'Bakeneko 化猫' from the series '怪 ～ayakashi～ JAPANESE CLASSIC HORROR'

[Massive spoilers ahead]

1) Here is my translation of the plot summary from the Japanese official website:

The story takes place in a certain samurai household in the Edo period. It is the wedding day of the lord's granddaughter. However, the bride dies a violent death just when the wedding is about to take place. 'It is the work of bakeneko*,' says a pharmacist, and true enough many strange deaths follow one after another. Bakeneko at last appears before the terrified  people. Behind bakeneko's strike is an outrageous incident in the past that has to do with that samurai household...

(江戸時代のとある武家屋敷。今まさに当主の孫娘の嫁入りが行われようとしていた。しかし、いざ輿入れという時花嫁は無残にも惨殺される。「これは化猫の仕業だよ」薬売りの言葉をなぞるように次々と起こる怪死事件。おびえきった人々の前についに化猫が姿を現す。化猫が人々をつけねらう裏には、その武家にまつわる、恐ろしい狂気の出来事があった・・・。)

* Bakeneko = cat demon. You can read up on this particular demon in Japanese folklores here.

2) Something tipped me off at the very beginning that whatever wrong the samurai household committed in the past, it probably is something along the lines of 'the sins of the fathers'. Perhaps it is the motif of death and the maiden (which seems to point to the idea of  'wronged maidenhood' in these supernatural tales). Perhaps it is the conversation between 'the pharmacist' and the household maid Kayo, which hints at the bride's fiance being an old man of advanced years and possibly impotent. Perhaps it is Kayo's further hints that the lord of the household is not good at making ends meet (usually licentiousness tends to go with financial ruin in these fall-of-a-great-family scenarios) and the young girl must be married off to whoever will undertake the family's debts.

3) Sure enough, to make a long story short: twenty-five years ago, a girl on her wedding day was kidnapped by the former lord of the household and ended up as everybody's sex slave down in a dungeon. She died by starving herself to fatten a cat she kept as a pet, in the hope that the cat might escape from the dungeon someday. I am aware that the curt manner with which I summarize this tragedy does not nearly do justice to the masterly storytelling of this anime, which is discreet as to what to say and what to leave unsaid. But there you have it - 'the sins of the fathers'.

6) The animal on the pharmacist’s sword appears to be xie zhi 獬豸, a Chinese mythical beast that has come to be known in Japan as kaira. Legend has it that when a xie zhi sees two people arguing, it will push the person in the wrong with the hone on its forehead till that person falls (some say it will also eat the person after he falls). Needless to say, xie zhi is a symbol of justice. I think it is a neat stroke that the pharmacist's sword can only be unshielded with three things: the form of the monster (物の怪の形), earnestness (真) and reason (理). 

7) If I rememeber correctly, I think the hairstyle of the samurai's wife is called keisei 傾城. Usually it is worn by high-class prostitutes or else kabuki male actors playing high-class prostitutes roles which are also known as keisei. It beats me as to why a samurai's wife is wearing such a hairstyle that no 'decent' women would 'condescend' to wearing. Perhaps it is a hint of her gaudy past?

8) Of course it helps that one of my favourite male voice actors, Sakurai Takahiro 櫻井孝宏, is playing the leading role as 'the pharmacist' (albeit his real job in the story should be more appropriately described as 'an exorcist of demons').

9) W-dono, if you are reading this, please let me hear your thoughts so that we can discuss this further. I have more to say but they are all trivial things. Anyway, please feel free to comment.

[EDIT 24/03/2007: Content added below.]

10) A question has been raised as to what was Yoshikuni's wedding scene about. I took two screen captures of it. I believe Yoshikuni's bride was not Tamaki but some other woman (Tamaki in her healthy-looking days has thicker eyebrows, and she wears a different wedding dress). Yoshikuni also looks a lot younger at the wedding than when he first finds out about Tamaki in the dungeon. My guess is that the patriarch violated Yoshikuni's bride some years before Tamaki comes along, and this is Yoshikuni's way of getting back at the patriarch.  In other words, the patriarch's track record with women has never been good to begin with.

Comments

[w]

Firstly: Yay! I'm so terribly happy that you finally watched this. I'm glad to see you appear to have enjoyed it. (And it's nice to know Sakurai-san is also one of your favourite seiyuu.)

Unfortunately, it's been some time since I've last discussed it so it's a bit difficult for me to re-salvage the thoughts I had about the show as it was.

And I should think you would have more to say about the show than I would because I didn't have the sense to look up everything while the show was airing (to be honest, I had to re-watch them using subtitles because my Japanese simply couldn't keep up all the time).

All I can really comment on with any usefulness would be the visual and filmic aspects of the anime; and not so much on the cultural aspect of it, which as I can see is certainly your forte. (Though perhaps I might decide to revisit this anime over the CNY weekend and look at it more carefully).

I would love to talk to you more about this, so if I can spare the energy and time I will definitely try to rewatch Bakeneko and reorganise my thoughts about it.

[Wabisabi]

I just noticed that I forgot to put in a numeric rating. I would give it a 4.5/5. Now it should be clearer as to how much I enjoyed it.

Who are your favourite male voice actors? Let us compare notes.

[w]

Well. Just a quick note right now since I couldn't resist:

Off the top of my head, a few of my favourite male seiyuu would have to be...

-Toshihiko Seki
-Jouji Nakata
-Kouichi Yamadera
-Takehito Koyasu (sometimes)
-Kazuya Nakai
-Kenta Miyake
-Kenji Utsumi
-Nobuyuki Hiyama
-Tetsu Inada (sort of)

And I think there are others too that I simply am not rememebering right now, but sometimes it depends a lot on the sound director (like Hiroyuki Yoshino did a fantastic job in Kemonozume compared to Blood+ and I'm pretty sure the directorial instructions partly had to do with it).

I realise I like a lot of female seiyuu too; but in terms of male roles Yuka Imai and Romi Paku do some of the best out there (Imai's role in Banner of the Stars III nearly made me cry)

[Euryclee]

I don't think tamaki was kidnapped, i think she was yoshikuni's bride (from the flashback scene where both she and yoshikuni are kneeling and the patriarch forcibly kisses her) and being just a commoner,she was mistreated by everyone.
Her situation is like that of Ayako's mother in Tezuka's "Ayako", the commoner wife of the weak willed son, abused by her father in law.

[Wabisabi]

Really? I thought that woman shown in the 'wedding scene' was another woman and it was shown to emphasize the patriarch's lustful disposition...

The patriarch also referred to Tamaki specifically as the bride of some other family (ttp://ameblo.jp/o-parts2005/entry-10010787425.html):

出来心からか、他家の花嫁をさらった。その女がたまきであった。しかしそれはあくまで出来心、たまきが悲鳴をあげれば、すぐに帰してやるつもりだった。だが・・抗う様子もなかったらしい。

Translation:

'Could it be an impulse? I dragged the bride of some other family with me. That woman was Tamaki. However, it was just an impulse after all. I was intent to return her to her home if she cried. But she did not seem to resist at all.'

I know we cannot take the patriach at his word, but since we have nothing explicit afterwards that suggests it was not a case of kidnapping, we would have to take it as a half-true part of the story. Besides, in Tamaki's flashback, Yoshikuni is shown as someone who discovers Tamaki's existence rather late, and Tamaki is punished by the patriach for 'having another man'.

I don't remember any explicit reference that Tamaki is a commoner. On the contrary, her hairstyle and wedding carriage seem to suggest that she is well-born.

[w]

Oh my god.

They're making a sequel to this!

And it'll be 12 episodes long!

Has sense finally hit the minds of the anime industry or something?

[Wabisabi]

This is good news indeed. And to be released in July 2007 too - this seems to be a good year for high-quality anime indeed.

(You still have not answered me about the wedding scene.)

Forgot to say - yet another meaty role for Sakurai. I am happy for that. ^-^

[w]

My apologies about not replying about the wedding scene. I read about it, but to be honest, my memory about that bit has gotten a bit fuzzy. I don't have the episodes on hand with me right now either, so unfortunately I can't check exactly... I was under the impression that Tamaki and Yoshikuni *were* married, though, but I misunderstood a lot of these things back then...

[Wabisabi]

No need to apologize. Let me know if anything occurs to you.

BTW, I am so going to blog about Mononoke. ^-^

[w]

I've suddenly got a huge reason to rewatch this all over again. And great that you'll be blogging Mononoke! You've already got a reader here.
And you're quite right about Sakurai getting another role! This is also one of his better performances, so it's even better that he gets to reprise it. Just thinking about it gets me breaking into a crazy grin, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here...

[Wabisabi]

I just rewatched the relevant part and added some screen captures and comments in the main post. Please see if it makes sense to you.

[Euryclee]

Nice to see you reply about the wedding scene, i'm still puzzled about it and the more I watch it, the more i think the couple look like Mizue(the one with the keisei hairdo) and her husband yoshiaki the younger brother (notice the big lips and the eyes) than yoshikuni who has narrower lips and eyes...

About the "commoner" thing:
After Tamaki got raped by yoshikuni, and while she is being beaten up by the patriarch, he calls her a commoner and a beast.
And I don't think she was so well-born, otherwise the patriarch would not have dared abducting her. If her family were bushi, they would have attacked his clan and if they were affluent traders they would have filed a complaint/used paid mercenary to get her back.
I think Tamaki is highly likely to be of modest extraction.

We ave to remember that the story takes place in the Edo period where relations between social classes were strictly regulated and were laws were usually enforced (remember the comment about the sword, only the bushi class could carry them).

I think that everything the patriarch said is a lie, cue the medecine guy remarks at the end about taking a good look at his "truth".

Really looking forward to Mononoke, let's hope it keeps up with bakeneko in terms of quality and storytelling. Plus Sakurai is so awesome!

[Wabisabi]

I am not sure how they translated what the patriarch calls her in the subtitles. What he calls her are: 田舎者 ('country bumpkin'),うんざい('stupid') and 汚らわしい('dirty'). None of these is a direct reference to her social rank per se (she could be a country aristocrat).

And even if Tamaki comes of a bushi family, they may turn a blind eye to the fact that she was kidnapped by a much more high-ranking lord on whom they depend for their stipend. Not exactly someone you want to mess with.

[runpsicat]

I also think the bride in the flashback scene is Mizue, who married the not-so-bright younger son, Yoshiaki (the groom looks pretty harmless/clueless in the flashback scene, whereas Yoshiaki already looks pretty nasty even back then). Right before Mizue goes berserk (or perhaps driven mad by her guilty conscience finally catching up with her), she is "haunted" by a vision of Tamaki speaking her name via her daughter's corpse--this leads me to believe that Tamaki and Mizue were aware of each other's presence under the same roof at the time. As far as I can tell, Yoshiaki never married and probably abused Sato to satisfy his needs (Sato hints strongly that both the patriarch and Yoshiaki raped her whenever they felt like it).

[Wabisabi]

I see, perhaps that explains her keisei hairstyle as some sort of parody of high-class prostitutes.

On of these days, I really ought to write up a FAQ - perhaps when I get around to launch a blog dedicated to the sequel Mononoke.