Director
Masaki Kobayashi
Masaki Kobayashi
Cast
The Black Hair
Rentarō Mikuni - the SamuraiMichiyo Aratama - the First Wife
Misako Watanabe - the Second Wife
The Woman of the Snow
Tatsuya Nakadai - Minokichi
Keiko Kishi - the Yuki-onna
Hoichi the Earless
Katsuo Nakamura - Hoichi
Tetsurō Tamba - the Samurai in Armor
Takashi Shimura - the Chief Priest
In a Cup of Tea
Kan'emon Nakamura - Kannai
Noboru Nakaya - Heinai Shikibu
Osamu Takizawa - the Author/Narrator
Nakamura Ganjirō II - the Publisher
I have to give a huge amount of credit to Japanese filmmakers for making horror movies with such enthralling plots often so carefully put together like a fine tapestry. They seem to take the art of filmmaking, even horror movies, very seriously and with every bit of attention to detail. A lot of Japanese horror movies are crafted artfully and meticulously. Even when it comes to many of the Godzilla movies, Japanese filmmakers seem to give their films a lot of depth. Case in point, the 1964 horror anthology film, "Kwaidan."
It was directed by Masaki Kobayashi and taken from a screenplay by Yoko Mizuki.
I wouldn't hesitate to call "Kwaidan" a horror movie masterpiece.
This is one of the eeriest, most reverential, dignified, and captivating anthologies I have ever seen.
Watching this, there is certainly a sense of awe and historical reference that left me thinking I would be a huge jerk if I said anything negative about it.
"Kwaidan" tells four separate ghost stories that are taken from Greek/Irish writer Lafcadio Hearn's collections of Japanese folktales.
These haunting stories depict love, betrayal, pride, and spiritual consequence in a relatable way. Then they use these themes to tie the living with the dead.
It was directed by Masaki Kobayashi and taken from a screenplay by Yoko Mizuki.
I wouldn't hesitate to call "Kwaidan" a horror movie masterpiece.
This is one of the eeriest, most reverential, dignified, and captivating anthologies I have ever seen.
Watching this, there is certainly a sense of awe and historical reference that left me thinking I would be a huge jerk if I said anything negative about it.
"Kwaidan" tells four separate ghost stories that are taken from Greek/Irish writer Lafcadio Hearn's collections of Japanese folktales.
These haunting stories depict love, betrayal, pride, and spiritual consequence in a relatable way. Then they use these themes to tie the living with the dead.
In this first tale, a samurai (Rentarō Mikuni) leaves his devoted wife (Michiyo Aratama) and heads to Kyoto so he can marry into a rich family. As he leaves his wife behind in tears and miserable loneliness, the samurai hopes that by marrying into a rich family, he'll improve his social standing and actually become somebody important and highly regarded.
He manages to find another wife, (Misako Watanabe) who can make all that happen. However, that marriage turns out to be a complete disaster, and not what the samurai was hoping for.
Disgraced, the samurai returns to the home where he left his first and more dedicate wife. Surprisingly, she welcomes him back with no ill feelings. The house, however, certainly hasn't been tended to very well during his absence.
It seems almost too good to be true. When the samurai awakens the next morning, he discovers that his first wife, who welcomed him back joyfully, is actually long dead. Her decaying corpse has been lying next to him during the night.
The samurai tries to escape, but his wife's long and gorgeous black hair entangles and subdues him.
It's an unsettling and emotional start to this anthology with its depiction of the horror of regret. It's a story that centers more on the dread of irretrievably losing something so precious rather than just being a spooky tale of regret.
Not only does the samurai find himself haunted by his wife, but he's also more keenly haunted by his own guilt and his longing for the good he had in his possession until he threw it away of his own free will. His is a longing for his own past. Now, it has become a source of torment.
This story begins during a terrible snowstorm up in the mountains. A woodcutter named Minokichi (Tatsuya Nakadai) witnesses a beautiful woman kill his elderly companion. Well, that beautiful woman is actually a yuki-onna, or a snow woman (Keiko Kishi), a supernatural entity linked to blizzards or whatever other severe winter conditions happen to occur. Though beautiful, the yuki-onna is a ruthless entity that kills unsuspecting people. Well, almost ruthless.
After she kills his companion, the snow woman turns her attention to Minokichi. However, she's taken by his handsome and youthful appearance, and spares his life.
However, she makes him swear never to tell anyone that she appeared to him and killed his companion. If he lets the cat out of the bag, figuratively speaking, she'll return to take his life.
Years roll by. Minokichi hasn't told a soul about what he witnessed during that snowstorm.
During those years, he finds himself a beautiful wife named Yuki and, together, they make a nice little family.
However, this little slice of heaven they made changes when Minokichi makes a pair of sandals for Yuki. He even places a little red ribbon on them.
He tells Yuki the ribbon symbolizes her young and gorgeous features. How precious!
Later, while watching Yuki sitting in candlelight sewing a kimono, Minokichi is reminded of the snow woman. He can't help noticing a resemblance.
So, he tells Yuki about what he saw all those years ago during that mountain snowstorm.
He didn't keep his end of the bargain, and now he has to pay the penalty. Yuki reveals herself to be the snow woman. However, she still can't bring herself to kill Minokichi or the children she had with him.
The fragility of a promise and the burden of secrecy are at play in this story. I like this story because, when it comes to horror, I’m drawn to that one thing in a horror story that disrupts a character's peace of mind in an otherwise peaceful existence. To me, that simple element is frightening. I picture that one horrific detail weighing on a character’s mind as something like a blemish or worm bothering one's conscience . It’s there in their mind. Amid all the joy and good things that surround them, the knowledge that this one bit of evil is still a part of their life keeps coming back every once in a while.
In this case, it’s the knowledge that evil, murderous, supernatural snow women exist, and that Minokichi can’t do anything about it or tell anyone what he has seen. That knowledge becomes a kind of secret burden he carries with him for the rest of his life. But there’s another tragedy here: love is stronger than the monster of the story, at least for a time. Minokichi manages to keep his life, but his true love is gone forever. And, in a strange twist, she wasn’t even exactly what he thought she was all those years. He loved her, lived with her, and built a life with her, all while unknowingly living alongside the very thing he had once feared. Tragic all around.
By the way, this story seemed very familiar to me. In fact, as the story progressed, I knew right away where I had seen this same story depicted before.
Anyone who's familiar with the 1988 horror anthology "Tales from the Darkside" will recognize this as the same plot as the story "Lover's Vow" with James Remar and Rae Dawn Chong.
This segment seems original yet familiar to me. I mean, I feel like I've seen a story similar to this third segment, "Hoichi the Earless," depicted someplace else, but at the same time, it strikes me as original. I get that originality from how reverentially deep the segment goes into old Japanese history, particularly the Battle of Dan-no-ura, which occurred in 1185.
In this segment, Hoichi (Katsuo Nakamura) is a blind musician who is a master at playing the Japanese lute-like string instrument called the biwa. He lives in a Buddhist temple and is known for how well he sings a chant called "The Tale of the Heike," which tells the story of the Battle of Dan-no-ura.
So much so that Hoichi is summoned by a mysterious samurai to perform this song for an audience of nobles, including the samurai's lord. The samurai instructs him not to tell anyone about this request.
Hoichi agrees. So, during the night, the mysterious samurai leads him to a strange court where he sings "The Tale of the Heike."
One of Hoichi's caretakers notices his late-night absence.
The samurai returns the following night to take Hoichi back to his lord and the nobles in the court to sing the tale once again.
His caretakers try to protect Hoichi, who doesn't realize the samurai, his lord, and the nobles he's playing for are actually spirits of the dead. To protect him, they write Buddhist scripture all over his body. Weird, I know. But that's what they do. This writing makes Hoichi invisible to the ghosts. But the monks he lives with forget to write on his ears. That means the ghosts can see Hoichi's ears floating around.
The samurai takes Hoichi's ears and leaves him...earless.
There's a real eeriness about the way this segment depicts the persistence and longing for the past, which the ghosts that seek out Hoichi are longing for. They're trapped in this ongoing recollection of the battle Hoichi sings about. They have him singing practically on repeat. It's like the ghosts are the haunted ones who can't escape their past of war, even in death. Their haunting won't let them rest in peace.
History and storytelling are doing the haunting, but history is still treated with the reverence it deserves.
This story is steeped in an almost sacred sense of history. The ghosts of the past demand to be remembered, while the living struggle to keep from being overtaken by it.
In this last segment, as told by a storyteller, a writer tells the tale of a samurai named Kannai (Kan'emon Nakamura) as he waits for a visit from his publisher.
While Kannai is waiting, he stops by a teahouse for refreshments. As he serves himself tea, Kannai suddenly starts seeing a random face of an unknown man in his cup of tea.
As disturbing and weird as this is, Kannai still drinks his tea, face or no face.
When Kannai and his publisher meet, the man whose face he saw in his cup of tea appears to him. He says his name is Heinai Shikibu (Noboru Nakaya).
Kannai tells others about what he witnessed, but of course they don't believe him.
Later that night, three spirit attendants of Shikibu manifest themselves to Kannai and then end up dueling each other.
However, the story deliberately ends without a formal conclusion. It ends with the eerie and unsettling image of the storyteller trapped inside a big jar. The story is left unresolved forcing the audience to use their imagination as to how the scenario ends. Uncertainty is one of the most haunting aspects of life. It can really bend a person in half, twisting their stomach with anguish. And that's what the audience is left with after this purposely unfinished segment. With the reverential historical tale told in song, this segment feels like the centerpiece of the film.
"Kwaidan" isn't just a spooky ghost movie. It's a substantial series of tales that's quite an experience. The frightening aspects go deeper than just seeing people haunted by spirits. These ghosts carry with them memory, guilt, broken promises, and uncertainy.
While I think a horror movie ought to depict the defeat of evil, this movie's ending on abrupt uncertainty rather than giving the audience a neat explanation gives a final and lasting haunting. It certainly works. The audience needs to regain its footing after the last segment.
One of the things that makes "Kwaidan" so effective is its atmosphere. Although every story is obviously constructed on a soundstage, the artificial sets give these worlds an uncanny feel.
Reality seems to border the strange, dreamlike spiritual realm from which the ghosts cross over. The painted skies, semi-unnatural landscapes, stark colors, and theatrical sets distort reality just enough. The atmosphere becomes more and more unsettling as the stories progress. It's as if the audience is looking at a world that exists only a few steps away from our own, with the ghosts just on the other side of the curtain.
The human actions of the characters somehow invite the respective supernatural consequences.
The spirits in this movie are more than just souls of the dead. They act as metaphors.
This movie goes above just being a supernatural scare for a movie night. It gives the audience so much to take away in regard to human actions and supernatural consequences.
Some of the ghosts evoke pity more than fear. And, actually, it's the human frailty and weakness that drives each story. It's this human corruption that evokes the supernatural intrusion, for lack of a better word. All of this is depicted near flawlessly. It goes beyond conventional scares. It utilizes an amazing, almost dreamlike atmosphere throughout each tale. It's almost meditative in regard to our actions and what those actions may lead to. It doesn't pull any punches about it. The movie is certainly blunt in its depictions.
Out of all the paranormal horror movies I've watched, this one is the most impressive.
The human actions of the characters somehow invite the respective supernatural consequences.
The spirits in this movie are more than just souls of the dead. They act as metaphors.
This movie goes above just being a supernatural scare for a movie night. It gives the audience so much to take away in regard to human actions and supernatural consequences.
Some of the ghosts evoke pity more than fear. And, actually, it's the human frailty and weakness that drives each story. It's this human corruption that evokes the supernatural intrusion, for lack of a better word. All of this is depicted near flawlessly. It goes beyond conventional scares. It utilizes an amazing, almost dreamlike atmosphere throughout each tale. It's almost meditative in regard to our actions and what those actions may lead to. It doesn't pull any punches about it. The movie is certainly blunt in its depictions.
Out of all the paranormal horror movies I've watched, this one is the most impressive.
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