Shinshaku Yotsuya kaidan: kôhen (1949)

Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita [Other horror films: Yotsuya kaidan (1949)]

Now this is what I’m talking about.

Shinshaku Yotsuya kaidan: kôhen, best known as The Ghost of Yotsuya: Part II, follows the first part and continues the tragic stories of those involved. I was lukewarm toward Part I, because it felt largely like a drama, with little in the way of what I’d consider horror. Here, though, the action is amped up, and there are some really great sequences here.

The whole finale, for instance, was great. Not only was it action-packed – a lot of fights taking place in a house that’s burning down – but there was some great emotional resonance from Ken Uehara’s character, especially taking into consideration what the crowd was saying the following moment (another stellar scene). And even a bit before the finale began, we got revealed a twist that I certainly didn’t see coming from Osamu Takizawa, and I loved it.

Osamu Takizawa is probably the star here. His sleazy portrayal of a man who will do anything and everything to get ahead is great, and his manipulations of Ken Uehara, Haruko Sugimura and Aizo Tamashima were classy. Ken Uehara does fantastic also, suffering from a guilty conscience most of the movie following what he did in Part I. The ending, as I said, really brought a lot to his character, moral and otherwise.

I did think both Kinuyo Tanaka and Daisuke Katô would be more involved with the story, but while they do appear from time to time, they’re not really that entwined with everything going on, aside from Tanaka’s failed attempt to speak with Uehara. Oh, and the same could be said for Hisako Yamane – save a few sequences, she was pretty much invisible, despite the fact that everything Uehara’s character did in Part I was so he could get married to her. I did like seeing Chôko Iida come back, and Aizo Tamashima got some prominent time on screen, which was nice.

I still don’t think the movie’s amazing, though. Sure, Uehara’s character had some visions and acted insane a lot of the time, but I sort of expected more supernatural phenomena as opposed to a guilty conscience playing tricks on someone (à la The Bells or The Avenging Conscience). It’s possible that there were supernatural events going on, of course, but it was more subtle than you might expect.

Still, The Ghost of Yotsuya: Part II was better than the first part, and I also really do find the ending quite good. Overall, I’d say it’s a better-than-average movie, but not one that I’d revisit often. For early Japanese horror, though, this was fun to watch.

7.5/10