projectionist. Not Ama-Terasu or Susano-no-Mikoto or Inari. Even if they would bother with something as ephemeral and trivial as cinema, the woman in the films bears none of their regalia. Perhaps Ama-no-Uzume—you say she often appears near flowers and trees? Interesting, interesting. I think it’s quite clear the figure is Hora-Sul, an emissary of the ninth sphere with whom I have long been in contact and special intimacy, mistress of amethyst and harbinger of the end of technofascist culture.
She is not Hora-Sul.
The trouble with the Kami is that she is not a repeatable phenomenon. You would think it would be no trouble to prove her being: look, here in the battle scene of The Master Sword Araki Mataemon , she is dying. And in the human chest the heart feels her wound. But the Kami is not an extra in a market scene that can be reliably pointed out to anyone with a quick eye for pattern recognition. One moment she is laughing with the traveling troupe of The Dancing Girl of Izu , the next she is dressed as a man in I Have Sinned, Sakubei . She is never in two films at once. You must chase her out of one frame into another, out of a moonlit peach grove and onto the decks of a naval vessel. You must know that face—as if you could ever forget it, as if it has not already replaced your mother’s face, your childhood love’s, even your own, in the cinema of your memory. You must search after that face, hunt for it, like a great flickering whale moving beneath the surface of the past.
She does not visit DVDs or VHS tapes. An Okinawa tailor claimed to have seen her once on a laser disc of Why Is Seawater Salty? but he is not a serious person. No, it is only film that the Kami enjoys, the way a lion enjoys blood and flesh, and not cabbages and china plates. Nor does she traffic with Western movies, nor even Korean or Chinese, but moves like a swift needle only through the ribbons of Japanese cinema. She leaves the film intact when she goes, though it is possible, for a frame or two after she has escaped like steam, to see a glimmer of phosphorus, fitful light from some distant and unknown source.
The longest sequence of her presence anyone has witnessed was in the 1924 classic Moon Silver Jirokichi . The witness was a Kyoto fabric dyer by the name of . His wife had recently committed suicide, leaving their young daughter in his care. He loaded up a library-loan print of Moon Silver Jirokichi into his home projector on no particular evening, his child half asleep next to him. The Kami entered the famous battle scene and the nape of her neck glowed like the tip of a brand. She dragged behind her the long black expanse of her kimono, so vast it covered the forest set, filling up the frame, its silk draping over the corpses of fallen warriors, shrouding their faces in grace and forgiveness, burying them in gentle, total darkness. Director Goto Taizan’s quick, innovative camera work froze, as though struck dumbfounded by what was happening: The Kami threads her way through the battle; the actors do not look at her, their swords clanging together without sound. She pulls apart two men—neither the protagonist, just two men at arms striving. As though they are coming out of a dream, the actors in their costumes and black eye makeup stare at her, their mouths open. Her kimono sweeps over bodies like a tide, rippling and surging. She puts her hands to their cheeks and her face is full of troubled sorrow. She kisses their foreheads. They begin to weep. She folds her sleeves around them and they vanish from the film. She stares out into the camera, into the fabric dyer’s eyes, full of pity and infinite regret, as the screen slowly fills with black silk, the endless, depthless creases of her gown closing around her face until that too disappears and the piano soundtrack goes silent.
You will have heard that she can alter a film permanently—that once, Detective Umon’s Diary, Story No. 6 had a swordfight between
She is not Hora-Sul.
The trouble with the Kami is that she is not a repeatable phenomenon. You would think it would be no trouble to prove her being: look, here in the battle scene of The Master Sword Araki Mataemon , she is dying. And in the human chest the heart feels her wound. But the Kami is not an extra in a market scene that can be reliably pointed out to anyone with a quick eye for pattern recognition. One moment she is laughing with the traveling troupe of The Dancing Girl of Izu , the next she is dressed as a man in I Have Sinned, Sakubei . She is never in two films at once. You must chase her out of one frame into another, out of a moonlit peach grove and onto the decks of a naval vessel. You must know that face—as if you could ever forget it, as if it has not already replaced your mother’s face, your childhood love’s, even your own, in the cinema of your memory. You must search after that face, hunt for it, like a great flickering whale moving beneath the surface of the past.
She does not visit DVDs or VHS tapes. An Okinawa tailor claimed to have seen her once on a laser disc of Why Is Seawater Salty? but he is not a serious person. No, it is only film that the Kami enjoys, the way a lion enjoys blood and flesh, and not cabbages and china plates. Nor does she traffic with Western movies, nor even Korean or Chinese, but moves like a swift needle only through the ribbons of Japanese cinema. She leaves the film intact when she goes, though it is possible, for a frame or two after she has escaped like steam, to see a glimmer of phosphorus, fitful light from some distant and unknown source.
The longest sequence of her presence anyone has witnessed was in the 1924 classic Moon Silver Jirokichi . The witness was a Kyoto fabric dyer by the name of . His wife had recently committed suicide, leaving their young daughter in his care. He loaded up a library-loan print of Moon Silver Jirokichi into his home projector on no particular evening, his child half asleep next to him. The Kami entered the famous battle scene and the nape of her neck glowed like the tip of a brand. She dragged behind her the long black expanse of her kimono, so vast it covered the forest set, filling up the frame, its silk draping over the corpses of fallen warriors, shrouding their faces in grace and forgiveness, burying them in gentle, total darkness. Director Goto Taizan’s quick, innovative camera work froze, as though struck dumbfounded by what was happening: The Kami threads her way through the battle; the actors do not look at her, their swords clanging together without sound. She pulls apart two men—neither the protagonist, just two men at arms striving. As though they are coming out of a dream, the actors in their costumes and black eye makeup stare at her, their mouths open. Her kimono sweeps over bodies like a tide, rippling and surging. She puts her hands to their cheeks and her face is full of troubled sorrow. She kisses their foreheads. They begin to weep. She folds her sleeves around them and they vanish from the film. She stares out into the camera, into the fabric dyer’s eyes, full of pity and infinite regret, as the screen slowly fills with black silk, the endless, depthless creases of her gown closing around her face until that too disappears and the piano soundtrack goes silent.
You will have heard that she can alter a film permanently—that once, Detective Umon’s Diary, Story No. 6 had a swordfight between
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