Asian Gothic appears to be pretty much a label in the making. It is all the more difficult to determine as there does not seem to be any consent on what constitutes Asia in the first place. If we define Asia by its geographical boundaries, we are immediately confronted with a melange of cultures virtually impossible to describe in all their complexities, let alone compare. Although the vastness of the continent called home by over 4 billions of inhabitants inevitably lingers at the back of our minds, it seems that, far too often, we tend to forget that Asia indeed stretches through the enormous territory of Russia and ex-Soviet republics, down to the Middle-Eastern Arab countries and then through the Indian subcontinent towards the Far East of China and Japan. And that's a lot of countries, and even more cultures to deal with. Then, there exists also a more convenient and culturally coherent Asia based on the tenets of Eastern religions and philosophies derived from various forms and practices of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism. This, once again, can prove misleading, as it omits a significant Islamic population that has been present in the area for generations and it hardly ever accounts for indigenous Christians, seeing Christianity merely in terms of a Western import. Needless to say, there is yet another Asia, as known from influential critical texts which focus on selected economically attractive regions, post-colonial literary heritage and visual texts from countries with well-established cinematographies.  Such practice successfully narrows the continent down to India, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and an occasional mention of one or two more "visible" South-East Asian countries, depending on circumstances.

The second obstacle Asian Gothic studies have to overcome is the fact that the term “Gothic”, as such, is not native to Asian cultures and it has, therefore, rarely been used for classificatory purposes within the local literary, cinematic or cultural criticism. One notable exception here could be literary texts from the former British colonies and Goth-influenced popular visual culture of Japan striving to introduce the homely category of Goshikku to contemporary Japanese aesthetics. In the remaining cases, the search for Asian Gothic tends to take us into three very broadly delineated directions: an exploration of the written and oral lore connected with the supernatural; a re-examination of the classic literary and cinematic works against the existing critical Gothic paradigm; and a re-categorisation of contemporary popular texts (film, animation, music, fashion, lifestyles etc.) as “Gothic,” leading to the appropriation of the term “Gothic” by various Asian cultures. Bearing in mind the vastness of material to cover, all the three areas are still in great need of research and this page is my personal contribution to the task.

Since the available Asian Gothic research seems scarce to say the least, this site will hopefully play its part in extending and organising the existing resources. I have began constructing an online bibliography for my Asian Gothic project, which can hopefully prove useful to anyone interested in the subject. At the same time, it is a task of gargantuan proportions, especially with regard to the intended filmography (amounting to several hundred items and counting), which means it will take a while before the list is completed. Another major issue is the limited access to the relevant works of Asian literatures here in Thailand. As most of the books required for the project need to be shipped from overseas this part of the bibliography will obviously be growing rather slowly. Still, even if this online listing is destined to become an eternal "work in progress," it's a start.

I am also going to be uploading the transcripts of my interviews with Asian film directors and writers conducted as part of the project. Since all of these interviews appear in Asian Journal of Literature, Culture and Society I can only publish them on the website a year of two after the original publishing date for copyright reasons.

Last but not least, as a great part of my research is concerned with the visual representations of cultures, I intend to create an online gallery site with visual resources (photographs and videos) which can serve as illustration of the Gothic potential of the region. This part of the web development, however, is still in the planning process, as uploading a large quantity of images is a time consuming process.