Tag: Akiko Yamashita

The Mother Tree (怪談乳房榎, Goro Kadono, 1958)

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An amoral ronin worms his way into the home of a famous painter with the intention of stealing his wife in Goro Kadono’s eerie tale of ghostly revenge, The Mother Tree (怪談乳房榎, Kaidan Chibusa Enoki). As might be expected, it doesn’t go particularly well for him. He is, though, perhaps a symbol of the latent fear of social interlopers and those displaced within the Edo-era class system. Namihei (Asao Matsumoto) claims that he was let go by his master for being too interested in painting, though is otherwise focused on short-term gains and causing destruction.

Shigenobu (Akira Nakamura) is said to be “the greatest artist in Edo”, and is certainly very much in demand. He is father to an infant son, Mayotaro, and husband to devoted wife Kise (Katsuko Wakasugi). He appears to be a good man, if a little scatterbrained and hugely overworked, which is one reason why he was grateful to take on a pupil. The irony is that both Kise and the family’s maid Hana (Keiko Hasegawa) remark on what a nice guy Namihei is and how glad they are to have him in the household. He’s even good with the baby who apparently likes to be held by him. All of which suggests that he might have actually had talent for painting and could probably have succeeded Shigenobu, in time, if hadn’t been such a terrible person. 

Unfortunately, however, Namihei reminds Shigenobu that he promised to paint a freeze for a temple some distance away and had sort of forgotten about it. An impulsive soul, Shigenobu decides he’d better leave right away if only to shake off this sense of unfulfilled obligation that’s been plaguing him. He entrusts the women of the household to Namihei in his absence and has no reason to fear any harm may come to them while he’s away. Namihei, however, attempts to rape Kise as soon as he leaves. Though she resists him, he threatens to kill her son and she is forced to give in to a prolonged period of sexual exploitation.

This is actually quite a dangerous move on Namihei’s part considering that the penalty for adultery under Tokugawa law is death, which might be why he finally ends up killing Hana after she witnesses Kise being abused and tries to help her. Namihei evidently doesn’t have a long-term plan for how all this is supposed to pan out and panics on hearing that Shigenobu will be returning much earlier than he expected. The irony may be that Shigenobu intended to paint eyes that might see into the next world and eventually becomes a vengeful ghost after being brutally murdered by Namihei, though was unable to see his treachery. Evidently never having read a ghost story himself, Namihei dumps the body in a pond, which is all but guaranteed to come back and haunt him. “Though you kill me, I will not die,” Shigenobu curses, vowing that he cannot pass on while his dragons lack eyes. 

What might be surprising is that neither of the vengeful ghosts blame Kise for her plight or seek revenge against her. The rage of a vengeful ghost can often be indiscriminate, but both Shigenobu and Hana seem to understand that Kise has been abused by Namihei and only submitted to him out of maternal devotion in the desire to have her son. Namihei’s transgression aims at straight at the concept of motherhood and with it the entire social order. Having displaced Shigenobu, Mayotaro now seems a nuisance to him. He believes he’s conquered Kise by fear and no longer needs this leverage to control her now her husband is dead.

It is mainly fear that causes people to behave in strange ways. Namihei orders their servant Shosuke (Hiroshi Hayashi) to kill Mayotaro, telling Kise that he is to be sent to a noble samurai family that will assist in his social advancement. Kise seems to go along with this, despite having sworn to raise Mayotaro to take revenge. Shosuke is unable to resist after Namihei threatens him with death, but places Mayotoyo by the Mother Tree which had once nourished him. Following her husband’s murder, Kise’s milk had dried up in shock as if echoing this attempt on her maternity which was then restored by the ancient natural authority of the tree. 

That it’s the Buddhist priest that becomes a figure of moral authority and goodness positions Buddhism as the counter to the amoral nihilism of men like Namihei. Having been struck by Namihei, Kise leaves her son in the priest’s care who will raise him not for revenge but peace and forgiveness. This might run counter to the Shinto-inflected role of the Mother Tree as a symbol of the power of nature, but ultimately suggests that true righteousness is found in Buddhism and its values. Namihei pays for his amoral venality after being tormented by spirits appearing as flaming orbs. Japanese ghosts rarely harm humans directly, but cause them to hurt themselves through fear and madness. That he ultimately kills Kise despite Shigenobu’s telling her to raise their son suggests that she is being punished too, though none of this was her fault and it is really she who puts end to Namihei’s reign of terror. With his death, order is, in a sense, restored as Shigenobu returns to put the eyes on his dragons who can indeed see a better world free of greed or cruelty. 

Ghost Stories of Wanderer at Honjo (怪談本所七不思議, Goro Kadono, 1957)

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Ghost Stories of Wanderer at Honjo (怪談本所七不思議, Kaidan Nana Fushigi) seems to have become mistitled somewhere along the line seeing as the Japanese is something more like The Seven Wonders of Honjo, an area of Tokyo that had a reputation for gloominess during the Edo era. The “seven wonders” are a collective name for a series of local ghost stories, of which there may actually be more than seven, which were popular fare for rakugo tales and other forms of storytelling. Though the film opens with a brief rundown of the seven wonders which it weaves into the tale, it is more of a revenge drama that throws in the appearance of popular yokai such as Rokurokubi, Kasa-obake, and Hitotsume-kozo.

The yokai emerge to scare a pair of fishermen who were about to ignore a ghostly voice telling them to leave the fish they’d just caught in the river behind, but what the fishermen really seem to object to is the presence of a tanuki who makes a habit of tricking the local people. After becoming fed up with them, the locals hunt down the tanuki and are about to turn it into soup when a wealthy nobleman, Komiyama (Hiroshi Hayashi), arrives and buys the tanuki from them which he then frees. Komiyama tells the tanuki to stop bothering the villagers in return and continues home after marking the anniversary of his wife’s passing and the departure of his son who is going out into the world.

The tanuki later appears in the form of a beautiful young woman to tell Komiyama that she is grateful for his saving her life and will always protect him. Unfortunately, however, Komiyama gets into trouble on the night of a tanuki ritual, so she doesn’t make it in time to save him from a dastardly plot by his disinherited nephew to murder him for his money. She can, however, help his son Yumenosuke (Juzaburo Akechi) exact revenge and put a stop to the amoral Gonkuro’s (regular Shintoho villain Shigeru Amachi) reign of terror.

As in many tales like these, it’s Gonkuro who is real terror threatening chaos in the ordered Edo society while being unable to conform to his proper role in life. Before the film begins, Komiya has already disowned his nephew for being a wastrel. Gonkuro says that he’s come to pay his respects to his late aunt, but Komiyama suspects he’s after money again which he’ll spend on drink, women, and gambling. There is a direct contrast being drawn between the good son Yumenosuke and Gonkuro, though it’s Yumenosuke who apparently becomes seriously ill while on his travels preventing his speedy return until his desire for revenge enables him to overcome his illness. 

Meanwhile, Komiyama has recently married again to a younger woman, Sawa (Akiko Yamashita), who turns out to be a former lover of Gonkuro’s. Though she at first resists, she’s bullied into resuming a sexual relationship with him which she then carries on enthusiastically. She and Gonkuro seem to be symbols of the evils of the age in their lack of properness and humanity. Not only does Sawa cheat on her husband, but even goes along with Gonkuro’s murder plot to kill him and inherit his money.

Though the tanuki fails to save Komiyama and is generally depicted as an untrustworthy trickster, it is a kind of guardian of these virtues in standing behind Yumenosuke as a source of righteousness. Komiyama’s act of kindness will eventually be repaid, while Gonkuro’s attempt to triumph over the moral order represented by Komiyama will be denied. Having dispatched Komiyama, Gonkuro occupies an awkward class status as a usurping lord and even tries to rape Yumenosuke’s betrothed Yae during an expressionist storm as a means of asserting his triumph over his cousin. Sawa meanwhile does something similar by flirting with and then potentially entering a sexual relationship with their servant Gosuke (Saburo Sawai) in full contravention of the social order. Their attempts to get rid of the tanuki by praying her away are a means of reasserting control and dissolving the rules of human morality that they feel constrain them.

In that sense, the tanuki and yokai are not particularly frightening but a constant presence that enforces a moral order defined by humanity and compassion. The two fishermen are only spooked because they ignore the disembodied voice telling them to leave the fish, not because they heard it in the first place. The tanuki, meanwhile, are mainly seen dancing as part of their ritual rendered as ghostly figures not quite of this world. They appear not to do anything that could be considered more than irritating even when messing with locals and definitely don’t deserve to get made into soup. The message seems to be that being good and kind might not save you personally, but it will eventually pay off, and is after all, the right thing to do as man can only thrive when living in harmony with nature and the supernatural world rather than attempting to transcend it through immorality like the selfish and thoughtless Gonkuro.