Nabeshima kaibyô-den

Cute kittens galore and a haunted Go board, how could I possibly say no? Honestly though, I wasn't expecting to be very engaged by the story of Ghost Cat of Nabeshima but it drew me in pretty quickly and held my attention for the most part. Most of the acting was very well done as well, particularly the two who played the feudal lord and Matashichirou. Nabeshima also looks quite good in cinematography, set design (there is a bit that is clearly on a soundstage but it's not long), and costumes/makeup; unfortunately the available quality is pretty 'scratchy' and aged and could really use a restoration if there is a viable print around. The 80ish minute runtime is a little longer than the film could manage well and the editing was a bit rough which I think really hurt the film for me - it could easily be 7 stars if the editing was better/tighter.

Also, I think it's worth mentioning that while this does get the branding of being a horror-mystery, it is much more a mystery than a horror. In fact, it's about as much horror as your typical episode of Scooby-Doo is a horror.

During the American occupation of Japan, the American censors had forbidden Japanese films to incorporate into the narratives the theme of feudal loyalty, a central factor in most early jidai-geki films. This, together with the economic reasons, drove Japanese filmmakers to mostly focus on gendai-geki films in the late 1940's. One way to get around the censorship restrictions was to include supernatural elements in jidai-geki films. This turns them into ghost stories, were the usual themes of duty and honor could be left to the sidelines.

I have seen few such supernatural jidai-geki tales from director Watanabe Kunio. Whereas I find his approach to historical depiction interesting, his films have yet to win me over in quality. This film, for instance, has a good story-line, but the director doesn't get much done with it. The narrative centers around a quality go-board (go is a popular game), that some of the characters fear to be cursed. They think that each game played on the board causes one death. This could have been a spooky and stylistic narrative like many Japanese horror films of the 1960's, but it doesn't really get there.

Though this is listed as a "horror film"many other sites, it's not at all scary. This movie is 90% talking, with static cinematography and bland characters. In visual style, it looks like a pre-war film. There is no electricity in the story-telling, and the film feels longer than it actually is.

Samurai Ureo Egawa is slight of form, but smart. He seeks to curry favor with his lord by buying a reproduction of a renowned game board over which a death had occurred and which, according to legend, mus have a death for every game played on it. He gives the board to his lord, who is enchanted. When people begin to die, there are rumors of a deadly cat monster, and people become terrified of the critters.

Japanese horror movies seem weirder than western ones in part because the mythology behind them is not as well known. Even more, they lack the over-riding Christian beliefs that suffuse so much of western art. G*d is not good, there is no over-riding sense of order, and the evil spirits can attack us not only sporadically, but when they will. Add in a central authority that is uncaring or ineffectual, and it's every man for himself.

But do these details make movies like Kunio Watanabe better? Or are we just fascinated by the unfamiliar?