Cure (1997) was Kiyoshi Kurosawa's masterpiece, a powerful horror film that came at a time when Japan was experiencing a resurgent interest in horror films along with most of Asia (Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong). The revival is mostly accredited to the recent success of Ring (from Far East Film).

In thinking about Kurosawa, one wonders how does one find the time to film 5 films a year -- from commercial films to Eurospace and TV -- and to teach?" asked Marco Muller, the director of the Locarno Film Festival, during a press conference.

"It is perhaps surprising to you," responded Kurosawa," but for me it's totally spontaneous and natural. I take projects as they come. As soon as a producer likes me and I have a budget, I start filming.

It's a B Series spirit that would make Roger Corman proud.

RG: Ko-rei was produced for TV. Did producers ask you to make a movie just like Ring?

KK: Ko-rei essentially came to be out of the success of Ring, which did quite well in Japan and other Asian countries. Thus, as producers so often do, when they see one success, they immediately try to follow it with another.

RG : Did it make you nervous to follow someone else's style when normally your films are so personal?

KK: It didn't bother me at all to make another Ring. It was very reasonable to make another one, after all, cinema is something personal, but it's also an industry. Thus, with a commercial mindset, it made a lot of sense to make this films and it didn't bother me at all. But you know the director of Ring, Hideo Nakata, and the screenwriter Hiroshi Takahashi, are some of my best friends.

Takahashi was actually my roommate at the University of Rikkyo, and even then, as college students, we were planning to do something like Ring. I even made a short that was quite similar to Ring. But in the end Hideo Nakata inherited it. And had a lot of success. I am very happy for my friends, but I do feel some regret since I always wanted to make the film.

RG: It is because of your film Cure that we have seen a resurgence of fantasy films in Japan.

KK: Thank you for such praise! Cure worked really well with the press, but less so with the public. Ring was an enormous commercial success, so it's often said that Ring revived the horror genre in Japan. I can tell you a few stories about the filming of Ring You must remember that there was an evil video film in Ring. During Hideo Nakata's filming, he remembered that there was the same thing in Cure, and he came to see me and he asked me how to show these images efficiently? I thus gave him advice on this point.

RG: And what was your advice?

KK: First of all, the images have to be very old, like old family photos. The ghost of Sadako took on an ordinary appearance, but because of something abnormal in his gestures, I don't think of the images as scary. To be truly frightening they have to be natural, like in documentaries.

RG: In Ko-rei ghosts are thus treated as reality; we don't imagine them literally coming out of the TV, for example, as in Ring.

KK: The idea of TV is not very original. Hiroshi Takahashi and I already developed this in another screenplay, and we've also seen this done in Videodrome from David Cronenberg. It's not very scary. I can tell you another story about Ring. I read Hiroshi Takahashi's first screenplay, and in that version, the hero asked the following question: "Does Hell exist?" In the second version, Takahasi eliminated this phrase, but I've reprised it in Ko-rei with his permission.

RG: How did you go about filming scenes to make them scary?

KK: My goal is not to scare the audience. I wrote many things that do not happen in reality but perhaps could happen. Fear can follow, but it has to be a logical result. For example, in the scenes of Ko-Rei where the characters see a ghost, I didn't say to the actors "Try to seem scared." I said "the ghost is perhaps a god, it symbolizes a general unknown and not fear." I wanted them to react as though they were facing the unknown.

RG: For Ko-rei, you worked once again with actor Koji Yakusho. Is this partnership based on long conversations or an unstated mutual understanding?

KK: Generally, I am a director who does not do much directing -- but I do even less with Koji, because he knows very well what he should do. I give him information on the role and the situation and he plays quite naturally based on what I tell him.

RG: In Cure and Ko-Rei you dwell on the dysfunction between couples, and you suggest this is related to psychological problems, usually linked to the female characters.

KK: I'm very interested in the positions of men and women in Japanese society, especially concerning work and family. Men tend to be fortunate in the working world, while women are generally more bonded with their families. But things are changing and many women are reluctant to adopt these traditions and wind up alone and neglected. It is with these troubles in mind that I developed both Cure and Ko-Rei.

Robin Gatto