THE TALE OF OIWA’S GHOST (1961)

Held in high esteem among the scores of film versions of Tōkaidō Yotsuya Kaidan / 四谷怪談 that have been made in Japan since the dawn of cinema, Tai Katō’s The Tale of Oiwa’s Ghost / 怪談 お岩の亡霊, is perhaps one of the most faithful retellings of the epic and enduring kabuki play. So, it’s great news that this classic adaptation has been beautifully restored by Toei Studios and released by Radiance on Blu-ray.

When prolific playwright Tsuruya Nanboku IV wrote it down in 1825, the ghost story featuring an onryō, or vengeful female ghost, was already well-worn and had been around in some form for about two centuries. There’s even a grave attributed to the original Oiwa suggesting she died in 1626, much earlier in the Edo period. There’s also a shrine dedicated to calming her restless spirit in the Yotsuya area of Tokyo, not far from the Imperial Palace. However, any historical fidelity is tenuous, and Tsuruya Nanboku drew heavily from folklore and a few other sources including a couple of real murder cases that made the news during his lifetime.

Apart from the homage near the end of the film, where we see a sequence performed in kabuki style without dialogue, I have never seen the famous play. A full stage performance of Tōkaidō Yotsuya Kaidan can last more than four hours and is sometimes delivered over consecutive nights. Inevitably, movie adaptations jettison entire threads and subplots to streamline the storytelling, though the essential characters are always retained: Iemon Tamiya, a struggling rōnin; Oiwa, his beautiful wife; Osode, her indentured younger sister; Yomoshichi, a low-ranked samurai in love with Osode; and Oume, a daughter of the Itō clan.

However, I get the impression this is a more faithful adaptation than the version I enjoyed previously—released in the excellent Daiei Gothic box set, also available from Radiance. That was titled The Ghost of Yotsuya / 東海道四谷怪談 (1959), directed by Kenji Misumi. For that superior version, the screenwriter, Fuji Yahiro, seamlessly streamlined the narrative, reworking the characters and situations to create more intrigue and interpersonal dynamics to drive the plot. There was also a compelling reason why the Itō family would want their daughter Oume to marry Iemon, who also manages to retain a shred of human decency and gets a shot at redemption.

Here, though, writer-director Tai Katō never makes the main motivations clear. Or rather, they may be all too clear but remain somewhat unconvincing. The central device that everything balances upon is that Oume Itō (Yumiko Mihara) is smitten by Iemon Tamiya (Tomisaburō Wakayama) simply because he literally bumped into her in the marketplace and she saw his face up close.

While there’s nothing amiss about Tomisaburō Wakayama’s face, there’s no other reason for her instant infatuation that then drives her father to arrange for the disfigurement of Oiwa. He does this in the hope that Iemon will leave her and then Oume could seduce the deadbeat and penniless rōnin. Luckily for them, Iemon is a selfish and greedy little man who finds their family wealth appealing enough and certainly isn’t deterred by the prospect of a new girlish bride. It seems all they really had to do was bribe him. So, the whole central narrative feels strained despite its many contrived convolutions that keep things interesting.

That aside, Tai Katō presents an important entry into the nascent J-Horror genre and an unflinching character study of a man’s fall from grace and incremental descent into self-loathing and eventual insanity. Iemon’s hatred for himself makes it impossible for him to feel empathy for others, changing him into a callous schemer. It is hinted that his loss of official position and lack of respect from others has been a contributory factor to his decline but, really, that’s no excuse for such cruelty.

There’s already a guilty conscience eating away at him, as we learn that he recently killed a man in the street during an altercation while walking home from the ‘gambling house’, or brothel, presumably drunk. So, we’re dropped into the story when his moral disintegration is already underway. Initially, Oiwa leaves him in disgust over the murder he won’t own up to. Iemon’s brother Naosuke (Jūshirō Konoe) admonishes him for picking Oiwa over her younger sister Osode (Hiroko Sakuramachi) in the first place but hopes to have a chance with her himself.

Later, the two men will murder the father of the sisters so Oiwa would have to return to Iemon and stop rumours from proliferating. The murder, made to look like a petty robbery, also allows Naosuke to step in as guardian for the younger, unmarried Osode, whom he covets despite knowing that a young samurai, Yomoshichi (Sentarō Fushimi), has already asked for her hand in marriage.

At least to begin with, Oiwa remains faithful and loving despite Iemon’s indifference and his increasingly resentful attitude and violent behaviour toward her and their newborn child. Naosuke notes that it would’ve been better for him if she and the baby had died in childbirth, thus lightening his financial burden and freeing him to pursue younger women.

It’s clear from conversation that nearly all the men are only interested in using women for their own pleasure and would prefer if there was no commitment at all. Circumstances that would legitimise murdering women are discussed openly, bluntly emphasising the gendered power gradients in play. When Iemon and Naosuke come across the bodies of a man and woman nailed to a plank of wood drifting down the river, it is explained as a popular way to punish adulterers. This is one of the real murders that partly inspired the original play.

Iemon thinks it might be a good idea to coerce his servant, Takuetsu (Atsushi Watanabe), into raping Oiwa so he can then divorce her—or preferably kill them both and nail them to a board before casting their bodies into the river. He sets about putting this plan into play in parallel with the Itō family’s plot to ruin Oiwa’s beauty with a disfiguring potion.

Prospects for the innocent, open-hearted Oiwa couldn’t be darker as everyone around her seems intent on doing her harm. It’s a mess of cruel intentions, malign machinations, greed and jealousy. The whole narrative is propelled by such negative emotions and gets accordingly harsh and difficult to watch at times. Yet it remains engrossing to the last, especially when the final act delivers on the supernatural promise of the title as the wronged woman returns as a terrifying force of vengeance.

The horror lies not in Oiwa’s disfigurement, for it’s an expression of the evil surrounding her from without, not a manifestation of anything from within. The monstrous stems from the cruelty of selfish, self-obsessed men, and when the supernatural takes hold, it is they who suffer the return of their sins. It serves as a stark indictment of the misogyny and strict social hierarchy of Edo period Japan despite its economic growth and burgeoning arts scene.

The disfigured face make-up was obviously based on the way Oiwa’s ghost was portrayed in popular prints produced around the time of the play’s first productions in the 19th-century. Particularly the way her face was visualised in woodblock prints by famous ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai. Some of the interiors also echo the compositions of prints from that era where rectilinear sliding panels and screens provide structure and frames within frames.

Of course, Osamu Furuya deserves due credit for the beautifully balanced use of monochrome at a time when cinema was welcoming colour. Much of the action takes place at night, and he relishes the painterly use of chiaroscuro to bring the faces and forms of the actors out of velvety shadows. This is an early film for the notable cinematographer who was yet to showcase his command of narrative colour on the Valiant Red Peony franchise and would work with director, Tai Katō, repeatedly, including Red Peony Gambler 3: The Flower Cards Game (1969).

Tai Katō makes the most of a very capable cast. In some key scenes, such as the classic reveal when Oiwa sees her own reflection after her face has been ruined, he pulls back to present the set as a stage, allowing actors to use their whole bodies to emote, thus remaining true to the expressiveness of the traditional kabuki style. He also applies cinematic language fluently throughout every scene, offering lingering close-ups of faces to reveal subtler unspoken emotions that belie the deeper subtexts, or creating visual chaos with rapid edits when effectively eliciting fear and confusion.

Katō began his career making documentaries before transitioning to assistant director, notably for Akira Kurosawa on Rashomon (1950), before establishing himself as a prolific director of jidaigeki swordplay movies through the 1950s and yakuza films in the 1960s. So, The Tale of Oiwa’s Ghost comes at a transitional period of his career, showcasing his mastery of the period drama and hinting at the more uncompromising crime dramas he was yet to produce.

JAPAN | 1961 | 94 MINUTES | 2.35:1 | BLACK & WHITE | JAPANESE

Limited Edition Blu-ray Special Features:

• High-Definition digital transfer.
• Uncompressed mono PCM audio.
• Introduction to the film by Mari Asato (2025, 9 mins.) Providing context for the popular story in general and this rendering in particular, I learned that the Kabuki play originated as a kind of spin-off that picked up a narrative thread from The Loyal 47 Ronin—which is perhaps the only tale retold more than that or Oiwa’s ghost! Iemon was from the same clan and did not manage to give his life to reclaim the honour of their leader. As a result, he feels he is a failed samurai who has no worth in society and no surviving shred of self-esteem. This highly informative short introduction is best enjoyed after an initial viewing of the feature.
• Interview with Mari Asato (2025, 9 mins.) An excellent short critique in which she analyses Tai Katô’s style, noting his use of faces and how the camera lingers on the actors, seemingly fascinated by the similarities and differences between male and female facial expressions. She praises his use of lingering shots to convey emotional responses as they realistically take time to process and manifest. She explains that audiences in Japan are very familiar with the story and part of the enjoyment is seeing how iconic moments are treated by different filmmakers.
• Visual essay on tormented female ghosts by Lindsay Nelson (2025, 7 mins.) A compilation of comparative shorts form different versions of the story and also how its imagery has influenced the portrayl of female ghosts in Japan’s horror cinema tracing a clear lineage from Oiwa to Sadako.  
• NEW improved English subtitle translation.
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow.
• Limited Edition booklet featuring new writing by Tom Mes. Not available at time of review.
• Limited Edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings.

Cast & Crew

director: Tai Katô.
writer: Tai Katô (based on the play by Tsuruya Nanboku.
starring: Tomisaburô Wakayama, Jûshirô Konoe, Ayuko Fujishiro, Sentarô Fushimi, Hiroko Sakuramachi, Yumiko Mihara & Sawamura Sōjūrō IX.