Ghost story movie - Kaidan Eiga

Japanese: 怪談映画 - かいだんえいが

...On the other hand, however, it has led to the production of pseudo-masterpieces that ignore the coherence of their narrative and whose sole selling point is their outrageous shock value.
[Japanese Horror Movies]
In Japan, rather than horror films, the mainstream is the "ghost story film" in which the victim's grudge haunts the perpetrator (individual) or sometimes his/her blood relatives, in contrast to the Western type in which people who enter a cursed place experience fear (Robert Wise's "Haunt," 1963, John Hough's "Hell House," 1973, etc.). This "grudge" tradition continues from the "Bakeneko" films starring Suzuki Sumiko before the war and Irie Takako after the war, and from these came films such as Mizoguchi Kenji's "Ugetsu Monogatari" (1953), Nakagawa Nobuo's "Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan" (1959), "Kaidan: The Peony Lantern" (1970, TV version), and Kato Tai's "Kaidan: The Ghost of Oiwa" (1961).

From the movie "Bakeneko"

...is a type of ghost story film unique to Japan, and like films about raccoons and foxes, it has long been made as a kind of ``grotesque stuff'' (books on the history of Japanese cinema state that it was ``popular with low-brow audiences''). However, in the early 1930s, Sumiko Suzuki (1904-1985), known as the ``enchantress actress'' of Japanese cinema, played the heroine of this type of ghost story film one after another (``The Legend of the Saga Ghost Cat'' and ``Arima Cat'' (both 1937), ``The Fifty-Three Stations of the Ghost Cat'' and ``The Ghost Story Mystery Shamisen'' (both 1938), ``Yamabuki Cat'' (1940), etc.), and since then, it has come to form part of the undercurrent of Japanese film history as a unique genre of ghost story film. That is to say, although they were considered weird and low-brow entertainment films, they were mass-produced as a genre with definite box office value, and Nagata Masaichi, the producer who made Suzuki Sumiko's "Transformation Cat Movie" a hit at Shinko Kinema before the war, also had success after the war at Daiei (Nagata became president in 1947) by turning Irie Takako, a prewar "young lady star" who had lost popularity, into a "transformation cat actress."

*Here are some explanations of terms that refer to "ghost story movies."

Source | Heibonsha World Encyclopedia 2nd Edition | Information

Japanese:

…しかしそれは，一方において，大作もどきの物語のつじつまを無視したどぎついショックだけが売物の作品の輩出を招いた。
［日本の怪奇映画］
　日本の場合は，怪奇映画というよりも，被害者の怨念が，加害者(個人)やときにはその血縁者にとりつく〈怪談映画〉が主流を占め，同じたたりでも，のろわれた場所へ入りこんだ人々が恐怖を体験する欧米型(ロバート･ワイズ監督《たたり》1963，ジョン･ハフ監督《ヘルハウス》1973，など)とは対照的である。その〈怨念〉の伝統は，戦前の鈴木澄子，戦後の入江たか子主演の〈化猫〉映画から続いているが，そうした中から，溝口健二監督の《雨月物語》(1953)，中川信夫監督の《東海道四谷怪談》(1959)，《怪談牡丹灯籠》(1970，テレビ作品)，加藤泰監督の《怪談お岩の亡霊》(1961)などが生まれた。…

【化猫映画】より

…日本固有の怪談映画の一種で，〈狸もの〉〈狐もの〉などと同様に古くから〈ゲテモノ〉としてつくられてきたが(日本映画史をつづった本には〈低俗観客層に愛好された〉などと記されている)，昭和10年代の初めに日本映画きっての〈妖婦女優〉として知られた鈴木澄子(1904‐85)がこの種の怪談映画のヒロインを次々に演じて(《佐賀怪猫伝》《有馬猫》(ともに1937)，《怪猫五十三次》《怪談謎の三味線》(ともに1938)，《山吹猫》(1940)，等々)，〈化猫女優〉の異名を取って以来，怪談映画のなかでも特殊なジャンルとして日本映画史の底流の一部を形成することになった。すなわち，ゲテモノ，低俗娯楽映画といわれながらも確実な興行価値をもつジャンルとして量産され，とくに戦前の新興キネマで鈴木澄子の〈化猫映画〉をヒットさせたプロデューサーの永田雅一は，戦後も大映(1947年より永田が社長に就任)で，戦前の〈お嬢さんスター〉で売れなくなっていた入江たか子を〈化猫女優〉に仕立てて成功した。…

※「怪談映画」について言及している用語解説の一部を掲載しています。

出典｜株式会社平凡社世界大百科事典第２版について | 情報

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