Kwaidan – Masaki Kobayashi

Ghost stories. They have haunted many genres – horror-slash-supernatural, comedy, romance,  fantasy. They have been told to us by friends and parents around campfires, or during blackouts, with “Ooooo” sound effects and torch-lighting. They have been around almost as long as we have been writing stories. (The ancient Epic of Gilgamesh – one of the earliest ever pieces of literature – is probably the first ghost story ever told). So, the question is, while ghost stories are always entertaining, can they ever be something new? And would we really want them to be?

Enter Masaki Kobayashi’s eerie 1964 masterpiece, Kaidan (‘Ghost Stories’ in Japanese), aka Kwaidan. This Oscar and Palm D’Or nominated and Cannes Jury Special Prize winner is a collection of four ghost story shorts that manage to do both – lift themselves ethereally outside the genre, and simultaneously stay ensconced in its beloved traditions.

The film begins with the segment The Black Hair – the tale of a young samurai who, tired of poverty, deserts his wife to marry into money. He soon regrets his decision and returns to his true love. What begins as a joyful reunion turns into an anything-but-happily-ever-after ending.

Then comes The Woman in the Snow, where an eerie ice spirit sucks the life out of an old woodsman trapped in a snowstorm, and spares the life of his young apprentice on the condition he never tell anybody about her. He keeps his promise – first out of fear, then because the memory of the night has snuck way back into the recesses of his memory. Another snowy night ten years later brings it back, and he confides in his wife. Big mistake, but not one that produces the expected outcome.

The third – and finest – segment, Hoichi, the Earless, tells of a blind temple attendant who has a beautiful musical gift. His specialty is his rendition of the epic battle of Dan-No-Ura, fought between the Genji and Heike clans. His gift attracts the attention of a mysterious and powerful family who beckons him to play for them in the middle of the night, but warns him not to speak of his moonlighting. With very literal blind trust Hoichi complies, and eerie consequences ensue.

Wrapping up the portmanteau is In a Cup of Tea,  in which a writer invites us to speculate why certain stories are left unfinished by their authors. Like the story of a guard that is haunted by a face in a teacup.

Each of these tales has been adapted from a story in Lafcadio Hearn’s Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things – a short story collection that – like much of Hearn’s work by his Japanese-citizen avatar, Koizumi Yakumo – is drawn from the folklore of the land. In fact, Hearn claimed that the story of Yuki-Ona (The Woman in the Snow) was told to him by an old farmer, and his was, as far as he knew, the very first telling.

Where western horror movies rely heavily on big scares and in-your-face gore, Kwaidan depends on a gradual increase in atmospheric tension that may or may not lead to a release. It unfolds languidly, giving you the feeling of having a nightmare about walking in treacle. It isn’t a film that jumps out at you and yells, "Boo!" It is more like someone – or something – that creeps stealthily behind you, and when you turn around to look what’s causing the prickle on your neck, there’s nothing there, and when you turn back you are trapped in some dimension not your own.

The themes in Kwaidan are familiar – clichéd, even – with the otherworld punishing those who step out of the line of human decency, or dabble in things they shouldn’t. But the way they unfurl on screen makes them seem like something fresh and new, even nearly half a century after their first appearance. It manages this because Kobayashi doesn’t take his ghosts and plonk them in your world; he drags you into theirs – and you don’t even realise he’s doing this till you’re already there.

This eerie illusion is created and fed by uncanny scenes that are painted with a surreal mix of the real and the otherworldly. The real world is moulded out of sparse settings that mimic minimalist stage props, and set against surreal backgrounds evoking expressionist paintings. There are giant eyes-in-the-sky and pink suns in The Woman in the Snow. In Hoichi, the Earless, flashbacks to the battle scenes are formed by dreamlike ships and an ocean only hinted at by movement, juxtaposed with paintings of the battle scenes set at disorienting angles. In The Black Hair, the close-ups of the long black hair of the samurai’s new wife shimmers with preternatural foreboding.

Kobayashi also uses sound masterfully. The ingredients – creaks, banshee music, thumps and bumps, high ‘pling’ tones – have, once more, been used many times before and since. But never quite like this. The filmmaker orchestrates these sound effects with impeccable timing, rather than relying on the sheer effect of volume.

The effect of this amalgamation is striking, beautiful, wondrous, creepy, arty, and unsettling all at the same time. And it is proof positive that Kobayashi deserves the same lofty artistic plaudits usually reserved for Akira Kurosawa. Like Kurosawa, Kobayashi, too, was a formal student of Japanese painting and fine arts, and it shows. Every frame could be plucked from the screen and hung in an art gallery.

The characters and stories are really a supporting cast to the visual intensity of the film. While this would have been a flaw in lesser hands, in this instance, it is the film’s real strength. Its undiluted atmosphere seeps out of the screen like a mist from some other world leaking into yours. It crawls under your skin, and into your mind, forcing you to stop watching, and just start feeling.

Indeed, this isn’t really a film you see. It is one you experience.

Watch a trailer for the movie here: