A murdered merchant returns for revenge—but he's not the only killer in these woods.
On the Kōshū Kaidō road, merchant Sōjirō is poisoned, robbed, and pushed off a cliff by former courtesan Okuma and her lover. A year later, a fugitive named Shinsuke, on the run after killing his wife, encounters a sinister, heavily made-up man. He soon realizes this man is the vengeful spirit of Sōjirō…
Practical Effects
Sōjirō's corpse-like makeup is genuinely unsettling 1970s TV horror.
Direction
Yamazaki packs a feature's worth of moral rot into 45 minutes.
Director
Daisuke Yamazaki
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Part of a 1979 NHK series adapting classic Japanese ghost stories, this episode draws from Lafcadio Hearn's 'Kaidan' collections—foreign-born writer preserving oral folklore that mainstream Japan was forgetting.
Shinnosuke Ikehata, who plays Shinsuke, later became a drag legend under the name Peter; his androgynous screen presence here eerily prefigures his later persona.
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