This article focuses on contemporary Japanese horror cinema seen as a case in point representing the influence of (South) East Asian horror on contemporary horror genre. While it might be argued that the success of Japanese horror films on European and American markets can be at least partially attributed to Western viewers’ ignorance of Japanese customs and traditions, which forces the films to remain trapped within the realm of the cultural Other and as such renders them more mysterious and uncanny, this factor of course does not apply to the Japanese audience. And yet we have reasons to presume that they also find the films in question unnerving. So what scares the Japanese then? And to what extent can the fear induced by Japanese horror films be seen as culturally-bound? Drawing on the analysis of a number of contemporary Japanese horror productions this article suggests that behind practically all the Japanese horror plots lies culturally-fostered fear of Chaos, and indeed, many of the significant Japanese horror figures/images can be brought down to representations of Chaos.
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