Kwaidan/Kaidan (1964)

          1) Black Hair - A poor samurai who divorces his true love to marry for money, but finds the marriage disastrous and returns to his old wife, only to discover something eerie about her.

          2) The Woman in the Snow - Stranded in a snowstorm, a woodcutter meets an icy spirit in the form of a woman spares his life on the condition that he never tell anyone about her. A decade later he forgets his promise.

          3) Hoichi the Earless - Hoichi is a blind musician, living in a monastery who sings so well that an imperial court commands him to perform the epic ballad of their death battle for them. But they are draining away his life and the monks set out to protect him by writing a holy mantra over his body to make him invisible to the ghosts. But they've forgotten something.

          4) In a Cup of Tea - A writer tells the story of a man who keep seeing a mysterious face reflected in his cup of tea.

          Overall: This is gonna rile a few readers up but frankly, I wasn’t impressed with this movie. I agree with much of the viewers out there that this film has tremendous cinematography and color. I’m there with you. But the film takes forever to tell the stories. Each story is about 40-45 minutes long meaning the entire film exceeds 2 hours and 45 minutes. That’s way too long for 4 “short” stories. I had to do this over 3 nights just to see it the first time…’cause I kept falling asleep. And don’t bother fast-forwarding through the stories – often the narrator just jumps in to explain things just so not every second of the story is "visual." It’s a decent film but just kills you in terms of getting to the point. And note the 2nd story was totally redone in “Tales from the Darkside” involving James Remar. In the 3rd story you can see the strings on the “flying” torches and frankly...that just dumb-founded me on why some people think this is the best horror film ever. Ugh!

          I’m including a very well-written review by tedg - (I copied this from IMDB) – frankly I never would have caught these ideas from the film and since the review was so insightful, I didn’t want you, the viewer, to be without a more complex review of this film.

But more interesting to my mind is how the Japanese deal with self-reference. These stories follow a literary tradition of self-aware fiction where the act of storytelling becomes subtly entangled in the story. And so too here:

--The first story is about the penalty of not coordinating one's narrative with reality.

--The second is about the penalty of telling that narrative inappropriately. The telling of the story often destroys elements in the story which overlap with the life of the storyteller.

--The third, the most elaborate and intended to be the centerpiece, is about all stories being dead. Stories keep the past alive, but since the story and reality are so confabulated, the past keeps stories alive. This sequence is the most elaborate in staging, but also the most elaborate metaphorically: the poet is protected by writing on his body. Terrifically powerful image, one elaborated by Greenaway in his Japanese-centric `Pillow Book.' But alas, writing and speech are different, so the poet has his ears stolen by the past.

--The final story looks at things the other way: the three previous were focused on the storyteller. Now here is the listener and about the penalties of swallowing the story. Even the smallest drink captures you. Your reality cannot be separated from that of the story (image).

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