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Author
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Comment
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midori snyder
Registered User
(10/13/04 3:49 pm)
ezSupporter
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Sounds in Kwaidan
Ok...this is a totally off the wall question...so where else but here to ask it!
I have been watching"Hoichi the Earless" in Kobayashi's wonderful film, Kwaidan. Just before the Heike ghost shows up there is a strange rattling/maybe wood clapping? sort of sound.
so...is this a stock noise to suggest the approach of ghosts? Something that all Japanese would probably recoginize? (one of my students thought he heard the same noise used in a Japanese video game.) I just wondering...
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Richard Parks
Registered User
(10/14/04 7:25 am)
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Sounds in Kwaidan
I thought the sound was made by a mokugyo, a traditional Buddhist wooden bell/clacker used to mark the time in monasteries. I've also heard a similar sound used in kabuki music, though I don't know if it's made by the same instrument. I'm no expert, just an interested amateur. Mabye someone else will have a definitive answer.
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Midori
Unregistered User
(10/14/04 10:09 am)
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Thanks!
Richard...thank you so very much! I think you are right in this case--at least it makes perfect sense in the movie--it's heard just at sunset...and just prior to the entrance of the ghost. But the film is also puncutated with the sounds of the temple bell--the two sounds are played off of each other...
but because the film also makes so much use of theatre--evoking the Noh and Kabuki drama in the dramatic version of the Heike's last battle at Dan no Ura in the opening, and Kyogen in the comic servant figures...it would make sense that Kobayashi would use the sound in an ambiguous way--as he manages to evoke multiple traditional arts in his rendition of the tale.
This is great...
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