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THE GHOST STORY OF YOTSUYA
From 1959, a stunningly executed, no-nonsense exercise in
old-fashioned ghost story chills. Superbly visualized and authentically scary,
this Japanese near-masterpiece is one film that has definitely stood the test of
time.
The Package
The "Ghost Story of Yotsuya" is an ancient Japanese
folktale about a spiteful man who kills his wife, only to have her reappear as a
ghost and hound him to his grave. Although this particular film is the one most
people have seen, there have been at least ten others based on the tale and
subsequent 19th Century theatrical adaptation by Nanboku Tsuruya
(including one by SHOGUN ASSASSIN'S Kinji Misumi made in 1959, the same year as
this one).
The director was Nabuo
Nakagawa, often referred to as the "Nippon Hitchcock" and probably best known
for 1960's JIGOKU (a.k.a. HELL), a visually opulent horror-fantasy with enough
gore to fill a dozen H.G. Lewis flicks. It was, in other words, many years
ahead of its time, not unlike GHOST STORY OF YOTSUYA (TOKAIDO YOTSUYA KAIDAN),
which was also considered shocking and transgressive upon its original release
(though it does seem rather tame by today's standards).
The Story
A quick criticism: the first half is a bit too
drawn-out and overcomplicated for its own good, but things pick up considerably
once the horror kicks in during the story's final third.
In feudal Japan, Lemon, a young samurai, stops an older
samurai on a road to ask for his daughter Iwa's hand in marriage. The old man
rebuffs him, and an enraged Lemon retaliates by murdering the coot and his
minions. He spares the life of one servant, Naosuke, after the latter agrees to
help Lemon evade capture. They pin the murders on a local thief and
subsequently kill another man, the companion of a woman Naosuke is interested
in, by stabbing him in the back and pushing him over a waterfall.
Several months pass; Lemon and Iwa have a young child
and find themselves living in poverty. Worse, Lemon has his eyes on Ume, the
daughter of a wealthy man. He and Naosuke plot to kill Iwa by poisoning her and
pinning the blame on a local masseur.
Iwa swallows the poison,
which horribly disfigures her face. As she dies, she realizes her husband's
treachery and kills their infant son before breathing her last. Lemon returns,
finds the bodies and the still-living masseur, and brutally murders him. He and
Naosuke nail the carcasses of Iwa and the masseur to either side of a board and
sink the whole thing in a lake. But later that night Lemon hears his wife's
ghostly voice talking to him, and sees her deformed visage on ceilings, emerging
from the lake, etc. Lemon is eventually driven mad by the ghostly visitations,
killing everyone around him and, inevitably, ending up dead himself.
The Direction
Nobuo Nakasawa's widescreen compositions are
stunning (if you see this film on video or DVD, it MUST be in letterboxed
form!), as are the eye-popping colors. Visually, GHOST STORY OF YOTSUYA ranks
alongside the films of Japanese masters like Teinosuke Kinugasa (GATE OF HELL),
Kon Ichikawa (FIRES ON THE PLAIN) and Akira Kurosawa. The film is
unapologetically stagy, which gives Nakasawa great control over color and mood
(a storm is announced by simply dimming the stage lights) and imparts an unreal,
dreamlike ambiance.
Nakasawa's flair for pure
horror is as proficient as that of anyone. A shot of the just-poisoned
wife catching a glimpse of her hideously disfigured face in a mirror ranks with
the greatest horror movie images of all time. Her subsequent ghostly
appearances, accompanied by discordant musical cues, were an evident influence
on THE SHINING. The bright, gorgeous color scheme, for its part, foreshadows
the films of Mario Bava (BLACK SUNDAY, THE WHIP AND THE BODY, etc.) and Masaki
Kobayashi, whose 1964 horror epic KWAIDAN owes much to this film. As in Bava
and Kobayashi's works, the supernatural is announced by otherworldly shades of
red and green, erupting into otherwise unremarkable landscapes.
Vital Statistics
GHOST STORY OF YOTSUYA (TOKAIDO YOTSUYA KAIDAN)
Shintoho Company Ltd.
Director: Nobuo Nakagawa
Producer: Mitsugu Okura
Screenplay: Yoshihiro Ishikawa, Masayoshi Onuki
(Based on the play by Nanboku Tsuruya)
Cinematography: Tadashi Nishimoto
Cast: Shigeru Amachi, Noriko Kitazawa, Shuntaro Emi, Junko Ikeuchi, Ryozaburo
Nakamura, Jun Otomo, Kazuko Wakasugi