Kwaidan (1964)

A collection of four Japanese folk tales with supernatural themes.

Director:

Masaki Kobayashi

Writers:

Yôko Mizuki (screenplay), Lafcadio Hearn (novel) (as Yakumo Koizumi)

Stars:

Rentarô Mikuni, Michiyo Aratama, Misako Watanabe

Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 5 wins & 1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Michiyo Aratama	...	First wife (segment "Kurokami")
Misako Watanabe	...	Second Wife (segment "Kurokami")
Rentarô Mikuni	...	Husband (segment "Kurokami")
Kenjirô Ishiyama	...	Father (segment "Kurokami")
Ranko Akagi	...	Mother (segment "Kurokami")
Fumie Kitahara	...	(segment "Kurokami")
Kappei Matsumoto	...	(segment "Kurokami")
Yoshiko Ieda	...	(segment "Kurokami")
Otome Tsukimiya	...	(segment "Kurokami")
Kenzô Tanaka	...	(segment "Kurokami")
Kiyoshi Nakano	...	(segment "Kurokami")
Tatsuya Nakadai	...	Mi nokichi (segment "Yuki-Onna")
Keiko Kishi	...	Yuki the Snow Maiden (segment "Yuki-Onna")
Yûko Mochizuki	...	Minokichi's mother (segment "Yuki-Onna")
Kin Sugai	...	Village woman (segment "Yuki-Onna")

Storyline

This film contains four distinct, separate stories. "Black Hair": A poor samurai who divorces his true love to marry for money, but finds the marriage disastrous and returns to his old wife, only to discover something eerie about her. "The Woman in the Snow": Stranded in a snowstorm, a woodcutter meets an icy spirit in the form of a woman spares his life on the condition that he never tell anyone about her. A decade later he forgets his promise. "Hoichi the Earless": Hoichi is a blind musician, living in a monastery who sings so well that a ghostly imperial court commands him to perform the epic ballad of their death battle for them. But the ghosts are draining away his life, and the monks set out to protect him by writing a holy mantra over his body to make him invisible to the ghosts. But they've forgotten something. "In a Cup of Tea": a writer tells the story of a man who keep seeing a mysterious face reflected in his cup of tea.

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Plot Keywords:

anthology | snow | samurai | promise | spirit | 

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Taglines:

Toho's Cannes Film Festival Prize Winner

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Genres:

Drama | Fantasy | Horror

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Did You Know?

Trivia

This is the film adaptation of four stories from the book "Kwaidan: Stories and studies of strange things" by Lafcadio Hearn and is actually a collection of Japanese ghost stories, taken from various sources, some even stemming from China. Originally published in 1904, there are actually seventeen ghost stories in total, as well as insect studies including butterflies, mosquitoes and ants.

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Alternate Versions

Originally a four-episode anthology released in Japan at 183 minutes. The USA version removes the second episode, starring Keiko Kishi and Tatsuya Nakadai, in order to shorten the running time to 125 minutes.

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Connections

Featured in WatchMojo: Top 10 J Horror Films (2016)

User Reviews

marvellous fairy-tales: directorial and cinematographic fabulous

Cinematographer Yoshio Miyajima did a marvellous job, although most of the visuals in this masterpiece are obviously invented by Kobayashi. It is clearly studio-work, but Kobayashi turns that to his advance by making the most marvellous background paintings I've ever seen in a movie and his virtuosity comes to full exposure in the light effects that are fabulous for such an old film. That together with the beautiful colors creates a mesmerizing and sometimes terrifying experience. 'Marco the magnificent' (Patelliere&Howard, 1964) reminded me of the visuals in Kwaidan, because of the beautiful environmental shots and because of the (supposed) history of mixture of eastern and western stories. Forget that movie instantly plz. Another film that has nothing to do with this one, but is brilliant and comparable only because of the episode structure, the fairy-tale nature and great cinematography is Kaos (Taviani, 1984).

Kwaidan has such a haunting effect because of the scary music and the sound effects are unnerving(-ly edited). Some call it horror. I thought the pace was rather slow for horror, but it is a film that does not let go easily. The actors (one of which is Takeshi Shimura) convince enthusiastically and they too make it an entertaining film. According to the user-rating this is Kobayashi's least interesting work of these three: Joi-uchi, Seppuku, and Kwaidan. I can't wait to see the other two, although I don't think they can surpass this masterpiece.

10 points out of 10 :-)

Details

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Release Date:

22 November 1965 (USA)

Also Known As:

Ghost Stories

Filming Locations:

Japan

Box Office

Budget:

JPY350,000,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Bungei, Ninjin Club, Toho Company

Technical Specs

Runtime:

183 min 125 min (heavily cut) 161 min (cut)

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1