Rebirth of the Oriental Matriarchy: Female Zombie Hunters Who Rule

"A woman may be reborn as a male in the next life." -Kishitigarbha Vow Sutra

Things are not what they seem. Demons in Asian are not what we think. I grew up in Korea and Japan.

Many are aliens from another planet. Japanese men are told to love their family and to love their jobs, and work overtime, as they get drunk nightly after work, sleep but a few hours and return. They are brainwashed to be slaves to vampires who rule us as our leaders and our CEOs. That is why Japanese women leave Japan and marry foreigners.

Actually, horror is not fiction, we live in the Gothic hell called capitalism. We have sold our souls, we are zombies, vampires and demons who suck the blood out of  each other. We are hungry ghosts addicted to our ego. In Asia, Hell is here on Earth.

In several Japanese zombie films, women become the main heroines or villains. Onechanbara is a game about a sexy zombie hunter, who wears a bikini and a cowboy hat. She is obsessed with killing the zombie hordes that populate the Japanese apocalyptic nightmare.

"Stacy: Attack of the Schoolgirk Zombies" is another interesting zombie film where the girls become zombies because of puberty while it becomes the filial duty of the family to kill these femme fetale characters.

Feminine power or lack of power is examined in these films that represent the rebirth of the matriarchy, which was once a powerful entity in Asian history.

Ang Lee's "Wo hu cang long" (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2000) remains the greatest foreign box office hit of all time.

Some of my students in my kung fu films class commented that they liked how the women were the best fighters in the film and how it promoted feminist ideas, which they think is rare for Asian kung fu films. What they didn't realize is that Asian lore has quite a few women warriors.

Indeed, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" was not so big a hit in Asia (besides Taiwan) because it seemed to be a story that audiences were all too familiar with.

In the final scene, Jen Yu (played by Zhang Ziyi) jumps off a cliff and flies to her death because of her mistakes.

Those daring, dying, flying women are a part of the powerful cult of the Asian matriarchy that needs some examination because we missed something whenever we allowed men to rule with absolute power.

Women as warriors and spiritual beings demand respect. Though Jen Yu sacrifices her life for the death she inadvertently caused of her teacher, Master Li Mu Bai (played by Chow Yun-Fat), karmic reactions will also occur for her death.

Men often feared the suicide of women for its signification often had tragic consequences in their own lives. They fear the ghosts and demons of the night who return with a voice that must be heard.

Revenge is a powerful weapon that causes nightmares throughout the psyche of Asian men who did not respect the women they oppressed.

Some of my students tend to think of Asia as a world dominated by the cult of patriarchy where men rule of the spiritual world. Indeed, one student felt American women were too selfish and aggressive while Asian women are submissive and obedient.

Unfortunately, he never took my Asian American literature class that deconstructs such lies. However, stereotypes will come back to haunt them.

Men did not always think they were in control in Asia. Thus, such was not always the case. Indeed, there remains strong evidence of a matriarchy that once ruled and of its recurring appearance in Asian history.

Emperor Hirohito, denounced his title of Arahitogami, the human kami or god, descendent of Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess.

Thus, the spiritual matriarch of Japan that created the physical patriarch seemed to come to an end. It did not. Women have and continue to have a power over men which Asian men do acknowledge.

According to legend, one of the first women to rule Japan was a woman warrior. During the fourth century AD after the death of her husband Emperor Chuia, Jingu, a shamaness-priestess, became basically the ruler of the kingdom.

As Empress, the fifteenth ruler of Japan, she even invades Korea to demonstrate her power. She was a fierce warrior. Her son would become the Emperor Ojin. According to Michikio Y. Aoiki, that legend might have been based on a real shamaness ruler Himiko who ruled in the second century (Jay 225). Furthermore, Scholar Patricia E. Tsurumi researched and discovered that "Half of the Japanese rulers from 590 to 770 were women. . . " (Jay 225).

Scholar Yuki Miyamoto explains that The Tale of Genji (written by a woman, Murasaki Shikibu in the eleventh century) has stories of women, though once silenced by death, who are allowed to voice their stories.

Shiryo are the "spirits of the dead" who need exorcists, buddhist monks or those who understand onmyoji (the way of yin-yang).

The dead can return to haunt the living. Men often feared the suicide of women for its signification often had tragic consequences in their own lives.

They fear the ghosts and demons of the night who return with a voice that must be heard, for revenge is a powerful weapon that causes nightmares throughout the psyche of Asian men who did not respect the women they oppressed.

Though speaking of Japanese exorcism, "Spirit possession thus functioned as a channel by which those who did not otherwise have the means to be heard - often women - could find a voice " (Miyamoto 142–3).

Furthermore, Miyamoto points out that in the West if anyone could talk to the dead, they became the dead as witches were often burned to death (143).

Famous cinematic Japanese ghosts, such as Sadako from Ringu (Hideo Nakata 1998), are to be feared. Sadako, a vengeful ghost, a gaki (hungry ghost) or shiryo, finds her voice by haunting those who watch a video tape.

Sources:

Miyamoto, Satoshi. "Exorcism and the Spirits of the Dead."

“Imagining matriarchy: ‘kingdoms of women’ in Tang China” by Jennifer W. Jay