The Black Hair is about an ambitious man (Rentarô Mikuni) who lives in poverty with his beautiful, loving wife (Michiyo Aratama). He decides to leave her for a distant government position. He marries again, but his new wife (Misako Watanabe) is vain and petty. He begins to regret leaving his first wife.
A few years later, he returns. Remarkably, the first wife is still there, unchanged. The husband and wife reconcile, and he falls asleep. When he awakes, he shrieks in terror, as he discovers the first wife is a corpse.
The Woman of the Snow is reminiscent of "The Blizzard" sequence in Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990). A young man, Minokichi (Tatsuya Nakadai), and an old man are trapped in a severe snow storm. They find shelter in an empty cabin, and would be saved, except that a female spirit (Yuki) appears and freezes the old man to his death. She spares the life of Minokichi, but warns him never to tell anyone of her appearance.
Not long after, Minokichi meets Yuki (Keiko Kishi), an attractive young wanderer. They marry, and have three young children. Minokichi tells Yuki his story about the snow spirit, and his ideal wife transforms into the malevolent snow spirit.
Hoichi the Earless is set in a Buddhist temple. Blind musician Hoichi (Katsuo Nakamura) is a humble temple servant. The temple is led by a wise priest (Takashi Shimura). Every night, a spirit samurai (Tatsurô Tanba) appears and escorts Hoici to a noble court, where Hoichi is compelled to play his instrument and recite The Tale of the Heike.
Hoichi's fellow temple servants take note of his absence, and inform the priest. He compels the servants to follow Hoichi at a distance, to learn where he goes at night. It is revealed that Hoichi is playing to tombstones in a cemetery.
The priest informs Hoichi that his life is in danger. He orders Hoichi to remain silent and motionless the next time the samurai appears. The samurai cannot see Hoichi, because the Heart Sutra has been written throughout Hoichi's body. Except his ears, which the samurai spirit sees and cuts off from the hapless Hoichi.
In a Cup of Tea is set in the estate of a powerful lord. He has many guards, including Kannai (Kan'emon Nakamura). One day, while Kannai is on guard duty, he is visited by an insolent spirit (Kei Satô). Kannai attempts to slay the spirit, but to his dismay, the spirit disappears. The next evening, three more spirits pay a visit to the lord, to pester Kannai further and drive him to madness.
How others will see it. By 1964, director Kobayashi had developed a following in the West due to the remarkable Human Condition trilogy and the well received film Hara-Kiri (1962). Kwaidan was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, and was nominated for the prestigious Palm d'Or at Cannes.
Today at imdb.com, Kwaidan has a high user rating of 7.9 out of 10 and a respectable user vote total of 17K. The user reviews are full of praise for the storytelling, cinematography, and the director, who is hardly a household name today in the West but nonetheless has long earned the respect of film students.
How I felt about it. I am once again in the position of the Christmas Scrooge shouting "Bah! Humbug!" at a beloved movie. This time around, I have difficulty expressing why I don't particularly like it.
It is true that the stories vary in quality. In a Cup of Tea is certainly weakest of the four stories. It isn't clear why the spirits take such pleasure in aggravating inconsequential residence guard Kannai. Surely they can find more worthy targets.
The Woman of the Snow is better, but the actions of the snow spirit make little sense. Why does she kill one man and not another. Why does she marry Minokichi and for years play the role of a perfect wife, only to threaten to kill him for confiding her secret? What does she value in a husband, and can a spirit take a husband?
The Black Hair is a morality tale about not leaving for greener grass when you have a loving wife already. The tale is ordinary aside from its dramatic surprise ending, which many viewers will have guessed before it arrives.
The best story is clearly Hoichi the Earless. The marvel here isn't that Hoichi plays to an audience of graves, but that the priest knows everything. He knows what the spirits will and won't do, and knows that the Heart Sutra written on Hoichi's body will make him invisible to the spirit. But how does he know this?
Tatsuya Nakadai was a favorite of both director Kobayashi and Kurosawa. The handsome everyman starred in eleven films of the former, and five films of the latter. But he isn't given much to do here, in the bland role of the unwitting husband of a witch.