Kwaidan
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Profile
- Movie: Kwaidan / Ghost Stories
- Romaji: Kaidan
- Japanese:
- Director: Masaki Kobayashi
- Writer: Lafcadio Hearn (Novel), Yoko Mizuki
- Producer:
- Cinematographer
- Release Date: November 22, 1965
- Runtime: 183 min
- Language: Japanese
- Country: Japan
Notes
Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, Kwaidan features four nightmarish tales adapted from Lafcadio Hearn’s classic Japanese ghost stories. For this lavish, ‘scope production, Kobayashi drew extensively on his own training as a student of painting and the fine arts. Indeed, the breadth of the film’s poetic expression is unmatched in all of Japanese cinema: breathtakingly photographed on handpainted sets, the film is at once a miniature writ large, and an abstract wash of luminescent colours that seem to hail from another world. On the soundtrack, an electronic score by avant-garde composer Toru Takemitsu plays hauntingly with the natural sounds — crickets, rain, the cracking of wood, the loud silence of snow. This interaction of the film’s plastic and aural textures with the simple, aching humanity of Hearn’s tales serves to accentuate the power of the storytelling: four episodes about mortals caught up in forces beyond their comprehension — when the supernatural world intervenes in their lives. Perhaps the definitive adaptation of Hearn’s work, Kwaidan also presents the author’s most emblematic tale — “Hoichi, the Earless”, in which a blind young monk journeys every night to an abandoned graveyard, compelled by the ghosts of a famous battle to retell their story, over and over again…
Cast
- Rentaro Mikuni - Husband (Black Hair)
- Michiyo Aratama - First wife (Black Hair)
- Misako Watanabe - Second Wife (Black Hair)
- Tatsuya Nakadai - Mi nokichi (The Woman in the Snow)
- Keiko Kishi - Yuki the Snow Maiden (The Woman in the Snow)
- Katsuo Nakamura - Hoichi (Hoichi the Earless)
- Tetsuro Tamba - Warrior (Hoichi the Earless)
- Kanemon Nakamura - Kannai, a Guard (In a Cup of Tea)
- Osamu Takizawa - Author / Narrator (In a Cup of Tea)
- Ranko Akagi - Mother
- Yoichi Hayashi - Attendant (Hoichi the Earless)
- Kenjiro Ishiyama - Father (Black Hair)
- Kazuo Kitamura - Taira no Tomomori (Hoichi the Earless)
- Seiji Miyaguchi - Old man (In a Cup of Tea)
- Yûko Mochizuki - Minokichi's mother (The Woman in the Snow)
- Eiko Muramatsu - Kenreiinmon - Hoichi the Earless
- Ganjiro Nakamura - Publisher (In a Cup of Tea)
- Noboru Nakaya - Shikibu Heinai (In a Cup of Tea)
- Akiko Naraoka - Suzue, Kannai's Sister (In a Cup of Tea)
- Shizue Natsukawa - Taira no Tokiko (Hoichi the Earless)
- Kei Sato - Ghost samurai (In a Cup of Tea)
- Noriko Sengoku - Village woman (The Woman in the Snow)
- Takashi Shimura - Head priest (Hoichi the Earless)
- Kin Sugai - Village woman (The Woman in the Snow)
- Haruko Sugimura - Madame (In a Cup of Tea)
- Kunie Tanaka - Yasaku (Hoichi the Earless)
- Akira Tani - Huntsman #2 (Hoichi the Earless)
- Jun Tazaki - Kannai's Colleague #1 (In a Cup of Tea)
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