Galbraith IV, Stuart (1994). ''Japanese Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror Films''.

McFarland & Company McFarland & Company, Inc., is an American independent book publisher based in Jefferson, North Carolina, that specializes in academic An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tert ...

. is a 1968 Japanese

historical drama A historical drama (also period drama, period piece or just period) is a dramatic work set in the past, usually used in the context of film and television, which presents history, historical events and characters with varying degrees of fiction s ...

horror film Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit physical or psychological fear in its viewers. Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with Transgressive art, transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements of the genre include Mo ...

directed by

Kaneto Shindō was a Japanese film director, screenwriter, film producer, and writer, who directed 48 films and wrote scripts for 238. His best known films as a director include '' Children of Hiroshima'', '' The Naked Island'', '' Onibaba'', '' Kuroneko'' a ...

, and an adaptation of a supernatural folktale. Set during a civil war in

feudal Japan The first human inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago have been traced to the Paleolithic, around 38–39,000 years ago. The Jōmon period, named after its cord-marked pottery, was followed by the Yayoi period in the first millennium BC whe ...

, the film's plot concerns the vengeful spirits, or ''

onryō In Japanese traditional beliefs and literature, are a type of ghost () believed to be capable of causing harm in the world of the living, injuring or killing enemies, or even causing natural disasters to exact Revenge, vengeance to "redres ...

'', of a woman and her daughter-in-law, who died at the hands of a band of

samurai The samurai () were members of the warrior class in Japan. They were originally provincial warriors who came from wealthy landowning families who could afford to train their men to be mounted archers. In the 8th century AD, the imperial court d ...

. It stars Kichiemon Nakamura,

Nobuko Otowa was a Japanese actress who appeared in more than 100 films between 1950 and 1994. Life and career A graduate of Takarazuka Girl's Opera School, Otowa was first signed to Daiei studios, before becoming a freelance actress by the early 1950s. A ...

, and

Kiwako Taichi was a Japanese film actress. She appeared in 20 films between 1967 and 1985. Biography Kiwako Taichi was born in Tokyo on 2 December 1943. She graduated Shoin Junior and Senior High School and, after training in the Haiyuza Theatre Compan ...

. ''Kuroneko'' was shot in black-and-white and in

TohoScope TohoScope (東宝スコープ) is an anamorphic lens system developed in the late 1950s by Toho Studios in response to the popularity of CinemaScope. Its technical specifications are identical to those of CinemaScope. Adoption of widescreen techn ...

format, and distributed by

Toho is a Japanese entertainment company that primarily engages in producing and distributing films and exhibiting stage plays. It is headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, and is one of the core companies of the Osaka-based Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group. ...

. It was not dubbed in English, but was released with subtitles in the United States in 1968.

Plot

Yone and her daughter-in-law Shige, who live in a house in a bamboo grove, are raped and murdered by a troop of

, and their house is burned down. A black cat appears, licking at the bodies. The women return as ghosts with the appearance of fine ladies, who wait at

Rajōmon , also called , was the gate built at the southern end of the monumental Suzaku Avenue in the ancient Japanese cities of Heijō-kyō (Nara) and Heian-kyō (Kyoto), in accordance with the Chinese grid-patterned city layout. At the other far nort ...

. They find the samurai troop and bring them to an illusory mansion in the bamboo grove where the burnt-out house was. They seduce and then kill the samurai like cats, tearing their throats with their teeth. Meanwhile, in northern Japan a battle is taking place with the

Emishi The were a group of people who lived in parts of northern Honshū in present-day Japan, especially in the Tōhoku region. The first mention of the Emishi in literature that can be corroborated with outside sources dates to the 5th century AD, ...

. A young man, Hachi, fortuitously kills the enemy general, Kumasunehiko. He brings the severed head to show the governor,

Minamoto no Raikō , also known as Minamoto no Raikō, was a Japanese samurai of the Heian period, who served the regents of the Fujiwara clan along with his brother Yorinobu, taking the violent measures the Fujiwara were themselves unable to take. He is one of t ...

. He says that he fought the general under the name Gintoki. He is made a samurai in acknowledgement of his achievement. When he goes looking for his mother and wife, he finds their house burned down and the women missing. Raikō tells Gintoki to find and destroy the ghosts who are killing the samurai. Gintoki encounters the two women and realizes that they are Yone, his mother, and Shige, his wife. They have made a pact with the underworld to return and kill samurai in revenge for their deaths. Because Gintoki has become a samurai, by their pact they must kill him, but Shige breaks her pledge to spend seven nights of love with Gintoki. Then, because she has broken the pact, Shige is condemned to the underworld. Reporting on his progress, a mournful Gintoki tells Raikō that he has destroyed one of the ghosts. Gintoki encounters his spectral mother again at Rajōmon trying to seduce samurai. After seeing her reflection as a ghost in a pool of water, he attacks her with his sword, cutting off her arm, which takes on the appearance of a cat's limb. Gintoki brings the limb to Raikō, claiming it is evidence that he has killed the second ghost. Raikō is pleased and says Gintoki will be remembered as a hero, but first orders him to complete seven days of ritual purification. During the purification, Gintoki is visited by Yone, who claims to be a seer sent by the emperor to ward off evil spirits. She tricks Gintoki into giving her the limb, and then flies through the ceiling and disappears into the sky. Distraught and disheveled, Gintoki staggers through the woods to the cottage where he met the ghosts, and there he collapses. The walls disappear around him, revealing the charred remains of his family home where Shige and Yone were murdered. Snow falls and covers his body as a cat is heard meowing in the distance.

Cast

* Kichiemon Nakamura as Gintoki *

as the Mother *

as Shige * Kei Satō as Raiko *

Hideo Kanze was a Japanese actor and director, who specialized in the Noh form of musical drama. He was the second son of Kanze Tetsunojō VII, a descendant of Kan'ami and Zeami, who founded the Noh movement in the 14th century. Trained alongside his brot ...

the Mikado *

Taiji Tonoyama was a Japanese character actor who made many appearances in films and on television from 1939 to 1989. He was a close friend of Kaneto Shindo and one of his regular cast members. He was also an essayist. In 1950 he helped form the film company ...

as the farmer * Yoshinobu Ogawa as Raiko follower * Rokko Toura as a warlord

Release

''Kuroneko'' was released theatrically in Japan on February 24, 1968, where it was distributed by

. It was released in the United States by Toho International with English subtitles in July 1968. It was placed in competition at the

1968 Cannes Film Festival The 21st Cannes Film Festival took place from 10 to 19 May 1968, when it was officially cancelled due to the ongoing turmoil of May 1968 in France. French writer André Chamson served as jury president for the main competition. The festival ope ...

, but the festival was cancelled due to the events of

May 1968 in France May 68 () was a period of widespread protests, strikes, and civil unrest in France that began in May 1968 and became one of the most significant social uprisings in modern European history. Initially sparked by student demonstrations agains ...

. It was released on DVD and Blu-Ray by

The Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home video, home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films". A "sister company" of art film, arth ...

on Oct. 18, 2011.

Reception

Contemporary reviews

Tom Milne Tom Milne (2 April 1926 – 14 December 2005) was a British film critic. See also After war service, he studied English and French at Aberdeen University and later at the Sorbonne. Interested in the theatre too, he wrote for the magazine ...

of the ''

Monthly Film Bulletin The ''Monthly Film Bulletin'' was a periodical of the British Film Institute published monthly from February 1934 until April 1991, when it merged with '' Sight & Sound''. It reviewed all films on release in the United Kingdom, including those wi ...

'' found the film "Much less extravagant than Shindo's earlier excursion into ghostly horrors with ''Onibaba''", and that it was "more of a mood piece." The review concluded that the film "has a sufficiently ingenious story to remain enjoyable throughout, and it sporadically discovers moments of genuinely bizarre invention".

Retrospective assessments

Manohla Dargis Manohla June Dargis ( ) is an American film critic. She is the chief film critic for ''The New York Times''. She is a five-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Career Before being a film critic for ''The New York Times'', Dargis ...

, in a review of the film for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' in 2010, described it as "a ghost story that's more eerie than unnerving, and often hauntingly lovely". The following year, Maitland McDonagh called the film "darkly seductive" and "sleek, hair-raisingly graceful, and ready to take its place alongside the other landmarks of Japanese horror history". On the review aggregator website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 95% based on , with a rating average of 8.1/10.

Themes

Yūsuke Suzumura of

Hosei University formerly known as Tokyo University of Law (東京法学社, Tokyo Hogakusha) is a top research university in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. Hosei University and four other private universities in Tokyo are collectively known as "MARCH (Japanese univers ...

has speculated that the film's title was deliberately intended to allude to the

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa , art name , was a Japanese writer active in the Taishō period in Japan. He is regarded as the "father of the Japanese short story", and Japan's premier literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, is named after him. He took his own life at the age ...

story '' In a Grove'' (''Yabu no naka'' in Japanese), as well as

Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker who List of works by Akira Kurosawa, directed 30 feature films in a career spanning six decades. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the History of film, history of cinema ...

's film version of the story. Although the Japanese title literally means "a black cat in a bamboo grove", the phrase ''yabu no naka'' in Japanese is also used idiomatically to refer to a mystery that is difficult to unravel. Suzumura also identified the legends of

as an influence on the film: since Raikō himself appears in the film, it is likely that the film's protagonist's name refers to the name of Raikō's legendary follower . Kabuki-Play-Yoshitsune-Senbon-Zakura-1847

Kabuki-Play-Yoshitsune-Senbon-Zakura-1847

In an essay about ''Kuroneko'', film critic

Maitland McDonagh Maitland McDonagh () is an American film critic, writer-editor and podcaster. She is the author of ''Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento'' (1991) and other books and articles on horror and exploitation films, as well as ...

highlighted the roles cats play in Japanese folklore—particularly the ''

bakeneko The (, "changed cat") is a type of Japanese , or supernatural entity; more specifically, it is a , or supernatural cat. It is often confused with the , another cat-like . The distinction between them is often ambiguous, but the largest difference ...

'', a ''

yōkai are a class of supernatural entities and Spirit (supernatural entity) , spirits in Japanese folklore. The kanji representation of the word comprises two characters that both mean "suspicious, doubtful", and while the Japanese name is simply ...

'' (or supernatural entity) thought to have the ability to take the form of a human victim, often eating the victim in the process. ''Kuroneko'' is one of a number of Japanese "monster cat" horror films (''kaibyō eiga'' or ''bake neko mono''), a subgenre derived primarily from the repertoire of kabuki theatre. Other theatrical elements observed in ''Kuroneko'' include the film's implementation of spotlights; the use of smoke to create a ghostly atmosphere, which is characteristic of kabuki theatre; the dance movements of the mother's spirit, based on dances in

Noh is a major form of classical Japanese dance-drama that has been performed since the 14th century. It is Japan's oldest major theater art that is still regularly performed today. Noh is often based on tales from traditional literature featuri ...

theatre; and the resemblance of the spirits' jumping and flying movements to ''

chūnori is a classical form of Japanese theatre, mixing dramatic performance with traditional dance. Kabuki theatre is known for its heavily stylised performances, its glamorous, highly decorated costumes, and for the elaborate make-up worn by so ...

'', a visual trick used in kabuki theatre in which actors are made to "fly" in mid-air through the use of wires. Additionally, lead actor Kichiemon Nakamura was a kabuki performer, and Hideo Kanze, who played the Mikado in ''Kuroneko'', specialized in Noh theatre.

Legacy

''Kuroneko'' was screened at a 2012 retrospective on Shindō and

Kōzaburō Yoshimura was a Japanese film director. Biography Born in Shiga Prefecture, he joined the Shōchiku studio in 1929. He debuted as director with a short film in 1934, but, after being denied a promotion by head of the studio Shirō Kido, continued working ...

in London, organised by the

British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves filmmaking and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...

and the

Japan Foundation The is a Japanese foundation that spreads Japanese culture around the world. Based in Tokyo, it was established in 1972 by an Act of the National Diet as a special legal entity to undertake international dissemination of Japanese culture. I ...

Awards

In Japan, the film won two awards from the

Mainichi Film Concours The are a series of annual film awards, sponsored by ''Mainichi Shimbun'' (毎日新聞), one of the largest newspaper companies in Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of t ...

won the award for Best Actress for her work in ''Kuroneko'' and '' Operation Negligee'', and Kiyomi Kuroda won the award for Best Cinematography for this and ''Operation Negligee''.

Notes

References

Bibliography

* *

External links

* * * * {{Kaneto Shindo 1968 horror films Films directed by Kaneto Shindo Films set in Kyoto Jidaigeki films Japanese horror films Japanese supernatural horror films 1968 films Existentialist films Historical horror films Films about cats 1960s ghost films Japanese ghost films Japanese independent films Rape and revenge films 1960s Japanese films Films scored by Hikaru Hayashi