Eyes in the Static: A Narrative Synthesis of Cognitive Fear in Japanese Horror

This narrative review examines the psychological mechanisms underlying fear, uncertainty, and anticipatory cognition in Japanese horror folklore, drawing on tales such as Ringu, Ju-on, and Noroi. These narratives generate sustained suspense through minimalistic and ambiguous sensory cues—whispered sounds, flickering thresholds, and unseen presences—that engage perceptual systems and cognitive expectations, providing a rich context for exploring the architecture of human anxiety. Integrating frameworks from depth psychology, including Jungian interpretations of the Shadow, with contemporary cognitive neuroscience, Japanese horror functions as a model for investigating how the mind responds to unresolved threats, ambiguity, and environmental uncertainty.Narrative structures create a feedback loop in which anticipatory attention heightens perceptual sensitivity, amplifying emotional arousal, and facilitating selective encoding of threat-relevant stimuli. Such dynamics illustrate principles of predictive coding: the mind continuously generates hypotheses about potential dangers, and ambiguous cues trigger recursive simulations of threat scenarios, producing sustained psychological tension. Psychophysiological responses align with sympathetic activation, heightened vigilance, and modulation of memory consolidation, highlighting the potential of folklore narratives to serve as naturalistic laboratories for studying affective regulation and cognitive anticipation.Beyond fear, Japanese horror engages themes of existential uncertainty, boundary dissolution, and moral ambiguity, offering a symbolic space in which repressed anxieties, unintegrated psychic content, and shadow material can be externalized and negotiated. These narratives reveal mechanisms of attention, emotion regulation, and threat appraisal that may inform experimental and clinical psychology. Folklore thus emerges as both a cultural artifact and a psychologically resonant system, demonstrating how immersive narrative experiences shape cognitive-affective processes.By synthesizing narrative, psychological, and cognitive perspectives, the review underscores the translational value of folklore for research: Japanese horror provides a structured yet immersive paradigm for examining environmental ambiguity, cognitive anticipation, and emotional response, offering pathways to study stress, trauma, and adaptive coping strategies within controlled narrative contexts. Integration of classical psychological theory with contemporary empirical frameworks highlights the enduring relevance of archetypal horror narratives as tools for advancing understanding in cognitive-affective science and clinical practice.