So a couple weeks ago, I read the Enigma of Amigara Fault. It was okay although not the horror masterpiece that I was led to believe. It did get me thinking about the differences in perceptions of society not just in horror but in fiction in general.
In the west, our fiction tends to center around the individual being stronger than society. The lone hero who triumphs over evil or works out what needs to be done to save the day. The one person who rises above all others.
With eastern fiction, it is different. The society is all powerful and individuals are little more than leaves tossed around by the wind. The Demotivator about Doubt symbolizes this perfectly.
Even when the path seems self-destructive, it is always society that will win out. Yoshida was terrified of entering the hole to the point of having a complete meltdown in front of her hole. Owaki had nightmares that told him exactly what would happen. There were several points in the story where, in western fiction, they would have won out. Whether it was when Owaki filled up Yoshida's hole or when they hook up in the tent, there were points that a Western author would have had them walk away using one of the following notions:
By filling up the hole, Owaki laid to rest the spirit driving Yoshida to her destruction.
They found comfort and strength in each other's arms to turn their back on fate and forge a new destiny for themselves.
But, in this story, their efforts change nothing and, in the end, both enter the hole.
Even the fault itself could be considered as a metaphor for society. When you enter the hole, the character is still themselves but, slowly, the hole twists and shapes their body until what comes out of the other side of the mountain isn't recognizable in any but the most superficial ways. In society, we also start out the same way. We are filled with bold ideas for the future but, slowly, we get changed. Sometimes, we bring the pressures that change us on to ourselves. After we get married and start a family, that trip to Nepal suddenly isn't a priority anymore. Other times, the pressures are completely external. In this economy, more and more people are doing unpaid overtime because the alternative is unemployment.
As a personal example, I had a friend who, when Napster got taken down, said that he was going to save up enough to have his own server farm dedicated to freely redistributing music. 4 years later, when asked, he said that he was still going to do it but it was plain that the enthusiasm to do it had left him and that the project had been moved to "someday". In the end, he never did do it.
I guess what I find most interesting is that we have such differing views but, in many ways, western society has as many pressures to conform as does eastern society. We still view ourselves as rugged individualists even as our society molds us to conform to it's standards. I don't know if this means that the people in the East are just more fatalistic or if, in the West, we just delude ourselves more. I just find it interesting that, despite having similar levels of societal conformity as time goes by, we have such differing perspectives.