, or ''Ghost Cat's Mysterious Shamisen'', is a 1938 Japanese

horror film Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes. Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apoca ...

directed by

Kiyohiko Ushihara was a Japanese film director most famous for his gendaigeki of the silent era. Career Born in Kumamoto Prefecture and graduating from Tokyo University, Ushihara joined the Shochiku studio in 1920 on the invitation of Kaoru Osanai. Starting out ...

. Produced by

Shinkō Kinema was a Japanese film studio active in the 1930s. Background Shinkō was established in September 1931 out of the remnants of the Teikoku Kinema studio with the help of Shōchiku capital. The historian Jun'ichirō Tanaka writes that the studio w ...

, it stars Sumiko Suzuki, an actress known for her roles in "ghost cat" films (''kaibyō eiga'' or ''bake neko mono'').

Premise

Mitsue is a popular stage actress and the lover of a ''

shamisen The , also known as the or (all meaning "three strings"), is a three-stringed traditional Japanese musical instrument derived from the Chinese instrument . It is played with a plectrum called a bachi. The Japanese pronunciation is usual ...

'' player named Seijuro. She jealously murders two other objects of his affection: Okiyo, a young woman from a

samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They h ...

family, and Kuro, a cat. The spirits of Okiyo and Kuro then merge into a

vengeful ghost In mythology and folklore, a vengeful ghost or vengeful spirit is said to be the spirit of a dead person who returns from the afterlife to seek revenge for a cruel, unnatural or unjust death. In certain cultures where funeral and burial or crema ...

Cast

* Sumiko Suzuki as Mitsue * Kinue Utagawa as Okiyo

Release

''The Ghost Cat and the Mysterious Shamisen'' was released in 1938. In October 2018, the Indiana University Cinema held a 35 mm screening of the film. Two months later film film also screened at the

Metrograph The Metrograph is an independent two-screen movie theater at 7 Ludlow Street in the Dimes Square neighborhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It opened in 2016 with two theatres, a bookstore, a "curated" concession stand, and a restaurant. ...

independent movie theatre in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

, New York.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ghost Cat And The Mysterious Shamisen, The Japanese horror films 1938 films 1938 horror films 1930s ghost films Films set in Japan