Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan (The Ghost Stories of Yotsuya on the Tokaido) is the most famous Japanese ghost story of all time, written as a Kabuki play in 1825 by Tsuruya Nanboku IV. The five act summer play appeared at the Nakamuraza Theater in Edo on a double bill with the immensely popular Kanadehon Chushingura. Over two days, both plays were given in full, Yotsuya Kaidan interwoven with Chushingura and commenting on it by problemetizing the value of the traditional vendetta, as well as by contrasting its ghosts and grim lower class life with the aristocratic heroics of the other play.
The details of the Yotsuya Kaidan story were altered over time and numerous characters and subplots were added. Here is the main plot of the original Kabuki play of 1825.
Yotsuya, now fully incorporated into Tokyo, at the time of the play was a village near Edo. Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan was performed with the costumes and sets suited to the gritted low-life (kizewamono) of the Bunsei period (1818-1830). Act 1 is a sort of prologue which establishes the evil characters of the protagonists, in particular Iemon's treachery toward his master Enya Hangan (from Chushingura) and Iemon's murder of Oiwa's father. This sets into motion the play's main theme: Oiwa's vendetta against Iemon, which parodies the feudal revenge against Ko no Moronao in Chushingura.
Act 2 stresses Iemon's uncouthness. Oiwa has just had their baby and feels ill, but Iemon is disgusted at her unkempt appearance. Out of need for money, Iemon has turned to making paper umbrellas. Oume,
the beautiful granddaughter of their wealthy neighbor, has fallen in
love with him. A revolving stage is used to contrast with dramatic effect the poverty of Iemon with the splendor of Oume and her grandfather Kihei. Oume's grandfather wants Iemon to marry his granddaughter and become his heir; he therefore has sent Oiwa a medicine which will spoil her beauty.
Oiwa naively drinks the medicine, which is in fact a sort of poison, and when it starts to work her face is horribly disfigured. Most famous is her left eye, which droops down her face, a feature exaggerated in Kabuki performances to give Oiwa a distinct appearance. In order to
have grounds for a divorce, Iemon has asked Takuetsu, a masseur, to seduce
Oiwa and elope with her. Takuetsu is unable to do that but instead forces Oiwa to look in a
mirror at her own horrible face.
Iemon has carried off all Oiwa's belongings to sell and with the money buy some fine clothes for his wedding that same night at the neighbor's mansion. Oiwa is overcome with a jealous rage - when she combs her hair it falls all out, magnifying her ugliness (a subversion of erotically-charged hair combing scenes in Kabuki love plays). This is always played for effect by having the actor pull out an improbable amount of hair, which piles up to tremendous heights, thanks to a stage hand who
sits under the stage and pushes more and more hair up through the floor
while Oiwa is combing. Finally, she even wrings blood from her hair.
Realizing that she has been deceived, Oiwa becomes hysterical and,
picking up a sword, runs towards the door to take revenge on Oume.
Takuetsu tries to stop her from leaving, and Oiwa, wanting to
evade him, accidentally cuts her own throat with the sword's tip. As she
lies bleeding to death before a stunned Takuetsu, she curses Iemon's
name. Takuetsu flees in panic.
Iemon returns and - as the scheme with Takuetsu has failed - murders his servant, Kohei, so that he can blame his wives' death on him. To make it look as if
Oiwa and Kohei were lovers who have committed "double suicide," he orders his cronies to nail
their bodies on opposite sides of a raindoor and throw it into the Onbo Canal.
Not long after, Kihei and Oume arrive at Iemon's house for the marriage. They will both spend the night there. However, when Iemon approaches Oume sitting in his bedroom to sleep with her, she turns into the ghost of Oiwa and he cuts of her head - of course he slashes off the head of Oume. And when he turns to Kihei, he sees Kohei and the same things happens - he cuts off the head of Kihei. Struggling with a ghostly force that wants to hold him back, he finally manages to escape from the house. Thus ends Act 2.
In act 3, Iemon attempts to go into hiding, but while fishing one day his hook is caught in a heavy object. On closer inspection it turns out to be the raindoor onto which he had previously nailed his wife. In one of the most famous and shocking stage tricks in Kabuki, the "raindoor switch," a single actor plays the part of both Oiwa's and Kohei's corpses, which have been nailed to either side of the raindoor. Both come briefly to life - raising their hands beseechingly as if calling him - before turning into skeletons. By the way, there happens more in this scene. Before the raindoor makes its appearance, Iemon meets among others Kihei's wife (the grandmother of Oume) at the canal side and after she accuses him of killing her husband and daughter, he kicks her into the canal.
At the end of this scene, various other characters emerge in the darkness and play a nighttime mime scene (danmari) as they search for a scroll containing the names of the vendetta conspirators (in a subplot linked to the Chushingura play).
Act 4 contains a subplot about Oiwa's sister, Osode, but in the final act we return again to Iemon. Iemon, still haunted by the ghost of Oiwa, flees to an isolated mountain retreat, Snake Mountain Hermitage. There he rapidly descends into madness as his dreams and reality begin to merge and Oiwa's haunting intensifies. At the time of the Tanabata Festival he dreams about a beautiful woman who closely resembles Oiwa - the dream culminates in a love scene (nureba), but the ghost is finally transformed into a monster.
Iemon intends to renounce his loyalty to Hangan and instead gain admission into Moronao's service (again linking up with Chushingura). In a scene full of special effects, Oiwa confounds Iemon's plan. A famous scene here was added in 1831: a "lantern-escape episode" in which Oiwa's blood-smeared ghost directly confronts Iemon by peeking out from a large lantern he is just trying to light. And in the so-called "Buddhist altar-change episode" the ghost of Oiwa is played by an actor attached to a wheel built into the scenery, appearing and disappearing from behind the Buddhist altar. It seems as if she is floating just under the ceiling and from that position she strangles Iemon's companion Chobei. She takes his body with her and blood starts dripping down from the altar. This is followed by a series of other graphic murder scenes: Oiwa kills both parents of Iemon who had come to the hermitage. When she appears, the stage swarms with rats who are her helpers - Oiwa was born in the Year of the Rat. The play ends with the death of Iemon during a highly stylized combat scene (he is finally killed by Yomoshichi, the husband of Oiwa's sister).
[Lantern scene by Kuniyoshi]
Tsuruya Nanboku IV (1755-1829) is known for writing plays in both the ghost story (kaidan mono) and raw-life genres. Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan is a masterful combination of those two styles.
Oiwa is more brutal in her vengeance than previous Kabuki ghosts. This added level of violence thrilled audiences, who were seeking more and more violent forms of entertainment. In addition, the performance of Yotsuya Kaidan was filled with fantastic special effects, with Oiwa's ruined face projecting magnificently from an onstage lantern, and her hair falling out in impossible amounts.
Another Kabuki technique repeatedly used in the play is the "quick change" (hayagawari), in which a single actor plays several roles, changing from one to another with incredible speed - an example is the raindoor scene where the same actor plays Oiwa and Kohei. Today, only (parts of) acts 2, 3 and 5 are commonly performed but they allow actors interesting double roles.
Nanboku incorporated two sensational and real-life murders into Yotsuya Kaidan, combining fact and fiction in a manner that resonated with audiences. The first involved two servants who had murdered their respective masters. They were caught and executed on the same day. The second murder was from a samurai who discovered his concubine was having an affair with a servant. The samurai had the faithless concubine and servant nailed to a wooden raindoor and thrown into the Kanda River.
As a popular Kabuki play, Yotsuya Kaidan soon became a much used subject for ukiyo-e artists, as Shunkosai Hokushu, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Kuniyoshi.
Scores of film adaptations were made, starting as early as 1912 and continuing into the present century (for example, Nakata Hideo in 2007). The best adaptation is The Ghost of Yotsuya (Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan), filmed in 1959 by Nakagawa Nobuo. Other famous versions of the story were made by Mori Masaki in 1956 and by Toyoda Shiro in 1965, but Nakagawa Nobuo tops them all. In 1994, Kinji Fukasaku returned to the Kabuki roots and combined the stories of Chushingura and Yotsuya Kaidan into the single Crest of Betrayal. Interestingly, Sadako from the film Ring by Nakata Hideo is a clear homage to Oiwa, including the cascading hair and drooping, malformed eye.
There is no full translation of Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan available - today, only acts 2, 3 and 5 are commonly performed -, but the major scenes from those acts have been translated in Kabuki Plays On Stage, Darkness and Desire 1804-1864, ed. James Brandon & Samuel Leiter (Hawaii U.P.) by Paul B. Kennelly (Act 2), and in Traditional Japanese Theater, An Anthology of Plays, ed. Karen Brazell (Columbia U.P.) by Mark Oshima (Acts 3 and 5).
Illustration from Wikimedia Commons
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