Image: AMC/The Terror
Are you ready for AMC’s upcoming horror series The Terror: Infamy? Whether you watched the first Terror series or not, we here at WiC have put together a quick primer so you’ll be all set when the premiere episode drops this Monday.
The new series promises another fictional journey into historical events blended with a whopper of a ghost tale. The story delves into the United States’ imprisonment of Japanese-American families (most of them citizens) during the Second World war, and their resulting fears and hardships in the internment camps. We’ll also be introduced to the horrors of kaidan ghost stories drawn from ancient Japanese folklore. It sounds like one heck of a ride.
The Terror: Infamy premieres this Monday. We’ll be watching and reviewing. Let’s get ready!
“Anywhere you go, it follows you.”
The Terror. Ciaran Hinds and Tobias Menzies (Photo by Aidan Monaghan AMC)
Do I need to have seen season 1 to watch Infamy?
If you haven’t already seen it (and we highly recommend you should), the first season of the AMC anthology series was called The Terror, and the story was based on the true-to-life disappearance of the Franklin expedition as it searched the Arctic Ocean for the Northwest Passage in 1847. It starred Game of Thrones veterans Ciaran Hinds (Mance Rayder), Tobias Menzies (Edmure Tully) and Clive Russell (The Blackfish). Here’s the show synopsis and original trailer:
"A crew of a Royal Naval expedition is sent to find the Arctic’s treacherous Northwest Passage but instead discovers a monstrous predator, a cunning and vicious Gothic horror that stalks the ships in a desperate game of survival, the consequences of which could endanger the region and its native people forever."
Based on what we know, The Terror season 2 is continuing with some structures and themes seen in the first season — both are based on a true historical event (the Franklin Expedition vs Japanese Internment) and revolve around a compromised group of people being terrorized by an ancient, murderous supernatural force. So far as we can tell, you don’t need to have seen the first season to enjoy the second.
The Terror _ Season 2, Episode 2 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
The Horror of the Japanese-American Internment Camps
Executive produced by Ridley Scott (Alien, Bladerunner) and created by Alexander Woo (True Blood) and Max Borenstein, Infamy takes place in the Japanese-American internment camps of the Second World War. Here’s the official show description from AMC’s The Terror: Infamy website:
"Set during World War II, The Terror: Infamy centers on a series of bizarre deaths that haunt a Japanese-American community and a young man’s journey to understand and combat the malevolent entity responsible."
The Japanese-American internment camps in the United States were a direct consequence of the anti-Japanese hysteria resulting from the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941. Between 100,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry (of which 62% were US citizens) were forcibly rounded up (mostly from the Pacific Coast) and incarcerated in concentration camps.
Approximately 80,000 members of the Japanese-American population were Nisei (second-generation born in the USA with U.S. citizenship). The children of the the Nisei were the Sansei (third generation). First generation immigrants (born in Japan) were called the Issei and were not allowed to become US citizens.
Attack on Pearl Harbor By Imperial Japanese Navy – Official U.S. Navy photograph NH 50930., Public Domain, httpscommons.wikimedia.orgwindex.phpcurid=223876
“A date which shall live in infamy”
History buffs will pick up on the reason AMC chose to name the new season “Infamy.” It comes from the speech President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave to a joint session of Congress on December 8, 1941. “Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
Shortly after the attack, Japan declared war on the United States and the British Empire. Not long after that, on February 19, 1942, Roosevelt ordered the incarceration of the Japanese-American population of the United States with Executive Order 9066.
The official trailer is heavy on spookiness
Hey! Is that Lieutenant Sulu from the original Star Trek? Yes, it’s the Japanese-American actor George Takei, and he’s got that I’m-in-a-horror-movie-armed-with-an-axe look to him.
Okay, let’s watch the trailer for Infamy:
The trailer is haunting and the themes potent. The characters feel they are being “watched,” and the specter of ghosts drawn from ancient Japanese folklore hangs over all.
Here’s the main cast members:
- Derek Mio (Greek) as Chester Nakayama: Chester’s response to extreme, life-altering events leads him on a treacherous journey that teaches him what it means to be an American, and a man.
- Cristina Rodlo (Miss Bala) as Luz, Chester’s secret girlfriend: her family’s longstanding intention was for her to become a nun, a fate she barely resisted until she met Chester.
- Shingo Usami (Unbroken) as Henry Nakayama, Chester’s father: he would say he’s “just a simple fisherman,” but his faith in America will soon be tested.
- Naoko Mori (Everest) as Asako Nakayama, Chester’s mother; she deeply respects the traditions of Japanese culture, but with that reverence comes a bent toward superstition.
- Kiki Sukezane (Lost in Space) as Yuko Tenabe, a woman from Chester’s past: no one knows much about Yuko, but her role is central in the fate of Chester and the rest of the Terminal Islanders.
- Miki Ishikawa (9-1-1) as Amy, a Nakayama Yoshida: Amy is one of the Yoshidas, the closest family friends of the Nakayamas on Terminal Island.
- George Takei (Star Trek) as Yamato-san: he is the 80-year-old former fishing captain and elder statesman of Terminal Island.
Keep a close eye on that Yuko …
Derek Mio as Chester Nakayama — The Terror. Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC.
The dilemmas of Chester Nakayama
The main character in Infamy is Chester, a US-born Japanese-American (Nisei) from Terminal Island, California. He’s trapped in limbo between the Old World of his immigrant parents and the New World life of an American college student. He’s “a proud, stubborn young man” who dreams of one day escaping his “tiny island” and exploring the world as a photographer for LIFE Magazine.
After the Japanese Empire’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Chester and his family have been relocated to an internment camp, and that’s where his world turns into an unsettling horrorscape. He, his family and the entire traumatized community are haunted by Yuko, a beautiful ghost who has something to do with Chester’s past. Here’s a Sneak Peek of the premiere episode (Season 2, Episode 1, “Chester’s Discovery”).
Is that the ghostly Yuko in that photograph? Chester has other big problems on top of the ghost issue: his girlfriend Luz (Rodlo) has become pregnant, which presents a cultural minefield for the m to navigate. He is born of Japanese immigrants and she is Latina — but the USA, like Nazi Germany in 1942, has strict miscegenation laws.
What are miscegenation (or anti-miscegenation) laws? They are laws that enforce racial segregation in marriage and personal relationships, criminalizing interracial marriage and even sexual contact between members of different races. Between the cultural tensions with his family, forced internment, American miscegenation laws and an infuriated supernatural being, Chester finds himself in an awful situation.
Image: The Terror/AMC
The terrors of Japanese kaidan folklore.
In Japan, kaidan folklore encompasses most any story about a haunting, but authors like to use the word to give their stories an “old-fashioned” connotation. In an interview with Vanity Fair, The Terror: Infamy showrunner Alexander Woo explains that he hopes the familiarity of the traditional Japanese kaidan ghost story helps viewers connect with the plight of the characters.
What does the old term kaidan harken back to? It is generally based on Buddhist didactic stories involving karma and a ghost out for revenge. These Japanese vengeful ghosts are called Onryō. Death has given them immense power, far more power than they possessed while alive; they are usually the spirits of people who were powerless and vulnerable while alive, such as women, servants and slaves.
An example of the blind wrath of an Onryō spirit can be found in the Ring movies, where a mysterious videotape kills all who watch it — the first of those came out in Japan in 1998 and was remade for American audiences in 2002. Or there’s Ju-on: The Grudge, where a house is able to kill anyone who tries to inhabit it. The Onryō ghosts can also use natural forces to wreak havoc on people, and sometimes are able to rip the spirits away from the bodies of their dying victims.
Kaidan ghosts are traditionally connected to water, because water is a pathway to and from the underworld in Japanese religion. You’ll see open water in some shots in the Infamy trailers, with the supposed specter walking along a dock. Female Onryō are often seen wearing a white burial kimono.
Image: The Terror/AMC
The ancient Japanese shapeshifters
What does yokai mean? It’s a general term for a class of supernatural creatures from Japanese folklore, such as demons and ghosts. In the Infamy trailers, two specific kinds of yokai spirits are mentioned: the yurei and the bakemono, also known as the obake.
The yurei: These spirits are trapped between the worlds of the living and the dead because they have unfinished business. The aforementioned Onryo is a violent and vengeful kind of yurei; currently popular versions of the ghost are seen in Japanese horror films like Ju-On: The Grudge and Ringu (The Ring). Unlike the bakemono, the yurei is the ghost of a dead human being. They are said to present in white clothing, with black hair, hands dangling from the wrists, and as floating, legless torsos.
The bakemono: the terms yurei and bakemono are sometimes used interchangeably, but the bakemono is unique because it specifically refers to a living being or supernatural entity that temporarily operates as a shapeshifter; it can pose as a human even though its true form is something else entirely, such as an animal. The name bakemono literally means “something that changes.”
The AMC 2019 Comic Con ‘Sneak Peek’ trailer, told largely from the perspective of the lead character Chester, provides some different scenes and a greater sense of horror than the official trailer.
“It’s easy to want vengeance,” says Yamato-san. “Natural as death.” Sure sounds like he’s referring to our onryo and yurei, doesn’t it?
Image: The Terror/AMC
A girl done wrong
Along with its deep dive into historical eras, Infamy anthology series wouldn’t be complete without a murdering spectre, and in Infamy it looks like the mysterious Yuko Tenabe fits the bill, or at least, has some connection to the haunting. The official AMC website character page is extremely vague on Yuko:
"There’s not much to say about Yuko Tanabe, not much that we know at least. But her role is central in the fate of Chester and the rest of the Terminal Islanders."
Is she a kaidan-style phantom, an onryo? A yurei? A bakemono? Or some bizarre, Old World/New World combination of all of them? And what is Chester’s connection to her, if any at all? Something terrible must have happened in the past to elicit this kind of postmortem rage.
Also, we’re not sure if Yuko is the only supernatural entity operating inside the world of The Terror: Infamy. Watching the trailers, it sure seems like there is a bakemono shapeshifter involved, but there are also elements more specific to the yurei. What’s is going on, exactly? It’s going to be fun to find out.
Kiki Sukezane as Yuko – The Terror. Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC.
Understanding the Japanese undead and the Obon Festival
According to Japanese tradition, humans have a soul called a reikon. Upon death, the reikon departs the body and inhabits a kind of purgatory where it waits for the proper ceremonies to be performed so it can join its family ancestors in the afterlife. If the rituals are performed properly, then the reikon will serve as a family protector and return during each year’s Obon Festival to accept the gratitude of their descendants.
This familiar transition from life to afterlife can be disrupted in a number of ways: the person dies by sudden violence, the ceremonies are botched or their soul is simply consumed by intense emotions like revenge, rage or sorrow. The reikon can then transform into a yurei, an entity that can forge a pathway back into the living universe, obsessed with fulfilling the last thoughts of their former physical selves.
The yūrei spirit remains in the living realm and continues haunting until it can be laid to rest by either the resolution of its emotional issues or until a proper burial ritual can be performed.
And guess what? The Terror: Infamy premieres in the U.S. on August 12 for a very important reason. That’s the day before the beginning of the 500-year-old Obon Festival, the three-day long Japanese holiday following the Buddhist tradition of celebrating and honoring family ancestors. Family members trek to the cemeteries to clean and decorate their forebears’ graves, while the reikon, the ancestral spirits, return to Earth to contemplate their family’s household affairs.
Naoko Mori as Asako Nakayama, James Saito as Wilson Yoshida, Alex Shimizu as Toshiro Furuya – The Terror. Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
A dark chapter in the history of the United States.
America has had many great moments, but we’ve also committed many mistakes we’d prefer to forget. “You have to confront a lot of very uncomfortable truths in order to tell the story in any, intimate detail in the classroom, so often it just doesn’t get told at all,” says showrunner Alexander Woo.
Woo doesn’t want the viewers to feel safe. He wants them to feel what it was like for innocent American citizens and legal immigrants to be ripped away from their homes and relocated to concentration camps where they were treated with suspicion, like an enemy. “But, this is America,” we whisper now in disbelief. “It was 1942, it was wartime.” But we should remember the harrowing experience of the Japanese-American internment camps, and we should understand.
INDEPENDENCE, CA – DECEMBER 09: A sign is posted at the entrance to Manzanar National Historic Site on December 9, 2015 near Independence, California. Recent presidential campaign rhetoric against Muslims in the wake of terror attacks has drawn comparisons to World War II era incarceration of Japanese Americans. Manzanar War Relocation Center was one of ten internment camps where Japanese American citizens and resident Japanese aliens were incarcerated from 1942 to 1945 during World War II. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
In the first Terror series, the most powerful sense of horror did not arise from the attacks of the supernatural being; it came from the psychological corruption of the sailors themselves, and the depiction of what men can do while slipping into starvation and insanity. It seems likely that Infamy plans to follow in that tradition, opening our eyes up to the human toll of the Japanese-American internment in 1942 through 1945, and how societal pressures can tear a culture and a people apart.
While The Terror: Infamy is a work of fiction, it is important to remember that many of the Japanese-Americans working on the series had family members who were interned during the war. Lead actor Derek Mio’s grandfather and great-grandfather were rounded up and detained. George Takei was interned when he was five years old. A poll was taken and it was discovered that the largely Asian American cast and crew had 138 immediate relatives who had been forced into the camps by Executive Order 9066.
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The Terror: Infamy premieres on AMC on Monday, August 12 at 9/8c. Watch it with us here at WiC!
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