Creative Soundtrack Expression: Tôru Takemitsu's Score for Kwaidan
Kyoko Koizumi · Equinox eBooks Publishing · 2009
Kwaidan [Japanese Ghost Stories], directed by Masaki Kobayashi in 1964, is regarded as a seminal film not only for its magnificent mise-en-scene but also for its experimental soundtrack, created by the Japanese composer, Toru Takemitsu (1930-96). The chapter, working with the notion that Japanese culture supports the animist notion of spiritual energy contained within the apparently inanimate (Brophy, 2005: 155), argues that Takemitsu has an animistic view of natural sounds when using the sounds of stone, ice or bamboo in Kwaidan. Takemitsus mission in the film is to give a strong life to each natural and instrumental sound to the extent that it can confront ma. By bestowing equal value to each sound, regardless of its origin, his work in Kwaidan transcends conventional distinctions between underscore and sound effects. The uniqueness of Takemitsus soundtrack to Kwaidan is three-fold. The first aspect is the effective use of musique concrete through modulating concrete sounds and juxtaposing them with Japanese traditional instruments. The second is non-synchronism, used in order to instil feelings of horror in the audience. The third is the emphasis on ma to give the in-between moments a positive meaning. Given these three distinguishing characteristics, it is possible to identify Kwaidan as marking a peak in the aesthetics of horror-film scores to date. As these three features were subsequently heard in Takemitsus later work and in film scores by other composers, the extent to which Kwaidan exerted a strong and enduring impact on horror-film scoring merits further analysis.