| The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review |
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| Science-Fiction |
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| Horror |
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KWAIDAN
(Kaidan)
Rating: 
Japan. 1965.
Director – Masaki Kobayashi, Screenplay – Yobo Mizuki, Based on Short Stories by Lafcaido Hearn, Producer – Shigeru Wakatsuki, Photography – Yoshio Miyajima, Music – Toru Takemitsu, Art Direction – Shigemasa Toda. Production Company – Ninjin Club/Bungei.
Cast:
Black Hair: Rentaro Mikuni (Samurai), Michiyo Aratama (First Wife), Misako Watanabe (Second Wife). Snow Woman: Tatsuya Nakadai (Minokichi), Keiko Kishi (Oyuki). Hoichi the Earless: Katsuo Nakamura (Hoichi), Rentaro Shimura (Priest), Joichi Hayashi (Yoshitsune). In a Cup of Tea: Ganemon Nakamura (Lord Nakgawa), Noboru Nakaya (Shikibu Heinai)
Plot: Black Hair: – A poor samurai divorces his wife and marries the daughter of a wealthy man so that he might advance in his profession. But his second wife is a selfish woman and he longs for his first wife, whom he loved. Eventually he returns to her and spends the night, only to wake and find a skeleton in the bed. Snow Woman: – An aging woodcutter and his apprentice are caught in a hut in the midst of a snowstorm. The apprentice wakes to find a beautiful woman of the snows feasting on the blood of his master. The snow woman agrees to spare him on the condition he will never tell anybody about her. Hoichi the Earless: – Hoichi, a blind monk is held in high repute for his singing of epics. But his fellow monks discover that Hoichi has unwittingly been spending his nights recounting the Battle of Dan-no-ura to ghosts in the graveyard. They cover Hoichi’s body with holy text so the ghosts may no longer see him but have forgotten one place. In a Cup of Tea: – A writer pores over a series of unfinished texts that recount how several hundred years before Lord Nakagawa was haunted by a face staring out of every bowl of water he drank.
Ghost stories have a long and respected tradition in Japanese culture. (The title kaidan simply means ‘ghost story’ in Japanese). This uses the long-honoured portmanteau format and is not dissimilar in many ways to tv’s The Twilight Zone (1959-63) and Amicus films. (Indeed the Snow Woman segment was stolen wholesale and without credit as one of the stories in Tales from the Darkside: The Movie [1990]). But it is also an attempt to tell horror stories from a specifically Japanese historical background. Despite the vast cultural differences between feudal Japan and post-War America milieu of The Twilight Zone it is surprising how similar many of the themes that run through these anthology stories are – the greedy and selfish receiving just desserts punishment, that any dabbling with the supernatural will cruelly come back to visit he who unwarily plays.
Director Masaki Kobayashi has a strong flair for the artistic – it is a genuine shame that he made no films other than this for on display here is a talent that rivals Akira Kurosawa’s. All of the stories are set in the dynastic past which is evoked with a command of cinematic artistry that is quite extraordinary. The film is conducted with a fascinated regard for formal ritual. The purpose of this is clearly one of contrast as when the supernatural does enter, its effect on established order is quite shattering – like in Black Hair with the long ritual of the wife welcoming the samurai home which is shattered by his shock discovery of her skeleton and descent into hysteria; or in Hoichi the Earless the scene where the nanny who, with dream-like and ritual slowness, steps into the sea with the infant emperor followed by the remaining soldiers. Kobayashi uses lighting schemes and colour contrasts with quite extraordinary effect – shooting twilights that are both yellow and pink, snowy skylines that are like giant whorls, even one sky that seems like a giant bird’s eye. The effect is the creation of a wholly fantastic world where one is never sure whether it is really photographed or if it exists inside a studio. In Snow Queen, Kobayashi manages to change from the everyday to the eerily otherworldly within the space of a single shot simply by changing the lighting from normal warm colours to an otherworldly blue reflected off actress Keiko Kishi’s white-painted face.
Hoichi is the finest story – from its captivating recounting of the epic of the battle to the amazing images of the monks painting Hoichi’s body and the ghost warrior trying to find Hoichi, seen from his point-of-view as a blanked-out shape with only a pair of ears, to the shock ending. Snow Queen is also superb in its evocation of otherworldly mood. The other two stories are, although by no means poor, weaker in comparison. Black Hair is largely dependent on its twist ending so its effectiveness does not really come until the end of the tale – it may have worked better as one of the middle segments rather than the opening. And In a Cup of Tea suffers from the very same problems that the writer in the story acknowledges – a lack of resolution. In most Western prints Snow Queen was cut and released as a separate short. This is a rather odd artistic choice, considering that it is one of the best segments. Removing it leaves Hoichi bookended by Black Hair and In a Cup of Tea, which surely only weakens an otherwise exceptional film. The full film has however been restored for its video release.
Cast:
Copyright Richard Scheib 1997
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