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Long a staple within Japanese literary and dramatic arts, the onryou, or 'avenging spirit' motifj remains an exceedingly popular and vital component of contemporary Japanese horror cinema. Drawing on a plurality of religious traditions, including Shintoism and Christianity, as well as plot devices from traditional theatre (for instance Noh theatre's shunen- [revenge-] and shura-mono [ghost-plays], and Kabuki theatre's tales of the supernatural [or kaidan]), these narratives of incursion by the spectral into the realm of the ordinary for the purposes of exacting revenge continue to find new articulations, as well as new audiences, courtesy of visually arresting and internationally acclaimed shinrei-mono eiga (ghost story films) by directors such as Nakata Hideo's Ringu (1998) and Dark Water (Honogurai mizu no soL· kara, 2002), and Shimizu Takashi's Ju-on: The Grudge (2002). Like the myriad of cultural texts from which Nakata and Shimizu draw their inspiration, including now 'classic' kaidan such as Shindo Kaneto's Onibaba (1964) and Kobayashi Masaki's Kwaidan (1965), these recent revisions of the 'avenging spirit' trope continue to relate tales of 'wronged', primarily female entities who return to avenge themselves upon those who harmed them. The targets of these angry spirits' rage, however, are often multiple, and careful analyses of the focus of the spirits' wrath, as well as the motivations behind their actions, provide valuable insights into the historical, political, gendered, and economic logics informing current socio-cultural tensions between nostalgic imaginings of a 'traditional Japanese' past and die equaUy illusory threat and/or promise of an ever-emerging technological, global, and postmodern Japan. Consequently, the impact of late industrial capitalism on the various (reconstructions of the 'family' in contemporary Japan constitutes one of the chapter's primary concerns. In particular, since both Ringu and Dark Water feature heroines who are also single mothers, this chapter examines the extent to which Nakata's female protagonists function as aesthetic and cultural barometers for highly contested comprehensions of gender and gendered behaviours in Japan. As well, these cinematic heroines - and the ghosts they confront - provide compelling analogies not only for Japan's protean economic and familial landscape, but also for emerging neo-conservative ideologies that threaten to re-imagine the notion of equal rights for men and women from a more 'conventionally Japanese' perspective. Furthermore, although Nakata depicts the exorcism, or even temporary placation, of these 'avenging ghosts' as nearly impossible, containment is frequently depicted as achievable, if only (as is most conspicuously the case in Ringu) through a process of eternal deferment.