Tag: 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

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

Yotsuya kaidan is not an easy movie to talk about. Part of this is because it’s the first movie in a two film series, and so seems to be primarily set-up to the conflicts in the second part. It’s not that things don’t happen, but most of the action here takes place at the end. It’s also barely horror, which is problematic.

I guess if you want to get technical, there is horror in trying to poison your wife, and a character getting their face disfigured by scalding hot water, or a woman needing to deal with the unwanted attention of a man, or being stuck in a loveless marriage while there are potentially better opportunities out there. Admittedly, this paragraph started off as glib, because while some of this could conceivably be horror, it’s not the easiest case to make.

Here’s what I can say: after a character’s face gets burned by some water, there’s a suspenseful scene toward the end as the character keeps asking for a mirror, but a horrified servant doesn’t want to give them one. It’s a pretty tense scene, and when we do finally see the face, it’s certainly disfigured, so that’s horror enough to count, amiright??

Mostly, though, Yotsuya kaidan (also known as The Yotsuya Ghost Story and The Ghost of Yotsuya: Part I, and apparently also The Yotsuda Phantom – you can see why I also use the original foreign titles over any re-titles) is a romantic drama. It’s a dark drama at times – there’s a character who consistently tries to get a character to kill his wife so he can move up in the world – but it’s still mostly a drama.

It’s well-done. Some of the acting is quite melodramatic, but that might partially be due to the Japanese culture, which, at least as presented here, seems quite reserved. Instead of having a conversation about important topics, someone’s wife just wails and proclaims that they ‘must never speak of it again.’ Because that works, I’m sure.

The performances are pretty good, though. Ken Uehara’s moral struggles are palpable here, and even toward the end, he has only so much agency insofar as things go. Osamu Takizawa’s slimy character was solid. Keiji Sada (who died in a car crash at the young age of 37 in 1964), who I thought was going to be the main character, was perhaps one of the most moral characters here. Kinuyo Tanaka (who plays two roles here) was a bit dramatic at times, but again, that may be the Japanese culture. Lastly, there’s Hisako Yamane, who didn’t really get that much character here, but that may change with the second part.

And that’s the main thing. Like I said, plenty of emotional things happen in this movie, but it ends on a cliffhanger (think the end of Hatchet, only far less dramatic), so it’s not an easy movie to judge on it’s own. Certainly it’s a moody, black-and-white picture with some issues of dark morality, but I’m far more interested in where the story is going – likely with some supernatural ghost action – than the focus we got in this movie.

Yotsuya kaidan isn’t a bad movie, but it’s also not particularly easy for me to say it’s a good movie. If you’re into dramas, or Japanese period pieces, it may well be worth seeing, but if you’re coming into this from the perspective of ‘I want to see some classic Japanese horror,’ this may not provide the best time. It’s an okay watch, but I want to see where the story is going before anything else.

6/10