Had it not been our film club pick, I probably wouldn’t have watched Kwaidan. But, boy, am I glad I did — what a beautiful movie.
The 1965 Japanese film, which takes its title from Lafcadio Hearn’s 1904 book, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, falls more into the genre of ghost stories than horror.
The movie credits open in a near-silence, periodically and startlingly broken by percussive instruments. (Warning: Don’t turn up the volume thinking it’s just a very quiet soundtrack.)
Wikipedia mentions that the film’s director, Masaki Kobayashi, went over budget and had to sell his house to complete the film. Well, you can certainly see where the money went. The sets, which appear to be entirely build on a soundstage, are lavish with intricate detail that shows up well in the pristine print streaming on the Criterion Channel.
Take the setting for the first of four stories, “The Black Hair.” As the segment opens, the home of a swordsman and his wife has seen better days, as has their marriage. He leaves his wife to find fame and fortune. As the story unfolds, the house crumbles under his feet just as his life crumbles before his eyes. The textures of both sights and sounds in the final scene are as sumptuous as they are chilling.
Kobayashi’s attention to both the visuals and the soundtrack extends through the whole film. He uses colors to emphasis other sensations (such as the cold in the second story, “The Woman of the Snow”) and sounds to accent the eeriness in the film (as in a fight between a worn-out samurai and three ghostly intruders in the finale, “In a Cup of Tea”).
But it’s the third story, “Hoichi the Earless,” where I think Kobayashi excels.
A young, blind musician takes the job of an attendant at a temple where he attracts the attention of a mysterious group who wants to hear sing the story of an epic sea battle. The percussive sound of his instrument, the biwa, and his voice are paired with scenes intercutting traditional Japanese art and live-action shots of the sea battle. Even though it’s clearly taking place in a studio pool, the quick cuts, the colors, and the smoke drifting through the sets and even the art combine into an unforgettable sequence that has no diegetic battle sounds.
If a three-hour runtime for a Japanese film terrifies you, don’t worry. Kwaidan provides natural breaks between its four separate stories. You won’t regret watching.