Most of us feel we were brought up upholding certain responsibilities—to forces we’ve been born into. So many ways to state what these are:
Defending/Fighting for our country, our community.
But we find ourselves bound to another set of vows:
Promises to our family, our religion/our spiritual codes.
Occasionally we experience a stark conflict between the two. We Just struggle to reach a decision in reconciling this stark conflict. In Kureneko we find three people trying to find answers between such opposing forces.
One sad irony. Kuroneko is set in Japan, centuries ago. But it was released in 1968 when such conflicts were tearing our country apart like never before. The words “Vietnam Era” will bring back brutal memories to many in the baby boomer generation. They faced such conflicts then, splitting their consciousness.
In the years Kureneko is set, Japanese nobility was in desperate need of someone to protect them, to fight for them. Warriors called samurai filled that need. But eventually the samurai’s power grew stronger than the nobilities’. The samurai felt that they were the rulers now—unstoppable. “It’s a samurai’s world now”, one of them says, without any doubt in his voice.
Kureneko sets up its conflict between samurai and a farm family just managing to keep itself alive in wartime. Near a house, samurai emerging from a forest like a swarm of army ants. With barely a word, they devour food, then rape and kill a middle aged woman and her daughter in law. They burn the house to the ground then leave in silence.
The two women lie dead in the smoking ruins. But the silence is broken by the quiet sounds of a cat. It stops to lick the faces of the dead women.
Soon after, samurai begin to die. Killed by ghostly women spirits who float, more than walk, in dense forest, asking protection from the samurai…then murdering them, then drinking their blood. The killings done in the dark woods, occasionally in a small house deep in forest. The samurai polite, expecting only a short respite from their soldiering for more raping, more murdering. The last thing the samurai see before dying—a woman’s arm and hand transformed into a cat’s leg and claw.
The samurai leader calls out for the strongest, bravest hero to stop the murders. An abrupt shift in tone from the early, subtle scenes; from darkness to something closer to a 1960’s Bible epic. These scenes feel wider in scope, the sunlight far brighter, the voices much louder, more abrupt. You can almost hear it translated into modern English, soldiers answering their U.S. Marine commander—“Sir, yes sir!” Gintoki, the samurai chosen to protect his comrades…carries around the head of his last opponent. Not the man anyone wants to fuck with.
Up till now, Kureneko feels like two different movies. But here begins the third, where the two worlds start to collide: soldiers’ world and supernatural (ghosts’) world. What will Gintoki’s fate be when he enters the realm of the ghosts?
At first, things go the way you expect. Gintoki on his horse in a dark forest, sees a woman walking ahead of him. He tells her she is about to enter a dark grove. But he offers his protection. She accepts; they reach a house and go inside.
So far, all the conversations between the women and the samurai have been set-ups—for inevitable killings. No killing this time. The two women and the samurai circle each other like feral cats. The man draws his sword, the women appear to vaporize, then re-appear outside. The samurai, unable to see them again.
And so it begins. Irony piled upon irony. Gintoki, a farmer till recently, now an accomplished killer. Two women, one previously Gintoki’s mother, one previously his wife…now sworn to kill.
The women’s lives before, trapped, victims. Now they have made some mysterious pact with a supernatural force, empowering them to commit violent revenge against samurai.
Yet Gintoki and the female spirits—bound to their past. Struggling to get past their previous roles, yet committed to more killing.