The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959)

directed by Nobuo Nakagawa

Japan

76 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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I've been having this hankering lately for something that I am terming "dark-ass jidaigeki": A movie based in folklore or history with a palpable air of evil; a curse that almost feels like it could be imparted upon the viewer just by witnessing the film. As of now I haven't found anything that has exactly fit this description, but I'm watching a lot of good movies in the process. I had seen this version of The Ghost of Yotsuya six years ago, and evidently enjoyed it, but retained little to no memory of it at all.

Yotsuya Kaidan is one of the most oft-adapted Japanese ghost stories, sometimes being told with a focus on Iemon himself and sometimes focusing more on his doomed bride, Iwa (occasionally spelled Oiwa, with honorific, in the title). The gist of the story is that a samurai of fairly low rank has his sights set on a specific woman, but her family is not keen on him marrying her, so he murders them, but it doesn't end there. Once he kills her family and anyone who could object to their marriage, other people keep getting in the way, so he has to kill them too. Eventually Iwa herself "gets in the way", so he kills her as well, by disfiguring her in a way that causes her to commit suicide and take their newborn son with her. He also kills a masseur after attempting to frame him for Iwa's murder. (More convenient to just not have the guy around at all rather than try to menace him into sticking to his story, right?) Iemon is a sucking black hole, an otherwise relatively powerless figure who has decided to obtain power by discarding the laws and morals that govern him and his peers. Anybody who steps within his path has a bleak future. In this adaptation, he's played impressively (and impassively) by Shigeru Amachi, who has an extensive back catalogue of pretty much all hits and no misses. Iwa is played by Katsuko Wakasugi, who seems to have flourished mostly in other kaidan films such as this one.

This particular adaptation draws heavily from traditions of kabuki theater because the original source material is a kabuki play. I think the thirty seconds or so that make up the opening credits are particularly interesting: We're watching and listening to a stage show, but we don't see the actors. Instead, the camera is focused on a kuroko, a stagehand, with a candle - representing a spirit or a soul - on a long pole. This could be interpreted in any number of ways and all of them are, I think, fascinating for their relevance to the film to come. I cannot tell who is in the kuroko getup. It could be Iemon himself, or meant to represent him, in which case his status as manipulator of souls, as wannabe arbiter of the fate of those around him, could be represented in how he handles the candle/soul. But remember: We are supposed to regard kuroko as invisible. We're not supposed to be seeing Iemon, or whoever is holding the pole, here. So even if the kuroko does represent Iemon, he himself is irrelevant, only a tool for conveying the larger narrative.

My favorite moment in the whole film is when Iemon kills his first three victims after getting refused their blessing for Iwa's hand in marriage. The vibe here is pure theater, from the thundering drums in the background to the way Iemon walks across the screen from left to right, the camera following him as he paces towards his victims, who stagger and fall before him. It's heavily menacing. It feels like we're watching the making of a curse. Iemon gets his girl after this, but he's never satisfied. Even in a marriage he wanted, where he should be happy, with a new child, his only thought is of his own power, and how he can eliminate anything that could get in his way.

One really interesting element of this is Iemon's friend Naosuke - I can't recall if he's a common element in Yotsuya adaptations, but I find him fascinating here because he acts as a sort of id to Iemon's ego. His Lady Macbeth. Ultimately it's Iemon who makes the decision to kill, but for many - if not all - of his murders, Naosuke is the one who went "hey, you know, we could just kill that guy". He even pushes somebody off a cliff himself, laughingly saying afterward that now the both of them are murderers. But while Iemon, throughout the film, is a brooding, haunted person, Naosuke lives it up, seemingly showing no guilt whatsoever for the things he's done and abetted others in doing. Viewing Naosuke as a kind of external manifestation of an aspect of Iemon's own personality is an angle that I've yet to see anybody examine and it's something I really loved about this movie.

In my original review, I talked a little bit about Iwa's role and the role of women in general in this adaptation. On the surface, it's easy to see her as a victim, but the whole point of her continuing to have a strong presence in the story after being killed is that she's not. Iwa had little to no ability to influence her husband in life - begging him unsuccessfully not to pawn the mosquito net protecting their baby is just one example of how her lot in life was basically to go along with whatever he did, up to and including abusing her. When he gives her the "medicine" that ends up killing her, she weeps with gratitude, finally envisioning a life where her husband will appreciate her and be kind to their family. But the entire point of this story is not that Iwa is a fragile side-character whose role as an accessory to her husband ends when she dies. She becomes - along with Iemon's other victims - his conscience, and haunts him relentlessly. Something I said in my old review that I will preserve here was that "her power as a woman lies in her ability to persist". To be the itching memory - not even a memory but a physical manifestation. In the final act of the movie, her sister, along with one of Iemon's would-be victims, seeks revenge for Iwa's murder. Women are shown retaliating in ways both spiritual and physical. I love Iwa's keening voice following Iemon wherever he goes, and always calling him "Iemon-dono", using the highly deferential honorific as if to imply, this is the regard I held you in, and what did I get for it?

The atmosphere of dread that permeates this film is created by its masterful cinematography that incorporates surprisingly experimental techniques. Another of my favorite scenes out of the whole thing is when Iemon finally kills Naosuke, and for a split second the lighting goes red, the sound cuts out, and we see him falling into the swamp that they dumped Iwa in, but it's in the middle of a house, recessed into the floor, reeds and foliage invading the room like a double-exposed photograph. Certain things like that and like the mosquito net floating in midair like a classic sheet ghost would absolutely not be out-of-place in an A24 horror movie made today. But the crucial thing about this movie is that it is conservative in its style, that it does mimic traditional theater. It is interesting that this is generally the most highly regarded of the Yotsuya adaptations despite more well-known directors having had a go at it, such as Kenji Misumi, Tai Katō, Keisuke Kinoshita, and Takashi Miike's loose adaptation that is one of my favorites of his.