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The Ghost of Yotsuya
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Radiance Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (12th June 2025). |
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The Film
 Without a master to serve, samurai Iemon (An Actor's Revenge's Kazuo Hasegawa) supports himself and his sickly wife Oiwa (Rodan's Yasuko Nakada) by making umbrellas, much to the offense of Oiwa's uncle (Adauchi's Hanzô Kataoka) who attributes Iemon's inability to secure a position to laziness and sets him up for an interview with Lord Ito (Resurrection's San'emon Arashi), assuring him that the traditional gift of a barrel of sake should be enough to flatter his potential employer. Iemon, however, is humiliated when Ito chooses another samurai – for what amounts to a security guard position on construction sites – who comes with an influential recommendation and a bribe; as such, he is spoiling for a fight when he scares off the drunken official's son harassing the beautiful Oume (Ninja, Band of Assassins's Yôko Uraji) who falls in love with him at first sight. Iemon's hangers-on Naosuke (Shogun's Hideo Takamatsu(), Akiyama (The Loyal 47 Ronin's Shôsaku Sugiyama), and Sekiguchi (Fujio Suga) see that they could also potentially benefit from Iemon marrying Lord Ito's daughter and plot behind his back,. Akiyama and Sekiguchi conspire to accuse Oiwa of adultery with faithful servant Kohei (Jôji Tsurumi). So jealous is Oume of Oiwa's beauty that her maid Omaki (Chieko Murata) and Naosuke conspire to disfigure her face. Both plans come together rather messily but all of the conspirators are seemingly successful and Iemon set for happiness and prosperity… that is, until The Ghost of Yotsuya unveils her chilling visage with an eye for vengeance. Based on a famous kabuki play, The Ghost of Yotsuya has been adapted to stage, manga, television, and film so many times that many J-horror enthusiasts looking into Japanese horror cinema's past may confuse this 1959 Kenji Misumi (Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance) version for Daiei with the better-known version by Nobuo Nakagawa made the same year for Shintoho – both are know in western references as "The Ghost of Yotsuya" but easier to distinguish in Japanese with the Nakagawa film titled "Tôkaidô Yotsuya kaidan" and the Misumi as just "Yotsuya kaidan" – indeed, it may be because of how familiar Japanese audiences were with the source material that Misumi and screenwriter Fuji Yahiro (Sansho the Bailiff) decided to take liberties with the plot while still hitting the horror high notes common to every version. Whereas Iemon in the original play was your typical faithless husband who takes an active part in his wife's murder and is justly haunted into killing his co-conspirators by his wife's disfigured apparition, here he is embittered and cynical but would rather be poor and starve than demean himself, his cruelty to his wife being an obliviousness to her overtures of kindness and wounded pride at her attempts to help him through avenues like her uncle. The machinations of those around him turn the story into a theatrical tragedy as Oiwa dies believing her husband responsible through the taunting of the real conspirators and Iemon avenging her out of feeling that he has wronged her rather than the love that she still possesses for him beyond the grave; indeed, it seems as if the threatening apparitions of her appear to those who feel guilt. Much of the backstory has been stripped out – including those bits that make Iemon more of a villain including slaughtering Oiwa's father in order to marry her in the first place – while other major characters have been included like Oiwa's sister Osode (New Tale of Zatoichi's Mieko Kondô) who works in a shop with her husband Yomoschichi (Tampopo's Narutoshi Hayashi) by day and as a geisha house hostess by night have been greatly-reduced (or completley erased like Iemon and Oiwa's infant with the film suggesting her ill health was the result of a miscarriage instead). The change in making Iemon the hero has the side effect of making Oiwa's yu-rei more of a jump scare but her make-up design here is a considerably creepier choice next to her counterpart in the Shintoho version. The film's color anamorphic photography is in keeping with the standards of Daiei, but whereas theatrical lighting effects are common to the presentation of ghosts and monsters in most Japanese horror films, here darkness swallows and radiates Oiwa's disfigurement even in otherwise brightly-lit shots like Iemon's POV tilting up from Oume's kimono up to Oiwa's face; indeed, apart from Oiwa's visit to Lord Ito's home without disfigurement to make herself known just before Ito receives news of her death, Oiwa seems to otherwise travel through the darkness as a firefly. The sound stage interiors and exteriors are earthy with splashes of primaries from bloodshed and the women's clothing while the matte painting backgrounds take on a twilit scheme of blacks, blues, and shades of gray that give the film more of a "Gothic" western look than some of its Daiei contemporaries. 
Video
Overshadowed by the Nakagawa film made the same year, The Ghost of Yotsuya comes to Blu-ray from a new 4K restoration by Daiei owner Kadokawa Corporation. The 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray is the least of the three transfers previously issued together in the Daiei Gothic - Japanese Ghost Stories set (also available in the U.K.), but that has more to do with it being the oldest film and the predominately dark cinematography which gets the black levels right unlike some earlier Japanese SD and HD digital masters, but in doing so makes some of the night exteriors feel a bit murkier and flatter. The well-lit interiors sport great depth and good to great detail – this is the one film in the set where most of the actors are given the "glamour" treatment so their close-ups are not as defined as those in the other two films – but the balance of colors is impressive, with the Oiwa apparition's make-up seeming almost like an oil slick of dark bruising, oozing green, and popping red. There are no traces of archival damage. 
Audio
Classic Japanese studio films have always boasted some of the best mono tracks in terms of creativity and fidelity – with the Westrex noiseless recording making some of the silences truly unnerving – and the LPCM 2.0 mono track is immaculate with clear post-dubbed dialogue, effects, and scoring (there are no notes about the audio side of Kadokawa's restoration so we have no idea how much work was required or the state of the audio materials). Optional English subtitles are free of spelling errors, although there are some inconsistencies where Oiwa is sometimes referred to as "Iwa" (we have no idea if this is meant to be a more intimate form or if some instances just evaded the proofing). 
Extras
is accompanied by a new appreciation by filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa (19:33) who discusses the kabuki origins of the story and its various adaptations, directly comparing the Misumi and Nakagawa versions, admiring both but preferring the former. He also discusses the ways the film departs from the source, particularly with regard to depicting Oiwa both in life and death. He also discusses the influence of the film on Daiei's house style for "dark" color photography. "The Endless Curse of Oiwa" (22:08) is a visual essay on the history and adaptations of the classic Ghost of Yotsuya story by author Kyoko Hirano who covers the stage origins and the earlier adaptations including the lost silent ones and the 1949 two-parter as well as the more recent adaptations, the enduring appeal of the story not only for audiences in anticipating how each director will approach their favorite fright scenes but also as a part of Japanese culture's social commentary on the position of women which extends to modern J-horror with its grudge-carrying female ghosts as victims of male violence or the single mothers given no choice but to move into haunted places like Dark Water. The disc also includes the Japanese theatrical trailer (1:43). 
Overall
Taking liberties with the oft-told source, Daiei's The Ghost of Yotsuya offers up an interesting variation that turns its protagonist from a villain to a tragically weak man.
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