Review: Kwaidan

Release Date: December 29, 1964 (Japan)
Run Time: 161 minutes

I delved a bit deeper into the research for this piece specifically because I had no idea what the word Kwaidan meant, though it could be easily figured out by simply watching the movie. But then I would never have learned that kwaidan (or kaidan), which translates to ghost story, comes from an old 17th century game of storytelling known as Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai, or A Gathering of One Hundred Supernatural Tales.

The rules were fairly simple: as night approaches, players gathered in a room and lit 100 candles. Each person told a spooky story, extinguishing a candle at the end of the tale, the room gradually growing darker darker, until the final candle goes out. The belief was that the tales would call forth a spirit. Just imagine the terrified giddiness flitting about the room as they nervously waited for something to happen!

The games became so popular that new stories, or kaidan, were in great demand, and special collections known as kaidan-shu appeared to fill the public need.

In the 1960s, director Masaki Kobayashi tried his hand at bringing a brief kaidan-shu to a movie audience, assembling four ghostly tales from 19th Century writer Lafcadio Hearn:

In The Black Hair, a samurai leaves his poor wife in Kyoto, with the hope of securing a wealthier existence with a nobleman’s daughter. Yet as the years pass, he looks back with regret on the woman he loved and yearns to return. When he finally ends his marriage and treks back to Kyoto, he finds his first wife, as young and beautiful as the day he left, and with such lustrous black hair.

The Woman of the Snow tells of two woodsman stranded in a lone cabin during a snowstorm. After a fitful bout of sleep, the younger of the two awakens to find a mysterious woman draining the life from the other woodsman. Taking pity on the younger man, the woman allows him to live on one condition: he must promise not to tell anyone what happened, or she would kill him.

In Hoichi the Earless, a blind musician is summoned nightly from a temple to regale a nobleman and his guests of the tale of the Battle of Do-no-ura. When the temple’s priest learns of these outings, he knows what the nobleman truly is and convinces Hoichi to allow Buddhist texts to be printed all over his body so that the ghosts will not tear him to pieces.

In a Cup of Tea concerns a writer who finds an unfinished story about a warrior who sees a reflection other than his own within a drinking cup and swallows it.

These tales of ghosts and spirits fit well within the rules of the game, but what does the Factor think of Kobayashi’s choices? Let’s run Kwaidan through and see what happens.

G: General Entertainment – Nothing bloody or overly gory by today’s standards. No CGI spirits or monsters. Instead, these are classic ghost stories told simply, with minimal special effects, and still every bit as effective. 9/10

A: Actuality – The use of sets is fairly obvious throughout the majority of the film: villages, rivers, woods during a heavy snow storm, a battle in blood-stained sea. And yet, for the most part, none of the stories feels forced or fake. The only slip comes during Hoichi the Earless when the camera spends too much time showing each and every member of the ghostly court, lasting about 5 minutes too long. 7/10

S: Story – Each of the tales makes sense, presenting a spooky ghost story with a good beginning, middle and end that fit within the context of each tale. Only In a Cup of Tea didn’t offer a satisfying ending, seeming to jump from the unfinished story to an incident involving the writer but without explaining their connection. Luckily, that’s the only glitch as far as the stories are concerned. 7/10

P: Presentation -  Kobayashi took a risk by dubbing all the sounds including voices. Rather than an orchestra we hear the lone biwa, the stringed instrument of the storyteller. However, combining the almost lack of sound with large indoor sets to create the haunting visuals, such as the eyes filling the sky in The Woman of the Snow or the ghostly court in Hoichi the Earless, he managed to create the hyakumonogatari atmosphere, as though the viewer were sitting in the room with the 100 candles, caught up in the stories like the other guests. 9/10

TOTAL SCORE: 8/10
VERDICT: AWESOME

Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan earned many awards, including the 1965 Prix du Jury from Cannes and an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. AS a lover of a good ghost story, Kwaidan proves that you don’t need a 3D sound system and tons of cgi effects to generate scares. All you need is a good story — or in this case, stories.