Kwaidan

Kwaidan (1965) (meaning “ghost stories”) is a 182-minute horror film directed by Masaki Kobayashi. Based on works by Lafcadio Hearn, mostly from his collection Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, the film is composed of four independent tales: “The Black Hair,” “The Woman of the Snow,” “Hoichi the Earless,” and “In a Cup of Tea.”

I’ve been fascinated by Japanese ghost stories since first coming to Japan in the mid-90s. Around that time, I visited the grave of Oiwa Tamiya in Sugamo, Tokyo, for a magazine article I was working on about Yotsuya Kaidan. As the story goes, Oiwa was betrayed by her husband, the ronin Iemon, and after being poisoned to death she returns as a mournful, vengeful ghost. I still have a photograph of her grave, and in it a spiral of smoke appears to rise out of the stone monument. After taking the picture, I checked for burning incense. There was none.

Around that same time, I was reading Hearn and noticing how different Japanese ghost stories are from those of the West, particularly in their deeply melancholic tone, their unyielding female spirits, and their otherworldly depictions of the consequences of injustice. Many of these stories seem intended to instill a reverence for the dead equal to that held for the living, or else!

Kwaidan is remarkable for its vivid, unsettling sets and its use of sound—long stretches of silence punctuated by screeching traditional instruments and the crack of splintering wood.

Roger Ebert described it as “an assembly of ghost stories that is among the most beautiful films I’ve seen.” The imagery is mesmerizing throughout. It leaves you spellbound and tense, with the sense that the preternatural world Kobayashi has created is implacable. That its tortured, vengeful spirits will rise with terrifying force. That the snow woman will freeze a man with her breath. That a wandering ghost will tear the ears from a blind musician.

All four stories are absorbing but “The Woman of the Snow” stands out for its patience and pacing, allowing the story to unfold at just the right tempo. The blizzard, too, and those strange, watchful skies, add to its unsettling atmosphere.

The Woman of the Snow (Kwaidan, 1965)

The Woman of the Snow (Kwaidan, 1965)

The Woman of the Snow (Kwaidan, 1965)

Hoichi the Earless (Kwaidan, 1965)