13 Nights of Shocktober: Kwaidan

by A.J. 

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 9: Anthology Horror Night
Ghost Stories of Old Japan

Kwaidan (1964)

Kwaidan is one of my favorite Japanese horror movies. It is also an anthology film, another favorite genre of mine. I first saw this film several years ago on TCM late at night. It has since become part of their programming rotation and usually airs in October. Kwaidan translates to “Ghost Stories” or “Strange Stories” and the film is exactly that: a collection of ghost stories from Japanese folklore. The vignettes are based on the writings of Lafcadio Hearn, a writer and folklorist who was born in Greece, spent time in the United States, and eventually moved to Japan in the late 1800’s where he married into a samurai family and changed his name to Yakumo Koizumi. Everything about Kwaidan feels so distinctly Japanese that I was surprised to learn that a Westerner was in any way involved.

The first story, titled "The Black Hair," is about a young samurai that abandons his wife to marry into another family of higher status. He comes to regret his decision and returns to his first wife to make amends, but all it not what it seems. This where the story turns to the supernatural. This first segment is a slow burn, but builds to a satisfyingly spooky reveal and sets the tone for the rest of the film. 

The second story, "The Woman of the Snow," is my favorite. A young woodcutter becomes lost in a forest during a snowstorm. The Woman of the Snow, a cold, icy spirit comes to drink the warm blood of the woodcutter, but she takes pity on him because he is so young and handsome. She tells him that he ever tells anyone what he saw in the snowy woods, even his own mother, she will return and kill him. Soon after, the woodcutter meets a lovely girl alone on a road and invites her to take shelter with him and his mother. He and the woman fall in love, marry, and have children, but as the years go by the other women in the village notice that the woman doesn’t age... 

In "Hoichi the Earless," a mysterious samurai comes to a temple at night and asks Hoichi, a blind singer, to perform the ballad of a massacred samurai clan for his lord. The samurai leads Hoichi to a mysterious gathering every night and Hoichi must keep it a secret. The final story, "In a Cup of Tea," is the shortest and most peculiar. A samurai fills up a cup with tea and sees the reflection of another man in the cup. He drinks the tea, mysterious reflection included. Later, at night the samurai gets an otherworldly visitation from the man he drank.

Kwaidan is directed by Masaki Kobayashi whose previous films were social dramas. This was his first horror film and also his first film in color. Kobayashi brilliantly and effectively utilizes color throughout his nearly 3-hour film. Rich, bold colors along with a surreal production design fill Kwaidan with memorable, vivid visuals. The sets and matte paintings are highly stylized so that they appear obviously artificial and surreal. This only enriches the ethereal, storybook atmosphere of the movie. When the woodcutter is lost in the forest in "The Woman of the Snow," the painted clouds in the sky resemble watching eyes. Somehow even the white snow is vivid and intense. Probably the most memorable image in all of Kwaidan is of Hoichi with a holy text written all over his body... except for his ears. This was the image chosen for the Criterion DVD release of Kwaidan.

Kwaidan won the Special Jury Prize at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival. It also received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Picture, making it part of the very small club of Oscar nominated horror films. Kwaidan was heavily edited for its American theatrical release but has since been restored to its original version. Though this movie does take its time telling these stories, it doesn’t drag and its epic scope justifies the runtime. Kwaidan feels unique among anthology horror films, and even among other Japanese horror films. It chronicles folklore and evokes the same tone and feel these stories likely had when told by one generation to the next. There is not blood or gore or pop-up scares in Kwaidan, but there is plenty to chill you and make you want to keep the lights on.