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The Tale of Oiwa's Ghost - Limited Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Radiance Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (19th June 2025). |
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The Film
 Ronin samurai Tamiya Iemon (Lone Wolf and Cub's Tomisaburô Wakayama) has sunk low after the death of his master and brothers, descending from gambling and alcoholism into drunken murder, causing his wife Iwa (I am Waiting's Ayuko Fujishiro) to flee back to her father Yotsuya (Prince of Space's Ushio Akashi), a penniless Ronin who has had to indenture his toothpick seller younger daughter Sode (Big Time Gambling Boss' Hiroko Sakuramachi) to masseuse and moxibustion house owner Takuetsu (Ikiru's Atsushi Watanabe) – who must stipulate in the contract that Sode is only a hostess and not a prostitute – since her betrothed Yomoschichi (Torawakamaru, the Koga Ninja's Sentarô Fushimi) cannot marry her until he returns from a year-long trip with his master's retinue. When Yotsuya refuses to order Iwa to return to her husband, Iemon flies into a rage but ends up meeting cute with Ume (Bored Hatamoto: The Cave of the Vampire Bats' Yumiko Mihara), the daughter of Lord Ito, who becomes infatuated with him. When Iemon's street vendor friend Naosuke (Yagyu Chronicles' Jûshirô Konoe) tries to buy Sode, Yomoschichi intervenes and chases him off; whereupon, Naosuke and Iemon come up with a plan to get rid of Yotsuya and Naosuke's rival. When Yotsuya goes out in search of the man who tried to dishonor his daughter, Naosuke and Iemon kill him and Yomoschichi's friend who happened to be wearing his kimono, not realizing that Yomoschichi has already left the village with his master. They blame Yomoschici and an unknown other party for Yotsuya's murder and Iemon swears to Iwa that he will avenge his father-in-law should she return home and Sode live as Naosuke's wife for her own protection. A year later, things have worsened with Iwa bedridden after a difficult birth and Iemon making umbrellas for enough money to drink and gamble while Naosuke has not consummated his marriage to Sode who keeps a knife on her and threatens to kill herself if he lays a hand on her. Iemon has come to loathe his wife who will not let him sell her mother's tortoise-shell comb or kimono – instead, he pawns the mosquito net used to protect their newborn – but discovers that Lord Ito has moved next door because his daughter is lovesick for Iemon. While Iemon tries to plot a way to catch his wife being unfaithful to him so he can divorce her, Ito has sent Ume's handmaiden with the gift of a special remedy for Iwa that is actually a disfiguring poison and she curses Iemon and Lord Ito before her accidental death evading Takuetsu who Iemon has pressured into seducing her. Telling everyone that Iwa has run off with her lover, Iemon weds Ume and Iwa's ghost returns to turn the wedding night into a bloodbath. The umpteenth adaptation of the kabuki play "Tōkaidō Yotsuya Kaidan" by Nanboku Tsuruya – following such entries as Shochiku's 1949 two-parter, Shintoho's 1956 Masaki Môri version which also starred Wakayama in the same role, and 1959 Shintoho Nobuo Nakagawa version and Daiei 1959 Kenji Misumi version (also available from Radiance separately or as part of the limited edition Daiei Gothic set) – The Tale of Oiwa's Ghost from Toei and director Tai Katô (Tokijiro: Lone Yakuza) is less of an art house melodrama than a samurai film with an emphasis on action over stillness in its compositions but it is generally more faithful to the source than the Misumi version. Like most adaptations, however, it takes creative liberties while otherwise hitting the most anticipated beats including the reveal of Iwa's face, her death, and turning up in bed in place of Iemon's new bride, images which have found analogues in most subsequent Japanese vintage horror and modern J-horror. Whereas the Misumi version turned Iemon into a weak man with those around him doing the plotting and who avenges Iwa when he realizes he has wronged her, Katô's Iemon is a brute who only seems concerned with saving face in getting Iwa back and feels his manhood slighted when his father-in-law does not capitulate. In the aftermath of his bloody wedding night, he seems less remorseful than resigned to ruining his own prospects and trying to change his fate with regards to the afterlife, referring to Iwa's apparition when it appears again as a "foul spirit." Naosuke is "redeemed" and Sode joins in with her lover and her husband in storming the retreat where Iemon is staying to avenge her sister in a sequence that provides more fodder for swordplay (although captured in a frantic and messy rush rather than a stylized choreographed sequence). The story has been adapted so many times for the stage, screen, television, and manga as well as reworked and mutated into different stories – including other literary adaptations like Lafcadio Hearn's "The Reconcilian" as it was realized in Kwaidan's segment "The Black Hair" – that one can see why different filmmakers would make changes or emphasize different aspects when approaching the material out of professional obligation or their own thematic interests; and The Tale of Oiwa's Ghost despite the titular emphasis compellingly depicts how the villains earn their ghostly and bloody fates. 
Video
Unreleased theatrically in the United States or the United Kingdom – the film was not screen in France until 2005 as part of a festival program of Edo-era ghost story films – The Tail of Oiwa's Ghost's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray transfer (a region A/B dual-coded disc also available in the U.K.) comes from a high definition file provided by Toei themselves and is a handsome monochrome presentation free of any distracting archival damage. Some of the gore scenes might have been darkened in the original grading while scenes with opticals – dissolves and supernatural apparitions – also look a bit contrastier and coarser. 
Audio
The sole audio option is a Japanese LPCM 2.0 mono track that is free of any noticeable hiss or damage, making the spectral voices more unnerving in the silence while the sound design is largely sedate apart from the moments of frenzied sword-slashing in the latter half of the film (even the murder of Yomoschichi's friend largely unfolds with screams low on the soundtrack fitting the fog-shrouded setting and wide lensing making it more believable that the killers mistake his identity). Optional English subtitles are free of errors. As with Radiance's other The Ghost of Yotsuya, the three female characters are alternately addressed as Oiwa, Osode, and Oume or as Iwa, Sode, and Ume, and we have had it clarified that adding the O is the formal manner of address. 
Extras
The film is preceded by the optional "Mari Asato introduces The Tale of Oiwa's Ghost" (9:19) who notes from her own experience of the source story as a child, Oiwa's disfigurement and death resonated with her but in later years she became aware of the story being a spin-off by Nanboku Tsuruya of the historic episode and tellings of the "47 Ronin" depicting Tamiya Iemon as the forty-eighth retainer who did not participate and the psychological effect of that dishonor in gambling and alcoholism, and the revelation that Oume, the woman he betrays Oiwa for, is the granddaughter of his late lord's enemy who caused his death, causing Asato to reassess Iemon's character in this light. There is another "Mari Asato on The Tale of Oiwa's Ghost" (9:00) in which Asato discusses the changes to the source material here and likens the film to one of Tai Katô's yakuza films in the operations of the villainous characters before the story proper. Asato also discusses Katô's visual style here and its debt to Daisuke Itô who carried silent film techniques into the sound era.  "Facing Oiwa" (6:57) is a visual essay on tormented female ghosts by Lindsay Nelson which compares a few of the main sequences from three adaptations of the story – including this one and the Misumi as well as a cheesier more modern adaptation – and defines Oiwa as an Onryō, the ghost of a wronged woman, and how that archetype has repeated come back in different forms in the J-Horror era, comparing Oiwa to Ringu's Sadako, the titular Tomie, and Ju-on: The Grudge's Kayako.
Packaging
The limited edition of 3,000 copies is presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow, and a booklet featuring new writing by Tom Mes who further discusses Katô's studying of the techniques of Daisuke Itô and his own uncle Sadao Yamanaka and the nihilistic shift in the earlier half of the twentieth century from depicting Ronin and yakuza as folk heroes to "having no faith in and living at odds with the obligations and codes that ruled feudal society." 
Overall
The Tale of Oiwa's Ghost is the umpteenth adaptation of the Nanboku Tsuruya's "Tōkaidō Yotsuya Kaidan" but Tai Katô puts his own spin on the story while hitting the horror beats.
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