Kwaidan

• Japan.
• Direction: Masaki Kobayashi.
• Production: Shigeru Wakatsuki / Toho.
• Screenplay: Yoko Mizuki.
• Photography: Yoshio Miyajima.
• Music: Toru Takemitsu.
• Edition: Hishashi Sagara.
• Cast: Rentaro Mikuni, Michiyo Aratama, Misako Watanabe, Tatsuya Nakadai, Keiko Kishi, Katsuo Nakamura, Tetsuro Tanba, Takashi Shimura, Kanemon Nakamura, Osamu Takizawa, Haruko Sugimura, Ganjiro Nakamura, Noboru Nakaya.

Movie adaptation of four horror stories written by the Greek-Irishman Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), who collected ancient Japanese ghost tales. Hearn arrived in Japan to teach English in 1890 and eventually fell so deeply in love with the Japanese culture and traits of the country that he took on its nationality and adopted the name of Yakumo Koizumi. This was the first colour film by Masaki Kobayashi, who celebrated Japanese folklore and the supernational without the explicit and bloody images to which today’s horror movies have us accustomed. Its simplicity and beauty shroud the film in a terrifying halo, turning it into a cult movie and source of inspiration for the later J-Horror genre.