「黒髪」：妻を捨て、京都から遠い任地へと赴いた武士。そこで彼は、良い家柄の娘と結婚するが、彼女は冷酷な女で、男は今さら、別れた妻のことを思い出すのだった。やがて任期を終え、京都に戻った彼は最初の妻と再会するが…。「雪女」：きこりの巳之吉は、森へ薪を採りに入ったところで吹雪に遭い、山小屋に閉じ込められるはめに。その晩彼は、雪女の姿を目の当たりにし…。ほかに「耳無し抱一の話」「茶碗の中」の計4編。
映画化された原作や関連書籍を読んで、映像との違いや独自の世界観を楽しみましょう。
I'm always a little daunted when I settle down in a cinema seat for a film that is 3 hours long - I fear the last glass of wine may have been one too many - but this simply flew by. It is a compendium of four different Japanese "poems" that deal with just about every emotion in the human panoply - love, hate, greed, joy, fear, envy, betrayal... You name it! Each story has a central theme that, perhaps not terribly sophisticated to anyone with a fairly well-centred moral compass of their own, delivers a salutatory lesson in what is decent and what is flawed about human nature, even amongst the best of us. "In A Cup of Tea" - is a wonderfully intriguing story and my personal favourite is "Hoichi" - featuring a blind priest who can sing such beautiful songs but at such a fearful price. The staging is superb, though the fight scenes - especially on the water - maybe a little too studio-bound to be truly effective. The colours and sounds test every range of your senses; ecstasy and despair, bliss and rage and leave you, at the end, feeling as drained and fulfilled, simultaneously, as any film could hope to possibly engender... This really is a glorious roller-coaster of a ride!
