Nobuko Otowa

While Kichi is away at war, his impoverished mother and wife survive in medieval Japan by killing samurai and selling the valuables they find.

Kaneto Shindo’s classic, spectacularly eerie twilight tale is a poetic and atmospheric horror fable with a shocking feminist angle. A malevolent spirit has been ripping out the throats of itinerant samurai at a village in war-torn medieval Japan. When a military hero is sent to dispatch the unseen force, he finds that he must struggle with his own personal demons as well.

Shinnosuke meets his prospective wife, Shizu, but he falls in love with her widowed sister, Oyu, who convinces them to marry so she can be close.