``Yatsu Tomb Village'' (1977 edition) What happened in the midst of the Yokomizo boom and Kadokawa films? [That's when movies were born Vol.3 Part 1]

In the fall of 1977, a movie theater was hit by a curse from 400 years ago. Audiences flocked to see "The Village of the Eight Graves," a horror mystery masterpiece written by Seishi Yokomizo, known for the catchphrase "It's a curse!"

Hagiwara Kenichi plays the role of Terada Tatsuya, a young man who returns to his hometown of Yatsuhakamura and gets caught up in the incident, while Atsumi Kiyoshi, who had already made 19 films in the "Otoko wa Tsurai yo" series at the time, plays the detective Kindaichi Kosuke. This film, directed by Nomura Yoshitaro and written by Hashimoto Shinobu, who worked on "Suna no Uta" (1974), leaves a strong impression not only with the phrase "It's a curse!" but also with the scene in which Yamazaki Tsutomu, with a terrifying expression on his face, massacres villagers with a hunting rifle and a Japanese sword, making it a mystery - or rather, an occult horror film - that will have an impact even on generations who did not experience it in real time.

1977, the year "The Village of the Eight Graves" was released, was also a year of unprecedented prosperity for Japanese movies. In the face of major films made by independent production companies such as "Proof of the Man" (1977), the second release from Kadokawa Pictures, which had launched the previous year, and "Mt. Hakkoda" (1977) by Hashimoto Productions, founded by screenwriter Hashimoto Shinobu, major film companies were also entering the single-feature blockbuster route one after another. The year is also remembered as the year that Obayashi Nobuhiko, who had gone from being an independent filmmaker to a commercial director, joined Toho and made his first commercial film, "House" (1977).

In this transitional period for Japanese cinema, The Village of the Eight Graves was produced as an exceptional blockbuster among the many Yokomizo films. However, after many twists and turns, filming took two years, and for Nomura and Hashimoto, it was a difficult project that they had to tackle in parallel with Mount Hakkoda, which they co-produced. In fact, the project itself had been in the works long before Kadokawa's first film, The Inugami Family (1976), so it was an unprecedented scale and time-consuming production for a Yokomizo film. The audience responded sensitively to this, and although the timing of its release was behind The Inugami Family, The Devil's Ball Song (1977), and Gokumon Island (1977), which were also based on Yokomizo's original novels and starred Koji Ishizaka, it became Yokomizo's biggest hit (distribution revenue of 1.986 billion yen).

Why was the huge project "Mura of the Eight Graves" planned, and how was it filmed? Learning about this allows us to witness the contemporary Yokomizo boom and the birth of Kadokawa films. It should also help us understand why it continues to be remade over and over again. In this three-part series, we will relive what was happening in the "era of Mura of the Eight Graves." Let's start with the first part.

Index

• Scenery depicted in "The Village of Eight Graves"
• The visual history of "The Village of Eight Graves"
• Yokomizo's films: a 14-year Intolerance
• Detective Columbo vs. Kosuke Kindaichi
• Hashimoto Productions and "Sand Vessel"
• "The Village of the Eight Graves" was made as a "grave-visiting movie"
• The complete story of the 1975 version of "The Village of Eight Graves"
• "Honjin Murder Case" vs. "The Village of Eight Graves"
• The battle for Yokomizo's original work
• Haruki Kadokawa and "The Village of Eight Graves"
• Why the Kadokawa film version of "The Village of Eight Graves" never came to fruition
• Why was "The Inugami Family" made into a movie?
• Kadokawa Pictures debuts

Scenery depicted in "The Village of Eight Graves"

Shochiku's 1977 version of The Village of the Eight Graves is a twisted film that leans more towards a 400-year-old grudge story than a mystery-solving one, so much so that it's difficult to call it a mystery film. It's understandable that it has received a bad reputation from fans of the original work and mystery fans, including the fact that it changed the time setting from the 1950s to the present day. As a film, it clearly pales in comparison to the high quality of the series directed by Ichikawa Kon from the same period, in which Ishizaka Koji played Kindaichi.

That being said, even though I am aware of its many shortcomings, I still find myself going to see it when it is screened at a movie theater. I also buy it on VHS, LD, DVD, and Blu-ray every time the media changes and watch it at least once a year. The reason for this is that the scenes shot over a long period of time, including Tsutomu Yamazaki's massacre of villagers, which is strangely powerful, and the landscapes carefully shot on locations all over Japan, stand up to repeated viewing.

In the original story, Tatsumi is told by his boss at work that someone is looking for him on the radio and returns from Kobe to Yatsuhakamura, a mountain village located on the border between Okayama and Tottori prefectures. In the 1977 film version, however, Tatsumi is a modern young man working as an international flight attendant at Tokyo's Haneda Airport. Tatsumi (Kenichi Hagiwara) is told by his boss at work that his name is in the "missing persons" column of the newspaper, so he gets off the Shinkansen at Shin-Osaka Station and heads to a law firm in Kitahama. Tatsumi meets his maternal grandfather (Yoshi Kato), but shortly afterwards, he dies mysteriously. With the guidance of Mori Miyako (Mayumi Ogawa), who comes to pick him up on his behalf, Tatsumi heads to his hometown of Yatsuhakamura in Okayama Prefecture. He transfers to the Hakubi Line at Okayama Station on the Shinkansen, and the train runs past the mountains of the Chugoku Mountains, and gets off at Bitchu-Kamishiro Station. From there, he drives over several mountains with lush forests. The village of Yatsuhakamura comes into view below from the pass, and is projected across the entire CinemaScope screen, exactly as described in the original novel: "The village of Yatsuhakamura was located at a point like the bottom of a mortar."

The journey is depicted so carefully that the audience feels as if they are traveling all the way to the village of Eight Graves with the protagonist. Master cinematographer Takashi Kawamata highlights the countryside scenery that could be found anywhere, making the film interesting.

The second half of the film also features an unforgettable scene in which Kindaichi conducts fieldwork in various parts of the Kinki region. With Akutagawa Yasushi's composition "Following the Genealogy of the Village of Eight Graves" playing, Kindaichi begins early in the morning at Gokurakuji Temple in Kainan City, Wakayama Prefecture, changes trains at Tennoji Station in Osaka, heads to Shiga, and goes to Ishiyama-dera Temple in Ishikōzan. He arrives at Higashi Hongan-ji Temple in Kyoto in the evening, and the next day, he heads to Tanba Sasayama early in the morning. He rides a Shinki bus through the countryside and heads to Tatsushin-ji Temple in Hikami Town, Hikami County, Hyogo Prefecture. The nearly five-minute sequence, which has no dialogue, evokes a sense of travel that is unique to this film among the many Yokomizo films.

For example, in Ichikawa Kon's masterpiece "The Demon's Ballad," released in the same year as this film, Kindaichi suddenly appears in Onikobe Village, Okayama Prefecture (filmed in Yamanashi Prefecture), and he appears speeding along on his bicycle, so there is no sense of travel at all. Furthermore, the editing that characterizes Ichikawa's works makes frequent use of short insert cuts, and does not show the scenery in detail. Even when a long shot shows Kindaichi climbing a mountain path, a short shot shot in a completely different space is immediately inserted, creating the unique dynamism of Ichikawa's works.

When "The Devil's Ballad" was released, film critic Yamane Sadao criticized it, saying, "The shots are fragmented and the sense of distance is all over the place, taking away the organic quality of distance. Distance becomes inorganic, and the characters depicted from that distance also become inorganic. This is Ichikawa Kon's method" (Collection of Japanese Film Reviews 1976-1989).

Whether or not I agree with that opinion, the two Kindaichi films, made in the same year and with the same author, are far from similar, and even just looking at how the scenery is cut, the differences are striking. On the other hand, perhaps I am drawn to Shochiku's version of "The Village of the Eight Graves" because it is so far removed from Kon Ichikawa's Kindaichi series.

The visual history of "The Village of Eight Graves"