Playing the Japanese Way
The Battle Royale Convention in Japanese Cinema
Abstract
This article aims to explore how literary elements permeate other forms of cultural expression. It is based on an analysis of films that draw on the model presented in the novel Battle Royale by Japanese writer Koushun Takami. Its central motif is a “deadly game” in which only one participant survives. In addition to attempting to identify shared features between the literary prototype and the films Signal 100 and As the Gods Will, this article also references Johan Huizinga’s concept of homo ludens, which highlights the key role of play as a cultural element. Following his line of thought, we must ask whether the threat of death—which once served to morally instruct people through the evocation of horror and suffering— has, in contemporary culture, become a source of hedonistic entertainment and whether that which is now reconfigured into popular play can still rightly be called “play.”
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