Short answers, pulled from the story.
The first printed ghost story in Japan appeared in 1688 with the title Otogi Boko. This publication introduced a literary tradition that eventually birthed the global phenomenon known as J-horror. Before this date, these tales existed only as oral folklore passed down to frighten children and adults alike.
The scholar Inoue Enryo formalized the term yōkai during the Meiji period to describe supernatural phenomena. He transformed a vague concept of the unknown into a defined category of folklore. This evolution from oral tradition to printed text allowed stories like the tale of Okiku to spread across the nation.
The film Ring changed the global perception of horror in 1998. Released in Japan roughly at the same time as The Blair Witch Project in the United States, the film revitalized the genre by taking a restrained approach. Directed by Hideo Nakata, the movie was based on a novel by Koji Suzuki and featured a cursed videotape that killed anyone who watched it within seven days.
Two Japanese video games released in 1996 revived the zombie genre globally: Resident Evil and The House of the Dead. These games introduced a new type of zombie: the fast-running zombie, which departed from the slow, shambling creatures of George A. Romero's classic films. The success of these games sparked an international craze for zombie media and led to a wave of Asian zombie films.
Junji Ito wrote the horror manga Tomie and Uzumaki. These graphic novels are popular Japanese horror films based on his works and explore the frightening notion of fluidity between realms. The visual style of horror manga with its detailed and often grotesque imagery has influenced the way horror is depicted in other media.