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Each of the three films included in Radiance’s Daiei Gothic: Japanese Ghost Stories is based on a classic Japanese tale that’s been adapted to film various times over the past century. This speaks to the remarkably timeless and universal nature of the stories, evoking real-life experiences and themes that are common to humans across time and culture.

The earliest film in the set, Misumi Kenji’s Yotsuya Ghost Story, is based on perhaps the most popular kaidan, or ghost story, in Japan. It’s so popular, in fact, that it was also adapted in 1959 by another filmmaker, Nakagawa Nobuo. While that adaptation, The Ghost of Yotsuya, has been more widely available in the West until now, it’s Misumi’s film that veers more radically from the traditional beats of the kaidan, filling in a tale of good and evil with striking layers of ambiguity and feeling.

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Many of the most terrifying and nightmare-inducing horror movies hail from Japan. Nearly every subgenre of horror owes a debt of gratitude to J-horror or Japanese horror films. From found-footage and analog horror to traditional ghost stories and body horror, these films have confronted global audiences with concepts and images that effortlessly bleed into their nightmares.

Most of the best Japanese horror films come from the '90s and the 2000s, which is when J-horror first attained worldwide notoriety through films like Ringu and Ju-on. However, old-school horror hounds who remember Tetsuo: The Iron Man and Kwaidan know that Japanese horror has been infecting nightmares since the mid-20th century. Indeed, while Japanese horror isn't as prominent today as it was in the 2000s, the foundations it laid gave way to contemporary horror concepts and sensibilities. For viewers curious about the history of J-horror - or just looking for their next mind-bending horror fix,...

If you ask me, Hell is the ultimate horror setting. Sure, creepy castles and abandoned outposts are great and all, but a realm of eternal torment just strikes me as a tad more terrifying. And of the major cultural interpretations of Hell out there, none are quite as grisly as the hell of Japanese Buddhism: Jigoku. Sure, there’s a way out of it, but the torments inflicted upon the damned in Jigoku make the ones Dante wrote about seem fit for children’s birthday parties. Jigoku consists of sixteen separate hells (eight “hot” and eight “cold”), with eight great hells that consist of tortures ranging from being charred in massive frying pans to being eternally smashed into paste and revived by massive rocks. It’s a brutal, depressing place where hope is faint and mercy can wait billions of years away. Naturally, it makes for a great topic for a horror movie.

The Ghost of Yotsuya is required viewing material for anyone who loves horror films. It tells a legendary eerie tale of betrayal, murder, and ghostly revenge! It’s one of the most famous Japanese ghosts stories of all time and was a huge influence on the Japanese horror films that we see today.

The story is based on the 1825 play Tōkaidō Yotsuya Kaidan, which was written by Tsuruya Nanboku IV. The basic premise of the story follows a woman who haunts her husband after she dies a miserable death.

A ruthless samurai named Iemon Tamiya wants to marry a woman named Iwa, but after her father refuses, “Iemon kills him and disposes of the body with assistance of Naosuke. Later, tiring of his wife and wishing to marry the heiress Ume Itō, Iemon plots to murder his wife by mixing a poison into her tea and also killing her admirer Takuetsu.