"I think Toru Takemitsu experimented greatly with the music he wrote for films." "A wonderful example is Harakiri." "That success then became the springboard for taking on Kwaidan." "That's right." "With Harakiri I had this idea..." "I wanted to try in every aspect of the production, ...including direction, production design, and camerawork." "I was trying to achieve a sort of stylized film direction." "And I succeeded to a certain degree with that film." "When it was shown in Cannes, ...one film critic compared it to Greek tragedy." "After that, I wanted to take the idea of stylization one step further, ...and I chose Kwaidan as perfect material for that." "The camera captures everything realistically, ...but as filmmakers we want to break through that limitation." "The Human Condition depicted things in a realistic way." "Then, in Harakiri a stylized quality began to appear, ...and I had a feeling you'd go on exploring that." "Then I heard you were going to tackle Kwaidan." "I got the impression you were heading into the world of surrealism," "That film was received better overseas than in Japan." "Kwaidan?" "Is that right?" "I wondered why that was so." "I think it was because the material civilization of the West was reaching its peak." "The Japanese had yet to reach that maturity." "They complained about the eyes floating in the sky." "Kwaidan came out just as the West was reaching that point, ...so it may have surprised them somewhat." "When I saw the film, what came to mind was Tibetan Buddhism and the third eye of the Buddha." "I thought, "So the world of religion can be seen in this way."" "Kwaidan felt very close to the world depicted in Tibetan mandalas and other detailed religious paintings, ...and I surmised that you might be diving into the dark depths of Asian spiritualism." "Perhaps I came close to that." "The huge background sets used in the film couldn't be built on the soundstages in Japanese studios." " That's right." " Their soundstages weren't big enough for the size of the sets." "Where did you build the sets?" "In Uji, Kyoto, there was a hangar for housing airplanes." "We searched by helicopter for some place like that, ...and we found it." "It was being used for storing Nissan's new auto bodies." "It was Nissan's warehouse for auto bodies?" "The company's name was Nissan Vehicles." "Tsutsumi knew them." "When a director sets up his own studio, ...in most cases it goes bankrupt." "That happened to Coppola too." "You had to bring together all the functions of a film studio from scratch." "And you were dealing with sets of extraordinary size, ...so the lighting equipment and crew required to light them." "We needed more of everything." "But the size was essential to achieve the images in the film." "The hangar was 1,100 yards long and 88 yards wide." "We set up a cyclorama running the entire length and painted the backgrounds on that." "Kwaidan was my first film in color, ...so right from the start I wanted to explore directing in color." "That's why Shigemasa Toda and I created color schemes for everything." "We gathered clippings from all sorts of sources and decided on basic tones and costume colors for each segment." "It's the only film I didn't do costume research for, ...because that was covered while creating the color schemes." "We created very detailed color schemes." "That was the first thing we did." "While you were making this film, I was filming in Kyoto, ...and even after I'd finished two films, you were still working on Kwaidan." "I remember asking you, "You still haven't finished?"" "While working on it, I thought we'd never finish." "That's how I felt." "Toho put up 100 million yen." "They gave us 30 million yen as each segment was completed." "And in the end, they'd put up 100 million yen." "That's how it came to cost 100 million yen." "The Human Condition cost 60 million yen, 100 million with all other expenses." "So obviously Toho didn't trust me in terms of delivering a film on time." "So they sent a watchdog and took out 100 million yen in insurance on the film's negatives." "The man they sent as a watchdog was Kawakami." " You know who that is, right?" " Yes." "Toho sent him as a watchdog, and they also took out insurance." "He was with us for the entire production." "But he gradually crossed over to our side." "As he watched the dailies, ...he gradually got sucked into the film." "That itself is a Kwaidan, a story of strange occurrences." "I don't think I'd have made the film if I'd known about all the circumstances beforehand." "Ninjin Club had borrowed money for various reasons." "I think it had to do with paying the stars' salaries." "They borrowed money from Shochiku, since the film was to be made there." "But when Shochiku pulled out, they wanted their money back, ...so Ninjin Club worked out a deal with Toho." "So that sort of dealing had gone on." "If you'd known about that, you wouldn't have taken on the film." "Toho gave us 30 million yen initially, ...but that went to Shochiku to pay the debt, ...and we got nothing." "So the production was in debt from the start." "So you were handicapped as you planned things." "We had to deal with the interest and the huge soundstage." "It was obvious interest payments would grow and grow." "And being in charge of production, you were responsible for the debt?" "No, I wasn't a producer on the film." "That was Shigeru Wakatsuki." "But I began work without knowing all the circumstances." "I still don't know if that was a smart thing." "As they say, "Fools rush in..." No offense intended." "I was unaware of the circumstances." "But coming off the success of Harakiri, ...you were brimming with images, skills, and strengths." "It seems inevitable you'd be compelled to dive into Kwaidan." "It was like a destiny you couldn't avoid." "It was like reaching a point of no return." "I think people can get completely lost in something as if possessed by an evil spirit." "For film directors, ...they can become drawn to the mysterious power of film and really find themselves teetering between life and death." "I think that sort of thing occurs." "In the case of Kurosawa, for example, ...he bravely challenged the studio establishment, ...but he faced great hardships, ...and he even tried to commit suicide." "When I saw Kwaidan, ...it felt like it was imbued with a certain intensity, ...as if possessed by vengeful Japanese spirits." "From the sidelines, ...I wondered what it was that drove you to that brink." "In a way, the film was very puzzling." "Well, I think film directors in general experience something like that once or twice." "It's not something you intend to do, but you get caught up in it and find you're unable to get out of it." "It's startling to hear that the film was 30 million yen in debt when you began production." "There was a trickery of sort." "And I didn't find out until well into production." "And everything about the production was costly." "The longer it went on..." "The lighting alone was costly." "The lighting equipment had to be set up really high." "The lighting crew was scared to climb up that high, ...so we hired scaffolders to erect scaffolding for setting up lighting equipment." "So scaffolding had to be set up." "All those extra things drove up the cost, ...and we ran out of money during the shoot." "I was told we didn't have a single yen left." "What did you do?" "That was when we were shooting the "Hoichi the Earless" segment, ...when Hoichi plays the biwa in the final scenes." "That's when it happened." "We ran out of money." "They told me there wasn't a single yen left." "But we needed money to keep going, ...so after giving it a lot of thought, I called Keisuke Kinoshita." "I explained the situation and asked him to lend me 10 million yen." "He replied, "I could lend you 10 million, ...but you'll be sorry later if you don't take 50 million instead."" "And he wired me 50 million yen right away." "And I handled that money myself, ...only doling it out for expenses necessary for the actual production." "At the end of each day, ...the crew would come to me for money to prepare for the next day." "We continued working with that system and finally finished the last segment we were shooting, "Hoichi the Earless."" "You know dry ice wound up being quite costly." "It cost us about 300,000 yen a day." "You need it for rehearsal first, ...so it gets used up quickly." "It was winter, around December." "The dry-ice vendor was puzzled as to why we needed dry ice in winter, ...and he came to see the shoot." "He said, "Ah, no wonder you need so much dry ice!"" "I imagine I'm the only director to receive a year-end gift from a dry-ice vendor." "When I made The Human Condition, a fireworks vendor gave me a gift too." "Fireworks and dry ice both disappear into thin air." "They do indeed." "Anyway, misfortunes never come alone, ...and when we were mixing sounds..." "We were mixing Takemitsu's music for "Hoichi the Earless."" "...it was the sound effect for the ghosts of the Heike clan." "We were having trouble getting it right." "When we finished all the sound mixing, ...I found a letter on my desk." "It was from Takemitsu." ""It's unbearable hearing my hard work reduced to such feeble sounds."" " He wanted to redo it?" " He just disappeared." "Really?" "I wasn't satisfied with the way it came out either, ...so we redid the entire sound mix." "On December 25th, ...we had a screening for invited guests at Toho." "That copy of the film didn't have the new sound mix." "So that was the version I saw." "The copy shown at the Scalaza theater beginning January 6th had the remixed sound." "So the remix was an extra cost we had to bear on top of everything else." "But Takemitsu worked so hard." "He began creating the music while we were still filming." "He really put a lot of effort into it, ...starting out with layers of sounds." "He worked on it at the Sogetsu building." "He'd bring me the finished segments to listen to." "All the pieces consist of Japanese sounds." "I think that among film music, ...the sound he created for the film really stands out for its tremendous scale." "It really does." "It's magnificent not simply as film music but as one of Takemitsu's serious works." " Yes, it's exceptional." " Victor released it on an album." "It was also released on CD." "It's still wonderful to listen to." "We went through a lot of hardships making the film." "Kwaidan was submitted to Cannes, ...but Visconti's The Leopard was competing too." " That was when we submitted Harakiri." " Oh, it was?" "So when you submitted Kwaidan..." "We lost out to a film by a new director." "I forget the name." "In any case, you got blindsided by the maneuvering in Cannes." "Nevertheless, Kwaidan was still a great success." "Yes, it was." "Takemitsu and I went to Cannes together, ...and we finally got to hear the sound the way we couldn't in Japan." "I was so happy." "It's wonderful to screen a film at the Palais des Festivals." "We looked at each other and agreed that the film was worth making." "I think all the hardships and struggles the crew of Kwaidan went through stand as one of the heroic battles fought by filmmakers in the history of Japanese cinema." "I was an assistant director on Kwaidan." "At the time I was an employee of Ninjin Club, ...the production company that made this film, ...and this was the first film on which I worked on set as an assistant director." "Since I was new, ...I was fourth assistant director." "But when we started production, ...there were a lot of complications." "The production schedule was delayed." "A veteran assistant director who was slated to work on the film couldn't fit it in his schedule, so he was out." "As a result, I was made second assistant director when shooting started." "The work of an assistant director involves setting up the scene to be shot on a given day." "You might say he has to serve as a kind of leader." "He prepares the day's shoot and conveys the director's wishes to the various section heads." "I was responsible for costumes and makeup." "I would convey directions about costumes and makeup for a given scene to the actors." "I'd get the actors ready, send them on set, ...and make sure they were on time." "But because it was a period piece, ...preparing the costumes and makeup ...took a lot of time and work." "I did everything I could to ensure that preparations were completed quickly." "Particularly in Kwaidan, the faces of the characters have to change as their psychological states change." "The makeup artists had to create those transformations." "For a subsequent shot, the makeup would have to change to show a transformed face." "We had to do that a lot." "For example, in The Woman oi the Snow, Keiko Kishi at one point suddenly transforms from a peasant's wife into the Woman of the Snow." "That was accomplished, of course, through makeup." "And in the first and fourth stories, ...the protagonists are overcome with fear, ...and their expressions change." "Their faces turn hideous." "I would set up those scenes." "The changes were sometimes subtle and progressed gradually as we filmed." "I had to anticipate the day's shooting and make sure the timing was just night." "It was extremely nerve-racking." "I had some heavy responsibilities on set." "Some of the work was really tough." "Making this single film represented the work of three or four films in terms of the content and sheer volume of work." "It was stressful, but I also learned a lot." "I was so busy that I didn't even have time to talk with Kobayashi." "But he was very understanding about your using your own judgment to do your job." "Everything was fine if you produced results." "He just wanted us to do our best." "That was the nature of our relationship." "Kobayashi shot this film with an eye to capturing the human drama." "It happened to take the form of ghost stories, ...but he had absolutely no interest in making a simple ghost story or horror film." "So the stories in Kwaidan evoke fear and dread, ...but beneath that fear and dread, ...there's always a current of deep human sadness." "The fear is a manifestation of sadness." "They're two faces of the same coin." "One rises to the surface and then the other." "I think he was very interested in telling that kind of story." "I believe the screenwriter Yoko Mizuki chose four of Lafcadio Hearn's stories and adapted them." "It wasn't just ...a selection of stories that shared the trait of being frightening." "The sadness of humanity is always the foundation, ...and the tear that arises from that is presented in various ways." "I think Mizuki tried to choose the four stories that worked best together." "I'd say that Kobayashi was in complete agreement with her choice." "He thought it was a good selection." "Kobayashi had great insight into Japanese art and aesthetics." "His knowledge was very deep." "In that regard, ...I think that when he was making Kwaidan, ...he used that aesthetic sense to create images that provoked strong feelings in viewers." "What made the biggest impression on me was during preproduction, ...when he'd go from one bookstore to another buying art books, the collected works of various artists." "Not only Japanese art, ...but world art too." "So there was Paul Klee, ...Picasso many different artists." "There was Japanese art as well, of course." "He'd flip through the books, ...looking for tonalities and color schemes to use in the four stories in Kwaidan." "That was the work of selection." "The ones he liked he'd cut out with scissors and glue into a scrapbook." "So the first story would have this tonality, ...the second would have this color scheme, ...and then he'd pick out colors for costumes, ...and then for props and set decorations." "The point was to keep the tonalities in balance." "That was the kind of research he did." "It's important to remember that Kwaidan was Kobayashi's first color film, ...so he wanted to make sure his use of color wasn't jumbled or confused." "He wanted a beautiful style that would help the story, so he took great pains with the color balance and tonality." "But he never actually told us what colors to make the costumes, ...or how to color the sets." "He'd give us a sense of his thinking and ask the technicians to use their expertise to make the best choices possible." "Of course he had us change things, ...but fundamentally he gave us the freedom to create according to our own imagination and volition." "That was his approach." "That made working for him very rewarding." "Everybody was happy to do their part." "As for the music, ...Kobayashi put his complete trust in Toru Takemitsu." "And I think that Takemitsu, for his part, ...felt that working with Kobayashi was something he absolutely had to do." "With Kobayashi he was free to do as he wished, ...so I think that for Takemitsu no director was as good to work with as Kobayashi." "Takemitsu's professional title was "composer,"" "...but for him music was, in a sense, pure sauna'." "It was sound, but silence is also sound." "In the music for Kwaidan, he used the methods of musique concrète, though we didn't use that term back then." "He'd create novel sounds and then arrange them together musically and put them on film." "He did the whole film that way." "With Kobayashi, originality was always welcome." "Not only with Takemitsu, ...but also with production designer Shigemasa Toda." "Toda's ideas went beyond what Kobayashi had imagined." "Toda kept generating new ideas, ...extremely exciting ideas, ...unexpected and interesting ideas." "Kobayashi was very open to that and let him carry them out as much as possible." "Kobayashi didn't enter the editing room and take control of the editing." "He never did that." "He'd just send the shot list and footage to the editor and let him do his thing." "When a rough cut was done, he'd watch it for the first time and discuss it with the editor, ...asking him to fix this, replace this with that, and so on." "That was how he approached the task." "He drew the line that way, ...letting the specialists do their jobs." "I can say emphatically that Kobayashi considered the 183-minute version of the film to be the definitive one." "The parts that were taken out were taken out against his will." "It was the result of external demands that couldn't be disregarded, so that's how the film got cut down." "The film was submitted to the Cannes Film Festival in 1964." "For some reason, at Cannes that year there was a strict policy of not screening films over two hours long." "Kobayashi realized he couldn't use the original cut." "He couldn't cut it down to two hours, ...but he made it as short as he could, ...thinking he could negotiate with the committee at Cannes and somehow get it screened." "That's probably why he tried to shorten it." "The result was the 161-minute cut." "He took that to Cannes and negotiated with them." "They said there was no way they'd screen a film over two hours long." "With no other choice, he completely cut out the second story, The Woman oi the Snow." "Now it was three stories, ...and that's how it was screened at the festival." "So he really had to cut it for Cannes, but after that..." "He had no choice but to show it at Cannes with The Woman of the Snow cut out, ...but he began receiving invitations from here and there to screen the complete film with all four stories." "For example, for a certain movie theater in Paris he added The Woman of the Snow back in and showed the 161-minute version." "After that, ...I think that became the generally marketed version, ...the one shown in foreign markets." "But I think the version that best conveys Kobayashi's way of telling a story and his cinematic language is the 183-minute version." "That said, the 161-minute version still gives viewers a good sense of the film's aims, ...meaning, and atmosphere, ...so I don't think the shorter version lessens the work's value." "The 161-minute version was shown in Japan too." "That version was easier to sell, ...and that was the version welcomed by the market." "So the master positive of the original 183-minute version was locked away in the warehouse, ...where it seemed it was then forgotten." "The year before Kobayashi passed away, ...he began trying to locate the negative." "I visited him one day and asked if he knew where the negatives were for the Cannes cut or the original cut." "He said he'd asked Toho Studios about it but that they hadn't given him a clear answer." "I thought it was absurd that they didn't know where they were." "I happened to have a friend working at Toho." "His name was Keiji Yabuki." "He really loved this film." "I told him we couldn't find the negative for Kwaidan and asked if he would look for it." "The Cannes cut and original cut had to be there." "I asked him to find both." "He was very well-known at the studio." "He was a helpful person and quickly looked into it." "In the inventory list he found an entry for the Cannes cut, a dupe negative." "It had been locked away." "We got that one first." "Even though we'd been able to find it by that time it had been there for 30 years." "There was concern about the negative's useful life, ...about the colors fading." "That was the shape it was in." "So we had to repair it digitally, ...restore it, ...and, if possible, bring out the restored version." "That's what we pitched to Toho, and they quickly agreed." "When the restoration was completed, ...Kobayashi was in bed rest at home, ...but we asked him to come out for the day, ...and we drove him to the studio." "We asked him to review the restoration." "He watched it, and he was extremely happy." ""You've saved the film!" he said." "But we still didn't know where the original cut was." "If we found it, we intended to restore it the same way." "That's where we left things for the time being." "Two years after Kobayashi passed away, ...we discovered where the original was." "The Toho studio was moving, ...and the facilities were being rebuilt, ...so everything in storage had to be taken out." "There was a mountain of film cans that had been left off the inventory list." "We checked the labels closely, and there was Kwaidan." "We rushed it to the Imagica postproduction house." "Upon inspection, it turned out to be the master positive." "We knew we had to restore that as well." "We immediately began a digital restoration." "It turned out that little bits of the film were missing." "There were a few such missing bits." "We replaced those bits with parts of the Cannes cut and filled it out to the length of the original sound track." "It was an almost perfect restoration." "However, Kobayashi passed away without seeing the restored original." "But at least he was able to see the restoration of the Cannes version." "I think that was a real relief for him." "You could say Kwaidan was brought back to life by the people who loved it." "That's how I see it, ...and I'm very grateful for that." "I don't think it would be possible today to replicate the beauty of this film." "Whether you're talking about the director cinematographer production designer, or composer, ...this work is the intersection and condensation of their best artistry at the time." "You might be able to approximate it through imitation, ...but to create the same beauty, ...filled with the same heart, ...I think would be impossible." "SPECIAL REPORT!" "THE BLOCKBUSTER OF THE CENTURY!" "Directed by MASAKI KOBAYASHI of THE HUMAN CONDITION and HARAKIRI" "KWAIDAN" " IN COLOR" "TATSUYA NAKADAI, TETSURO TANBA KATSUO NAKAMURA, RENTARO MIKUNI" "KEIKO KISHI, MISAKO WATANABE MICHIYO ARATAMA" "HARUKO SUGIMURA, YUKO MOCHIZUKI, NOBORU NAKAYA" "SEIJI MIYAGUCHI, KANEMON NAKAMURA, GANJIRO NAKAMURA" "KWAIDAN" "A NINJIN CLUB PRODUCTION" "JAPAN'S LARGEST SPECIALLY BUILT SOUNDSTAGE" "FILMING IS GOING SMOOTHLY!" "SPECIAL REPORT!" "KWAIDAN" "A SPINE-CHILLING LEGEND" "A PORTRAIT OF THE LOVE AND HATE OF HUMANITY AND NATURE" "Me." "It was me." "Me." "Me!" "BEAUTY BOTH SUBTLE AND SUBLIME" "GORGEOUS COLORS" "TATSUYA NAKADAI, TETSURO TANBA KATSUO NAKAMURA, RENTARO MIKUNI" "KEIKO KISHI, MISAKO WATANABE MICHIYO ARATAMA" "OSAMU TAKIZAWA, NOBORU NAKAYA SEIJI MIYAGUCHI, YUKO MOCHIZUKI" "HARUKO SUGIMURA, KANEMON NAKAMURA, GANJIRO NAKAMURA" "ON AN UNPRECEDENTED SCALE..." "A FILM ADAPTATION ONCE DEEMED IMPOSSIBLE" "IS FINALLY REALIZED" "Directed by MASAKI KOBAYASHI" "KWAIDAN" "THE LEADING LIGHTS OF FILM AND THEATER" "HAVE CREATED THE SUMMIT OF JAPANESE CINEMA" "Based on Stories by YAKUMO KOIZUMI" "FILMING IS ALMOST COMPLETED!" "Longing for days long past... seeking memories of a love lost... a man returns home." "BUT IN A PRESENT BESET BY ILLUSION..." "THE PAST WREAKS BITTER VENGEANCE" "Like a wind blowing across the plains... like the gleaming white of snow, a woman longs to be loved without being recognized." "BUT IT WAS A LOVE TOO INTENSE FOR THE HUMAN WORLD" "An eerie figure leads the way... and the strains of the biwa awaken resting souls... and echo in a world of water and flame." "IN THE PLACE" "WHERE LIFE AND DEATH MEET" "A BARD" "IS BORN" "She held the infant emperor in her arms" "In a tea bowl there suddenly appears the smiling face of a stranger, and a samurai is driven to irrational fear." "HAS THE WORLD" "GONE MAD?" "OR HAVE I?" "A DRAMA" "OF HUMAN PASSIONS" "GRAPPLING WITH" "DEMONS AND OBSESSIONS" "A WORK OF FANTASY AND LYRICISM" "KWAIDAN" "The essence of the Japanese people that comes down to us in an unbroken line through countless legends is here brought to life as a protest against the chaos of the modern age." "TEN YEARS IN THE PLANNING" "A BUDGET OF 350,000,000 YEN" "OVER A YEAR OF FILMING" "FRESH AND DARING COLOR DESIGN" "EXTREMES OF PATHOS AND OF THE SUBLIME" "A GRAND EPIC" "Directed by MASAKI KOBAYASHI" "KWAIDAN" "TATSUYA NAKADAI, TETSURO TANBA KATSUO NAKAMURA, YOICHI HAYASHI" "RENTARO MIKUNI, KEIKO KISHI MISAKO WATANABE, MICHIYO ARATAMA" "OSAMU TAKIZAWA, NOBORU NAKAYA SEIJI MIYAGUCHI, TAKASHI SHIMURA" "YUKO MOCHIZUKI, HARUKO SUGIMURA KANEMON NAKAMURA" "Are ghost stories only in people's minds?" "Or out there in the world?" "Piercing through the absurdity of human existence, and following on his triumph with Harakiri," "Masaki Kobayashi hurls these questions at the world." "KWAIDAN" "Produced by SHIGERU WAKATSUKI Original Stories by YAKUMO KOIZUMI" "Screenplay by YOKO MIZUKI Cinematography by YOSHIO MIYAJIMA" "A NINJIN CLUB PRODUCTION" "KWAIDAN" "COMING SOON"