Kwaidan

1965 • 3h 3m •

Horror Fantasy Drama

MOVIEVIBE Rating

★ 7.7/10

470 reviews

Your Rating

Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue comes at a cost. Blind musician Hoichi is forced to perform for an audience of ghosts. An author relates the story of a samurai who sees another warrior's reflection in his teacup.

"In the tradition of "RASHOMON" and "GATE OF HELL.""

Top Billed Cast

Michiyo Aratama

First Wife (segment "The Black Hair")

Rentaro Mikuni

Husband (segment "The Black Hair")

Misako Watanabe

Second Wife (segment "The Black Hair")

Kenjirō Ishiyama

Father (segment "The Black Hair")

Ranko Akagi

Mother (segment "The Black Hair")

Fumie Kitahara

(segment "The Black Hair")

Kappei Matsumoto

(segment "The Black Hair") (uncredited)

Yoshiko Ieda

(segment "The Black Hair") (uncredited)

Detailed Critic & Audience Reviews

C CinemaSerf Verified TMDB Critic

2024-12-02

I'm always a little daunted when I settle down in a cinema seat for a film that is 3 hours long - I fear the last glass of wine may have been one too many - but this simply flew by. It is a compendium of four different Japanese "poems" that deal with just about every emotion in the human panoply - love, hate, greed, joy, fear, envy, betrayal... You name it! Each story has a central theme that, perhaps not terribly sophisticated to anyone with a fairly well-centred moral compass of their own, delivers a salutatory lesson in what is decent and what is flawed about human nature, even amongst the ...