Day 88: Kwaidan (1964)

Everybody likes a good ghost story. Whether told at a roaring camp fire or a child’s bedside, these are tales that bring that delightful chill to ones spine and make us evermore cautious of the supernatural things we can not fully see or understand. And, as a bonus, some even teach us a moral or two. Taking this beloved art of scary storytelling, director Masaki Kobayashi gives us “Kwaidan,” a film containing not one, but four complete Japanese ghost stories, each holding their unique style which culminate in possibly the first every horror epic.

In the first story, “The Black Hair” a Samurai, who has divorced his true love to marry a rich man’s daughter, returns to his former wife wanting a second chance. Finding her and her beautiful black hair as gorgeous as he remembered, the Samurai believes he has finally grown content with his place in life. But, just when all seems too good to be true, the Samurai’s ex-wife reveals to him just how much she has changed since he has left and how he can not escape the horrible fate he has made for himself.

In “The Woman of the Snow,” the film’s second episode, we watch as a poor woodcutter becomes lost in a snowstorm and his frozen death seems to be inevitable. But, just before he takes his last breath, a blue mysterious ghost-like woman takes pity on him and spares his life on the stipulation that he never tell anyone about her or he will be killed. Ten years go by and the woodcutter, now happily married and with three children, forgets his promise and tells his beautiful wife the story of the woman in the snow. Instantly, the ghost returns along with the horrible punishment she brings for breaking their agreement.

In the film’s third story, “Hoichi, the Earless,” the supernatural presents itself to Hoichi, a blind musician who sings songs of an ancient sea battle that are so moving that the ghosts of the battle rise up and demand he give them a private performance. Though his frequent singing sessions bring delight to the spirits, it soon takes a toll on Hoichi and the head monk of the nearby monastery urges him to quit his playing if only to save his life. But, when Hoichi finally tries to ward of the spirits they react in a way that will make the poor musician wish he was dead.

“In a Cup of Tea,” the film’s final tale, a warrior sees the reflection of someone else in his cup of tea, though no one is around. Soon the warrior meets this phantom in the flesh and challenges him to a duel, which the spirit accepts. But, what the warrior never suspected was that this phantom would bring three of his friends along for the battle, easily outnumbering this simple human warrior.

With each individual tale, the look and beauty of “Kwaidan” grows stronger by the second as it tells ghost stories that only a culture like Japan could tell. But, surprisingly, these tales of ghosts and spirits were adapted from the book “Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things,” written by Lafcadio Hearn, a Greek writer, who took the name Koizumi Yakumo and became a Japanese citizen in the early 1890′s. Amazingly, while other Japanese films of the 1960′s were drawing most of their inspiration from western society and ignoring traditional Asian storytelling, such as Seijun Suzuki’s “Tokyo Drifter,” Masaki Kobayashi takes Japanese stories written by a European, who spent several years living in Cincinnati, Ohio of all places, and creates a film that honors the cinematic look and pace that Japanese cinema is known for all around the world.

With its country’s film style, at the time, increasing changing to that of Hollywood, “Kwaidan” is an epic homage to a tradition of filmmaking, which, decades later, would resurface in popularity and teach a whole new generation of Western filmmakers a thing or two about how to tell a good story and scare the pants off its audience.

To learn more about “Kwaidan,” check out Criterion’s page here.

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