The Ghosts of Kagami Pond (1959)

aka Ghost Story: Depth of Kagami

Original title: Kaidan Kagami-ga-fuchi

Some time (this isn’t a film for historical precision) in feudal Japan. Kinbei (Joji Ohara) is working as a manager for the highly regarded Eshimaya clothing store. When he hears that the Eshimaya head (Hiroshi Hayashi) is planning to eventually pass the shop on to his adoptive son Yasujiro (Shozaburo Date), Kinbei loses it completely and starts on a spree of murder and conspiracy meant to ruin the lives of Yasujiro and those closest to him. He racks up a surprisingly high body count during his vile work, sinking his first victim, Okiku (Noriko Kitazawa) in the titular pond after he ruined her marriage – and this being the kind of society it is, her life in the process.

But while women may have little power in life in this society, their ghostly grudges can eventually destroy even the worst of villains.

This lovely Shintoho kaidan movie directed by Masaki Mori is apparently based on a popular story by Encho Sanyutei whose 60th death anniversary the production was made for. In its tone, the resulting film doesn’t play out like a story with realistic character psychology at all, but has the moral clarity of a folk tale. Kinbei and his female cohort Osato (Reiko Seto), as well as the Eshimaya head, are utterly despicable people without a single redeeming – or just human – character trait, whereas Yasujiro and his wife are the kind of soft goody-two-shoes who can’t even comprehend of anything their society does not approve of. Which would make them perfectly annoying heroes, if the film would spent any time on them as anything but the victims of Kinbei’s (and Osato’s and Eshiyama’s) horridness.

Like in a good folk tale, this never feels like the film is strictly lacking in character depth but rather as if it decides its tale is so archetypal, psychology would only get in the way, and be completely besides the point anyway. The point in this case being to show horrible people doing as horrible things to people as 1959’s Japan allows in a movie (which is to say, pretty damn much), and seeing them from time to time frightened by and eventually dispatched by the female victims of their sins.

Mori realizes the mix of only semi-polite atrocities and moody ghost appearances with great verve, portraying Kinbei as despicable as a man can possible get without eating babies, finding much expressionist beauty in vengeful ghosts, and creating a mood that is in turns lurid and brooding. It’s a bit like poetry to people like me.


Of course, if you want, you can find at least an implicit criticism of feudal Japan (and therefore the people glorifying it in ‘59) in the film, the way rigid societal structures enable Kinbei and bring out the worst in people like Eshimaya, of how women are used and abused (without a ghostly intervention, Eshimaya would rape his own daughter-in-law, and no law of the time would care), and of how the blind belief in his society of someone like Yasujiro makes it impossible for him to even understand when its rules are used against him and the woman he supposedly loves. Frankly, I’m not sure if any of this was actually on Mori’s mind or if I’m only reading this into the film (or even the Japanese ghost story as a whole). In any case, The Ghost of Kagami Pond is a pretty great example of a kaidan movie.