Between 1982 and 1998, there were relatively few scary Western ghost movies – at least, in films getting a theatrical release. THE CHANGELING, THE SHINING and GHOST STORY did not prompt a cycle of similar movies. Ghost films were still made for mainstream release, but they were mostly either comedies such as KISS ME GOODBYE, HIGH SPIRITS and GHOST DAD (Sidney Poitier 1990), or films with more romantic ghosts, such as ALWAYS, GHOST and TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY.

The situation in Japan was very different. Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction Films (Weisser & Weisser 1997) lists over thirty ghost movies between 1982 and 1996, the vast majority featuring scary ghosts. Nevertheless, despite these contrasting traditions, two ghost melodramas from 1988, one American, one Japanese, show similarities as well as differences.

Bringing Back the Past

Lady in White (Frank LaLoggia, US, 1988) and Ijintachi tono natsu/The Discarnates (Nobuhiko Obayashi, Japan, 1988)

Written as well as directed by LaLoggia, LADY IN WHITE, with its wistful ghost girl, is an aberration amongst the other Western ghost films of the era. By contrast, THE DISCARNATES belongs to a tradition of scary Japanese ghost movies, and Obayashi was a specialist in fantasy and horror. Indeed, his very bizarre first feature, HAUSU/HOUSE (1977), a horror satire in which seven schoolgirls enter a haunted house that proceeds to gobble them up, one by one, has something of a cult reputation. A close adaptation by Shinichi Ichikawa of Taichi Yamada's 1987 novella, Ijintachi tono natsu (translated into English as Strangers, 2003), THE DISCARNATES is more mainstream. It combines two different ghost narratives, one evoking a familiar Japanese story filmed many times – but in a period setting – and the other an original. It thus looks back to the classical Japanese ghost story, but brings it into a contemporary setting, and combines it with a more personal modern ghost story.

Superficially, the two films have little in common. The central character of LADY IN WHITE is nine year-old Frankie Scarlatti (Lukas Haas) and the film is set in the fictitious small Northeast US town of Willowpoint Falls in the early 1960s; the central character of THE DISCARNATES is forty-year-old Hideo Harada (Morio Kazama) and the film is set in modern-day Tokyo.