Tokaido Yotsuya kaidan

Tōkaidō Yotsuya kaidan
Directed by Nobuo Nakagawa
Produced by Mitsugu Okura
Written by Masayoshi Ônuki (screenplay)
Yoshihiro Ishikawa (screenplay)
Nanboku Tsuruya (play)
Starring Shigeru Amachi
Music by Michiaki Watanabe
Cinematography Tadashi Nishimoto
Distributed by Shintoho
Release date
  • July 1, 1959 (1959-07-01)
Running time
 76 minutes
Country Japan
Language Japanese

Tōkaidō Yotsuya kaidan (東海道四谷怪談) (translation: Ghost Story of Yotsuya in Tōkaidō) is a 1959 Japanese horror film, directed by Nobuo Nakagawa and based on the 19th century Japanese kabuki play by Nanboku Tsuruya titled Yotsuya Kaidan. It is also known as The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959) in film reference sources.[1][2] The English-subtitled print runs 76 minutes.[3] The film was in Eastman Color and Shintoho-Scope, and is considered by many critics to be the best of the myriad adaptations of the Yotsuya Ghost Legend.[4]

The film falls in a trend of Japanese horror films throughout the 1950s and 1960s. In these ghost story films, greed commonly leads to murder and extramarital affairs, many involving former Samurai characters.[5][6]

Plot

Ruthless samurai Iemon Tamiya wants to marry Oiwa and when her father refuses, Iemon kills him and disposes of the body with assistance of Naosuke. Later, tiring of his wife and wishing to marry the heiress Ume Itō, Iemon plots to murder his wife by mixing a poison into her tea and also killing her admirer Takuetsu. Her health deteriorates into a slow agonizing death. The ghosts of Oiwa and Takuetsu appear and take vengeance on Iemon and his new wife.

Cast

  • Shigeru Amachi as Iemon Tamiya
  • Katsuko Wakasugi as Oiwa
  • Shuntarō Emi as Naosuke
  • Ryūzaburō Nakamura as Yomoshichi
  • Noriko Kitazawa as Osode
  • Junko Ikeuchi as Ume Itō
  • Kikuko Hanaoka as Maki
  • Hiroshi Hayashi as Kihē Itō
  • Jun Ōtomo as Takuetsu
  • Shinjirō Asano as Samo

References

  1. ↑ Galbraith,Stuart (1994). Japanese Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror Films. McFarland and Co., Inc.
  2. ↑ "Tokaido Yotsuya kaidan (1959)". TCM. Retrieved 2013-09-22. External link in |publisher= (help)
  3. ↑ Galbraith,Stuart (1994). Japanese Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror Films. McFarland and Co., Inc.
  4. ↑ Galbraith,Stuart (1994). Japanese Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror Films. McFarland and Co., Inc.
  5. ↑ Colette Balmain, Introduction to Japanese Horror Film, Edinburgh University Press, 2008, p. 50.
  6. ↑ Balmain, Introduction to Japanese Horror Film, p. 57.


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