Kwaidan: The Power of the Word

This is Part 2 of an essay about the movie Kwaidan. Read Part 1 here.

In "Black Hair," we see the first treatment of the Power of the Word theme. In this story, a ronin abandons his wife so that he can marry another woman possessing the political connections to secure him a position as a samurai. Even in the midst of the trip to his new posting, he begins to reflect about his first wife, favourably comparing her to his current bride. Here the Power of the Word is seen to be so strong that it allows him to create an idealized portrait of his first wife that it enables his self-delusion about her unchanged appearance when he returns to find her. However, the Power of the Word is not omnipotent--it cannot alter reality nor bring the dead to life. When the Word fails the samurai, it costs him his sanity.

"Snow Demon" explores the Power of the Word to help us make sense of our experience; in fact the impulse to do so is shown to be so irrepressible that people feel the need to tell stories even when to do so can be self-defeating. A young woodcutter, Minokichi, witnesses a beautiful snow demon take the life of his older partner. She turns to do the same to him, but spares his life after seeing how young and handsome he is. There is one condition for her mercy. She threatens that if he ever tells another about what he saw, she will kill him. Years pass. Minokichi marries, has three children, yet after all this time, he has kept his word. One evening, seeing the face of his wife Yuki (which ominously translates as Snow) from a certain angle, he is reminded of the snow demon. Realizing she is being stared at, Yuki asks what is wrong. He answers vaguely, but she presses him to tell the story. Even knowing the risk is death, Minokichi feels impelled to tell his story to someone--he simply cannot suppress the need to make sense of his experience through storytelling. He is willing to risk, and if necessary, accept the ultimate punishment.

Yuki’s complicity in Minokichi’s oath breaking warrants an examination as well. At this point in the film, she represents the audience. The audience too, has a need and an interest in hearing his impressions about whether he believes he saw a demon or not. Minokichi, by suggesting that he has a story to tell, has obligated himself to share it. That by telling the story Yuki will receive a pretext to abandon her family before the local villagers become any more suspicious of her preternatural youth and beauty seems secondary to her need to hear how her husband perceives their first chilling meeting.

Curiously, Yuki does not reveal her true identity at any point in Minokichi’s story. It is not until he questions whether it was a dream or reality that she counters, “It was not a dream.” She has now found a pretence to share her version of the night’s events. When finished, she does not kill him as promised, but suspends the sentence on the condition that he raises their three children so that they have no cause for complaint. If her mercy, and the reason provided for it, seem weak for a man-eating snow demon, it’s because she has been softened by her feelings for Minokichi. They were a loving, married couple, each withholding a secret from the other. The sharing of their stories with each other may have ended their marriage, but it has also completed it. The tragedy is that they have to part despite satisfying the necessary impulse to make sense of that fateful night of their first meeting.

In "Earless Hoichi," the need to make sense of an experience through storytelling emerges again. Although it is not the central theme of this episode, its repetition not only underscores its importance, but signals that the episodes are connected in multiple ways. Hoichi is a talented biwa player with a growing reputation for chanting the Tale of Heike, which retells the twelfth century battle between the Genji and Taira for supremacy of Japan. One night, the ghosts of the losing side summon an unsuspecting Hoichi to perform selections for them. Their need to relive these events is artfully revealed in a series of costume changes that mirror the stage of the story being retold. Learning of Hoichi’s unexplained late night absences, the head of the temple where Hoichi resides fears that his life is in danger so long as he remains in contact with the ghosts. In an effort to save his life, the abbot has sutras written on Hoichi’s body, unwittingly forgetting to inscribe his ears. The Power of the Word emerges here in a curious way, in that it is the written word that literally protects him from harm. When Hoichi’s unprotected ears are torn from his body, it may seem like an arbitrary plot device designed to add a sense of horror or to serve as a simple moral about the importance of double checking one’s work. Yet in Kobayashi’s reworking, it becomes a pointed reminder of the limitations of the Power of the Word. No one story has been, or ever will be perfect and complete.

"In a Cup of Tea" serves as a fitting epilogue, and is best perceived as such, for it does not stand on equal terms with the first three stories. That is not to say it does not offer an effective cautionary tale to those artists who take the Power of the Word lightly, especially for the sake of commercial gain. Initially, the episode appears to be a pedestrian ghost story in which four spirits seek revenge against a samurai for the crime of “drinking a man’s soul.” That the ghosts’ leader seemed to entrap the samurai implies that their motive is arbitrary--inserted by the author so that he may play with the idea of what it would mean to drink a man’s soul. Just as the author begins his digression with “After that. . .,” the story of the samurai abruptly ends and the scene shifts to the author’s empty house, where his publisher arrives to inquire about the completion of the story in question. While searching for the author with the latter’s wife, he comments, tellingly, “I have been rushing him to complete this script.” It suggests that the author, if not always a hack, is at least currently engaged in hack work. He does not take the idea of ghosts seriously, let alone the idea of what it would mean to drink a man’s soul. He has merely contrived an entertaining tale designed to discharge an obligation to his publisher. His punishment for his lack of respect for the Power of the Word is to have his own soul trapped in a jar of water in his house. It is a grim, yet fitting reminder that an artist risks losing his soul if he doesn’t engage himself completely in his art, regardless of creative fatigue or commercial pressure.

Part 3: Morality and Supernatural Justice