90 Kwaidan

[colinr0380]

I really enjoyed Stephen Prince's commentary, though I must admit to not having quite as harsh a view of Yuki in The Woman In The Snow as Prince seems to! I really liked his reading of the final scene of that story as a question of "who betrays who?" with political undercurrents that I had not previously considered. Though I'm slightly more of the view that Minokichi did betray his promise to the snow woman to not talk of their meeting under pain of death, albeit without any malice to doing so!

That story strikes me more as about the idea that some things are better left unstated (or at the very least should only be implied!) in marriages, even the happiest ones! It seems to suggest that stating fears, even to your closest soul mate in your most unguarded moment, can potentially run the risk of actually bringing about the tragedy that had always been feared. And when the truth is out there, there is only irreversible devastation with little to no catharsis to realising that truth, just a situation of having to explain to the children where their mother has disappeared to.

But is Minokichi a villain for casually talking about his encounter with the snow woman to his wife many years later? Has he forgotten his promise, or could it perhaps be that the promise made to a nebulous (even seasonal!) abstract entity is in some ways not as real as casual intimacies shared within a loving marriage? Perhaps this is where I think that I meet back up with Stephen Prince's comments, as there could be a political dimension to the idea that no matter how loyal someone is to their state, their nation, even the environment in which they live, in some ways people have a deeper connection within personal relationships that overrides any wider deference to laws and edicts. The wider world can seem abstract and distant to the point of appearing completely irrelevant, at least until it suddenly actively intervenes into someone's private relationship to brutally shatter it apart.

I also love Prince's comments over that shot of the wife's sandals left out in the driving snow seeming to disappear: "Perhaps she returned for them after all. Perhaps finally she desired a memento of her travels in the world of mortals". I would only add to that a perhaps more devastating final line: "Or perhaps they have only seemed to disappear, and are left lying there unclaimed underneath the drifting snow until the changing of the season"

It is also interesting to compare this extremely moving climax that invites multiple interpretations of who is at fault (if anyone in particular! They're all just following their natures) to the strangely blunter and less beautifully ambiguous Americanised version of the tale that turns up in that rather silly Tales From The Darkside film. In that adaptation:

Spoiler

the flesh-eating gargoyle monster at the climax stays true to her threat about killing the hero if he repeats the story and rips out his throat (sort of literalising the vampiric motif that Prince identifies in Kwaidan!), though not before he witnesses his sleeping children get painfully transformed into gargoyles themselves! Then the mother and her children leave to return to becoming statues on the nearby building. (I guess the implication there is that, even in fantastical break ups, the mother still gets custody of the children!) Here's that climactic scene from that film, though needless to say Kwaidan deals with this in a slightly more 'arthouse' manner!

[manicsounds]

With "Yuki-Onna", he broke the promise and told someone about the fateful night. Whether it was to the Yuki-onna knowingly or unknowingly isn't the question, the point is that he broke the promise. That's the moral of the story.

Of course, she should have killed him, but what kind of story would that be? Instead of a punishment of death, is made to live on taking care of the children given to him from the woman he loved, who will never be with him ever again, and that may be a worse punishment than death.

As for the snow covering the sandals, I don't see it as a possible "return" of Yuki, but that whatever he did for her is now completely gone.

[colinr0380]

Absolutely, and he'll always see the image of his lost wife in his children. It is just an extra heartbreaking element to the story where not killing the young man straight away and then appearing to him in order to try mortal love and marry him (maybe even test him, or even her own feelings towards living humans) is ruined not by the man consciously blabbing, but just absent mindedly forgetting himself many years later.

I particularly like that the final shot of those sandals is not a very obvious optical of them supernaturally disappearing (as say happens with Yuki running through the door and off into the horizon just before) to suggest as Prince implies that they have been taken, but instead is more of a time-lapse dissolve to show just the barest outline of them now covered by snow and almost hidden from view. That's the truly haunting image!

One of the things that I really like about Kwaidan in general is that it seems to be a reversal of the more expected ghost story tradition in which the ghosts do not know that they are dead and have to be placated in order to move on and finally be at peace. Here the ghosts always seem fully conscious that they are spirits (and are not looking to 'move on' but instead seem much more fully integrated into their environment than they ever were alive), and it is the living people who are often deluded as to being in the presence of the dead, or at least of greater spiritual forces!

[manicsounds]

In Japan, it's traditional that ghosts know that they are ghosts. It's not like the western idea of wandering spirits of people who suddenly died that are caught somewhere between life and afterlife. So it may be unexpected for westerners but not for Japanese.

[colinr0380]

I'm still very taken by Hoichi The Earless. When we finally see Hoichi performing in the spiritual world the eventual intercutting between the biwa peformance for the spirits and the painting of the battle is beautifully handled. I really like the sense created of the idea of getting caught up in a performance actually starting to transform the stage around Hoichi, with the audience themselves being taken back into their memories of the battle, almost re-enacting their positions in a highly stylised way. The intercutting with the paintings is also extremely beautiful, with moments of the entire painting appearing out of the 'fog of war' combining with intricate pans and focusing in on smaller details of the static image. This sequence always makes me think of the way that Tarksovsky later explores and highlights aspects of a painted image in Andrei Rublev and Solaris, and Kwaidan deserves to rank among that company in terms of effectively conveying the sense of viewing 'static' artworks which somehow reveals them to be full of content and meaning for the audience to uncover.

One of the things that I'd also take a different (almost diametrically opposed) approach to Stephen Prince's commentary on (though his commentary enabled me to consider this more deeply) is that I don't really consider the spirits to be particularly 'vengeful' in themselves, despite the bloody conclusion to the story. They might be slowly draining Hoichi of his vitality as he gets drawn further into performing for them each night, to such an extent that escaping from them would be necessary, but they have been attracted by his talent and he actually is performing a spiritual duty by playing for them that is perhaps even more fundamental than the perhaps more earthly duties being performed at the temple itself! After all Hoichi is the only one around to hold the fort when the other priests leave to perform services for newly deceased people, and indeed there is the suggestion that the spirits realise this by killing that fisherman in order to ensure that Hoichi will be left unguarded!

Perhaps the other priests are ironically too concerned with the day to day goings on and have perhaps been neglecting their duties to serve these more ancient spirits! I love the political dimension that Prince talks about regarding Kobayashi's concerns regarding autocratic rule and the prisons of duty (and Hoichi is the fundamental naive, almost ingenue, innocent at the heart of this tale being buffeted around by different agendas), and there is an element of that here in the rigid heirarchy and mass suicides after a failure in battle, but I see the spirits here as more duty-bound than particularly consciously cruel. There is always going to be the question of what happens to Hoichi such as whether simply playing each night for the spirits was enough. Did they just want to hear one single performance, or would Hoichi have to perform for the rest of his life for them? (Although is that any different from praying every day of your life, in terms of continually paying respects over and over without end to wider forces?) Presumably if nobody had intervened Hoichi would have actually died and added to the retinue as the court biwa player for eternity (maybe its all just an extended job interview!). But would that be a bad thing, in the sense that in some ways it is honouring Hoichi with that central role of a performer of skillfully re-invoking a moment over and over again for his audience to appreciate.

In some ways I feel much closer to the ghosts in this story than I do towards the human characters! When they are trying to hide him Hoichi has his ears almost pointedly left untouched by the priests (the one stand out part of his body that he would not be able to see himself to ensure that it had been covered, but more have to take the word of the priests that they had covered every part of his body?) and while they do a little self reflection after the samurai ghost rips them off as the only part of Hoichi he can find, they reflect on the 'tragedy' in very much an offhand 'well, what's done is done' manner! It is almost as if that is the ritualistic sacrifice Hoichi has to make to pay (or atone) for his 'crimes' of wandering off at night and abandoning the temple. Maybe also the priests are a little angry that the spirits have honoured Hoichi with their presence and not them! Once Hoichi has been dragged back from more artistic and spiritual concerns, and shed blood in payment, the priests can accept him back into the temple!

Indeed (and this is one aspect that Prince doesn't really go into too much in his commentary, though his political comments started me off on this train of thought) I got a sense of deep irony from those final scenes. Now the legend of Hoichi spreads across the land and the temple is getting actual living nobility wishing for him to perform for them! The film itself has some fun equating them at this point, with the servants being unsure if they can believe their eyes or are just seeing more ghosts! Yet ironically the living nobles are the pale echoes here. Hoichi himself becomes the star attraction, and presumably has regularly scheduled shows. The temple itself in those final shots is getting showered with wealth and gifts! So the actual spiritual duty to the subjects of the song is diverted off into capitalistic gain and something a bit more showy for visitors!

That's the tragedy that faces Hoichi at the end - not just that he has lost his ears, but that his chance to perform a truly needed and appreciated (albeit deadly!) function has in some ways been corrupted into more earthly desires for fame and fortune on the part of the priests themselves. But I guess it pays the bills! In some senses this puts Hoichi The Earless in the same territory as the capitalistic critiques of Kobayashi's earlier I Will Buy You.

I also wondered if there had not been any ghosts whether the priests may have one day come up with an idea themselves of mutilating a new recruit to create a myth, or at least get someone willing to mythologise themselves for fame and glory - weirdly I kept thinking of that otherwise unrelated Australian film Chopper in which the main character cuts off his ears in jail, which ends up becoming a defining physical characteristic of that character as well as a shorthand media nickname that gets him recognition as a performer and an eventual book deal!

[domino harvey]

Colin, I actually prefer the Tales From the Darkside version of this story, in part because it seems to carry-through on the threat! Not a very good film, though, I'll agree. Finally watching this, I found it, like a lot of horror anthologies, to pretty uneven, but I was surprised to learn that the Black Hair, by far the worst segment here and a horrible way to start off the film, wasn't the segment cut for its initial premiere! Things get much better once we come back from the intermission and Hoichi the Earless is pretty clearly the best thing here, using a longer running time to indulge in the dread rather than pad out the actions (which I think the Black Hair ends up spinning its wheels doing). I'm looking forward to Prince's commentary (some day...)

[AK]

Finally got to watch this Blu-ray after also revisting Harakiri. Kobayashi is just so astoundingly brilliant I love his films more and more after each viewing. And the transfer is breathtaking. (And in terms of colour films, this is pretty high up there as one of the most sumptuous and ingenious in its use of the possibilities of the technology)

So many amazing moments in these stories, the central moment for me the biwa performance – the spirits who have possessed Hoichi are themselves cast under a spell in a performance that's singularly evocative and in itself just as spellbinding for me as it is for the poor spirits reliving their bittersweet demise. The music makes the surroundings change and it's a powerful moment in which the blind Hoichi creates what we see, perhaps for a moment letting us see the way he does.

I don't know what is wrong with me, but I haven't yet seen/bought the Kobayashi Eclipse. Since I dearly love all that I have seen from him, I hope I'll come to my senses sooner rather than later.

[Zot!]

The eclipse set is interesting, but mostly genre pictures and nowhere close to the more famous releases. If you don't own it, I would definitely suggest the human condition set coming from arrow.

[Jack Phillips]

The eclipse set is interesting, but mostly genre pictures and nowhere close to the more famous releases. If you don't own it, I would definitely suggest the human condition set coming from arrow.

Also acquiring a copy of Samurai Rebellion would not go amiss.

[AK]

The eclipse set is interesting, but mostly genre pictures and nowhere close to the more famous releases. If you don't own it, I would definitely suggest the human condition set coming from arrow.

Also acquiring a copy of Samurai Rebellion would not go amiss.

These titles are actually the ones I've seen from Kobayashi (save for the Eclipse ones). Kaidan was my first, probably some 10 years ago, and I remember that while I admired it a lot at the time, I didn't really like it that much. Only after watching it again some years ago it kind of opened its doors for me, and I've been possessed ever since. Yesterday was more like a confirmation that yes, it still has me, and even more than before.

Samurai Rebellion is a title I've only seen once, and it's years ago, so my recollections and impressions have started to fade.

And I'll definitely get The Human Condition on Blu. I've been waiting for a long time for Criterion to upgrade it, so I'm over the moon. I think I've seen it twice in its entirety, and it's one extraordinary journey I'll surely rave about more and cherish come summer.

[jsteffe]

I decided to pre-order the Criterion Blu-ray, and but I'll keep the MoC DVD as well.

What I am seeing in the screenshots of the 2K restoration is a considered attempt (successful or not) to do the color timing for each segment independently. In some images the color looks very light, even pale as some of you have noted. In other places it is *more* saturated than in the other versions. Skin tones are also all over the place, depending partly on makeup and lighting. The one Blu-ray image of a male face in "natural" lighting without heavy makeup has really nice, natural-looking skin tones.

I ended up cancelling the preorder a while back and only just now picked up Criterion's KWAIDAN thanks to the Barnes & Noble sale.

I don't think the Beaver screenshots tell the whole story. Not that they're inaccurate, but they're very selective. Taken as a whole and viewed in motion, Criterion's 2K restoration looks really nice. *Many* shots in the film pop without looking overly saturated. I'd say that the color is superior, and over all more balanced compared to the old Masters of Cinema transfer. As I suspected, much of the variations in skin tones in the Beaver screenshots have to do with differences of in makeup.

On the Criterion Blu-ray, the shots where the skin tones should probably look "normal" are fine. Watching the film again, I was struck by how even within a single episode, an actor might have markedly different makeup from one scene to the next. In fact the clarity of the transfer made me appreciate all the more the meticulous work that went into the look of the film.

Some of the variations in color are probably due to the challenges of working with different elements and color fading in general. A couple shots look slightly soft and lack detail, as if there were too many restoration tools and filters applied to repair damage or stabilize the image, but these problems are minor. Mostly, I found the image very satisfying. I'm really glad I purchased this Blu-ray and will be returning to it periodically - KWAIDAN is one of my favorite Japanese films.

[movielocke]

Finally got to watch this Blu-ray after also revisting Harakiri. Kobayashi is just so astoundingly brilliant I love his films more and more after each viewing. And the transfer is breathtaking. (And in terms of colour films, this is pretty high up there as one of the most sumptuous and ingenious in its use of the possibilities of the technology)

So many amazing moments in these stories, the central moment for me the biwa performance – the spirits who have possessed Hoichi are themselves cast under a spell in a performance that's singularly evocative and in itself just as spellbinding for me as it is for the poor spirits reliving their bittersweet demise. The music makes the surroundings change and it's a powerful moment in which the blind Hoichi creates what we see, perhaps for a moment letting us see the way he does.

I don't know what is wrong with me, but I haven't yet seen/bought the Kobayashi Eclipse. Since I dearly love all that I have seen from him, I hope I'll come to my senses sooner rather than later.

The eclipse set is stunning, and definitely recommended if you like Harakiri. I like Kwaidan a bit less than the four eclipse films, personally, but you should definitely check out more of Kobayashi's films.

[Black Hat]

I'm still very taken by Hoichi The Earless. When we finally see Hoichi performing in the spiritual world the eventual intercutting between the biwa peformance for the spirits and the painting of the battle is beautifully handled. I really like the sense created of the idea of getting caught up in a performance actually starting to transform the stage around Hoichi, with the audience themselves being taken back into their memories of the battle, almost re-enacting their positions in a highly stylised way. The intercutting with the paintings is also extremely beautiful, with moments of the entire painting appearing out of the 'fog of war' combining with intricate pans and focusing in on smaller details of the static image. This sequence always makes me think of the way that Tarksovsky later explores and highlights aspects of a painted image in Andrei Rublev and Solaris, and Kwaidan deserves to rank among that company in terms of effectively conveying the sense of viewing 'static' artworks which somehow reveals them to be full of content and meaning for the audience to uncover.

One of the things that I'd also take a different (almost diametrically opposed) approach to Stephen Prince's commentary on (though his commentary enabled me to consider this more deeply) is that I don't really consider the spirits to be particularly 'vengeful' in themselves, despite the bloody conclusion to the story. They might be slowly draining Hoichi of his vitality as he gets drawn further into performing for them each night, to such an extent that escaping from them would be necessary, but they have been attracted by his talent and he actually is performing a spiritual duty by playing for them that is perhaps even more fundamental than the perhaps more earthly duties being performed at the temple itself! After all Hoichi is the only one around to hold the fort when the other priests leave to perform services for newly deceased people, and indeed there is the suggestion that the spirits realise this by killing that fisherman in order to ensure that Hoichi will be left unguarded!

Perhaps the other priests are ironically too concerned with the day to day goings on and have perhaps been neglecting their duties to serve these more ancient spirits! I love the political dimension that Prince talks about regarding Kobayashi's concerns regarding autocratic rule and the prisons of duty (and Hoichi is the fundamental naive, almost ingenue, innocent at the heart of this tale being buffeted around by different agendas), and there is an element of that here in the rigid heirarchy and mass suicides after a failure in battle, but I see the spirits here as more duty-bound than particularly consciously cruel. There is always going to be the question of what happens to Hoichi such as whether simply playing each night for the spirits was enough. Did they just want to hear one single performance, or would Hoichi have to perform for the rest of his life for them? (Although is that any different from praying every day of your life, in terms of continually paying respects over and over without end to wider forces?) Presumably if nobody had intervened Hoichi would have actually died and added to the retinue as the court biwa player for eternity (maybe its all just an extended job interview!). But would that be a bad thing, in the sense that in some ways it is honouring Hoichi with that central role of a performer of skillfully re-invoking a moment over and over again for his audience to appreciate.

In some ways I feel much closer to the ghosts in this story than I do towards the human characters! When they are trying to hide him Hoichi has his ears almost pointedly left untouched by the priests (the one stand out part of his body that he would not be able to see himself to ensure that it had been covered, but more have to take the word of the priests that they had covered every part of his body?) and while they do a little self reflection after the samurai ghost rips them off as the only part of Hoichi he can find, they reflect on the 'tragedy' in very much an offhand 'well, what's done is done' manner! It is almost as if that is the ritualistic sacrifice Hoichi has to make to pay (or atone) for his 'crimes' of wandering off at night and abandoning the temple. Maybe also the priests are a little angry that the spirits have honoured Hoichi with their presence and not them! Once Hoichi has been dragged back from more artistic and spiritual concerns, and shed blood in payment, the priests can accept him back into the temple!

Indeed (and this is one aspect that Prince doesn't really go into too much in his commentary, though his political comments started me off on this train of thought) I got a sense of deep irony from those final scenes. Now the legend of Hoichi spreads across the land and the temple is getting actual living nobility wishing for him to perform for them! The film itself has some fun equating them at this point, with the servants being unsure if they can believe their eyes or are just seeing more ghosts! Yet ironically the living nobles are the pale echoes here. Hoichi himself becomes the star attraction, and presumably has regularly scheduled shows. The temple itself in those final shots is getting showered with wealth and gifts! So the actual spiritual duty to the subjects of the song is diverted off into capitalistic gain and something a bit more showy for visitors!

That's the tragedy that faces Hoichi at the end - not just that he has lost his ears, but that his chance to perform a truly needed and appreciated (albeit deadly!) function has in some ways been corrupted into more earthly desires for fame and fortune on the part of the priests themselves. But I guess it pays the bills! In some senses this puts Hoichi The Earless in the same territory as the capitalistic critiques of Kobayashi's earlier I Will Buy You.

I also wondered if there had not been any ghosts whether the priests may have one day come up with an idea themselves of mutilating a new recruit to create a myth, or at least get someone willing to mythologise themselves for fame and glory - weirdly I kept thinking of that otherwise unrelated Australian film Chopper in which the main character cuts off his ears in jail, which ends up becoming a defining physical characteristic of that character as well as a shorthand media nickname that gets him recognition as a performer and an eventual book deal!

This is so wonderfully articulate Colin, thank you (7 years later). I agree with you about the spirits not seeming to be particularly vengeful. What it felt like to me was a desire to be remembered. I mean songs of this kind are commemorative by design, right? The priests, also, don't come out looking much beyond careless self-interested buffoons who have one job and can't even do that right.

[colinr0380]

Thanks Black Hat! I wonder if the presence of Takashi Shimura as the head priest was enough to distract audiences (or at least me for a decade before that post) from realising that his character is probably a bigger antagonist than the ghosts were! His character is the blinkered and down to earth pragmatist extreme opposite contrast to Hoichi's naively artistic dreamer, both characters embodying such traits to a fault, so much so that they miss the point of why they are there in the first place!

[Black Hat]

Considering how deliberate Kobayashi is I reckon you're correct. A pretty nifty piece of misdirection, huh?