Onibaba (film)

is a 1964 Japanese historical drama horror film written and directed by Kaneto Shindo. The film is set during a civil war in the fourteenth century. Nobuko Otowa and Jitsuko Yoshimura play two women who kill soldiers to steal their possessions, and Kei Satō plays the man who ultimately comes between them.

Plot
The film is set somewhere in Japan, in the mid-fourteenth century during a period of civil war. Two fleeing soldiers are ambushed in a large field of tall, thick reeds and murdered by an older woman and her young daughter-in-law. The two women loot the dead soldiers, strip them of their armour and weapons, and drop the bodies in a deep pit hidden in the field. The next day, they take the armor and weapons to a merchant named Ushi and trade them for food. The merchant tells them news of the war, which is driving people across the country to desperation. As they leave, Ushi makes a sexual proposition to the older woman, who rebuffs him. A neighbor named Hachi, who has been at war, returns. The two women ask about Kishi, their son/husband who was drafted along with Hachi. Hachi tells them that they deserted the war and that Kishi was later killed when they were caught stealing food from farmers. The older woman warns the younger woman to stay away from Hachi, whom she blames for her son's death.

Hachi begins to show interest in the younger woman and, despite being warned to stay away from Hachi, she is seduced by him and sneaks out of her hut every night to have sex. The older woman learns of the relationship and is both angry and jealous. She tries to seduce Hachi herself, but is coldly rebuffed. She then pleads with him to not take the young woman away, since she cannot kill and rob passing soldiers without her help.

One night, while Hachi and the younger woman are together, a lost samurai wearing an Oni mask forces the older woman to guide him out of the field. He claims to wear the mask to protect his incredibly handsome face from harm. She tricks him into plunging to his death in the pit where the women dispose of their victims. She climbs down and steals the samurai's possessions and, with great difficulty, his mask, revealing the samurai's horribly disfigured face. As she leaves, the older woman then gets an idea to keep her daughter-in-law away from Hachi.

At night, as the younger woman goes to see Hachi, the older woman blocks her path, wearing the samurai's robes and mask, frightening the woman into running home. During the day, the older woman further convinces the younger woman that the "demon" was real, as punishment for her affair with Hachi. The younger woman avoids Hachi during the day, but continues to try and see him at night. During a storm, the older woman again terrifies the younger woman with the mask, but Hachi, tired of being ignored, finds the younger woman and has sex with her in the grass as the devastated old woman watches from afar. Hachi returns to his hut, where he discovers another deserter stealing his food; the deserter abruptly grabs his spear and stabs Hachi, killing him.

The older woman discovers that, after getting wet in the rain, the mask is impossible to remove. She reveals her scheme to the younger woman and pleads for her to help take off the mask. The younger woman agrees to remove the mask after the older woman promises not to interfere with her relationship with Hachi. After failing to pull it off, the young woman breaks off the mask with a hammer. Under the mask, the older woman's face is now disfigured, as the samurai's had been. The younger woman, thinking the older woman has turned into a demon, flees; the older woman runs after her, crying out that she is a human being, not a demon. The young woman leaps over the pit, and as the older woman leaps after her the film ends.

Cast
Most of the cast consisted of members of Shindo's regular group of performers, Nobuko Otowa, Kei Satō, Taiji Tonoyama, and Jūkichi Uno. This was Jitsuko Yoshimura's only appearance in a Shindo film. The two women do not have names even in the script, but are merely described as "middle-aged woman" and "young woman".

Nobuko Otowa as Older Woman
Jitsuko Yoshimura as Younger Woman
Kei Satō as Hachi
Taiji Tonoyama as Ushi
Jūkichi Uno as The Masked Warrior

Production

The story takes place shortly after the Battle of Minatogawa which began a period of over 50 years of civil war, the Nanboku-chō period (1336 to 1392). Hachi tells of an attack from general Takauji Ashikaga, who came to power in the 1330s.

The story of Onibaba was inspired by the Shin Buddhist parable of yome-odoshi-no men (嫁おどしの面) (bride-scaring mask) or niku-zuki-no-men (肉付きの面) (mask with flesh attached), in which a mother used a mask to scare her daughter from going to the temple. She was punished by the mask sticking to her face, and when she begged to be allowed to remove it, she was able to take it off, but it took the flesh of her face with it.

Kaneto Shindo wanted to film Onibaba in a field of susuki grass. He sent out assistant directors to find suitable locations. Once a location was found near a river bank at Inba-Numa in Chiba, they put up prefabricated buildings to live in. Filming started on 30 June 1964 and continued for three months.

They had a rule that if somebody left they would not get any pay, to keep the crew motivated to continue. Shindo included dramatized scenes of the dissatisfaction on the set as part of the 2000 film By Player.

To film night scenes inside the huts, they would put up screens to block the sun, and changing the shot would require setting the screens in a completely different spot.

Kaneto Shindo said that the effects of the mask on those who wear it are symbolic of the disfigurement of the victims of the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the film reflecting the traumatic effect of this visitation on post-war Japanese society.

The film contains some sequences filmed in slow motion.

The scenes of the older woman descending in to the hole had to be shot using an artificial "hole" built above ground with scaffolding, since holes dug in the ground at the location site would immediately fill with water.

Score
Onibaba'''s score is by Shindo's long-term collaborator Hikaru Hayashi. The background and title music consists of Taiko drumming combined with jazz.

ReleaseOnibaba was released in Japan on November 21, 1964 where it was distributed by Toho. The film was released in the United States by Toho International with English subtitles on February 4, 1965. An English-dubbed version was produced by Toho, but any actual release of it is undetermined. On the films initial theatrical release in the United Kingdom, the film was first rejected by the BBFC on its first submission, and then released in a heavily edited form after its second submission."

Home media
It was released as a Region 1 DVD on March 16, 2004 in the Criterion Collection. A Region 2 DVD was released in 2005 as part of the Masters of Cinema series.

Critical response
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Onibaba received an approval rating of 83% based on 12 reviews, and an average rating of 6.7/10.

From contemporary reviews, the Monthly Film Bulletin" noted that "Shindo obviously likes to milk his situations for all they are worth-and then some." noting that "Onibaba has the same striking surface as [Ningen and The Naked Island]." and that the film "has the same tendency to fall apart if examined too closely". The review praised Kuroda's "fine photography" but noted that nothing else "in the film quite matches this opening among the reeds, or its aftermath in the ruthless stripping of the victims and disposal of their corpses, except perhaps the encounter between the old woman and the General." "Wear." of Variety described as "sexiest pic to be unveiled in New York so far" noting that Nobuko Otowa is superb as the older woman while Jitsuko Yoshimura contribs an excellent characterization as the daughter-in-law" The review declared it "sometimes high adventure and exciting, at other times dull in its so-called symbolism. Too often, this turns out to be a potpourri of ravenous eating and blatant sex." A. H. Weiler of the New York Times described the film's raw qualities as "neither new nor especially inventive to achieve his stark, occasionally shocking effects. Although his artistic integrity remains untarnished, his driven rustic principals are exotic, sometimes grotesque figures out of medieval Japan, to whom a Westerner finds it hard to relate." The review noted that Shindo's "symbolism, which undoubtedly is more of a treat to the Oriental than the Occidental eye and ear, may be oblique, but his approach to amour is direct... the tale is abetted by Hiyomi Kuroda's cloudy, low-key photography and Hikaru Kuroda's properly weird background musical score. But despite Mr. Shindo's obvious striving for elemental, timeless drama, it is simply sex that is the most impressive of the hungers depicted here."

Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian says "Onibaba is a chilling movie, a waking nightmare shot in icy monochrome, and filmed in a colossal and eerily beautiful wilderness". Jonathan Rosenbaum of The Chicago Reader described it as "creepy, interesting, and visually striking".

Genre classification
Many critics have been divided on the genre of the film. While Onibaba is regarded a "period drama" by David Robinson, or "stage drama" by Japanese film scholar Keiko I. McDonald, Phil Hardy included it in his genre compendium as a horror film, and Chuck Stephens describes it as an erotic-horror classic. Writing for Sight & Sound, Michael Brooke noted that "Onibaba's lasting greatness and undimmed potency lie in the fact that it works both as an unnervingly blunt horror film (and how!) and as a far more nuanced but nonetheless universal social critique that can easily be applied to an parallel situation"

Keiko I. McDonald stated that the film contained elements of the Noh theatre. She notes that the han'nya mask "is used to demonize the sinful emotions of jealousy and its associative emotions" in Noh plays, and that the differing camera angles at which the mask is filmed in Onibaba are similar to the way in which a Noh performer uses the angle of the mask to indicate emotions. Other reviewers also speculate about Noh influences on the film.: "Die Filme [Onibaba and Kuroneku] folgen in ihrer Schauspielkunst, Erzählstruktur und Inhalt den klassischen japanischen Nô-Stücken." ("These Films [Onibaba and Kuroneku] follow classic Japanese Noh Plays in the ways of acting, narrative structure and content.")

References

Bibliography

 

 

External links
 
 
 Onibaba'' at the Japanese Movie Database
 
 Kei Satō's 
Onibaba: Black Sun Rising an essay by Chuck Stephens at the Criterion Collection

Category:1964 films
Category:1964 horror films
Category:Japanese films
Category:Japanese drama films
Category:Japanese horror films
Category:Jidaigeki films
Category:Japanese black-and-white films
Category:Japanese-language films
Category:Japanese supernatural horror films
Category:Films set in the 14th century
Category:Films directed by Kaneto Shindo
Category:Films with screenplays by Kaneto Shindo
Category:1960s historical horror films