (From this, a two-dimensional
character would actually be a 100 percent improvement, hence my ire at
conflating them.) This is necessary for many tertiary characters that
only exist to fill the world or unsubtly foreshadow a theme, but it is a
challenge to make that work for a more important character. Characters
need not be active to circumvent this; the more personality and context a
character has, the more complex they are. Static characters are one
example of this (where an unchanging character proves the theme to the world
around them the way only that particular can), and paragons are the epitome of
whatever single trait defines them, framed often through conflict with the
world around them. Sayuri’s character works because we see her outlook
challenged constantly and she has to draw on whatever strength she can from
whatever sources she can to not only survive but remain optimistic about
it.
Tatsuya Hayashia is one
such source, an older male from the orphanage appointed to help ease Sayuri’s
transition to living with the Nanjos and attending school. He trusts her,
does everything he can to help her, and gives her a doll that briefly helps
Sayuri conquer her fears about Tamami. When Tamami’s animosity escalates
(and again when The Silver Haired Witch actively tries to kill Sayuri), he
makes a distinct effort to help her and figure out what is happening. It
is through his character’s growth (of accepting the pseudoscience of Tamami’s
inner ugliness causing her condition) that we first understand the movie’s
theme, and Tatsuya is the only consistently dependable character for Sayuri in
this story, raising the stakes when he is separated from her in the climax.
In case you still
disbelieve that this film’s trials are enough to make Sayuri a compelling
character via her resilience, the Silver Haired Witch tries to kill her by
making her fall from a high place twice (stopping short of total defenestration
to be more of a Mufasa in the Lion King situation). Sayuri survives both
attempts, but upon the latter one, the witch beats her hands, drawing a lot of
blood. As I already mentioned, the supernatural is only debatably real in
this film, and it is important to note that much of the horror of the original
source material by Kazuo Umezu was from the villain being a warped maternal
character, so the film’s ultimate twist, that Ms Shige is the Silver Haired
Witch trying to inherit the family’s money in a Scooby Doo-type scheme, works
as a marriage of the realistic horror and the fantastical. The Silver
Haired Witch is the greatest danger within the house: some mysterious grownup
with authority over Tamami and the animals that can turn invisible to spy on
and torment Sayuri. Compare this to Ms Shige: the totally innocuous
housekeeper that can carry out her evil plans unnoticed and, even after
witnessing Tamami order Yuko around to persecute Sayuri, can still justify
mistreating Sayuri. I think the stakes of the Real and Other map well
onto each other in this film, which is a compliment to the film’s storytelling.
Ahead of this Halloween
season, I recommend you watch this movie. Even respecting Noriaki Yuasa
as I do, this film still surprised me with its quality.
Symbolism
From our discussion with
Andi Brooks on Japanese folk horror (link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGGPJlevPXg), we know that the
Buddhist monk as a villain is a common trope, and I find it very interesting
that the Catholics in this story are all good guys in honest action and with
clear sight, while Buddhist ritual masks the secret of The Snake Girl (the
participants involved being either misguided or evil). However, this is
ultimately a film that values different perspectives, since Sayuri is not only
aware of traditional Buddhist rituals (even if she disbelieves early on) but
attributes her mastery of the film’s theme of inner vs outer beauty to Tamami
and not Tatsuya at the end. (This is significant because it is Tatsuya
that spells out said theme in conversation with Tamami near the end, so, it is
possible to attribute the lesson to either individual.)
Hair is usually an
important symbol in Japanese culture (this very movie emphasizes silver hair as
a characteristic of the witch), especially in shojo manga, but I have been
unable to figure out why Sayuri (the sister said to be beautiful) has short
hair rather than long (which is the symbol of status as a woman). That is the
kind of creative choice that must be intentional, but I cannot figure it out.
From there, we have to
get more specific into what symbols come from which creative. What of
this film is due to Kazuo Umezu and what is due to Noriaki Yuasa? (As
Kalat points out, some stuff such as the swirls and eyeball imagery in the
dream sequences is important to both styles.) The source manga for this
film is innovative and celebrated due to the main idea of having a sinister
mother figure at the heart of the horror for the young girl to deal with.
I figured the quickest way to be somewhat educated on the discourse around shojo
horror and Umezu would be Wikipedia, so according to the page on the source
text for the movie, Reptilia and its reception, this was due to benevolent
mothers being a staple of Shojo horror, so the subversion is more interesting
and raises the stakes. It also lines up with Jung’s idea of the Evil
Mother archetype, but Umezu represents this with Snake women (which in Japanese
culture are associated with witches, mask themselves as human and try to turn
others into snake people to build a warped family, while Jung regarded snakes
as representative of the duality of man and the basis for unconscious thought),
which does not match Jung neatly as far as I am aware. (How deep anyone should
read into Jung is up for debate, and we should not expect a writer using one of
Jung’s concepts to demonstrate all of them; I just mean that the Jungian
subtext of Umezu’s works has been read in by critics and so requires more
evidence than the claim itself.)
Another significant
Umezu trope is the eyeball in the ceiling hole, which Tamami uses to spy on
Sayuri in this film and drop snakes on her. Those instances also correspond to
the idea of Sayuri as an unreliable narrator where there is ambiguity as to how
much of the events of the film actually happen. Because the main character
voicing doubts in Sayuri’s stories (Mrs. Shige) turns out to be the villain,
and the rest of the film proceeds as if each supernatural event happened in
some capacity (even if Tamami was not a Snake Girl that violently murdered a
human-sized version of the doll, Tamami did still break Sayuri’s doll), I think
it is fairest to take Sayuri’s side. According to Weber’s thesis, shojo
manga frequently does explore systemic lack of trust and respect in women, so
the doubt cast on Sayuri’s story may just be trying to simulate that, in which case
I assign that feature to Umezu, the trailblazer in shojo manga.
The pamphlet included in
the Arrow release of this film includes an essay by Raffael Coronelli, who
claims Yuasa was very enthusiastic about Japanese folk stories, even as the
reason for his views about animals and humans being the same in capacity for
motivation and thought or for there being divinity in things the West would
label as monstrous. This would bring deeper meaning to the scenes of snakes and
spiders in this movie, since they would not just be props but actual
characters. Based on the film, I think there are more areas Yuasa diverged from
Umezu, since this film downplays the evil mother relationship, and demotes the
Snake Girl to a child shadow of the main character rather than the symbol of
the mother’s evil.
This takes us to the
doubles relationships in the film. There is nothing so outright Jungian
as in Gamera vs Guiron (where the Terans actually work better as the warped
Animas to the main boys than as foils to their parents), but there are a lot of
shadow relationships. Tamami ultimately represents a warning to Sayuri
about what would happen if she prioritized her looks over her heart.
Sayuri goes through similar scenarios and tests as Tamami (namely having to
live in the attic), but her positive qualities show her handling the situations
differently. Similarly, while Mrs. Nanjo is a weak but caring parent, and
Mr. Nanjo is a strong and caring one, Ms. Shige plays the role of the weak but
cruel housekeeper while being the dominant and manipulative Silver Haired
Witch. The introductory pamphlet mentions that Yuko Hamada (the mother in this
film) also plays a domineering mother in Gamera vs Guiron, and, as I have kept
saying, there really is not that much to connect Akio’s mother to the Terans,
while here (especially because of Kazuo Umezu’s input) there is a direct line
of comparison between Yuko Nanjo and Mrs. Shige.
This suggests a different focus in the doubles relationships that exist and also probably proves intentionality in those doubles relationships (since my understanding of Kazuo Umezu’s version of this story is such that it would have condensed Tamami, Mrs. Shige and Mrs. Nanjo into the same false mother character). Separating the Good Mother And the Evil Mother is a coincidental similarity to Coraline, but, more than anything, it indicates that Yuasa, independent of Umezu, has some understanding of double relationships. My initial comparison of this film to Coraline was based on all the incidental similarities (Other Mother symbolism, ambiguous reality, living doll, prominent male friend in the film version), the same way David Kalat’s commentary track brings up the similarities between pure Sayuri and the American slasher Final Girl trope, but those are coincidental similarities because again the relevant cultures as so different and divorced that the comparison here is primarily to help you, the audience member, understand what this movie is similar to not what it is.
The presiding view on
Gamera vs Guiron, as argued by Kalat in his Arrow video film commentary for the
Gamera collection, is a fairy tale (where the proposed punishment from Mr.
Kondo toward Tom manifests as the Terans shaving Akio’s head, but this film and
other fairy tales remain focused on the same protagonists and same antagonists
for the subtext. If Noriaki Yuasa intended Gamera vs Guiron as a fairy
tale, he failed in ways he did not for the movie that directly preceded it in
his filmography). As I argued, in my Jungian analysis of Gamera vs Guiron, the
film fits closer to the beats of Portal Fantasy (condemnation of technology and
prominent imagery of Sweets, specifically candies or pastries) than Grimm’s
fairy tales, but this film The Snake Girl… actually uses the kind of Grimm
allusions people ascribe to the later film.
I was going to go
through the tropes of Grimm fairy tales to compare with this film one by one
but just referencing the film’s plot points will be sufficient to say my piece
on that. Especially during the dream sequences, traditional Grimm fairy
tale imagery is leveraged as part of the horror. First, Sayuri’s doll
takes on a Fairy Godmother role, growing in size and transforming Sayuri’s
pajamas into nice clothes; The Snake Girl invades the dream and murders the
Fairy Goddoll. (Some critics like Kalat attribute this sequence as a reference
to the Nutcracker, but that is not in their better interests; The Nutcracker
and The Mouse King by E.T.A. Hoffman, the original version of that tale, is an
early example of portal fantasy, which would make it possible for Yuasa to be
aware of those tropes when he was making Gamera vs Guiron.) Next, once Sayuri
is forced into sleeping in the attic (becoming a princess locked away in a
tower like Rapunzel), she has a dream where she is menaced by a large snake and
must fight it with a sword (not necessarily a specific allusion I can think of
but the more generalized idea of a fairy tale scenario that lacks any portal
fantasy confounding tropes). And of course, rather than slaying the dragon,
it turns out she has, in the dream, killed Tamami, who she at this point is
sympathetic to, once again subverting the fairy tale imagery (and foreshadowing
Tamami’s later death).
Most importantly,
another notable common trope is the major theme of both this film and the Grimm
tale The Maid Maleen, where someone’s beauty is proportional to the goodness in
their heart (in this case where monstrous ugliness has a pseudoscientific
explanation). It is not perfect adherence to all of The Grimms’ tropes,
but neither is any individual story from their collections. I hope the
existence and distribution of this film disproves the notion of Gamera vs
Guiron being a Grimm fairy tale based only on the presence of violence and
childlike whimsy, because, even if Noriaki Yuasa didn’t put these allusions in
here, following his work on this film, he would know how to make these
allusions and what the common tropes are and look like. Yuasa’s filmography
getting less fairy tale-like over time should be very telling, but I should
again tie this back to the conclusion that The Snake Girl… is a very Grimm tale
(if it is possible to find these same messages in Japanese folklore, I will
encourage this conversation to continue along those lines. I am just presenting
the argument my research supports).
Bringing this back
around to Gamera vs Guiron, Sayuri is actually a quite similar character to
Akio’s sister Tomoko: a young girl that is constantly discredited but
singularly innocent and with an older male friend (in Gamera vs Guiron, the
policeman Kondo). I find that interesting because the benevolent older males in
the Gamera series usually interacted with the male child leads (Kojiro Hongo in
his second and third Gamera films). This is not just a movie Yuasa did on the
side but one that was very important to his storytelling style (also a film he
negotiated to make between Gamera flicks as a palate cleanser), so further
analysis into The Snake Girl And The Silver Haired Witch will be necessary to
understand Noriaki Yuasa more.
Sources
https://www.dabblewriter.com/articles/the-innocent-archetype
https://www.ghoulsmagazine.com/articles/junji-ito-monthly-halloween-and-the-rise-of-shojo-horror
https://www.structural-learning.com/post/carl-jungs-archetypes
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10357823.2017.1370436
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/TheBrothersGrimm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptilia_(manga)
https://carljungdepthpsychologysite.blog/2020/04/02/serpent-youtube/
https://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu:854133/datastream/PDF/view
