Ghosts of Old Japan

As Spooktober draws to a close, we finish with a trio of Japanese art-house ghost or horror films.

Onibaba (1964) starts with images of long waving grass. We are introduced to a hole in this sea of grass, then two figures struggling through the grass, that reached above their heads. These two, wounded samurai from a nearby battle, sink down to rest, and are killed by two women hiding in the grass. These women strip the samurai of their arms and armor and dump the bodies in the hole. This is a striking scene - the women, clearly peasants, work at stripping the men like hunters skinning a deer, or butchers skinning a pig. They are strong and desperate.

They go back to the hut they share in the grass, gobble a handful of millet porridge and collapse in sleep. The older woman is played by Nobuko Otawa, the younger by Jitsuko Yoshimura. They are the mother and wife of a man who has gone to the wars.

Later, a man (Kei Satō) shows up, a friend of the son.  He is sure glad to make it back, it was crazy. It takes a while, but he gets around to mention that the son is dead. After some time, the wife, or widow, starts sneaking out at night to see Sato. The mother-in-law tries to discourage it by talking about the Buddhist hell awaiting women who aren’t faithful, but it doesn’t seem to be working. When she steals a demon mask, she uses that to scare her daughter-in-law - with bad consequences. Hint: Onibaba could be translated “demon mother-in-law”.

This was an amazing movie. First, the scenes of grass, almost as abstract as a Stan Brakhage piece. Then the women, living primitive lives, so that the samurai seem almost like aliens. The women are simply dressed, sometimes stripped to the waist in the heat, with rough hair, completely unglamorous - but with exaggerated eye makeup. Their bodies are strong and very lean, which is hard to fake. This movie seems more like an ordinary drama (or maybe Woman in the Dunes), about what it takes to survive in wartime. Then, the supernatural intervenes, almost at the end.

Kwaidan (1964) came out the same year, but is a little more modern seeming. It was in color, rather than black and white like Onibaba. Also, the costumes are more likely to be colorful silks than the rough clothes of the peasants in Onibaba. Also, it’s an anthology movie, with five stories from Lefcadio Hearn’s book of the same title. I won’t go into all the stories, except to mention “Black Hair”, which is about a poor samurai who leaves his wife to marry a rich man’s daughter and take a post far away. When this works out unhappily, he returns after many years to find his first wife still loves him and forgives him. Until he wakes up in the morning...

“Hoichi the Earless” is probably the longest story. It’s about a blind biwa player, Hoichi, who sings the tale of the battle of Dan-no-Ura. When the priests (including Takashi Shimura from Seven Samurai) at the temple discover that he’s going out every night, they follow him. They discover that he is performing for an audience of the ghosts of the dead from Dan-no-Ura. To make him invisible to spirits, they write the Lotus Sutra all over his body. However, they forget to cover his ears, and that’s all the ghost who summons him can see. Guess how he got his name?

Ugetsu (1954) came out 10 years before the other movies, but has a very similar feel. Like Onibaba, it is about regular people and what happens in war. It is about a potter, his neighbor, and their wives. The potter sells his wares in a nearby town, and due to the war makes a fine profit. His neighbor helps him with the next batch - he wants to get enough money to buy armor and become a soldier.

When they are firing this load, the army comes through, raiding and stealing food. If the fire goes out before the kiln load is baked, they will lose everything. Against his wife’s wishes, the potter sneaks past the army to check - and it’s good! The pots are baked, and they can sell them at a town across the lake. The wives try to come, but they leave them on the far shore and go into town.

While very bad things are happening to the wives, and the neighbor is able to go to war, our potter meets a noble lady and her companion. They take him to a mansion, seduce him and marry him. She loves him for his artistry. And so he is happy for a time, until he finds out the truth. They are ghosts - the lady died without ever knowing love, and so stole him from his wife. Like in Kwaidan, he returns home to find his wife awaiting him, loving and forgiving. But, like his noble wife, she too is a ghost - she died while he was away with the spirits.

These movies had a very similar feel to them. They can be slow and contemplative, with lovely camera work that dwells on the natural world (or the soundstage version). Onibaba and Ugetsu both concentrate on peasants, rather than the nobility as in most costume dramas, but all three are at least partly about the tragedy of war. And they all have austere soundtracks, dominated by taiko drumming. They may be too similar to work really well as a triple bill, but seeing them that way made it easy to compare and contrast. And very enjoyable too.