Dis­cov­er this awe-inspir­ing col­lec­tion of Japan­ese ghost stories

Kwaidan opens with ink: first black ink swirling in clear liq­uid (on a white back­ground), and then vor­tices of dif­fer­ent colours, eddy­ing and mix­ing into rich chro­mat­ic layers.

This cred­it sequence (inter­cut with cast and crew names type­writ­ten on qual­i­ty paper, as though a book) serves mul­ti­ple func­tions: it marks direc­tor Masa­ki Kobayashi’s tran­si­tion from the mono­chrome of his pre­vi­ous work to a strik­ing use of Eastmancolor’s full palette; its admix­ture of dif­fer­ent, clash­ing colours fore­shad­ows the film’s merg­er of the mate­r­i­al and spir­it worlds; and, most of all, it points to the film’s lit­er­ary ori­gins, being adapt­ed by screen­writer Yoko Mizu­ki from a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries by Laf­ca­dio Hearn.

The ghost sto­ries (and ento­mo­log­i­cal essays) of ​‘Kwaidan: Sto­ries and Stud­ies of Strange Things’ rep­re­sent­ed part of Hearn’s dis­patch­es from Mei­ji-era Japan, where the Greek-born, UK-raised, Amer­i­ca-based writer set­tled in 1890, mar­ry­ing a local woman, father­ing four chil­dren, and becom­ing a nat­u­ralised cit­i­zen (and Bud­dhist) before his death in 1904. Hearn had long made a jour­nal­is­tic career of explor­ing the cul­tur­al geog­ra­phy of wher­ev­er he hap­pened to be post­ed, and the final chap­ter of his life in Japan coin­cid­ed with an emer­gence of West­ern inter­est in the remote nation’s aesthetics.

Hearn was help­ing, as it were, to put Japan on the map – and in adapt­ing four of Hearn’s tales, Kobayashi too, flush with the suc­cess of Harakiri at Cannes (where it won a Spe­cial Jury Award in 1963), was hop­ing to attract more west­ern atten­tion to his nation­al cin­e­ma, with Hearn serv­ing as the medi­um between these two worlds.

The result­ing film is abstract, ellip­ti­cal and ambigu­ous in its sto­ry­telling, painter­ly in its sur­re­al styl­i­sa­tions and, round­ing up to a for­bid­ding three hours, unlike­ly to appeal beyond the art­house (although notably it did win the Spe­cial Jury Prize at the 1965 Cannes, and was nom­i­nat­ed for the Best For­eign Lan­guage Film at the Acad­e­my Awards). Yet shot most­ly on sound stages in con­struct­ed sets with high­ly man­nered back­drops, this is a film of a rare, her­met­ic beau­ty, full of ethe­re­al images and errant ideas that will haunt the mind.

If all the sto­ries in Kwaidan are set in the past, the first of these imme­di­ate­ly sours and com­pli­cates any straight­for­ward notion of nos­tal­gia, as the past proves to be an irrepara­ble place of decay, death and hor­ror. For in ​‘The Black Hair’, an impov­er­ished samu­rai (Rentaro Miku­ni) aban­dons his lov­ing wife (Michiyo Arata­ma), remar­ries and moves to anoth­er part of Japan, all in pur­suit of improv­ing his own sta­tion, only then to be haunt­ed by his sense of betray­al, guilt and regret.

So over the years he keeps going back – in his mind, in his dreams and per­haps even ulti­mate­ly in real­i­ty – only to face the ruins of his old home, and the mon­strous­ness of his own reflec­tion. As he encoun­ters the ghost of his first wife, now a liv­ing pres­ence of devo­tion, now a skele­ton reduced to the ​“same glossy black hair” that he had once adored so much, he flees through a shift­ing space, part well-main­tained man­sion, part dilap­i­dat­ed wreck, where he, more than his long-dead wife, is the real mon­strous spec­tre, caught in a twi­light zone between cher­ished past and des­o­late present.

The sec­ond sto­ry, ​‘The Woman of the Snow’, con­cerns a wood­cut­ter, Mino­kichi (Tat­suya Nakadai), who, spared from freez­ing to death by a Yuki-onna (Keiko Kishi) on con­di­tion that he nev­er tell any­one that he has seen her, sur­vives to mar­ry a pret­ty young woman and set­tle into hap­py fam­i­ly life, before final­ly, sev­er­al years lat­er, encoun­ter­ing the ​‘snow woman’ a sec­ond time.

This entire episode was cut from the ver­sion of Kwaidan that screened in the US, in a bid to short­en the film’s run­ning time. But it would be a pity to miss this tale of love and death, with its beau­ti­ful snowy sets and vivid back­drops paint­ed with giant eyes, and lat­er with giant red lips, to sig­ni­fy that Mino­kichi is always being watched by some­thing super­nat­ur­al with an erot­ic as much as a deal-guard­ing inter­est in him. As befits a trag­ic romance, this episode comes with a tru­ly bit­ter­sweet end­ing, as the very inti­ma­cy of Minokichi’s rela­tion­ship with his beloved is para­dox­i­cal­ly what will dri­ve her from him

Eas­i­ly my favourite sto­ry in the film is the third, ​‘Hoichi The Ear­less’. It opens with the sea bat­tle of Dan-no-ura which was the final cat­a­stroph­ic stand of the Heike clan in 1185. We see a reen­act­ment of the naval encounter, with occa­sion­al cut­aways to paint­ings of the same, even as we hear an account of the bat­tle sung to the accom­pa­ni­ment of a lute-like biwa. In oth­er words, from the out­set we are made aware that this event, while fixed in his­to­ry, is also a medi­at­ed affair, com­ing with mul­ti­ple rep­re­sen­ta­tion in art (paint­ing, music, epic poem) which, like a tomb, main­tain its memory.

Sev­en hun­dred years after the bat­tle, a blind novice monk named Hoichi (Kat­suo Naka­mu­ra), who is renowned for his ​“uncan­ny skill at recit­ing the bat­tle”, is sum­moned from the local tem­ple to give a noc­tur­nal per­for­mance to a Lord and his ret­inue. As this artist, blind like the epic rhap­sodist Homer, recites to his biwa, he does not realise that he is in fact not in a Lord’s great hall, but in the cliff-top grave­yard, com­mem­o­rat­ing the last exploits of the Heike clan to their assem­bled ghosts. Once the Head Priest (Takashi Shimu­ra) dis­cov­ers what is going on every night, he inter­venes to save Hoichi, with painful con­se­quences for the young monk – even though it is not entire­ly clear that Hoichi is ever real­ly in any dan­ger or even needs to be saved.

‘Hoichi the Ear­less’ is an eeri­ly beau­ti­ful med­i­ta­tion on the pow­er of art to con­jure the past and bring it vivid­ly to life, and so serves as a mise en abyme of Kobayashi’s own peri­od film, which itself res­ur­rects and reen­acts not only sto­ries from two dif­fer­ent Japan­ese his­tor­i­cal eras, but also the 60-year-old text of Laf­ca­dio Hearn who, hav­ing him­self lost one eye in his child­hood and suf­fer­ing myopia in the oth­er, was near­ly as blind as Hoichi. Closed off through sen­so­ry depri­va­tion from this world, Hoichi serves as a medi­um to the next. And if, in the end, the tem­ple priests can no longer be sure whether the now famous bard’s audi­ence is ​“fake or real”, his sweet, sad song still goes on.

The final and short­est of the sto­ries, ​‘In a Cup of Tea’, is also the most con­vo­lut­ed, reflex­ive and post­mod­ern, and is, like ​‘Hoichi the Ear­less’, con­cerned with art. Open­ing in 1900 (when the real Hearn was writ­ing his own Kwaidan sto­ries) with an unnamed author (played by Osamu Tak­iza­wa) at his desk ink­ing a sto­ry that the nar­ra­tor (also voiced by Tak­iza­wa) warns will be ​“curi­ous­ly unfin­ished”, it skips to the sto­ry itself, set 220 years ear­li­er, in which the squire Kan­nai (Kan’emon Naka­mu­ra) sees the face of a smirk­ing stranger (Noboru Nakaya) impos­si­bly reflect­ed in his tea bowl.

After ill-advis­ed­ly swal­low­ing the tea down, the squire then finds him­self engag­ing in a super­nat­ur­al feud with the ghost­ly man and his three equal­ly ghost­ly retain­ers. As promised, the sto­ry does not come to a res­o­lu­tion. Instead, we return to the house of the author in 1900, even if the author him­self is mys­te­ri­ous­ly absent, his work inter­rupt­ed mid-flow. And so this sec­ond unre­solved sto­ry (about the author) reveals to us, in its final image, how noth­ing quite ​“swal­lows a soul” as well as an involv­ing ghost sto­ry. We are left to exam­ine the tea leaves and sup­ple­ment our own ending.

All four tales are scored by the great Toru Takemit­su, whose elec­tro-acoustic musique con­crète con­stant­ly has the view­er con­fused as to where the sound­track ends and the intradiegetic sound effects begin. Dai Arakawa’s arti­fi­cial sets, too, keep alter­ing uncan­ni­ly in appear­ance (espe­cial­ly in The Black Hair and Hoichi the Ear­less), with only Hisas­ho Sagara’s edit­ing to main­tain a veneer of con­ti­nu­ity. The result is a work some­how both del­i­cate and deliri­ous, as cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Hisas­hi Sagara’s state­ly fram­ing can bare­ly con­tain the more irra­tional nar­ra­tive ele­ments which so insis­tent­ly intrude. It is also cin­e­ma at its most unnerv­ing and awe-inspiring.

Kwaidan is avail­able on Blu-ray in a Lim­it­ed Edi­tion Boxset from Eure­ka Video’s The Mas­ters of Cin­e­ma Series on 27 April.