Yabu no naka no kuroneko, 1968
[Black Cat from the Grove/Kuroneko]
In
the midst of a devastating civil war, a band of desperate,
battle-fatigued mercenaries led by a ruthless and opportunistic
warrior (Rokko Toura) chance upon an isolated hut on the rural
outskirts of Kyoto and begin to ransack the property in search
of food and water. Encountering a peasant woman named Yone (Nobuko
Otowa) and her daughter-in-law Shige (Kiwako Taichi) inside the
house, the soldiers then commit a series of grievous and
unconscionable acts, culminating in the violation and murder of
the defenseless women before setting their home on fire. The scene
then cuts to a shot of two stray black cats hovering over the
charred remains of the victims as they subsequently make their home
among the ruins. Months later, the ringleader - now a retainer who
patrols the walled city gates on horseback - is approached by an
alluring and mysterious noblewoman seeking to be escorted home
through the ominous bamboo forest. Arriving at the edge of the
grove, the samurai elicits an invitation to enter the home, and
is offered sake and tea by the woman's mother-in-law who promptly
retreats into a backroom in order to afford them some privacy.
The young woman then begins her gradual seduction of the guest and,
just as the evening progresses to a seeming moment of intimacy,
violently attacks the unsuspecting samurai by biting him on the
neck and draining his blood. The following morning, his corpse
is found lying among the ashes of the burned hut. Soon, a rash of
inexplicable samurai deaths - all found with contorted bodies
ritualistically splayed among the charred ruins of the hut or
left near the Rajomon Gate - begin to surface, prompting the
mikado (Hideo Kanze) to issue a mandate to the head of
security, Raiko (Kei Sato), for a swift resolution to the crisis.
To this end, Raiko recruits a fearless warrior who calls himself Gintoki
(Kichiemon Nakamura) - the lone survivor of an entire regiment - after
he arrives at the palace grounds to present the head of a formidable
enemy named Kumasunehiko whom he had slain in battle. However, as
Gintoki finds a disturbing connection between the enigmatic noblewomen
and his former life as a humble farmer, his allegiance to the
mikado and the samurai bushido (code of honor) are tested.
Loosely based on a Japanese folktale entitled The
Cat's Revenge, Kuroneko is
a spare, atmospheric, sensual, and acutely haunting portrait of
love, duty, revenge, and inhumanity. Kaneto Shindo juxtaposes
elemental and poetic natural imagery with the abstract, highly
stylized expressionism of Noh theater to create an indelible aesthetic
of visual dichotomy that exposes the underlying contradiction and
hypocrisy of tolerated societal behavior. From the introductory
presentation of the disheveled, unnamed rogue army leader who
participates in the terrorization of the women, then subsequently
re-emerges as a distinguished samurai who, nevertheless, is
eager to exploit an opportunity to pursue a captivating and
seemingly vulnerable young woman walking home alone, Shindo
examines similar themes of innate primitivism, godlessness,
and violence that exist beneath the veneer of civility as his
earlier feature, Onibaba.
Moreover, through pervasive ambiguity of character and
interchangeability of identities - from the anonymous, brash
samurai who was once a forcibly conscripted farmer that parallels
Gintoki's own social evolution (his abandoned identity symbolized
in his adoption of the name Gintoki in lieu of retaining his peasant
name, Hachi) to the vicious bakeneko (cat monsters) that
take on the form of noblewomen who are forbidden by the evil gods
from revealing their true names - Shindo draws an implicit connection
between Yone and Shige's sinister pact and the cruel legacy of the
samurai bushido that further reflects on the human struggle
between individuality and conformity, duty and conscience, personal
will and hierarchical laws. By evocatively depicting the
irreconcilable tragedy inherent in the unredemptive attainment
of civilized order through warfare and social privilege through
barbarism, Kuroneko serves as a
horrifying and provocative indictment of man's vain, misguided,
and inevitably ephemeral quest for wealth, power, pleasure, and
immortality.
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At
sunrise, the nearly indistinguishable silhouettes of a peasant
man (Taiji Tonoyama) and woman (Nobuko Otowa) are observed on
the horizon as they navigate their modest rowboat through the
tranquil waters. Arriving on the main island, the couple disembark
from their boat carrying large water barrels and walk along a footpath
towards the freshwater reservoir of a village where they fill their
water barrels to capacity, before rowing their boat home to a small
island, and carry the oversized vessels through the steep and irregular
trail along the hillside, balancing the cumbersome, shifting weight
of the water across their shoulders through precariously yielding,
long wooden poles. Observing their parents' approach from the sea,
the children scamper to feed the animals, tend to the stove, and set
the table so that the family meal is promptly served by the time
that the adults reach the summit. After hurriedly consuming his
breakfast, the older son (Shinji Tanaka) puts his bowl away inside
the house, retrieves his school bag, and proceeds directly to the
rowboat, where his mother soon follows carrying another set of water
barrels for the next appointed excursion to the main island. And so
the silent, existential ritual of the isolated family unfolds as the
somber couple endlessly toil under the unforgiving sun throughout the
day - alternately transporting water from the main island and
cultivating the arid soil of their terraced, planting field along
the side of the remote mountain island - eking out a meager
existence from the barren and desolate land.
In
an open field of a remote village in ancient Japan, two disoriented,
exhausted soldiers attempt to evade the pursuit of relentless horsemen
from a rival samurai clan, collapsing amidst the tall, overgrown
reeds of the prairie. After the threat of capture has seemingly
subsided, the pair attempt to continue on their desperate flight,
but are unexpectedly ambushed and fatally speared. The vicious,
unseen assailants then emerge from the brush - an old peasant woman
(Nobuko Otowa) and her daughter-in-law (Jitsuko Yoshimura) - examining
the victims to ensure death before removing their armor, then coldly
disposing of their corpses into an ominous, deep opening in the
ground known as The Hole. The women then pack their spoils
into two wicker baskets and set off to see the opportunistic merchant,
Ushi (Taiji Tonoyama) in order to barter for sacks of millet. One
evening, a mercenary named Hachi (Kei Sato) returns to the village
after deserting his legion and witnessing the death of his samurai
overlord. Arriving at the old woman's hut, the boorish Hachi presumptuously
demands food, knowing that she is eager to hear any news of her
son, Kichi, and will not turn him away. Hachi immediately insinuates
himself into the lives of the two women by becoming an accomplice
in their barbaric enterprise, an unholy alliance that is soon threatened
when Hachi attempts to seduce the lonely, repressed daughter-in-law.
A
melancholic, nickelodeon arcade melody plays against the suffused, dreamlike
image of a slow-circling merry-go-round, as a curious assortment of characters
seated on the carousel gradually come into focus, then recede, before re-emerging
again within the stationary frame. The nostalgic, surreal episode carries
through to the voice-over narration of an aging author named Hatsu-rojin (Keiju
Kobayashi) as he dispassionately - but longingly - recalls a fanciful childhood
memory of throwing sandals into the air on an open field and imagining that
the footwear had magically transformed into bats to be momentarily captured
and then set free again and again, interrupted only by the sound of his mother's
(Nobuko Otowa) voice calling the children home for dinner. At home, life in
the rural province proves to be laborious, but often joyful and rewarding
as the children help with the household chores, run errands in the nearby
village, take turns in preparing food for the New Year's festivities, cultivate
the land and, with the advent of warmer weather, participate in the annual
crop plant ritual, an arduous task overseen by their aloof and stern father
(Ichirô Zaitsu) who lords over the generations-old family farm (and
his hard-working family) - while indulgently smoking his ubiquitous pipe -
with the critical and proud complacency of a coddled, leisured aristocrat.
Alternating between past and present, Hatsu-rojin traces his complex, unresolved
relationship with his parents as the youngest child of an uncomplaining, overindulgent
mother and a distant, seemingly callous father as the family struggles through
financial hardship, personal sacrifice, and inevitable fracture. Now in the
twilight of his career and the last surviving member of his family, the unmarried
Hatsu-rojin searches for a way to pass on his fading, but deeply felt memories
into a thoughtful commemoration of the simple life of his nurturing and resilient
mother.
Faced
with a bout of ill health, global traveller, western-educated novelist
Kafu Nagai (1879-1959) began to chronicle sundry episodes in his
life, as well as thoughts and observations of contemporary Japanese
society, in a series of intimate journals that would eventually span
the early half of 20th century. Based on 
On
a secluded cottage in the mountains, a retired carpenter and part-time
groundskeeper named Rokubei assembles a humble coffin, carefully selects
a properly weighted rock from the riverbed, and leaves a last note with
the terse inscription "It's over" scribbled onto the back
of a bargain sale flyer before committing suicide - the round rock
presumably to be used for driving the nails into his coffin for burial.
It is a mystifying and peculiarly pragmatic gesture that intrigues the
famous actress, Yoko Morimoto (Haruko Sugimura), who has arrived at her
rural summer retreat for a brief holiday and much needed rest before
returning to Tokyo to perform in a new theatrical play. Accompanied by
the devoted housekeeper, a local villager named Tokoyo (Nobuko Otowa)
and Tokoyo's daughter, the three women take a leisurely stroll through
the woods and return to a footbridge overlooking the river where Yoko
decides to reserve her own burial stone and store for safekeeping in
the house. However, Yoko is soon compelled to re-evaluate her abstract
- if not romanticized and dramatic - notions of the process of growing
old and death when a former colleague named Tomie (Kyoko Asagiri) pays
a visit at the desperate request of Tomie's husband Tohachiro (Hideo
Kanze) who had hoped that the reunion would improve his wife's diminished
mental faculties resulting from the onset of senility.