Yokai and Other Monsters: From Asian Folklore to Cinema | Out of Competition | Online
Japan, 1968, / restored 2024, 80’, Japanese
Directed by: Tanaka Tokuzo
Screenplay: Fuji Yahiro
Cinematography (color): Makiura Chikashi
Editing: Yamada Hiroshi
Music: Ifukube Akira
Producer: Kubodera Ikuo
Cast: Fujimura Shiho, Ishihama Akira, Hasegawa Machiko
Date of First Release in Territory: April 20th, 1968
Though yokai films have long been made primarily for children, some yokai lend themselves to adult themes such as the yuki onna or “snow woman.”
In the best-known version of her story, retold by American author Lafcadio Hearn in his 1904 collection Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, a snow woman finds two woodcutters sheltering from a snowstorm and kills the older one with her freezing breath, but spares the younger one on condition that he never tell anyone what he has seen, on pain of death.
Later the surviving woodcutter meets and marries Oyuki, a beautiful woman of mysterious origin, with whom he has ten children. One night he tells her about his encounter with the snow woman. Angered, she reveals herself as the yokai in his story and tells him she would kill him if it were not for their kids. She then resumes her true form and disappears into the night.
This, in outline, is the plot of The Snow Woman, Tanaka Tokuzo’s 1968 horror-drama starring Fujimura Shiho as the title character. Though made by Daiei, the film is utterly unlike the studio’s yokai trilogy of the same era in its eerie atmospherics, serious tone and committed performance by Fujimura, whose gaze as the snow woman is chilling to the bone.
In the film, Hearn’s woodcutters have become two sculptors – a master and his young apprentice – searching in the woods for a tree that can serve as the master‘s raw material. Once again there is a blizzard, a snow woman – and a death, this time of the master sculptor. The apprentice, Yosaku (Ishihama Akira), survives, again after promising the snow woman not to reveal what he has seen – and her telling him he will die if he breaks his vow.
Returning to the village, Yosaku begins work on a statue of Kannon, the goddess of mercy, at the behest of the village temple’s head priest, using the wood from the tree his master chose.
And similar to Hearn’s story, a beautiful woman named Yuki (Fujimura) appears in the village and ends up marrying Yosaku, with whom she has a child, Taro. But complications not in the story develop: The evil local lord brings in a master sculptor and pits him against Yosaku in a contest to carve the best statue, with the priest deciding the winner.
Meanwhile, a female shaman suspects that Yuki is not what she seems and the lord’s men accuse Yosaku of stealing the tree, though he earlier received the lord’s permission to use it, and demand that he pay a fee or face arrest.
Through it all, Yuki is a model of kindness and a paragon of virtue, using her knowledge of medicinal herbs to heal and rejecting the lord when he tries to make her his concubine. The lord, with the assistance of his men, attempts to rape her, but she reverts to her true terrifying form as the snow woman, a force no mortal man can resist – or survive.
In its climax, however, the story turns towards, not horror, but pathos. When Yosaku breaks his promise and speaks of the snow woman to Yuki, she erupts in rage and is about to kill him, when she casts a motherly eye on her crying son – and decides to spare his father. After she leaves in a snow storm, Yosaku completes the statue to the satisfaction of the priest, who had rejected an earlier version since its gaze lacked the necessary compassion. The priest sees it in the eyes of the new version, however – carved by Yosaku in the image of the woman the shaman had called a demon. This transformation is made credible by Fujimura’s committed performance.
Together with the unsettling scenes of Yuki freezing victims with her icy breath, shot by Tanaka entirely in the studio to better control the spooky atmospherics, she raises The Snow Woman to the genre heights.
Tanaka Tokuzo
Tanaka Tokuzo (1920-2007) made his directorial debut in 1958 with Bakeneko Goyoda. He then directed seven installments in the Bad Reputation series (1961-66) as well as three films in the Zatoichi series (1963-66). Both series were headlined by mega-star Katsu Shintaro. Tanaka also directed Katsu in six episodes of his Hoodlum Soldier series (1965 to 1968). From 1971, Tanaka worked mainly as a freelance director of TV dramas.
SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY
1958 – Bakeneko Goyoda
1961 – Bad Reputation
1963 – New Tale of Zatoichi
1963 – Zatoichi the Fugitive
1965 – Bad Reputation: Invincible
1966 – Bad Reputation: Cherry Blossoms
1966 – Zatoichi’s Vengeance
1966 – Hoodlum Soldier’s Flight to Freedom
1968 – The Snow Woman
1968 – Hoodlum Soldier: Looting and Pillaging