In tone, this version of Wuthering Heights isn't dissimilar from grim, intense Shakespeare adaptation, with the howling wind and warring spirits of superstition and tradition.
Beautiful young Kinu Yamabe (Yuko Tanaka) is drawn to low-born Onimaru, who's vital and charismatic, but viewed by his father as a demon, and by most of the remaining family as a stain to the family name. But after her first period, Kinu suffers the fate of any women born near the Sacred Mountain: she must leave the Mountain and serve as priestess But she has a plan to stay near her old home - which involves marrying into a rival branch of her family.
Few Japanese films are as as exacting in recounting the details of custom and superstition as this, where the mores of everyday life are enforced by ritual and fate. This version, then, is a striking variation on the Bronte version, and completely convincing.
