#225: Ayakashi - Samurai Horror Tales (2006)

 

Studio: Toei Animation

Directors: Hidehiko Kadota and Kouzou Nagayama (Tenshu Monogatari); Tetsuo Imazawa (Yotsuya Kaidan); Kenji Nakamura (Bakeneko)

Screenplays: Yuuji Sakamoto (Tenshu Monogatari); Chiaki J. Konaka (Yotsuya Kaidan); Michiko Yokote (Bakeneko)

Tenshu Monogatari adapted from the drama by Kyōka Izumi; Yotsuya Kaidan adapted from the play by Nanboku Tsuruya IV

Voice Actors:

a) Tenshu Monogatari

Hikaru Midorikawa / Kirby Morrow as Zushonosuke Himekawa; Houko Kuwashima / Willow Johnson as Tomi Hime;  Saeko Chiba / Tracey Power as Oshizu;  Yui Kano / Anna Cummer as Ominaeshi; Kappei Yamaguchi / Alec Willows as Kaikaimaru; Masaya Onosaka / Samuel Vincent as Kikimaru

Yotsuya Kaidan

Hiroaki Hirata / Brian Dobson as Iemon Tamiya; Mami Koyama / Nicole Oliver as Oiwa Tamiya;  Yūko Nagashima / Rebecca Shoichet as Osode Yotsuya; Keiichi Sonobe / Samuel Vincent as Gonbei Naosuke; Ryō Hirohashi / Lalainia Lindbjerg as Oume Ito; Wataru Takagi / Michael Adamthwaite as Yomoshichi Sato

Bake Neko

Takahiro Sakurai / Andrew Francis as Kusuriuri the Medicine Seller; Yukana / Kelly Sheridan as Kayo;  Tetsu Inada / Trevor Devall as Odajima; Chikao Ohtsuka / Scott McNeil as Clan Lord Yoshiyuki; Naoki Tatsuta / Paul Dobson as Lord Yoshikuni; Seiji Sasaki / John Novak as Lord Yoshiaki; Yōko Sōmi / Alison Matthews as Lady Mizue; Kozue Kamada / Tabitha St. Germain as Lady Mao; Yuu Shimaka / Ken Kramer as Katsuyama; Eiji Takemoto / Andrew Kavadas as Sasaoka; Yurika Hino / Tabitha St. Germain as Miss Sato; Kiyonobu Suzuki / Trevor Devall as Yahei

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Commissioned for Fuji TV's Noitamina block, highly regarded for its artistically and narratively different anime shows - where Masaaki Yuasa's The Tatami Galaxy (2010) or Princess Jellyfish (2010) came from - Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales befits the slot early in its existence, as it is three different horror tales between three to four episodes, of period set folktales and yōkai I am fascinated by. Two of the three are adapting classic authors for their tales too, adding to this an air of artistry, and even when the Noitamina started over the decades, from their 2005 inception to step away from a stereotypical young male target audience, to have more action and pulpier productions, this was not a bad thing either. This has led to shows like Samurai Flamenco (2013-14), and  with well regarded productions like The Promised Neverland (2019-2020) getting popular, the block can still claim respect for producing some of the best and most interesting in animated television series. My interest in Samurai Horror Tales beyond just horror anime would have been cemented by its connection to Mononoke (2007), another Noitamina block member and one of the most unique looking series of any genre, having been a spin-off from of the Ayakashi stories itself not based on a classic tale.

The three tales are very straightforward in what they are about, each taking very different directions to how to tell them however. Depending on how you watch this, the Discotek Blu Ray release, released on October 29th 2019¹, oddly has it that you can watch the second story's episodes, for Tenshu Monogatari, first before the others, but the structure was set up for broadcast as Yotsuya Kaidan (four episodes), Tenshu Monogatari (four episodes), and Bakeneko (three episodes). Going by how I had watched this, Tenshu Monogatari as the first watched is a supernatural melodrama, adapted from a drama by Kyōka Izumi. Izumi was a prolific novelist, dramatist and writer, who I am aware of for Demon Pond. It is a play even one of my favourite filmmakers Takashi Miike, in one of his many idiosyncratic leaps into any type of filmmaking he has wanted to try, tried his hand at filming, in a very good 2005 theatrical production he recorded, based on a Keishi Nagatsuka re-adaptation of the source material. It is a work too also adapted to cinema by Masahiro Shinoda in 1979.

In Tenshu Monogatari, a falconer named Zushonosuke, thanks to his evil feudal lord, has to retrieve a prized falcon only to find a mansion of forgotten gods, housing all women who as immortal beings, figures who succumb to hunger and consume the life force of any mortals who wander there. One, Tomi Hime, starts to fall for him, which has the issue that the more she is drawn to humanity, that will mean she loses her immortality, which is sadly also infectious to everyone else there in the mansion. The evil lord eventually catches wind of this, which leads to him sending his soldiers to take the mansion by the final episode, a tragedy of figures doomed to love each other despite them being different entities, or that at home Zushonosuke has a fiancée named Oshizu who is naturally heartbroken by all of this, becoming involved. This is the most conventional of the three narratives, but as a bittersweet story, that in itself is a curveball. It still has a ghoulish edge, and there is the fact that there are two monsters as a comedy duo and Greek chorus, two thieves who only help Zushonosuke out to steal from the mansion if they can. 

All the stories have their own distinct looks. Also of note is that, throughout the series, they have their own opening credits, with their own visual motifs and designs, even if they all have the same opening theme song. It is probably the least expected in such a context, HEAT ISLAND by Rhymester, a hip hop song with backing by a koto, a traditional Japanese string instrument, which is as strange as that songs but is yet an inspired choice, befitting a production which is idiosyncratic. It befits how, whilst Tenshu Monogatari is a very emotional drama at its heart, even the traditional ghost story, Yotsuya Kaidan, is not conventionally told at all, all the narratives here standing out with their idiosyncrasies. All the stories have their own authors, Tenshu Monogatari's Yuuji Sakamoto, who only has that one credit in their career strangely, Michiko Yokote for Bakeneko someone we will get to for that story later in the review, and a figure I know very well for Yotsuya Kaidan, Chiaki J. Konaka.

Konaka, someone I admired for his work, sadly has to be taken now by me as a fan with a pinch of salt in recent years. A divisive screenwriter for how obtuse he could be, from Serial Experiments Lain (1998) to one of the strangest narrative arches of Mononoke itself, I admire how esoteric and experimental his work is, even when, such as a live action film like Evil Dead Trap 2 (1992), figuring out what is transpiring and in what reality can be lost entirely even on multiple viewings. For a live reading of a script for Digimon Tamers, a follow up to the show that many of us (including myself) saw episodes of as a kid, he had a villain, which took on the form of "Political Correctness," that threatens the real and digital worlds, and had a special attack called "Cancel Culture"¹. Thankfully nothing from this raised concerns of far greater and more problematic ideas he has had, but at a time where his own personal blog expressed questioning views on COVID-19's reporting in worldwide news², sadly it did paint a picture for me of someone undermining himself when, if brutal to say, his work in screenwriting usually, even if frustrated viewers, was a lot more nuanced even with some of his hardest the grasp scripts in anime storytelling. When watching Yotsuya Kaidan even this came up here, as this is a really meta and clever retelling of the titular tale, which feels alien in comparison, originally written as a kabuki play by Tsuruya Nanboku IV, as Tōkaidō Yotsiya Kaidan, which becomes a story in itself as this version tells.

Nanboku himself is the narrator, and the play itself, as much as a new retelling here, is the subject. The story itself is about a woman Oiwa who, when her husband, Iemon Tamiya, is complicit in a poison she is given, which disfigures half of her face, and the disposal of her body after her death, taking revenge on him from the grave Iemon Tamiya is already established as a unscrupulous rōnin, who even killed Oiwa's father, pretending bandits had done so, to win her hand in marraige, before another woman wished him for her own and concocted the plan to disfigure and disgrace her. This is a morbid melodrama, where there is also her sister-in-law, lied to in a deceit by another man who kills her suitor and pretends bandits also did it, and the story takes on additional angst and wrought drama with its betrayals, seductions and heartbreaks. Konaka's take goes further in how the finale becomes Kaidan's lasting legacy, Tsuruya Nanboku IV revealed to have passed his mortal form and existing in an afterlife on the Earth, considering his story and how it has lasted in Japanese popular culture, even developing a curse around the plan where people adapting it have been maimed or even killed. Were it not for a certain tale coming afterwards which is clearly the gem of this entire anthology, I would hold this as a perfect piece in itself worth seeing. All three are, and Yotsuya Kaidan does feel like a perfect retelling of folklore in dissecting the text, something also for me to show Chiaki J. Konaka as a talented writer even if the real man stumbles in some bad ideas too in his thought process.

However it was Bakeneko which became a spin-off show in itself own right, and alongside that spin-off Mononoke, no anime looks and feels tonally like this these stories about a mysterious "Medicine Seller" at all. Bakeneko, alongside its distinct art style and character designs by Takashi Hashimoto, looks like it was illustrated on glossy waxed paper, done with digital animation as I aware of with Mononoke, but absolutely distinct in its composition. It is a horror story which yet uses bright colours, has a precise use of environment design (patterns, illustrations, even setting out locations), and where, clearly indebted to art styles from Japanese history, such as Japanese woodblock prints, it brings it into the modern era as a digitally animated production in movement. Even in mind that the series got Yoshitaka Amano to do the original character designs for Yotsuya Kaidan, and have his illustrations on the opening credits for that tale, one of the most iconic designers in anime and light novels who an acclaimed artist outside of the mediums, Bakeneko is an artistic masterpiece just in appearance, even in mind that this is a prototype to what became Mononoke the series.

It is also, with fair warning, a bleaker narrative than Mononoke could get, bearing in mind that the later series tackled heavy subjects, its first arch surrounding the ghosts of aborted foetuses of brothel workers. It says a lot in context however that Bakeneko manages to have the bleakest narrative of this world, introducing us here to the Medicine Seller, a figure here and in the later series whose job is exorcise demons, a magic sword on his person (alongside other tools) which can only be open when three criteria explaining the entity's existence come to light. A bride is killed on her wedding day in a proud samurai clan, and whilst suspicion comes on him, the Medicine Seller is quickly the only person able to deal with the problem, the Bekeneko. This is a "goblin cat", cats of supernatural form in Japanese mythology which are not necessarily as extreme as this, a monster claiming vengeance, but symbolically meaningful here with the context. This story will be uncomfortable for some, so fair warning is recommended, as this is the case as was in Mononoke that, as the truth and cause of the demon is revealed, it involves showing up the wrongs of human beings, alongside this explicitly dealing with how people lie, forget details or view it in a different perspective. Michiko Yokote was the screenwriter for this story, and whilst multiple writers all contributed good work to Mononoke, Chiaki J. Konaka, this is a great time, with the virtues she shows here, to praise Yokote. She is not someone I have frequently encountered, but I am aware of her, whilst not the only screenwriting contributor, for series composition, the person putting everything narratively together, for Princess Tutu (2002-3), an exceptional and unique fantasy tale about around ballet and fairy tales that, again with Konaka getting briefly involved, was a meta-text on fairy tales which was also a beautiful gem. Here, dealing with an incredibly umcomfortable subject exceptionally at the heart of this tale, the only not adapted from another source, I see another example of her talent.

And that is true as a warning for anyone interest. [Major Spoiler Warning] The cause of the bekeneko here is that the samurai patriarch kidnapped a woman, kept her in a cage as a sexual object, a peasant girl who was raped, beaten and left to starve to death, which is as grim a narrative reveal, too real for some, to consider. [Major Spoiler Warning]. All three tales to their virtue, but especially Bekeneko, show why I came to love these type of horror anime about folklore and figures like the Medicine Seller, stepping in to resolve supernatural entities, as they become morality tales and dramas with one-off characters, examinations of human beings which the Bekeneko pulls no punches in. Among them, for its artistic innovations, and how impactful the narrative in its centre is, clearly Bakeneko is the masterpiece of the entire set, though it is to the credit of the three tales altogether that they all succeed.

 

====

1) Discotek Media's announcement of Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales, dated on Facebook on August 13th 2019.

2) Digimon Tamers Writer Chiaki J. Konaka Responds to Overseas Backlash Over 20th Anniversary Stage Play, written by Kim Morrissy for Anime News Network, dated August 9th 2021.