Kaidan Kasane-ga-fuchi is the Japanese title of a 1957 ghost story. It's often called The Depths, The Ghost Of Kasane Swamp or The Ghost of Kasane. It's based on a story called Shinkei Kasanegafuchi by Encho Sanyutei, the screenplay is by Yasunori Kawauchi, the director is Nobuo Nakagawa.
It starts one snowy evening.
A blind masseur goes to collect a debt from a samurai. The samurai goes nuts, kills the guy and has his servant toss the body in the swamp. The ghost of the masseur comes back to haunt the samurai and he kills his wife and downs himself in the swamp.
Twenty years later the orphaned children of the masseur and the samurai have grown up and live in the same town. The son of the samurai is Shinkichi, he's a servant to a shop keeper, the daughter of the masseur is Rui, she's a samisen teacher. The daughter of the shop owner is Hisa, she's in love with Shinkichi, Rui is also in love with him. Omura is a samurai who wants to marry Rui but he's more thug than samurai, she doesn't want to have anything to do with him. He stirs up trouble among the trio and everything goes steadily to hell.
It's no Onibaba but it's fairly good. A lot of these Japanese supernatural stories seem to end poorly for most everyone. This isn't anything different. It's nice and moody and it looks pretty good. You can download a copy at this blog.
Comments