Alongside ‘In a Cup of Tea’, a disturbing account which derives from an evil omen, all stories are carried with the ritualistic weight of ancient art forms. ‘Hoichi the Earless’ materialises the spirits of the once illustrious Taira family, massacred in war but returning from the dead to haunt a blind musician. A Yuki-onna, an infamous spirit frightening lost travellers in snowy mountains, is portrayed gloomily in ‘The Woman of the Snow’. In ‘The Black Hair’, the flowing hair of Heian women are revealed as a dark symbol of despair. Unearthing the core of Japanese superstitions, Kwaidan adapts a book by the writer and translator Lafcadio Hearn from 1904, the first to collect scattered stories of folkloric phantoms and introduce its lore to the West. The classic horror from 1964 narrates mythological tales from a feudal past, conjuring some of its best known ghost stories amongst bamboo rooms, rusticated landscapes and surrealist colours. United by the cinematography of Masaki Kobayashi, Kwaidan stages four separate unearthly tales in a spine-chilling ritual.
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