The end is near? - Japanese Horror in decline

Even though I wrote that Toho is almost invincible, they are not without mistakes.  Last weekend, Toho's latest of annual winter horror series, "Rinne" (literal translation:  Reincarnation) flopped big time.  Mr. Texas over at Movie Consultant Blog reports that their weekend box office was 98mil. yen, mere 45% of their previous hit "Chakushin Ari" (English title "One Missed Call" according to IMDb) series.

Mr. Texas lists up the interesting revenue data of Toho's horror series since its succesful start with "Ring/Rasen" in 1998.  Although 2004/5 "Chakushin Ari" sequels stemmed the declining trend, "Rinne" broght the trend line back down again.  Please see the chart below.  More concerning is the serial flops of Hollywood remake versions of major Japanese horrors in 2005, such as "The Juon", "The Ring 2" and "Dark Water".  In the chart below, Hollywood versions are plotted with yellow dots.  (Click the chart on the left for the full size view)

Mr. Texas suspects it is due to oversuply of horrors, both Japanese and Hollywood versions.  Despite the continued interest from overseas, Japanese audience seem to be already drifting away from Japanese horror genre.  So this means that Japanese horror will become much like Takeshi Kitano's films - mainly made for international markets, and not popular in its home market.  Hmmm...