By Steve Biodrowski

Since its release in 1964, KWAIDAN - an anthology film featuring four separate spooky tales - has earned a reputation in the West (along with ONIBABA) as one of the classic Japanese ghost movies. There had been a tradition of such films before, but with its lavish budget and production values, KWAIDAN was not just another routine genre item; it was clearly intended as high-class art. Unfortunately, the pretensions are not fully justified by the film itself, which has a hard time living up to its reputation, thanks to slim stories and characterizations that are bogged down by terminally slow pacing.

The four episodes are linked together as if they are stories written by an author (who plays a more central role at the very end):

• In "Black Hair," a faithless samurai abandons his wife for a rich replacement. Later, filled with regret, he returns to his first wife, but he wakes up the next morning to find her dead, her long black hair entangling him.
• "Woman in the Snow" - probably the best episode - features two woodsmen caught in a snow storm. The older one dies at the hands of the title character, a kind of female demon, but she takes pity on the younger, letting him live in exchange for a promise never to reveal what happened. He marries and years later confides the episode to his wife - who turns out to be the snow demon in another form.
• "Hoichi the Earless" is about a musician who is summoned to sing his songs about an ancient battle. It turns out his audience consists of the ghosts of those who perished in the battle. A priest protects Hoichi by covering his bodies with tattoos that hide him from the spirits, but he forgets to tattoo Hoichi's ears, with dire consequences.
• "In a Cup of Tea" - the author tells us - is an unfinished fragment of a tale of what befalls someone who drinks a cup of tea with a "soul" in it, leading to ghostly visitations. The film ends with something similar happening to the author...

"Black Hair" deserves some historical credit for introducing (at least to the West) the concept of the Japanese ghost woman with long black hair - an image that came to fuller fruition decades later with RING, JU-ON, and others. The storytelling, however, deliberately distances the viewer from the action: there is little dialogue; the tale is mostly told by the author-narrator while the actors stand around in static tableau. The surprise ending has a certain creepiness to it, but the episode stops before achieving a satisfying payoff.

"Woman in the Snow" is probably the best of the bunch. The early scenes of the woodsmen trudging through the forest go on a bit, but the decor is beautiful enough to make the footage worth viewing (the alleged exteriors are actually filmed on a sound stage, creating a marvelously artificial look). The story sustains itself through to its twist ending and generates a touching sense of tragedy: the Snow Witch lets her husband live (out of sympathy for the children she has born him), but she abandons her husband, who is left to contemplate the the loss he caused himself through his indiscretion.

"Hoichi the Earless" has nowhere near enough plot to justify its length, which is padded out with endless repetitions of Hoichi's songs, accompanied by flashbacks of the battle that consist mostly of soldiers floating around on rafts in the fog. The ending, with Hoichi's ears torn off, is mildly effective, but it is too little, too late.

"In a Cup of Tea" is deliberately short, suggesting an unfinished fragment of a tale; this allows the episode to present its creepy phenomenon without having to ponder the consequences or resolve the story. It's not particularly brilliant, but it does serve as a nice coda to the longer stories the proceeded.

Despite its narrative shortcomings, KWAIDAN is one of the most beautiful supernatural films ever made. The elaborate, highly stylized and artificial production design remains the strong point, and it does make the film worth watching, if one has the patience to sit through the slow passages. There is little in the way of overt shock, but the film's glacial beauty does yield some hypnotic, eerie moments.

TRIVIA

In the past, distributors have sometimes excised one of the stories to shorten the film's running time.

In 1965, KWAIDAN was nominated for the Golden Palm and won the Jury Special Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. The same year, it also won the Kinema Junpo Award for Best Screenplay. In 1966, the film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 

The "Woman in the Snow" and "Hoichi the Earless" inspired plot points in John Milius's film version of CONAN THE BARBARIAN.