Kwaidan - Clip from "The Black Hair"

"Kwaidan" translates as "Ghost Story." Four of them, to be exact, based upon Japanese folk tales compiled into book form by Lafcadio Hearn in 1904.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Kwaidan
• Masaki
• Kobayashi
• Lafcadio
• Hearn
• Japanese

[slomoschon2000]

A moral tale of looking wealth and fortune away, while happiness and love are home.

[unitron]

Spot on Xactly!!!

[unitron]

I think its his illusional hell (... at the end). He focused on his wife of the past. Remembering her kind ways, tho' common and beautiful, he focused on her long black hair... to bad he committed the crime against his paradise. It seems he turn back to his past uncertain of his life choices or not loving his lovely/powerful sucessful wife mabe. The demon his past actions created came to take him in the form he wanted to see. He sold his paradise out when he left her years before .~

[bridgman]

So while I was watching this the first time, a few years ago, I realized that the Southern* pastime of shooting road-signs from a moving vehicle is basically the same sport as Yabusame. While purists from both camps would protest any comparisons, both sports involve steering with your legs, drinking rice-based beverages (saki and Busch Light), careful marksmanship and a lot of ancestor worship.

*Southern U.S., although sign-shooting is common nation-wide.

[AtheistCitizen]

best movie of all time

[gianca60]

I disagree: you forget about the tragic fate of his wife and that's what it matters in this tale. The vain samurai when he left home, sentenced his wife to die (maybe by suicide or starved). That's why she came bck as a ghost.

[sonoki82]

I enjoyed this story in Kwaidan, but I admit that I was confused by the ending. The samurai didn't really deserve his fate, as he was genuinely remorseful when he returned to his first wife. He didn't need to be taught a lesson; he had already learned it.

[pinz2022]

Ya got me there. I should have dug a little deeper. He spent considerable time in America as well.  I wish someone would do a movie about his New Orleans tales.

[Usagi0227]

Englishman? with the risk of being accused of being a pedantic paddy.... I do believe he was half-greek half-Irish, only attended a British school for a while. Not enough to make him a britishman I would say...

[unitron]

Thank you guys, this little bit of chat told me alot

[falstaffswims]

I, too, am deeply engaged with this madman, and started a huge, incidental research project on Hearn, translation, cultural conquest, etc. etc. (Distracted me from my proper M.A. thesis on Joyce, which is consequently unfinished). In all my reading, though, I never heard anyone describe such a crucial part of his character so precisely, so well as you've done: a hopeless romantic. And, yes, "put out of his misery" by that merciful infarction. So nicely, and sympathetically, phrased. Bravo!

[pinz2022]

I'm well-acquainted with the story of Lafcadio Hearn, impossible romantic. He only wanted to go native and become one of them. Alas, in the wake of the 1904 Russo-Japanese War an indiscriminate anti-western fervor gripped the land, and he was cast out. A heart attack put him out of his misery. I wonder if the Japs know how much of the standardization of their folklore they owe to the efforts of a mad Englishman.