He says that the wasteland was once a beautiful field of flowers before the bomb and no giant dandelions are the only things that grow. There are other demons with different numbers of horns, creating a hierarchy system: Those with one horn are on the bottom of the heap while those with more horns rank closer to the top. The demons scream in pain at night, ashamed of who they are and what they have become and cannot die. The original demon says their immortality is a punishment for their sins, and no matter how much pain they are in, they will forever suffer because they cannot die.
At the end of these dream, the demon chases the man away through the wasteland so he doesn't become like them, which to me sort of parallels the story of Izanami's death where she sends a hoard of demons to chase her husband Izanagi from the underworld because she is ashamed of him seeing her rotting. This clip also seems to describe the important Shinto theme of purity versus pollution and that all humans, nature and the Gods (Kami) are connected to one another, and that there is a powerful and beautiful spirit in everything and that it must all be cherished and taken care of. The planet needs to be protected so that the spirits may survive and thrive.
I also saw the clip of “The Weeping Demon” and thought you had made some really great, but different interpretations than I did. I remember the demon mentioning the radiation poisoning, but I didn’t catch on that the human-demon had endured the side-effects. I also didn’t notice the horns coming from the top of his head, partly because the setting was so dark and I didn’t pay close enough attention. Also, though I watched the end part where the demon was running after the human, I didn’t interpret it as him trying to chase the human away so as to prevent him from becoming like the rest of the tortured demons. However, I definitely agree with your interpretations and liked how you related it to the story of Izanami’s death, because they really are both similar. The way that I related “The Weeping Demon” to the Shinto lecture was mentioning how I believed the demon and the human were in the Other World of Yomi (the Underworld) and relating how the demon was had made the same mistake as the other screaming demons he was describing (interfering with nature—he had dumped milk into the river to keep prices up). Even though I watched the same clip as you, I learned more about it after reading your post and it definitely cleared things up a bit for me. Great job!
ReplyDeleteI would agree that I didnt know what to expect when watching the weeping demon. I definitely did not expect it to turn out how it did. Although I did not include this in my own blog, I agree that this kind of reminded me of the story of Izanami's death. I also agree that this explains the Shinto principle of purity vs. pollution. One thing I noticed though that you did not include in your blog was how the weeping demons clip could be related to one of the other worlds of Kami, more specifically the underground. I interpreted this clip as an illusion of what hell might be like on earth, and associated hell with the idea of an underground world.
ReplyDelete