Kuroneko

Plot

A black cat appeared after a troop of samurai raped and murdered two women, Yone and her daughter-in-law Shige, then burned their home in a bamboo grove. The cat licked the bodies. The women later returned as ghosts, disguised as elegant ladies, and waited at Rajōmon. They located the samurai troop and lured them to a phantom mansion built on the site of their destroyed house. There, they seduced the samurai and killed them like cats, tearing out their throats with their teeth.

Meanwhile, a young man named Gintoki was fighting in a battle against the Emishi in northern Japan. He happened to kill the enemy general, Kumasunehiko, and brought the severed head to Governor Minamoto no Raikō. Gintoki claimed he had fought the general under that name. In recognition of his deed, he was made a samurai. When he searched for his mother and wife, he found their house burned down and them missing.

Raikō ordered Gintoki to find and eliminate the ghosts killing samurai. Gintoki encountered the two women and recognized them as Yone, his mother, and Shige, his wife. They had made a pact with the underworld to return and kill samurai in revenge. Because Gintoki was now a samurai, the pact required them to kill him. However, Shige broke her pledge by spending seven nights of love with Gintoki. As a result, she was condemned to the underworld. Gintoki, grieving, reported to Raikō that he had destroyed one ghost.

Later, Gintoki found his spectral mother again at Rajōmon, where she was trying to seduce samurai. He saw her reflection as a ghost in a pool of water and attacked her with his sword, cutting off her arm. The severed limb took the form of a cat’s limb. Gintoki brought it to Raikō as proof he had killed the second ghost. Raikō was pleased and said Gintoki would be remembered as a hero, but first ordered him to complete seven days of ritual purification.

Reception

Critics have described Kuroneko as a mood piece that is less extravagant than Shindo's earlier ghost story Onibaba, though it still offers an ingenious story and moments of bizarre invention. One review called it a ghost story that is more eerie than unnerving and often hauntingly lovely. Another critic found it darkly seductive, sleek, and hair-raisingly graceful, placing it among the landmarks of Japanese horror. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 95% approval rating from 22 reviews, with an average score of 8.1 out of 10.

Themes

The film's title, according to Hosei University's Yūsuke Suzumura, was likely a deliberate nod to Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's story In a Grove and Akira Kurosawa's film adaptation of it. While the Japanese title translates directly to "a black cat in a bamboo grove," the phrase yabu no naka idiomatically suggests a puzzle that is hard to solve. Suzumura also pointed to the legends of Minamoto no Raikō as an inspiration, noting that Raikō appears in the film and that the hero's name, Gintoki, probably echoes Raikō's famous follower Kintoki. In her essay, film critic Maitland McDonagh discussed the significance of cats in Japanese folklore, especially the bakeneko, a yōkai that can assume a human victim's form. Kuroneko belongs to the Japanese "monster cat" horror genre, which draws heavily from kabuki theatre. The film incorporates several theatrical elements: spotlights, smoke to evoke a ghostly mood (a kabuki hallmark), the mother spirit's Noh-inspired dance, and the spirits' flying leaps achieved through chūnori, a kabuki wire trick. Lead actor Kichiemon Nakamura was a kabuki performer, and Hideo Kanze, who portrayed the Mikado, was a Noh specialist.