By Kaleigh Fleming

There is often a push for more women-centric films on social media platforms these days. Films that pass the Bechdel test, films where women are the central characters, and especially films where women aren’t on display simply for the pleasure of a heterosexual, cisgendered male audience.

We strive for female characters who are strong in the sense of character depth, rather than physical strength. In other words, she should have presence. She should be someone with a personality, someone whose presence goes beyond the female sidekick, the male gaze, and the stereotypical kickass-woman type. Unfortunately, it is this ‘kickass-woman’ who many filmmakers seem to think ticks the box of having a female character who will ‘appease the feminists’, Western cinema makes a couple efforts to include one or two films featuring female protagonists (amongst hundreds of films per year with the usual male protagonists), and then they sit back expecting a pat on the back. The fact of the matter, however, is that there has always been women-centric cinema, it just doesn’t really exist in Hollywood. Instead, it exists — thrives even — in Asian horror. Most specifically, Japanese and South Korean films.

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By Michael Haverty

As someone who has come from a very rural part of the US where plant-life can be found no matter how deep into a city one goes, the lack of grass and yards in Japan was a cause of some minor culture shock. Dirt-only parks and the playgrounds at my schools only added to this. It is almost as if Japanese urban planning is a thorough rejection of nature, even in small towns like Iyo.

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By Michael Haverty

If you spend enough time in Japan, you will surely begin to notice the stone bead bracelets that many people seem to own or that are sold in a variety of shops, from second-hand stores to matsuri stalls. There is even a store called M’s Power Stone Shop (パワーストーン専門店エムズ) in the Ōkaidō (大街道) shopping district of Matsuyama. What significance do these little beads hold that they have become so popular? Is it just fashion? If you look more closely, you will see that these bracelets are a sign of a larger spiritual movement bubbling under the surface of Japan.

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