More than the films of any other genre, horror movies are the phenotypes of cultural anxiety—often, you can read the turbulence right on the skin, like hives. In Japan, a nation always rich with wild expressions of social stress, this phenomenon yielded two primary surges: the New Wave attack of the 1950s and ’60s, and the J-horror invasion starting in the late ’80s and ’90s. While these phases reflected different societal shifts, when you take the macro view, they come together to look like one big haunting.
Source:https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/8637-the-psychosocial-dread-at-the-heart-of-japanese-horror