THE PLOT OF THE FILM IS BASED ON A BUDDHIST PARABLE ABOUT AN OLD WOMAN WHO FORBADE HER DAUGHTER-IN-LAW FROM VISITING THE TEMPLE, BLOCKING HER PATH WEARING A DEMON MASK. AS PUNISHMENT, BUDDHA MADE THE MASK STICK TO THE OLD WOMAN’S FACE.
THE DEMON MASK IN THE FILM INSPIRED WILLIAM FRIEDKIN, WHO USED IT AS INSPIRATION IN CREATING THE DEMON IN ‘THE EXORCIST’ (1973).
HIGH GRASS BENDING TO WHISTLING WINDS; BLACK AND WHITE CLOUDS HANGING LOW OVER A SINGULAR PLOT OF LAND THAT FEELS OUTSIDE TIME AND OUTSIDE ANY PEOPLES; TWO WOMEN, WHO TRAP AND KILL ANYONE WHO PASSES THROUGH THEIR TURF IN AN EERIE AND ENDLESS ROW OF FEAR, MISTRUST AND HORROR – THIS IS THE STORY OF ONIBABA.
The elder woman, bereaved of her son and gripped by the fear of abandonment by her daughter-in-law, resorts to a sinister guise – that of a harbinger from the netherworld, dispatched to mete out punishment upon transgressors. As the wheel of fate turns towards its inevitable reckoning, the blood-stained visage of her ‘demon’ mask becomes emblematic of a profound transformation.
Violent and unrelenting in its narrative twists, unforgettably shot by Hiyomi Kuroda, masterfully scored by Hikaru Hayashi’s taiko drumming, and extremely laconic in its aesthetic, Onibaba is a mesmerizing tale of the brutality of human nature in the harsh existence of war torn 1300’s Japan.
In the Western world, Onibaba ignited a firestorm of controversy, its impact often misconstrued through a lens of literal interpretation. In 1965, the film encountered staunch resistance from sensitive and puritanical British censors, resulting in an effective ban. It wasn’t until three years later, following a reevaluation, that a heavily censored version received an exceedingly stringent “X” rating. Across the Atlantic, American audiences, encountering the film in early February 1965, were captivated by its genre-defining qualities, cementing Onibaba’s status as a timeless exemplar of Japanese and Eastern horror. Notably, William Friedkin drew inspiration from the work of the 52-year-old Kaneto Shindo, endeavoring to craft one of the most chilling cinematic experiences in history by imbuing the adversary possessing the young girl with echoes of the samurai mask.
However, the uniqueness of Onibaba lies in the fact that the Shindo does not deliberately cross the line separating the mundane from the mystical, unlike, for example, Masaki Kobayashi with his ‘Kwaidan’ (1964) or their common mentor Kenji Mizoguchi with ‘Tales of the Taira Clan’ (1953).
When the young widow, struggling to remove the mask and seeing the disfigured face, continues to scream vindictively (‘A real demon!’), paying no attention to the old woman’s wails, one somehow doubts that this is just a hysterical, entirely explicable state of shock.
Through the deftly woven mist-shrouded imagery and allegory, Shindo imparts a sobering truth: within the recesses of the human soul, true demons lie in wait, poised to erupt forth at the slightest provocation, rendering the horrors of the imagination pale in comparison to the stark realities of existence. Even when the imaginary hell takes the form of the very real pits where women dump the remains of the slain samurai – pits ‘deep and gloomy’, the darkness of which, as stated in the prologue, has existed ‘from time immemorial’…
Despite the temptation, Kaneto Shindo does not indulge in either formalism or abstract discussions about the depravity of human nature and the loss of identity in the way his European contemporaries do. Critics immediately caught on the topical subtext of his work, conveyed in an extremely sharp, shocking form.
A native of Hiroshima, Shindo makes one feel an unceasing pain for the native people, for specific individuals, universally brought (much later, in the mid-20th century) to a truly demonic state by imperial militarism, where normal human feelings, let alone an obligatory ‘divine spark’, irreversibly atrophy.
He, of course, not accidentally places the story in a significant historical context, in the midst of the civil strife of the 14th century, more precisely, during the period of establishing a precarious dual power. It is a time when the emperor who fled from the burnt capital settled in the mountains of Yoshino, his rival occupied Kyoto, and their armies, led by Kusunoki and Ashikaga, engaged in senseless mutual extermination, not unlike that experienced by modern Japan.
The mother-in-law thus turns into the closest ally of Brecht’s Mother Courage, finding no less ingenious a way to survive and even exist comfortably amidst the ongoing slaughter, but definitely forgetting that when dining with the devil, one should use a very long spoon.
With Nobuko Otowa, Jitsuko Yoshimura and Kei Sato.