Format: Blu-Ray from North Chicago Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.
National cinemas have their horror styles, which reflect a number of things about the culture from whence they come. You can’t learn everything about a culture from their horror movies, but you can learn something. Japanese horror is often about the slow burn and frequently about vengeful ghosts and unquiet spirits of one kind or another. That’s definitely the case with Kaneto Shindô’s Kuroneko (Black Cat if you want the English or Yabu no naka no kuroneko for its original name—this roughly translates to “a black cat in the bushes”).
What makes this film fun is that we’re not just going to have those staples of J-horror to enjoy, although we will get lots of angry, murderous ghost activity and slowly building tension. No, with Kuroneko we’re also going to get that other staple of Japanese cinema, at least of this era: samurai. Yes, this is a samurai folk horror tale, and that is a wonderful thing to behold.
The story here is deceptively simple. Yone (Nobuko Otowa) and Shige (Kiwako Taichi) are respectively mother and daughter-in-law, trying to survive during a time of war across the country. As the film begins, they are discovered by a group of samurai, who naturally rape and kill them, then burn down their house. A black cat is seen licking at their bodies in the aftermath.
Now, because this is a horror movie, it’s not going to be a surprise that Yone and Shige come back. Essentially, they have made a deal with the underworld to come back as ghosts to exact their vengeance on the living. Specifically, they have returned to murder samurai, capturing them, seducing them, and then ripping out their throats and drinking their blood.
We see this play out a few times. As a lone samurai rides through their bamboo forest, Shige appears and asks them to accompany her through the forest back to her house. There, they meet Yone, and the two women ply the samurai with sake, getting him drunk. Shige then offers herself to them, and kills them in the throes of passion, leaving the body to be found the next day. While we see this play out three times, it’s the first instance where we get a lot of our information. We learn that Yone’s son/Shige’s husband was conscripted to fight in the battles around Japan. The first victim tells them that he is likely fine and probably a samurai himself.
Meanwhile, in northern Japan, a fighter named Hachi (Kichiemon Nakamura) wins a battle against an enemy general, and returns to his leader, Minamoto no Raikō (Kei Satō). Minamoto, as a reward, makes Hachi a samurai. Hachi takes the name Gintoki and goes off to tell his mother and wife the good news.
Did you make the connection? Of course Hachi/Gintoki is Yone’s son and Shige’s husband. And that is the crux of the problem for the rest of the film. Yone and Shige have made a deal that they must kill the samurai who they capture, tearing out their throats and drinking their blood. But Yone doesn’t want to kill her son and Shige has no desire to murder her husband. As for himself, Gintoki has been commanded to find the ghosts that are murdering samurai and destroy them, but he can’t bring himself to kill his wife and mother.
It's a simple conflict, but it’s also incredibly compelling. Even better, it’s a conflict where the people (and ghosts) involved act in predictable but also completely believable ways. This is not a movie that is plot-driven but character-driven. If Yone and Shige don’t kill Gintoki, they will be forced to return to the underworld, their vengeance incomplete. If Gintoki doesn’t destroy them, he will lose his honor and be executed. Everyone is compelled to actions that they don’t want to take and can barely contemplate. It’s the simplicity that gives the story its power.
Kuroneko is very clearly a horror movie, but it’s also a movie where it’s clear that Kaneto Shindô learned a lot of lessons by watching Kurosawa. A great deal of what draws us into the bamboo forest looks straight out of the opening scenes of Throne of Blood, but Shindô is doing more work with his cinematography here. We see a samurai being lured by Shige, sitting in their house and drinking sake, but behind him, we are moving through the bamboo forest. We are stationary but moving. We are in the real world, but also in the spirit world.
While the film does focus on the characters, there is a single area that I find frustrating. We, as the audience, can see exactly where this is going before the characters do. We’ve seen the set up with Yone and Shige, and once Gintoki tells his master that he’s going to look for his wife and mother, 99% of the audience knows what is coming next. So why does it take everyone else forever to figure it out? Gintoki doesn’t realize he’s talking to at least a version of his mother and his wife for some time, and neither Yone nor Shige twig to the fact that Gintoki is their son/husband respectively. Why not?
Still, that might have been just to lengthen the film a bit. It’s a pretty minor complaint for something that was extremely enthralling.
Why to watch Kuronkeo: Japanese folk horror with samurai.
Why not to watch: It takes Gintoki a long time to figure out what is going on.
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