- 御用金 (Goyokin)
5/26/23 (Thurs)
Gosha Hideo’s 1959 film finds the young Oriha returning to her seaside village after five years of indentured service to discover a town devoid of all life other than Hitchcockian groups of greedy crows. Everyone has vanished without a trace. We learn that Rokugo (Tamba Tetsuro), the chief samurai of the fictional Sabai clan (presumably modeled on the real-life Sabae clan in present-day Fukui Prefecture), had waylaid a ship carrying the shogun’s gold from nearby Sado Island, recruited the villagers to steal the treasure, and allowed the ship to sink, thus making it appear an accident. He then had his men slaughter the villagers to prevent word getting back to the shogunate, and spread the word that their disappearance was the work of magical forces known by the superstitious as kami-kakushi, literally “hidden by the gods”. (The phrase is interestingly left untranslated in the subtitles. It was deftly rendered in the title of a later animated film as “Spirited Away”.)
sekenbanashi 