Kwaidan's Hidden Depths

Kwaidan might not be a frightening horror movie, but it is the most spine-tingling one I have ever seen. If you have not viewed this classic collection of ghost stories yet, please do so before reading. It would be best if you could enjoy it without having any preconceived notions. I wrote the following essay in March & April 2003 for my own benefit, long before I had ever heard of blogging. Due to its length, it has been broken into four parts.

After returning to Canada following a two year stint in Japan, I rented every Japanese movie I could find, craving cultural knowledge while assuaging feelings of homesickness. One of the most memorable movies I rented was Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan (1965). Already a kabuki fan, I was deeply impressed by the stylized artistry of the film. In a rare move for me, I rented it again a year later to share with my wife to be. Unlike so many other movies, this one seemed to yield even more on second viewing. A lifelong non-collector of movies, I later bought a DVD player for the sole purpose of acquiring Kwaidan. I have watched it a dozen times since without tiring of it. In fact, my appreciation has only deepened, and my familiarity with the movie hasn’t prevented me from experiencing surprises and feelings of empathy as though I were viewing it for the first time. Without fail, I succumb to the moody atmosphere established by the billowing ink slowly swirling in the water during the opening credits. Yet this movie is so much more than a mood piece--even if other critics disagree.

The West’s most noted Japanese film critic, Donald Richie, writing in A Hundred Years of Japanese Cinema, dismisses Kwaidan as “Gorgeous pageantlike entertainment, all of it paper thin.” Given Richie’s obvious preference for such directors as Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa, it seems reasonable to deduce that he is partial to naturalistic films. However, closer examination of Kwaidan suggests that stylized, aestheticized movies can also possess an appreciable depth when one considers what is hidden behind the mask. In the four stories collected in Kwaidan, Kobayashi explores varying facets of interrelated concerns, revealing the complexity of the concerns, and by extension, the film itself.

One theme is the Power of the Word (especially the risks of exercising that power when real forces exist that can suppress it). This theme has been noted by other critics as well, such as Mike Pinsky, who considers it from the perspective of a narrative about narrative. My own observations about the film parallel his at times, but the context in which I consider them seems sufficiently different enough to justify the effort of writing them down. The second theme is an exploration of the moral elements embedded in the supernatural folk tale--here reworked by Kobayashi and scriptwriter Yoko Mizuki in a more complex manner than traditional tales. A third theme explores the lines between the literal and the figurative, reality and imagination, the psychological and the supernatural explanation of uncanny events in such a way that an examination of each dichotomy informs the others. These three themes--among others no doubt--connect the four stories so clearly that they cannot be dismissed as coincidence. In fact, they attest to Kobayashi’s rich artistic accomplishment in Kwaidan.

Part 2: The Power of the Word