Kwaidan (film)

Kwaidan
Theatrical release poster
Japanese name
Kanji	怪談
Transcriptions Revised Hepburn Kaidan
Directed by	Masaki Kobayashi
Screenplay by	Yoko Mizuki[1]
Based on	Stories and Studies of Strange Things by Lafcadio Hearn
Produced by	Shigeru Wakatsuki[1]
Starring	Tatsuya Nakadai Rentarō Mikuni Tetsurō Tamba Keiko Kishi Michiyo Aratama Misako Watanabe Yoichi Hayashi Katsuo Nakamura Osamu Takizawa Haruko Sugimura Nakamura Kan'emon Nakamura Ganjirō II Takashi Shimura
Cinematography	Yoshio Miyajima[1]
Edited by	Hisashi Sagara[1]
Music by	Toru Takemitsu[1]
Production company	Ninjin Club[1]
Distributed by	Toho
Release date	December 29, 1964 (1964-12-29) (Tokyo)
Running time	182 minutes[1]
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Budget	¥320 million[2][3]
Box office	¥225 million[4]

Kwaidan (Japanese: 怪談, Hepburn: Kaidan, lit. 'Ghost Stories') is a 1964 Japanese anthology horror film directed by Masaki Kobayashi. It is based on stories from Lafcadio Hearn's collections of Japanese folk tales, mainly Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1904), for which it is named. The film consists of four separate and unrelated stories. Kwaidan is an archaic transliteration of the term kaidan, meaning "ghost story". Receiving critical acclaim, the film won the Special Jury Prize at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival,^[5] and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.^[6]