Daiei Gothic – Japanese Ghost Stories (1959-1968)

This beautiful box set from Radiance gathers meticulously restored 4K scans of the three most popular tales of the supernatural ever to be told, retold, and reinterpreted countless times in Japan. Think of them along the same lines as classics like Dracula and Frankenstein—how many times have variations of those famous works of gothic literature been presented as faithful adaptations or reworked and reinvented into something barely recognisable, with their villains sometimes recast as romantic heroes?

A triumvirate of the bigger studios dominated Japan’s post-war cinema scene. Toho had started as one of the two major kabuki theatre companies operating in Tokyo during the 1930s before venturing into film production, predominantly in the samurai-centric jidaigeki genre. They had launched Akira Kurosawa’s career during World War II’s turmoil and tragedy. Still, it was their post-war kaiju franchise, beginning with Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla (1959) that consolidated their continued commercial success.

From 1938 their first serious rivals had been Toei Studios and, a few years later in 1942, Daiei was created by merging several smaller studios as part of an initiative by the wartime government hoping to increase their control over film production. Of course, everything changed after the war with very different though equally restrictive controls from the occupying US caretaker government replacing those of the deposed Imperial Regime. Political films were troublesome, but fantasy and horror were less linked to contemporary issues and considered less provocative while remaining perennially popular with audiences. However, it doesn’t take much scrutiny to find the political subtexts in all three films here.

Japan was a nation in turmoil desperately trying to establish a new cultural identity that could keep hold of its rich heritage while adjusting to new freedoms and looking to the future. Ghost stories were nostalgic and by their nature carried metaphors about breaking free from the past and moving on… or not.

Daiei’s Ugetsu (1953) set the tone with its literary intelligence, beautiful black and white cinematography and all-round poetic and poignant treatment. Then came along the paradigm shift of colour cinematography. It has been posited that the global horror revival was driven by the onset of technicolour with smaller studios unable to raise the kind of budgets needed for Hollywood-style epics. Yet colour was becoming expected. Exploiting colour for its expressionistic and narrative properties was one option, exemplified in Italian cinema by their horror maestro, Mario Bava. Another was to keep the palette simple and make the colour work in contrast to darkness and shadow—a look that invited gothic content, and a style pioneered by Hammer films in the UK and Roger Corman’s adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories over in the US.

Before and during the war, period dramas in Japan emphasising heroic adherence to traditional honour values were the prescribed subject. Any jobbing director or actor had to comply with this propagandist agenda if they wanted to stay in work and not fall foul of the authorities. So, after the war, when writers and directors had some degree of freedom to express and explore alternative socio-political themes they looked to the resources at hand – plenty of historically accurate sets, costumes and props along with plenty of actors experienced in the manners and etiquette of the past. The provenly popular ghost stories provided ready-to-go material that fuelled Japan’s horror revival and could be produced in colour with relatively small budgets.

One such socio-political theme prominent in each of the stories presented here is a strong central woman who instigates or influences events more than any of the men, who remain comparatively passive. A role reversal for a society where women had traditionally been marginalised, manipulated and disempowered. Gender equality was one of the marked differences and challenges in post-war Japan and remains a lesser but significant challenge where women’s wages and opportunities are generally much less than any male counterpart.

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The Ghost of Yotsuya / 東海道四谷怪談 (1959)

A wronged woman returns from the grave as a disfigured phantom to torment those who conspired against her.

The box set opens with what’s cited as the most famous ghost story in Japan. Although it was told much earlier, it was first written down as Tōkaidō Yotsuya Kaidan / 東海道四谷怪談 / Ghost Story of Yotsuya in Tokaido by Tsuruya Nanboku IV as a long-form kabuki play first staged in 1825—it was just one of the 120 or so he penned. He was known as a master of convoluted, emotionally driven stories often involving supernatural powers shaping the destinies of his characters to ensure wrong-doers are served their just deserts.

Tsuruya Nanboku’s original kabuki version is rife with betrayal, blackmail, murders, and suicides, and the 30 or so movie adaptations have offered a rich array of variations on the theme, usually streamlining the story by shedding a few of the characters and subplots. Always at the core of the tale is the couple of Iemon Tamiya and his beautiful wife, Oiwa. In most retellings, Iemon is a ruthless and vain villain who murders his wife so he can marry into a rival clan and regain his wealth and status as a samurai. The best version of this unrelentingly bleak story is generally held to be Nobuo Nakagawa’s 1959 film, released by Toho in direct competition with Kenji Misumi’s audacious reworking from Daiei.

While in keeping with the spirit of the traditional tale, Fuji Yahiro’s compelling script manages to entirely reshuffle the characters along with their motivations, which mesh together logically to propel a far more believable and engaging narrative. He had already scripted more than 125 movies which, judging from their titles, were mainly period dramas with a twist of the supernatural. Notable among those that survive are Kenji Mizoguchi’s Sansho the Bailiff (1954) and Kunio Watanabe’s take on the story of The Loyal 47 Ronin (1958)—which is perhaps the most retold story of all in Japan.

The ghost is not named in the title because the unusual story allows us to get to know the person while they are alive and, if it were not such a well-known story, guessing who is to become the ghost would form part of the suspense. The Yotsuya of the title is the name of the place where the story unfolds—a town within the region of Tōkaidō not far from Edo—the city we now know as Tokyo. The main road through the region connected the old capital of Kyoto with the new one as power transitioned during the Meiji Era. Fittingly, this route was the first to see telegraph lines, physically and symbolically connecting the past capital to the modern one. Similarly, ghost stories act as channels for those in the present to revisit the past. Japanese stories of the supernatural tend to be super-regional, sometimes associated with a specific street, bridge, shrine, or even just part of a building… perhaps the site of an old well.

In this version of The Ghost of Yotsuya, Iemon (Kazuo Hasegawa) is no longer an outright villain; he’s a dissatisfied samurai without a position. He has given up on the prospect of the shogun assigning him duties, which only come to those who can pay substantial bribes to the local officials. He’s too proud and ‘old-school’ to stoop so low, instead spending his days helping to make umbrellas or fishing at the canal. Recovering from a miscarriage, his wife, Oiwa (Yasuko Nakada), is feeling insecure since she failed to provide an heir for her clan and feels her youth and beauty fading. The first act dwells on this interpersonal dynamic and, although absorbing, with its threads of intrigue weaving into the second act, may prove too slow for those with modern horror expectations. However, the set-up is necessary to create the atmosphere and get to know the characters well enough for the final act to work so well.

Early on, we glimpse the old Iemon in full effect when he steps in to see off three bullies from the neighbourhood, easily besting them even though his sword remains sheathed. A little later, he takes on three swordsmen who were behaving badly at an inn, again without drawing his sword, and this time his upstanding deeds are witnessed by Lady Oueme (Yôko Uraji), a daughter of the neighbouring Itô clan who is instantly smitten.

Fuji Yahiro introduces this ingenious twist where a scheming woman is motivated by her obsession with male beauty. This remains a surprising and challenging development, even though we’ve seen the reverse plot device many times. Certainly, at the time, the casting of Kazuo Hasegawa would have helped to sell this notion. He was a very popular leading man, and his casting would have been a draw. Not to dismiss his performance, which is nuanced with a skilful deployment of subtext—he may say something thoughtless, then we see his second thoughts on his face before he casually tries to mitigate any hurt his remark may have caused those dear to him. Perhaps his image necessitated the character of Iemon changing from outright villain to something much more ambiguous and ultimately heroic.

Plus, it pits the female antagonist against a female protagonist, with a male ‘pawn’ being played between them, for both Oueme and Oiwa are intent on influencing Iemon. Now, it seems unlikely that a faction within the Itô clan would conspire with Oueme to win her an unemployed, down-on-his-luck samurai… until one remembers that he has no potential heir and is the last man of the Tamiya line. So, if he should marry into the Itô clan, then the remaining Tamiya properties would come with him. Although Oueme is genuinely obsessed with taking him from Oiwa, this would also benefit her family, so they conspire to poison Oiwa.

This is done most cruelly by leading her to believe that Iemon had sent for special medicine to aid her recovery, and the local healer Takuetsu (Ryônosuke Azuma) administers it in good faith, believing it to be a cure. The poison is necrotic, intended to disfigure her and destroy her beauty so that Iemon would leave her for Oueme. One thing leads to another, ending in the death of Oiwa who refuses to believe her husband had intentionally poisoned her and, seeing through the Itô clan’s machinations, returns as a vengeful ghost for a sad yet supremely satisfying finale. Oiwa is the onryō—a vengeful female ghost—that templated a lineage of such characters, leading up to the current glut epitomised by Sadako in Ringu (1998).

The female leads all balance period-true motivations and mannerisms with recognisable, timeless emotion, but Yasuko Nakada’s Oiwa shines in the pivotal role. She’s deferential and demure with an underlying soft power that still elicits our support and sympathy as a terrifying apparition. The varying manifestations of the ghostly Oiwa are handled beautifully, from the subtle, colour-coded, ghost lights seen floating through the night to the pale, beautiful spirit appearing to her courtesan sister Osode (Mieko Kondô) or in fully disfigured mode to those who wronged her.

This is among the earliest Japanese films to be shot in colour, yet the sumptuous cinematography has a painterly richness with a wonderful use of light to add depth to the interiors where panels and doorways frame scenes in warm lamplight. The second and third acts play out almost entirely at night with great structural use of the velvety darkness. The artifice of the soundstage perfectly evokes the formal composition of ukiyo-e woodblock prints made in the era of the story’s setting. So, it’s surprising that this is cinematographer Y. Marika’s only credit.

Director Kenji Misumi had just delved into the supernatural trend with Ghost-Cat Wall of Hatred (1958), but he would go on to become known for three of the hit jidaigeki franchise Sleepy Eyes of Death starring Raizô Ichikawa, with Sword of Adventure (1964), Sword of Fire (1965), and Sword of Villainy (1966), and for reinventing the genre with his four Lone Wolf and Cub (1972-73) adaptations that redefined samurai swordplay action as a ballet of blades and blood spray.

JAPAN | 1959 | 84 MINUTES | 2.35:1 | COLOUR | JAPANESE

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The Snow Woman / 怪談雪女郎 (1968)

A wood carver must keep his oath to a deadly female spirit or pay the ultimate price.

The second film presented here was made nearly a decade later, with Tokuzô Tanaka taking the directorial helm. He was another Daiei regular, also handling a couple of the Sleepy Eyes of Death movie series: The Chinese Jade (1963) and, immediately prior, Hell is a Woman (1968). He’d also contributed to another of their hugely influential franchises with Shinobi No Mono 4: Siege (1964) and had an excellent pedigree, starting out learning with Akira Kurosawa as assistant director on Rashomon (1950) and then for the great Kenji Mizoguchi on the seminal Japanese ghost story Ugetsu and also Sansho the Bailiff.

Technically, this one isn’t a ghost story at all, as the titular Snow Woman, or Yuki-onna, is one of the many yōkai of Japanese mythology, a spirit of nature, neither good nor evil. At least to begin with. This is another ancient and very popular tale of the supernatural. The definitive version was published in the 1903 collection Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, written by the renowned scholar of folklore, Lafcadio Hearn. He was an Irishman who settled in Japan, by way of the US, and fully immersed himself in the country’s culture. His Japanese wife helped him understand the subtleties of Japanese traditions, enabling him to become a respected storyteller—his works that retold classical tales to be accessible to foreign readers also entered the Japanese school curriculum.

The best movie version of his story appears in Masaki Kobayashi’s superb portmanteau Kwaidan (1964), which informs any subsequent interpretations. It’s such a poetically pure rendering and a perfect slice of cinema that I approached Tokuzô Tanaka’s version with some trepidation. However, another ingenious script by Fuji Yahiro manages to elevate the relatively simple story with an entirely new narrative core and an expanded cast of characters.

Those familiar with Kobayashi’s version may well recognise the opening scene of a vast eye in a snowy sky looking down upon a tiny figure from the similar closing frames of the Kwaidan segment. One may even expect this to be a follow-on or sequel, but Tokuzô Tanaka is simply signalling a debt owed to the prior rendering before offering an inventive, and equally gorgeous, reinterpretation.

Instead of simple woodcutters, the two men caught out in a blizzard are a master wood-carver, Shigetomo (Tatsuo Hananuno), and his young apprentice, Yosaku (Akira Ishihama). They discover a tree so majestic that it must have a soul and is therefore suitable material for a temple statue of Kannon, the Buddhist goddess of mercy and compassion. After praying to the tree and sharing their intentions, they take refuge in a cabin as the snowstorm worsens. During the night, their meagre fire is extinguished by a gust that blows open the door, allowing the figure of Yuki-onna (Shiho Fujimura) to materialise.

In folklore, she’s a vampiric yōkai of the snow who feeds off the warmth of her victims by taking their final breath. Though sometimes she’s portrayed as a merciful spirit bringing comfort and release in their final moments. Yosaku is transfixed as he watches her kneel at the side of his sleeping master who rapidly becomes a frozen corpse, glittering with frost. Next, she turns and inexorably approaches but at the last moment relents, touched by his youth and vitality. Again, we have a woman strongly affected by male beauty, so, instead of consuming his life energy, she makes him swear never to tell anyone about the occurrences of that night, on pain of death.

Sometime later, the majestic tree is felled and delivered to Yosaku, who’s commissioned by the local temple to complete his master’s dying wish and carve from it a devotional statue of Kannon. He feels inadequately qualified for the job but to honour his master, agrees. On a rainy day soon after, his adoptive mother invites a young woman, sheltering on the porch of their house, to wait with them inside until the storm passes. There’s an instant frisson between Yosaku and the young lady, Yuki, who we realise is the Yuki-onna in human form who, unable to forget the only man that she ever allowed to see her true form and live, has tracked him down.

Shiho Fujimura is perfect in the lead role, capable of tugging the heartstrings with her alluring beauty and vulnerability while at the same time conveying ancient wisdom and a barely restrained, terrible power. I recognised her as the female lead in the first two Shinobi movies (1962-63) in which she also delivers stand-out performances.

Things get complicated when Yosaku’s mother rushes to the aid of some children being beaten by a vicious samurai and, in turn, receives a fatal beating herself. Although he only glimpsed Yuki, the samurai Lord Jito (Taketoshi Naitô) is immediately fixated on making her his wife, although she’s already promised to Yosaku.

To get the young sculptor out of the way, he resorts to a series of increasingly dastardly schemes, including bringing in master carver Gyôkei (Mizuho Suzuki) to produce a statue and arranging a competition for the commission. With a team of apprentices helping out, Gyôkei completes his statue first, but it’s rejected by the priests at the temple because the face of the goddess lacks an expression of compassion. Jito then revokes the permission that was given to fell the tree that provided Yosaku’s wood and threatens to arrest him for stealing it unless he can pay a fine that’s clearly beyond his means. It’s suggested that he may be lenient if Yuki could throw herself upon his mercy, but she instead sets about raising money to pay the fine by using her powers to cure the dying son of a rival lord…

The narrative revolves around the conflicts between the innocence of Yosaku, the inhumanity of Jito, and the transformation of Yuki from the demonic to the compassionate. In many ways, it becomes a tale of redemption bordering on apotheosis for Yuki-onna. There’s plenty of room for discussing the Buddhist subtexts of living a compassionate life and cultivating a deep respect for the natural world.

It’s one of the most poignant folktales and is as beautiful as it is heartrending. If anything, the added complexity of the plot engenders a deeper engagement with the characters, giving the dénouement an even bigger emotional punch than the simpler telling in Kwaidan. What’s more, the visual beauty is matched by Chikashi Makiura’s cinematography and superb production design from art director Akira Naitô who’d already worked with Tokuzô Tanaka on the Sleepy Eyes of Death films.

JAPAN | 1968 | 79 MINUTES | 2.35:1 | COLOUR | JAPANESE

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The Bride from Hades / 牡丹燈籠 (1968)

A handsome samurai is so enchanted by a courtesan’s beauty that he fails to realise she is a ghost.

The third film in this brilliant box set is also a thing of beauty, with cinematography once again in the hands of Chikashi Makiura. This time, Satsuo Yamamoto’s in the director’s chair, having already proved more than capable with around 40 titles under his belt, including the first Shinobi movie, Band of Assassins (1962) and the second in the series, Shinobi No Mono 2: Vengeance (1963).

Also known in translation as Bride from Hell, Haunted Lantern, Ghost Beauty, My Bride is a Ghost, and Peony Lanterns, the story originates in the classical four-volume collection of Chinese supernatural stories, Jiandeng Xinhua / Stories to Tell After Snuffing the Lamp, penned by Ming Dynasty author Qu You in 1378. Though the stories themselves already dated back to the Han Dynasty of the 3rd-century, probably earlier. It’s one of the oldest ghost stories to be written down and was the first to be adapted for the screen in Japan. The earliest versions were key scenes from kabuki performances filmed and edited into a simplified narrative. Most pre-war versions are now lost, but it’s known to be Japan’s second most filmed ghost story, after The Ghost of Yotsuya.

This definitive version was scripted by Yoshikata Yoda, known for writing most of Kenji Mizoguchi’s major works, starting with Osaka Elegy (1936) and including Ugetsu—the film that set the benchmark for Japan’s cinema of the supernatural. A couple of the ghost stories in Ueda Akinari’s 1776 book Ugetsu Monogatari are thought to be inspired by the same ancient tale and involve a man being seduced or influenced by spirits or ghosts.

Hagiwara Shinzaburô (Kôjirô Hongô) is called before a council of his elders during the memorial to mark the anniversary of his older brother’s passing. He’s told that he’s bringing disgrace to the noble family by choosing to live in the poor area of town as a teacher and is instructed to marry his dead brother’s wife, Kiko (Atsumi Uda). It’s a bunch of men discussing the fate of a woman while she serves them tea, and after the vague threat of having to return her to her family to become a nun, she dutifully states that she is willing to marry Shinzaburô, who remains reluctant.

He’s found his vocation as a teacher, taking great satisfaction in seeing the peasant children flourish. On the first night of the Obon festival to honour the ancestors, he leads a procession of his class to the lake where they float lanterns to symbolically guide the spirits of the departed. He frees a couple of the lanterns that had snagged on foliage and is surprised by two strangers who thank him, explaining that it was their lanterns he just freed. They introduce themselves as Lady Otsuyu (Miyoko Akaza) and her attendant maid, Oyone (Michiko Ôtsuka), who requests to visit him and allow Lady Otsuyu to entertain him before she has to leave and unwillingly marry a man who has bought her from the geisha house where she worked. Well, that’s the gist of an increasingly complicated backstory that they share over the next few nights as it gradually dawns on Shinzaburô that they are, in fact, ghosts.

By the time he works this out, he has been enchanted by Otsuyu’s beauty and demeanour and doesn’t seem to mind at all. However, Shinzaburô’s ne’er-do-well assistant, Banzô (Kô Nishimura), discusses his employer’s nocturnal assignations at the inn, and word spreads to the Buddhist priests that he is possessed by ghosts. They explain that unless the spell is broken and the spirits are laid to rest before the end of Obon, Shinzaburô will join his lover in death. A ritual is performed, and on the last night of the festival, every door and shutter is sealed with a prayer scroll to keep Otsuyu and Oyone out.

Instead, they visit the home of Banzô to implore them to remove just one of the prayer scrolls that stand in the way of his master’s eternal happiness. Pressured by his mercenary wife, Omine (Mayumi Ogawa), Banzô agrees to help them if they tell them the whereabouts of some buried treasure…

For me, this film is the least successful of the trinity here because of the sometimes comedic nature of Banzô’s character and some sudden, incongruously bloody violence in the climax—both of which add texture and vary the mood, but tend to disrupt the poetic atmosphere, thus breaking the seductive spell woven by the first half of the narrative.

The ghosts are authentically portrayed according to the tradition of ukiyo-e prints by the 18th-century artist Ōkyo Maruyama, who established how ghosts, particularly female ones, would be represented in Japan. A defining feature is that they fade out before touching the ground, indicating that they are untethered spirits that no longer walk in our material world. For The Bride from Hades, this illusion was achieved with a clever combination of costume, camera angle in conjunction with lighting, and some very smooth wirework. This was aided by excellent production design by art director Yoshinobu Nishioka, who had already racked up 50 or so credits and had just finished the gorgeous 100 Monsters and would immediately begin work on Along with Ghosts—-both found in the wonderful Yokai Monsters Collection (1968-2005).

Sound recordist Tsuchitarô Hayashi also deserves a shout-out for enriching the atmosphere with the sounds of the night and for some subtle voice effects that help indicate the ghosts are not quite of this world—their first credit was for Rashomon. On watching the latter two titles in this box set, it’s difficult to believe that Daiei would soon go out of business. They certainly don’t look like the productions of a struggling studio working with restrictive budgets, and they stand as a fitting swansong that showcases the dedication of the technicians and studio crew who loved their work and respected the craft. Daiei would declare bankruptcy before the end of 1971.

JAPAN | 1968 | 88 MINUTES | 2.35:1 | COLOUR | JAPANESE

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Limited Edition Blu-ray Box Set Special Features:

The three films are newly restored and near-perfect in terms of audio-visual quality. The colours are sumptuous and nicely saturated, with beautifully graded darker tones that are near black without much loss of detail. The film grain is pretty much smoothed out without loss of its appealing, velvety visual texture, and the sound design is showcased with clarity and no obtrusive noise.

• New 4K restorations of each film.
• Uncompressed mono PCM audio for each film.
• Optional English subtitles for all films.
• Newly designed box and booklet artwork by Time Tomorrow.
• New 4K restorations of each film.
• Uncompressed mono PCM audio for each film.
• Optional English subtitles for all films.
• Newly designed box and booklet artwork by Time Tomorrow
• Limited Edition 80-page perfect bound book featuring new writing by authors Tom Mes, Zack Davisson and Paul Murray, newly translated archival reviews and ghost stories by Lafcadio Hearn. Not available at the time of review.
• Limited Edition of 4,000 copies presented in a rigid box with full-height Scanavo cases for each film and removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings.

The Ghost of Yotsuya

• New 20-minute interview with filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa. He begins by expressing his love for this version of the story as his favourite because, despite it barely qualifying as a horror, it manages to be the scariest. He then gives an overview of the original kabuki story, explaining how different filmmakers have to select which scenes to include and how this adds to the enjoyment of each new interpretation. He then analyses it in terms of its lasting legacy, comparing it with contemporary cinema’s treatment of ghost stories, and discussing how it was unique in introducing us to the person before they become a ghost. Whereas the usual format gives us the ghost and then reveals a backstory to explain their vindictive behaviour. He also shares cultural insight into how a Japanese audience appreciates the variations on a familiar story that may be missed by foreign audiences. He then places the movie into a contextual framework as an early colour treatment of the Gothic style.
• A 22-minute visual essay on the history and adaptations of the classic Ghost of Yotsuya story by author Kyoko Hirano. A fascinating overview of the story and some cultural insight into how such ghost stories are received in Japan. For example, they are traditionally summer viewing to coincide with the August festival of Obon and also to literally ‘chill’ the audience during the sweltering weather. She then explains some of the symbolism associated with the film’s iconography such as the mirror, comb, and loss of hair and goes into some of the historical references such as the corruption of the Edo period and the harsh punishment meted out to adulterers involved with samurai families. She also laments the modern trend for horror films to abandon allegory in favour of less rational motivations, often unrelated to any moral of the story.
• Trailer.
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Filippo Di Battista.

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The Bride from Hades

• Audio commentary by author Jasper Sharp. A highly informative commentary that at times becomes a list of loosely related film titles. He covers the literary origins and draws comparisons with the Universal Monster movies of the 1930s. He explains the contemporary studio system in Japan and discusses previous screen versions of the story. He also shares some background knowledge about the Buddhist and Shinto beliefs that inform the ghost story traditions of Japan. Plenty of facts but I would have appreciated more analysis of what we are seeing on the screen rather than an encyclopaedic list of other films we are not watching. For example, there is one baffling scene where Banzō glances at a waitress who serves him sake, briefly glimpsing her as a faceless being… some discussion of such symbolism would have been great, as well as some background about the various customs and cultural aspects.
• New interview with filmmaker Hiroshi Takahashi. He looks back to the origins of the story in ancient China and posits that the same folktale also spread to Eastern Europe, where it was reinterpreted by the Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol in his story filmed as Viy (1967). He discusses the similarities between kabuki staging and the mechanical effects used in the film and goes on to compare the different traditions surrounding ghost stories, pointing out how the tangible ghosts of Chinese folklore have informed the physicality of vengeful spirits in contemporary J-Horror.
• Trailer.
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Filippo Di Battista.

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The Snow Woman

• New 16-minute interview with filmmaker Masayuki Ochiai. He takes a poetic approach to discussing Yuki-onna’s motivations and how her womanly feelings of love and compassion are very human, although she’s not. He draws astute comparisons between the fairytale of Snow White and the Japanese concept of ‘The Silver World’. He then talks about the variety of yōkai as spirits of the natural world that coexist with us and how ghosts, though they shouldn’t, are trapped in our world by their human passions or regrets too great to carry with them to the other side. Yōkai, he explains, have different personalities and characteristics, but ghosts are no longer complete beings, defined by their sadness or anger and therefore are more frightening than yōkai.
• A 7-minute visual essay on writer Lafcadio Hearn by Paul Murray. A detailed biography tracking his formative experiences, from the Dublin of his childhood to his time in the US as a journalist, and then how his travel writing took him to Japan where he settled. There is some interesting discussion of how his fascination with pagan folklore and Irish Catholicism informed his understanding of related Japanese beliefs. There is also a useful overview of his published works, giving credit to his wife who helped him understand and retell the traditional tales he collected.
• Trailer.
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Filippo Di Battista.

Cast & Crew

directors: Kenji Misumi (Yotsuya) • Tokuzô Tanaka (Snow) • Satsuo Yamamoto (Bride)
writers: Fuji Yahiro (Yotsuya, Snow) • Yoshikata Yoda (Bride).
starring: Kazuo Hasegawa, Yasuko Nakada, Yôko Uraji, Mieko Kondô, Jôji Tsurumi, Narutoshi Hayashi (Yotsuya) • Shiho Fujimura, Akira Ishihama, Machiko Hasegawa, Taketoshi Naitô, Mizuho Suzuki & Fujio Suga (Snow) • Kôjirô Hongô, Miyoko Akaza, Mayumi Ogawa, Kô Nishimura, Takashi Shimura & Michiko Ôtsuka (Bride).