Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
This is Rob Lamp and this is Joe McCormick, and today we're going to be talking about the nineteen seventy nine Japanese fantasy drama Demon Pond, directed by Massive hero Shinoda with music by Esau Tomida.
Yeah, this is a film that had been on my radar for quite a bit, and I was eager to cover it when you brought it up, because in my memory I had watched a good chunk of this film on a flight maybe a year or so ago. Turns out I realized this once I started rewatching it. Oh, I actually watched the whole thing on the flight, but that might have been a red eye. I don't remember. But you know, it was one of these flights where
I'm coming in and out and watching the film. You know, either there's some sort of distraction or I'm falling to sleep. And this is not a dig on this movie at all, but this is a very very easy film to fall fall asleep too. It's a film that invites transference into the dream realm because it has such an elegant soundtrack that's very soothing in many of its stretches. It also has this dreamlike visual vibe. Everything feels like the world feels like it is in a constant state of twilight
or gloaming. So it is a sleepy film in all the best ways.
It's a film that convinces you that you may already be dreaming. Yeah, so it's a little bit easier to slip into the actual state. We were talking just before
we started about it. I for a moment was trying to make the case that, you know, it's got to be easier to fall asleep during the first half of the movie, before all the goblins show up and things get really crazy, you know, when it brings in all of the fantasy Kabooki elements, but not really even once all of the wildness starts, I think it's still kind of wants to pull you into dream world.
Yeah, yeah, I think so. Now. You mentioned already that you could classify this as fantasy romance. I've also seen discussions of it as a work of folk horror. But I think at the end of the day, this is one of those films to just so much more than any classification. We could just you know, bust out and
throw at it. Much has been written about exactly what Demon Pond is and where it stands in the history of Japanese cinema, but I guess in broad strokes, it's essentially a film adaptation of a very this was what a seventy eight film. No, seventy ninety film. It's a seventy nine adaptation of a seventy eight staging of a nineteen thirteen kabuki play.
Yeah, which is interesting because this is also considered part of the I guess it would be becoming at the tail end of this but part of the Japanese New wave cinema movement. So it's it's very old and new at the same time, and you feel that in multiple ways, even in the story itself, but also in the elements that are coming together because it's taking this ancient art form as taking kabuki theater and I think some other older traditions as well, and wrapping it up in a very novel cinema style.
Yeah, there's I think most discussions you're going to see about this film are talking about some sort of merging taking place generally, you know, like you said, new wave in old school new and old traditions, like more modern, westernized and western conscious Japan versus deeper Japanese traditions. Stage
meets the screen. Traditional Japanese stage symbolism from both kabuki and no theater collide with the more naturalist film styles that are summoned in many stretches of this film, and indeed, the original play was apparently, in many ways a counter to naturalist theater in Japan. Naturalist theater in Japan is
inspired by Western theater traditions. So modernity meets tradition, urban meets rural politics and folklore, and the human world collides with the natural world in ways that are both subtle and just utterly bombastic.
Yeah. So, a very simple summary of the plot is that it concerns a man who goes out wandering in the countryside on holiday. It's a man named Gakawin, who is a school teacher, very much a man interested in
the sciences, in rationalism. He's a school teacher, and he goes out to the mountains and the countryside, comes to a village that is parched with drought, and there he encounters a couple of people, a strange, enigmatic woman and her husband who turns out to be a long lost friend of his, a friend who vanished three years earlier, and reigniting his friendship with this man, and meeting and learning about his new wife, who is a woman from
this village. The three of them sort of become wrapped up in this legend that concerns the village, a bell that hangs over the village, and an apocalyptic potential, you know, a great disaster and calamity that could come and fall upon the people of this valley here if traditions are not kept to. And this does involve the titular demon pond and the power that lies beneath it, And so it ends up bringing in a lot of different themes.
When I started trying to count them up in my mind, I was like, Wow, this movie it has it involves more than you would think it does. I guess like you were just saying, like urban and rural ideas things about politics. I think, weirdly, this is a political film. It kind of from that description doesn't sound like one, but it is one. And yeah, ideas of tradition and modernity and science and rationalism and promises that how important it is to keep or pise keep promises and you know,
even when it doesn't feel like they're important. And another thing that so interesting about it is the way that the movie jumps between tones.
Yeah.
That almost the entire first half of this movie is a quiet, subtle, strange character drama that is entirely realistic with no fantastical elements. It just has just has characters kind of exploring a landscape and talking to each other and getting weird vibes. There's a lot there is a lot of apprehension and feelings of the uncanny in the first half, but nothing actually supernatural happens. And then suddenly in the middle of the movie there is a hard shift into goblin world.
Yeah, and the Goblin starts showing up. It's a little jarring at first because it's because, as we'll discuss, like they have kind of the vibe of like goofy live action yokai characters from various Japanese jokai.
Films broad comedic performances.
And with the superior lighting in this picture, they also reminded me a little bit of the goblins in Ridley Scott's Legend, especially since you know they're engaging in cackling conversations about things.
I would almost wonder if this movie inspired Legend.
Yeah, that's very possible.
You know, it seems like it could have.
Given the sort of film they were trying to make with Legend, I think this would be a natural thing to look at.
Yeah. Yeah, And so of course all of this character drama and the fantastical elements come together for you know, I don't want to spoil too much right here at the beginning, but just to let you know, we are going to be talking about the plot in exquisite detail as we go on. So if you want to see the movie without things being spoiled, this would be a good time to stop and you know, go watch it yourself,
because we will talk in detail. But it builds up to a terrifying apocalyptic conclusion that really kind of had my jaw on the floor.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I want to note too that in addition to the you know, the lighting and the way that you can everything looks like it's in Twilight, everything is also really lush in this picture. And in fact, they filmed in Hawaii and Brazil in order to capture all of that that lushness of the of vegetation. And then ultimately some of the torrential aquatic elements that are going to be in play late in the picture.
Yeah, the greenness of vegetation is a very important part of this movie. Yeah, as is water.
All Right, at this point you might be wondering, well, where can I watch Demon Pond? Well, Criterion is going to be your main source for this film, one way or another. I'm to understand. For a very long time, this was not available until a four K restoration was put together with the approval of the director and its main star, And this is the version you're going to
find out there in the world right now. So yeah, Criterion either via their physical release disc which I rented from Atlanta's own videodrome, or you can on the Criterion streaming channel, which is also a great source for this sort of thing. But on top of that, there are also some other streaming platforms that also allow you to rent or buy it.
Did you happen to see the review online? Where was it? John from Videodrome who said he spent years trying to figure out what this movie was that he saw it a long time ago.
I didn't read his review, but I like his reviews in general, and so that's a strong sign from him.
Yeah, But anyway, while I was thinking, also, it speaks to the idea that for a long time this was not particularly available. I guess there had been a VHS release a long time ago, but I think maybe a lot of people were in that situation of like having seen it in some way and a VHS release maybe and then not remembering what it was or not being able to find it on DVD or on Blu Ray until more recently.
Yeah, so the version that's out now is terrific. It's also traveled around. There has been a chance to see it on the screen on the big screen in recent years and probably in the future as well. I believe Videodrome co hosted a showing of it at the Tara Theater here in Atlanta. I've also seen that it played at places like MoMA, So you know, it's made the rounds. A lot of people have gotten to see this on
the big screen, and again in the quality that it deserves. Yeah, the extras on that Blue Array are really nice, by the way, They're not a ton of them, but what is on there is very informative. Particularly, there's a really nice piece on the film by noted film scholar Dudley Andrew, and I'll refer back to some of the things that Andrew points out as we perceive.
Okay, should we talk about the people who made this?
Let's do it starting at the top with a director, Masahiro Shinoda, who lived nineteen thirty one through twenty twenty five, Japanese director central to the Japanese New Wave movement of the fifties, sixties, and seventies. Now, Joe I had not seen any of his films before, so you'll have to jump in if you have more familiarity with some of these titles. Okay, his best known works, and clue, let's see sixty four's Pale Flower.
Well, that's actually the other Shinoda movie I've seen. I just watched that one the other night, and that one is also amazing. It is a it's a realistic drama, so there are no fantastical elements in it. But it is a I think, I guess considered a neo noir. It's a noir film about a yakuza gangster who just gets out of prison and then gets involved with a woman that he meets at a gambling parlor who is
on this thrill seeking streak. This woman is engaging in self destructive behaviors, seeking more and more dangerous, higher risk thrills, and this man is falling in love with her at the same time, and then I don't know, there's a lot of other interesting drama going on. So I thought that movie was fantastic, and maybe we can talk some more about it as we go on. But a really interesting, dark, complicated, character driven noir that I greatly enjoyed.
Oh excellent. Let's see how the works include sixty nine's Double Suicide. This one is based on a puppet play, I believe, traditional puppet play, seventy one, Silence, seventy four's Somiko, seventy fives Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees, and eighty one's Island of the Evil Spirits.
I have not seen any of those other ones, but I did want to flag I have seen Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Silence, the adaptation of the same novel that.
Oh, of course, i'd forgotten about that connection.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that Shinoda's Silence is based on, which is about Catholic missionaries in Japan hundreds of years ago. And it's been a while, but I remember really liking Scorsese Silence, so I would be very interested to see Shinoda's take on it as well.
All right, well, I was looking into some of these titles. Again, I have not seen any of them aside from Demon Pond, but Cherry Trees and Evil Spirits are I think they're generally considered to be either horror or at least whole adjacent with Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees concerning a mountain man who beheads his many wives to prove his love to an alluring woman he meets in an enchanted forest.
Wow. Yeah, and I would I would absolutely watch a Shnoda horror movie. I'm on board.
And Island of the Evil Spirits. I've seen it, I say again, I've seen it classified as maybe horror adjacent. But this one is this is that this is a murder mystery, a detective story, a detective can duchy murder mystery. And then yeah, many other works as well from Shnoda, but Demon Pond certainly stands out as well. This is this is I think often held up is one of his best, and it's also one that is I think it has been celebrated more recently via this four K restoration.
It's gotten to make the rounds. You know, a whole new generations of people have been exposed to this picture. Yeah, so what. We'll have a lot more to say about about his directorial as we proceed here.
Yeah, but I will just say, as of the past couple of days, my first exposure to his work, I'm a new devoted fan.
Awesome now getting into the writing here. The original source material here is an older kabuki play by Koka Izumi, who lived eighteen seventy three through nineteen thirty nine. Japanese pre war novelist, writer and kabuki playwright. His work is often singled out for his romanticist supernatural tales that were influenced by much earlier Edo period works. Multiple films have been based on his writings a few during his lifetime, you know, from the nineteen thirties and then Demon Pond
has been adapted more than once. I think most recently, I think there's a two thousand and five adaptation by Takeshi Mikhay, but I don't know. I don't know anything about it. I love that director as well, but I'm not sure he's varied enough in his outl but that there's at least from my standpoint, there's no telling exactly what that's like.
Is it a silly version or a torture version or what.
He Yeah, he contains multitudes. He's capable of so many different things, all right. Then the writers here that have adapted this older work, we have two names. There's so Tomu Tamura. I couldn't find any dates in this individual, but a Japanese screenwriter best known for The Ceremony in seventy one, Boy in sixty nine and Death by Hanging
in sixty eight. And then also there's Horohiko Mimura nineteen thirty seven through two thousand and eight, Japanese screenwriter also known for sixty eight's I the Executioner.
Now, Rob, I expect that, like myself, you were impressed with most of the cast. But I think the most striking performance in the movie that we're gonna have to talk about here is the double role played by Tamasaburo Bando.
Yes, yes, Bando plays both the wife of one of our I don't know, expatriates of the the urban world, Yuri. And then this actor also plays Princess Shirayuki, who is of the supernatural realm as well.
Learn yeah, the dragon princess of the Demon Pond and the enchanting possibly enchanted woman that Gakuin meets when he first comes to town.
Right right, So, Bando was born nineteen fifty and remains like pretty much a superstar of the kobuk world. And of note, he is an on a Gata, and on Agata is a male actor who specializes in female kobuki stage roles. And this there's so I mean, there's so much to say about about this. We're not even can be able to really do more than dip our toes
in this topic. But basically, the Onagata approach originated around sixteen twenty nine after female kabuki performers were banned by the Tokugawa Shogunate, so male actors had to step in and do all these roles and this and having male
actors step into play the female characters. This ended up developing into its own highly refined performance art form, and Bando, still active today as of this recording on stage at any rate at the age of seventy five, has long been considered the predominant living embodiment of Onagada, and at
the time this film was made. Was a superstar, like we have to just like we don't tend to think about this, I guess, you know, maybe in Western context to imagine like somebody representing like a really old school traditional performance style being a superstar as they are doing modern cinema. But he was a huge name and he had a lot of sway over the production.
Yeah, I'm trying to think of a comparison. I don't know if there really is one. I mean sort of like if there was a superstar opera singer in American cinema, but even I think that doesn't really capture it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The only thing I get like what if you had a superstar boxer playing a boxer in a movie. But then that's it's the difference. It's not a performance art, not directly a performance art.
So yeah, and it doesn't have the interesting gender connotations here.
Yeah yeah, yeah, And we'll come back to the gender comment to some of it here. But again, whole books have been written about this, even just like the gender studies aspect of this.
But I do just want to emphasize again that Bando is a fascinating, spellbinding presence on camera here and you can tell how much went into making the characters he portrays just exude magic even when they're not speaking, and the more so when they you know, they have these
strange monologues that are very different. They're not exactly the same character that, like Yuri is a very apprehensive, reserved, kind of haunted character, whereas the Dragon Princess is highly expressive and emotional and regal fight, yeah, regal and fighting against the constraints that are put on her. And so there are these very different characters, but both of them there is just enchantment pouring out of them, and a lot of that comes down to Bando.
Yeah. Dudley Andrew pointed out that many viewers outside of Japan probably didn't and or don't realize that these two key female roles are played by a male actor. And I have to admit that on my first viewing that you know, on the on the airplane a year or so back, this was my case as well. I had gotten into this film relatively cold, just knowing that, you know, good things were thought about it. Yeah, And I had no idea until I came back from my rewatch.
Yeah, I knew before I went into the movie, So I can't say what I would have known other wise. But yeah, I mean the characters. The characters are fully embodied.
Yeah, so yeah, we'll have a lot to say about Bando, and I'll come back to on a little more about on Agada here in just a second, but just talking about Bando's film career. His film roles include a supporting role in Sijen Suzuki's ninety one film Yumiji, and the role of none other than the writer is Zumi in the nineteen eighty eight film Tokyo the Last Megalopolis. This is a film adaptation of the popular Japanese fantasy epic
The Tale of the Imperial Capital by Hiroshi Atramata. This is a movie that I haven't actually seen it, but I've been aware of it for a long time, and I think a lot of international fans might know of it, especially due to a couple of factors. First of all, hr Giger worked on a particular design for this picture, so when you start pulling up Giger's film credentials and
credits run across this title and you may dig deeper. Also, it makes use of a character that served as possible partial inspiration for the Street Fighter video game character that Western audiences know as m Bison.
Oh interesting, Yeah, but captain, yeah, that kind of dark general character.
Yeah, so well we may have to come back to that if we ever watch a street Fighter film, we might there's there is, of course.
A particularly good one, maybe on a Thursday.
So Bando began acting at a very young age seven, I believe, as part of his recovery from polio, and rose to become, in the words of Yuko Mashima, living proof of the vitality of kabuki, which, which again is a may sound like a very strong credential, but it seems to match up with this guy's celebrity and then just how how well everyone regards him in kabuki, especially his father.
Sorry, my understanding is he didn't just do kobuki roles, in did mainstream cinema roles as well.
Right, But I'm to understand that his father had forbidden him from acting in any thing besides kabuki, and it was only after his father's death. I'm to understand that Banda really began to break out into other forms of theater, other types of roles, including cinematic performances. But he would break out and portray even male characters, such as in the ninety four film Nostagia, in which he plays both
a male and a female character. So I mentioned that the Bando was a huge star at this point, but also he'd never really done film before, so working for the first time here with extended close up shots, which of course don't really exist in live theater or certainly in the traditional context of theater, and so he was very particular about the way his face looked and requested a number of extra takes on things to get everything
where he wanted it to get. So I think that that added to some of the complexity of the shots.
But well, sometimes I think people might not realize this if you don't have experience acting, but acting for the stage and acting for film are actually quite different art forms because there's so much, you know, the camera being closer. There's a lot of subtlety that can be captured on film that doesn't really come across on stage. So this is an oversimplification, but in a lot of ways, stage performances have to be bigger, they have to be less subtle,
they have to be louder. Your movements have to be you know, more projected to you know, reach people at a distance. And yeah, film performances bring in these new levels of kind of quiet variation and subtlety that can't be seen from the distance of an audience in a theater, and so they're different art forms to master. The lots of actors do both.
Of course. Now I want to come back to the Onagada tradition for just a second.
Here.
There are, of course, traditions of cross gender acting spread across various cultures and throughout time. I go as so far as to say it's an essential part of human performance and storytelling, but Onagata is particularly fascinating in its depth. I've read that there's like a particular like feminine energy that one has to bring into your daily life according
to the philosophy of the Onagata way. And so naturally there's a lot to unload here on a gender studies level, because on one side you have the embracing of the feminine energy by male identifying performers to better perform these roles. And then there's the historic through contemporary exclusion of females
from mainstream, mainstream traditional kabuki. So again, whole books have been written on this subject, and I did see one that looked particularly fascinating if anyone out there wants a deeper dig into all of this, and it is Onagata a Labyrinth of gendering in Kabuki theater by Maki Isaka looks looks like a great book. I was reading just a little bit of it, but didn't have time to
really go deep. Yeah, and so again Deadly andrew and others have pointed out you could go into this film and not know anything about the only god of tradition and you would be perfectly entertained, and there would be plenty of other things to think about. But Deudlely Andrews stresses that you know, we we absolutely shouldn't overlook a pretty groundbreaking kiss in the film between the character of Yuri and the character of Akira ther her husband in
the film. So this is this is essentially, you know, outside of the context of the of the film, this is a same sex kiss, not the first same sex kiss in Japanese cinema, but still a pretty important one and would have been, you know, groundbreaking for the time.
This comes at a really pivotal moment in the film too, because the character you called him Accura. I've always said that name Akira. I don't know if I've been saying it wrong.
I have also always said Akira is certainly thinking about the anime picture Akira and Akira Krasawa and so forth. Dudley Andrew was saying Akera, and I kept thinking I was hearing Akera in the Japanese language of the film, so I could be wrong. I may jump back into saying Akira here as well out of habit.
If nothing else, well, I apologize if I'm saying it wrong.
Akira is going to be easier for me to say because I've always said it that way, saying I will probably hope the character the character Akira in this scene, this is in the moment when so it happens in a flashback, and it's in the moment when he is explaining to his long lost friend Gaku and explaining how he fell in love with the character Yuri, who gok going up to this point has been very skeptical of, and so it's kind of the moment where they get
over this disagreement about Yuri and Gacko and is kind of brought over to a curras side and understands how he loves her, and this kiss is like what cements it in the flashback through which the story is told. So it's a pivotal, dramatic moment and it's very important in the film, and it's powerful when it happens.
Yeah, and it's a real kiss. I was afraid on my rewatch, knowing about the gender roles. I was afraid they were gonna fudge it, you know. But it's a legitimate kiss. Yeah, all right. Well, speaking of the character Akira, Akira Hagawara is played by Go Kato, who lived nineteen thirty eight through twenty eighteen, Japanese actor whose other credits include sixty seven Samurai Rebellion and nineteen seventy two's Lone
Wolf and Cub Baby cart Ta Haites. This is the third Lone Wolf in Cub movie in which he plays a Ronan character that I think is the central antagonist or an important antagonist in the picture. Okay, this is not one of the Lone Wolf and Cub movies that was edited together to make Shogun Assassin, which we previously watched on House Cinema. This would be the yeah, the third one after those two. Okay, but yeah, anyway, Kato heir Award winning Japanese actor who rose to fame in
Samurai Rebellion sixty seven opposite Toshiro Mafuni. So he played Mafuni's character's son, and his other credits include sixty five Sort of the Beast, The Long Darkness in seventy two Let's See, and Death of a Tea Master in eighty nine, active until his passing. And he had a long TV career as well. All right, and then we have Gakawin, and Gokowin is really he's really our structural protagonist, even though he doesn't have top billing here.
Yeah, the movie becomes less about him as it goes on, but certainly for the first third were just with him.
Yeah. Yeah. And he is played by Sutomu Yamazaki, Award winning Japanese actor whose credits include multiple Kurosawa films, most notably sixty five's Redbeard in eighties Kaigamusha. Yeah, let's see, those are some of our main characters. We're not gonna be able to list everyone here, and certainly there are a lot of great crab and fish actors, yes, and you know, you know we can't. We can't list everybody.
There is a priest character. Priest Shikami and he's played by Koji Nanbara, who of nineteen twenty seven through two thousand and one. He stood out to me because Japanese actor who played a crucial role in the ground breaking nineteen sixty seven sage in Suzuki Assassin film Branded to Kill. That's a big one. That's one that I've considered doing for weird house cinema.
Is this one? This is the Shinto priest. The one, yeah is he's sort of one of the ones most on board with the diet member. Is a plot to do a human sacrifice.
Yeah, yeah, there's yeah, he alongside yea, the diet member. Yeah. There's a whole host of human characters in the village and then a whole host of supernatural characters in the underwater realm. And yeah, everybody's great in their role. Be it something that is in The human characters tend to be a lot more believable and naturalistic, and of course the spirit characters are ranged from being somber and theatrical to just like outright goofy you know, so, yeah, it varies greatly.
Yeah. Well, also, I think the moral coding of the different character groups is interesting because you might think based on the structure that the Dragon Princess is like the villain of the film. You know, she's the great evil baddie to overcome, but not really, She's somewhere in between. She's just a complex character with her own desires that is neither really good nor bad. She just wants something that's kind of oblique to her involvement with humans and
her responsibilities to them. I would say, if the movie has a real human villain, it is the bloodthirsty diet member.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, let's skip ahead behind the camera for just a couple of credits here. This is definitely a visual effects picture, and there's actually a feature rite about the visual effects on the Criterion collection disc. I ended up not really diving into that one because, weirdly enough, despite this being a film with great special effects, I feel like the special effects are almost the least notable part about it. There's so much else to talk about. Yeah,
but they're really well done. And it's a high budget affair.
Yeah yeah, some great other world underwater sets where you can't even identify exactly what this is supposed to be. Are they in a cave under the pond? What is it?
I don't know, and then we have that great water spout laid in the picture. You know, we'll come back to that. But the visual effects are credited to Minora Nakano, who of nineteen thirty nine through twenty twenty one. Lots of great Japanese SI special effects credits for this guy, beginning with mathra Versus Godzilla in sixty four. Oh, okay, which we've talked about. That's one of our selections.
Clearly, there is a lot of great miniature work in this so you can see the interface with giant monster movies.
Yeah, yeah, And I think particularly he did optical effects in animations in mathra Versus Godzilla, and then his subsequent films include the nineteen seventy four Thai co production Hanaman versus seven Ultraman, which we also watched perfect yep. Seventy seven is the Last Dinosaur. Seventy eight's the Bermuda Depths. Oh, that's one we've talked that we've talked maybe talked about it.
It's not good, it's kind of jawsy, but it's I think that's the one with a killer sea turtle.
Yeah. Is that the one with Carl weathers? Oh?
Wait, that sounds right, Okay, maybe we'll put a question mark wearing very very short short.
And then oh, this guy also worked on seventy eight's Message from Space, which was another early Weird House Cinema selection, and then after that he did Demon Pond and his other credits include eighty eight's Doomed Megalopolis. The last one Megalopolis Akira kurosaw was Dreams in nineteen ninety, which we also covered.
On Weird House.
Wow. Yeah, the Cat in nineteen ninety one, and then a film from ninety seven titled Cat's Eye that has no relation to the Stephen King adapticians Japanese film.
So completely without our knowledge, we have been running a Minoro Nakano fan podcast. Yeah, like we're just doing his whole catalog.
Yeah, yeah, all those films have great special effects, all right. Then finally, this film famously features a score by he Saw Tomita, who lived nineteen thirty two through twenty sixteen.
This is actually our second to meta score. We previously discussed him in our episode on the sixty eight film Black Lizard, which is a great, beautiful weird picture, but the music on that one is on the for the most part, I think non electronic and as we discussed, like the story goes concerning Tamita, is that around nineteen sixty eight or shortly thereafter, he heard the Windy Carlos album Switched on Bach And is.
This the one famously featured in Clockwork Orange or related to it? Well, related to it, yeah, because of the Beethoven in that.
Yeah, and with the Moge synthesizer work. So the story goes that to me, to heard this work and almost immediately flies to the US to bring a Moge synthesizer back with him. I don't know how immediate it is, but like in my mind of imagining, he hears the album and just head straight to the airport. Yeah, doesn't pack, just brings back the synth, but love it. However it actually went down. Yeah, Tomita gets into it and becomes a pioneer in his own right of electronic music and
space music. Like I've read that with tomto Like one of the things is that he he kind of like Wendy Carlos is a legend and and and her work is you know, absolutely undeniable, but like to meet is one of those who like kind of takes it then and goes to like another level with it as well, like ends up going into this spaceier zone, like certainly doing his his spin on the classics as well, but then finding this like sort of sci fi space zone in which to explore as well.
And you get both in Demon Pond. You get electronic adaptations of classical symphonic works and then you also get just weird wacky space music.
Yeah, and it gets funny at times. There's a couple there are a couple of moments where the music is really goofy, in that moge synth goofy way. Like. There are a number of like electronic pioneers would get into this sound a little bit, and sometimes I don't know, for my own part, it's a little harder to listen to those, because I, you know, I just want to hear like the really like serene samples of early synth work.
But early synth work can get really goofy as well, and it's it's great in its own way.
There were this is gonna sound like a horrible comparison, and I don't mean it this way because I love to meet us score here. But there were a couple of parts in the movie where the like the funny music when the goblins were doing their antics. Reminded me of the synth the synth score in the Star Wars Holiday Special when you've got you know, when there's like I think it's acrobatics or something are happening, that kind of thing. There was a bit of that.
The synth world is going to have to come back to that sound, I think, And then you know, ten years down the road, that's all anybody's going to be talking about.
I can't wait.
But yeah, the Jen Alpha style, but to me of course, and goes on to become a legend in his own right, known for such works as Let's See Electronics, Electric Samurai, Switched on Rock, seventy six is the Planets, and seventy eight's Cosmos You'll.
Find the Planets. Sorry, is that Holst? Do you know?
I'm not sure off the top of my head. Maybe I'd have to look up that work. Okay, But because he again, he did do a certain amount of taking older works and then giving them the synth treatment, and you'll find loads of his work wherever you get your music. I don't think this particular score has ever received proper release. However, I was looking around for it. It looks like there's there's some sort of collaboration that he did with Bando
around seventy eight, but I don't think it's direct. It's not the score, it's not the soundtrack or anything, but they should put it out. I'd love to listen to this. Yeah, yeah, so yeah again. This score is great. It has these spacier segments, but then he also makes use of contemporary European motifs from music from the period the film takes place in, so in particular Mazorski and WSA music. You'll hear that multiple times.
The Mussorgski that's going to be Night on Bald Mountain. So that comes in in fact in a particularly hilarious musical moment where we're watching some of the goblins go about their business and we're first getting the comedic dup to dupe music and then for it with no warning, hard shift into electronic Night on Bald Mountain.
It's great. I would totally listen to most of the score if it was released properly, but you know, when in the context of the film, it's a pretty great way to listen to it as well, because then you get the sonic experience and these fabulous.
Visuals Another thing I want to point out about to me to score that's so wonderful in this movie is that it sounds like the visual and conceptual themes. The movie is about a demon pond and a creature that in many ways embodies water. Water is a core texture of the film. About the lack of water or an excess of water is so much of what the story is about. And the music sounds like like water. There are these musical motifs that sound like whirlpools that have
a swirling quality. There are musical motifs that sound like bubbles rising through water. It's amazing how watery the sound is.
Yeah, and then obviously there is the added element of this being like the bleeding edge of modern technological music combined with these elements of much more deeply rooted performance tradition.
Yeah, okay, are you ready to talk about the plot?
Yeah, let's board the train, let's walk the bridge, let's do it.
Okay, And warning once again, folks, this we're going to talk about the plot in a lot of detail. So if you want to go in without spoilers, go without. You know, the spoilers we've already done. Go now, go go, you come back later. So we begin with a text legend and this bubbling effervescent electronic score, and the text in translation reads on the border between Fukui and Gifu, there is a pond called Demon pond. According to an ancient legend, a dragon dwells at the bottom of this pond.
And then we open on a scene which is this large pond surrounded by forested mountain sides with lush green trees all around, and the slopes on either side framing this u shaped horizon that shows just the sky beyond. And then on the bank on the nearest side of the pond, there is a single lone architectural feature. It's a Japanese tory e. You've probably seen these at Shinto shrines and other places in Japan. This is a little structure that looks like a doorway leading from nothing to nothing.
It's made of two vertical posts a few feet apart, and then a couple of cross posts joining at the top. And these can be simple like this one is, or it can be more complex with kind of a flaring of the posts or shingles or other decorations. But it's like a doorway standing in the middle of nature and these are symbolic gateways that indicate the transition from a mundane space to a sacred space.
And that's pretty much what this whole first for opening moments of this film is about where we're venturing into the sacred.
So the text on screen continues, it says the time was the summer of nineteen thirteen, and then we get a title and the credits come in, and the music swells and becomes really huge and regal, with these heavy hollow bells ringing and a climbing theme that sounds like voices and adulation. So it's a very powerful musical moment at the beginning. But the action resumes in a train car.
We see passengers watching out the windows as the train rolls through the country, and there is a bespectacled man in a linen suit and a hat that looks sort of like a pith helmet. It's got a very Safari looking hat, and he is closely inspecting a topographic map with a magnifying glass. He kind of zooms in on a place on the map that shows a body of water called Demon Pond, and then later we see him looking through a reference book of drawings of various plant species.
So the feeling we get about this guy is that he's a man of the sciences and he's interested in plant life.
Yeah, he's a naturalist.
So we will learn that this man is named gaku and Yamasawa. He is a school teacher, an amateur botanist, or maybe a professional botanist, I'm not quite sure. A school teacher and a botanist from the big city. He's out rambling in the countryside for his summer vacation. At a remote stop, he gets off the train with this big backpack and he begins hiking further up into the mountains on a footpath. There's this feeling of leaving civilization
further and further behind. This is actually a something I really associate with Japanese fantastical films in general, kind of step wise retreat from the world of the city and modernity, where you see multiple stages of becoming less and less connected to the city world, with like first you're on the train, then you get off the train, and then you go into a more isolated place, and then from there, like the first place he goes to on this footpath
is this big rope bridge spanning a ravine, This long bouncy rope bridge and we see him walking over it and see the water rushing below. But then after this there's even less kind of human infrastructure, Like he emerges into this swamp or marsh and he's looking at specimens under a microscope, and then we see him crossing some kind of desert with this scrubby vegetation and parched white earth,
with these mirages of heat rising from the ground. So it's like at each step he's just getting more and more into a different world.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
There's a part in the middle of when he's in the desert here where he drains the last of the water from his canteen and he happens to notice nearby a porcelain baby doll discarded and lying on the ground. And so he hikes on from this desert into another forested highland and eventually comes to a mountain village that seems almost as dry as the desert below. There's vegetation all around, but there's a kind of camera filter that
creates a CPA tone, so everything looks dead. All the vegetation is dead and dry, so the plants are desiccated, and the field crops or these gray husks, and at one point Goaquin collapses on the road, but he manages to pick himself up and keep going. And there are weird, eerie soundscapes here, like in one place extremely loud bugs like cicadas screaming, and in another place a sound. It's uncanny because there is a sound like howling wind, but we see on the screen that nothing is moving like
visually the air looks still. And in this howling but still place, Gokuin encounters a lone cow just wandering and lowing on the road. It seems almost like a cow that is suffering or in pain, maybe for need of water. But it's very disconcerting atmosphere. And then he wanders further into the village. The whole time he's there he sees no one the houses. All around there are houses, but nobody's coming in and out of them, and the streets are empty. Eventually he finds a well and he runs
to the well with excitement. He's eager for water. But when he gets there, he drops a rock in waiting to hear the splash, and there is none, as just a dry clack when it hits the bottom. So disappointed, he walks further into the village past a banner that says prayer for rain, until finally he crosses paths with people.
The people seem to be in a funeral procession. They're marching past in a column, wearing kimono with faces painted white, and they're holding huge, tall bouquets of fake flowers and other plants I think made out of paper or some of the craft. And with them is a two wheeled cart bearing an open coffin with a dead man inside, surrounded by a kind of silver tinsel looking substance. And the procession stops briefly when a bon show bell sounds from a perch on a hill above the rest of
the village, and we get a kind of cutaway. We see the belfry up above the village. It's you know, it's within visual distance, but it's a good ways up and somebody, an old man, appears to be ringing the bell with this big log that's on a rope, and Gakuin checks his pocket watch it is six o'clock. And then the procession moves on and here the wind begins
to blow and it kicks up dust. They get stuck in Gakuwin's eyes, so he's holding a handkerchief to his face and he runs inside a nearby building for shelter. Once inside the building, he sees a group of men sitting in a circle talking and they're talking about the bell. One is like, not that bell again, there's no need to ring it, and then another one says, but the demon pond will overflow, a flood will come, and then another says that's just superstition, but whether it's true or not,
at this point of flood would be welcome. And then the people in the house finally notice Gochowin in their entry way. He explains that he's got dust in his eye and he asks for water to wash it out, and the men are like, what you want water? Are you kidding? And then a woman comes out from the other room and kindly offers to help him. She's like, here, let me help you. And her solution is she offers to express breast milk into his eyes. Yes, and Gogowin
is disturbed. He tries to be polite like he thanks her, but he quickly leaves. So something has gone horribly wrong at this village related to water.
Yeah, yeah, this is such an awkward and largely uneerrotic interaction here, Like, clearly Gagawin is just completely thrown off guard here.
Yeah, So he leaves the village and wanders into the woods further up the mountain side. He's still holding the handkerchief to his eye. But these woods do not appear parched like the village below. Here, it's shady green under the tree canopy, and there are all these ferns and
small plants on the forest floor. And then Gakawin hears the sound of trickling water, so he hunts it down and he finds a little stream, washes his face, removes the dust from his eye, fills his canteen, and takes a drink, and we see him kind of stand up and his face is just covered in water. He's like he has been infused with essence of wetness and feels very revived. So if it's this green just up the hill from the village, why is the village so parched.
It's a mystery one we'll have to to investigate.
So he feels very revived, and he ventures further up the mountain as the sun is setting, and he comes across a little hut and a shrine. This is the house where somebody was ringing the bon schow bell earlier at six o'clock when he saw the funeral. So there's the belfry there on the side, and the area around this little house is very wet. There's like a small pond and a trickling brook with lush water grasses all around.
So the drought has not reached this place that's just a little bit away from the rest of the village.
And this is definitely a scene where we get an overwhelming sense of that sunset, twilight gloaming vibe. And in fact, at this point I also actually felt a little bit of anxiety because this reminded me very strongly of the sky and the lighting in house in that scene where
where the head comes up from the well. So I was like, oh, man, something weird is about to happen, and something is weird is about to happen in some ways, but not on the level of cackling bottom biting head from the bottom of the well.
Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, the light becomes tremendously orange and it's the silhouette of the mountain is ominous. But anyway, so behind the house on the hill there's a woman kneeling in the grass at the water's edge. I think she's washing produce or washing food, and she begins speaking to Gacawan without turning around. She tells him the bell he heard ringing earlier is rung only three times a day, at dawn, at dusk, and late at night, and it may not be struck any
other time. She says, if you are walking by, please do not strike it with that stick in fun, do not be mischievous. So it's interesting she knows he has a stick, even though she has not turned around to look at him. And there's a slow zoom on Gakawan. Very quiet, eerie music starts to play. He becomes curious, like there's drought in the village below, but up here at the house there's plenty of water, and he asks the woman about this, and she explains that it gushes
from a spring. And then they have this moment where they talk about how when the water, when the flowing water hits a rock, it tinkles, and the way they say it, the way they say it in Japanese has a little automatopoia. They say like it's ding ding ding ding, like a ringing bell or like a harp, and then they talk about how the valley that they're in I think is the valley that plays a harp or the
valley of harp music. But then she goes on to explain that the real source of the water that's around their house, that's coming out of the spring is Demon Pond. The water comes from Demon Pond, and Gakuwin takes interest here. He tells her that he saw Demon Pond on the map and he came here in part because he wanted to see it. And she tells him that there is a legend that a dragon sleeps at the bottom of the pond. Quote it carries poison. The villagers say that fearfully.
The rocks change color in the water to purple and green rouge granules seen at times. It's very beautiful. The villagers say the dragon's scales have been shed. They say it is fishy, dirty, uncanny, and that the water is poisoned. I like the ambiguity of the description here. I don't know exactly what's causal from one statement to the next, but it's a little bit hair raising, especially since he
already drank the water. He becomes very concerned. He's like, well, I drank the water from the stream, I washed my eyes in. It is something going to happen to me.
I do love the idea of the dragon scales. The shed scales are in the water. Yeah.
Yeah. And the woman, you know, he's concerned, but she says, you know, the villagers are suspicious, but we drink the water, meaning her and the people who live at this house. We haven't met anybody else there yet, but we drink the water and nothing happens to us. So that makes the villager suspicious of them, Like, you know, if the water is poisoned, but they drink it and they're fine. Maybe they're witches or something. That's the implication. And Gakuin
drops his compass into the water by accident. The woman retrieves it for him, and then finally, here we get a revelation of the woman's face as she uncovers her hair turns to look at Gakawin. This is the woman played by Tamasaburobando, and the film suggests that something strange
is happening. We don't again, it's not clear exactly what it is, but upon seeing this woman, Goquin is shaken and the music is again bubbling swirling, effervescent and magical, and this is one of the parts where Tomita really manages to make the music sound like water. So they have this strange, enchanted form of eye contact, and Gakowin asks if he can stay for a cup of tea. The woman says yes, she's trying to be a good host,
and so she goes inside the house. And then Gakawin looks down at the compass of his that fell into the water, and it's spinning all around like in Bermuda Triangle movies. I bet there's a scene like this in the Bermuda depths.
Yeah, it's all but smoking here.
Yeah. So inside, the woman who we learn is named Yuri, talks with her husband Akira or Akira, the handsome young man with silver hair, and Akira asks Yuri to ask the traveler if he has a good story to tell, and we see that Akira is working over a text called Collection of Old Legends, so this is a narrative guy. He's looking for legends. All through these scenes, Rob, I wonder what you think about this. I feel like there is consistently something strange about Uri, not something bad, like
she is portrayed as polite and a good host. There's nothing nefarious about her, but there is an uncanny distance and hesitation in her behavior, like she is out of place or living in the wrong world, but also with these dimensions of anxiety, like she's living in fear of something that cannot be spoken of. Do you know what I'm saying here?
Yeah? I think that's a good point. This is also the scene though, is there's a lot to unpack here because she's also behaving and she's she's treating a wanderer who has come up and is asking for aid, and so like she's navigating certain social norms here. But then we quickly see that there is the white haired gentleman is is remaining hidden, and she's somehow navigating this as well.
So yeah, all of these elements make for a scene that is on one level, like very straightforward, like a wanderer is being greeted with tea and then later some fruit, But then there's also something else going on, perhaps on multiple levels.
Yeah yeah, yeah, so she's she is displaying kindness and hospitality, but there's also this level of apprehension. Yeah yeah, yeah, So Gakuwin sits with your EA outside on the veranda and they have tea and chilled pairs while they talk.
Yeah, we see him eat one, but it later sounds like maybe he ate like six pairs.
Yeah, it seems like maybe he's had a lot of fair Also, Gaquin is a skilled peeler of pairs. Do you see he takes the entire skin off in the one the one long strip? Yeah.
Yeah, I've been trying to lick my apples that way these days, but I still end up making a mess that I guess I haven't refined it.
I like to eat the apple peels. I'm a big peel fan.
Oh yeah, yeah, well I've been Yeah, I still eat the peels, but I've been trying to do the whole. Like I'm gonna sit here and like use a knife to like cut off little slivers of the apple and eat it.
Oh I do do that. Yeah, I'm not a bite into the apple person. I like to cut off pieces.
Yeah, I've largely been a bite into the apple person. But then sometimes like I'm ot at the computer I'm working, I'm biting into apple, sprays apple juice on the screen. I gotta clean that up. But now I'm trying to cut the apple and I'm still slinging juice around the room. So I don't know. I've got to work on my form.
So actually what I'm doing recently is we've gotten my daughter likes apple, but only the inside doesn't want the peels. So I'm trying to cut it in a way that creates peel pieces and non peel pieces and equal measures so that I can, you know, do one and then the other and I eat the peel pieces.
As she's seen one of those the apple peelers, where you like lock it into the device, and.
We've actually got one of those, we just haven't used it. It's like it takes some setting up.
I remember from the past. It only makes sense if you're doing like large scale apple peeling for some sort of a culinary project.
Wow, this has been peel talk, Yeah, Robin Joe. So back to the movie. So we learned that we learned from the conversation between Gacawin and Uri that this house used to be a temple storehouse, but the temple burned down long ago, and that's why there is a sacred bell here because it used to be a temple. I feel like this detail it's only mentioned in Passing and
doesn't come up again. There's something about the idea of the temple burning down long ago and this Belfrey being a remnant that kind of ties in with themes that will become more important later on about what really is tradition, what types of tradition are worth honoring, and you know, do we does do the obligations of the past still linger and things like that. But again, uh, Gakuin is thankful. He tries to be a good, you know, a good
guest and tries to pay for the hospitality. At one point he says something about this being a tea house. So I don't know if he if there is confusion about whether this is just somebody's house that he's being offered tea at, or if it is a tea house that serves customers.
Yeah, yeah, he says something of the effective like, oh, it's a temple. I knew it wasn't just a tea house or something.
Yeah, okay, maybe that's what it was. Yeah, But he tries to pay for the hospitality. Uri says that she will not accept payment in the form of money, only in the form of him telling her a great story of the strange from his travels, and this seems to raise Gakuwain's suspicions. We will learn why in a bit, But he starts to tell a story from etches In Province about a dumpling that was transformed into something that gets interrupted by the next big plot beat. Though I wanted to hear the dumpling.
Stone, I know I was. I felt the same way, like what does it transform into? Because I've I've read some stories from I can't remember offhand off it was of Japanese origin or Chinese origin, but of dumplings coming to life and essentially running around as little people.
So he says something about it going under the veranda or something. But yeah, it doesn't finish the story because as Gakuwin speaks inside, Akira is listening and he hears his voice and he's he freezes. Akira is deeply troubled because he recognizes Gakuwin's voice, and at one point he peeks out through the door and Gakawin sees him. Gaquin seems to recognize him as well. So here I'm gonna shift a bit from the more moment to moment narration into some summary of what follows. So it turns out
Akira and Gakuin are long lost friends. They were once like brothers. But three years ago Akira disappeared without a trace, not a single word to his friends or family. Gakuin knew that a Kira a disliked city life and thought he may have fled to live in the country, but nobody knew for sure, and many were afraid that he had died. It turns out, in reality, what happened is that Akira went traveling north from Tokyo to collect strange local tales and legends for a book he was writing
because he's some sort of folklore scholar. And then, just like Gakawin, Akira had been drawn to this village because he saw the demon pond on a map and wanted to see it in person. Except when he arrived. At this point, all we learn is that he met Uri, They fell in love, and they got married, and they have been living here together ever since. But why didn't Akira let his friends and family know there is something strange going on here again, an unspoken tension or reticence.
For example, Akira's he's got silver hair when we first see him, and he later reveals to Gaqawain that it's a wig, Like, why is he in disguise in his own house.
Yeah, out in the such a rural setting. Yeah, who's gonna see him? Who's he hiding from?
Also, Uri in particular seems to be afraid of Gakuwin finding out Akira's identity. Yuri says, you know, with this, with this kind of pitiful fear. She says, if you go away with him, I'd be and then she just trails off in fright, like something terrible will happen to her if he's not there with her. H And at first Yuri manages to talk Akira out of revealing himself to Gakawin, but eventually Akia can't stand it. This is like after Gakuwin has already left and it starts raining.
Akira goes after him, finds him in the woods and admits who he is, So he invites his old friend to stay the night at their house, and they spend a long time that evening catching up. Gakuwin has a lot of questions about Uri, rob I wonder what you make of like what is the source of initially of Gakuwin's suspicion about her, because she's been nothing but nice to him, and and in fact, even in the first
time they meet. He seems rather taken with her, like he's kind of entranced by her, but also a little bit unsettled. So is it just that she's just giving off vibes? Is it magical kind of frightening energy or is there something specific?
I mean, I think it is a general thing like that, you know, she has a kind not like a straight up spooky vibe, but there is an ethereal nature to her. There's the whole disappearance of Akira, and then maybe there's also a bit playing with the folkloric elements that the trope that we see in at least some Japanese folk tales of some sort of a spirit bride that comes into someone's life and changes that life one way or another.
Yeah, there will be other character elements that come in later that I think may explain part of this, and we'll talk about that when it comes up. But yeah, at this point I wonder to what degree he really is afraid of her being magical in some way because he asks a He's like, is she a sorceress? And Akira is like no, what makes you say so? But anyway, they talk and they decide that since Gachowin came here to see the demon pond. They are going to go
out tonight and see it together. So it's a five kilometer walk through the woods, and then there is a there's a very gun on the mantelpiece, you know, Chekhov's gun. You kind of seen where they're like, there may be bamboo and vines to cut through on the way to demon pond. So we must take our sickles and oh no, the sickles are dull, Yuri, would you please sharpen our sickles? So like Uri working the sickles on the wet stone in the spring while the two men put on their shoes.
There's it's an eerie moment.
Yeah, we know it's going to pop up back up again for sure.
One of them says it looks really sharp now. So also in the scene, Gakuin makes little comments to Akira about escaping, and Yuri is frightened about them leaving. She says that she's going to feel so lonely. She actually clutches a doll. It's a pitiful thing, like, you know, clutches a doll, Like there's a kind of return to childhood and her fear here.
Yeah, I mean, already there's so many you could begin just taking little bits of string and mapping them out different elements of the plot. Because we have this doll here, we have that doll in the desert that we saw. The doll in the desert looked very European, and this doll looks more authentically Japanese, at least in my eye. There's also this like this escape element.
Right.
We have characters that we've discussed as escaping the urban world to venture into the rural, escaping the modern to go into the traditional, and now the reverse is being discussed.
So we should note. On the night that our main characters meet, there is a brief rainstorm, but it's so brief. By the time the villagers are able to get out their buckets and pails to catch the rain, it's over, so it's like the weather is taunting them a lot of disappointment. Then there is also a very important scene here where the politician shows up, the local member representing the village in the Diet. The character's name is Koso and a Kuma, but I think I'm just going to
call him the Diet member. The politician arrives by car with bags of rice for the villagers and there is much rejoicing because of the rice. So he comes in and you know, the people take the rice out there. There's like one guy in the village who's the big tough wrestler guys. I think he's helping them move the rice in. Uh, and they like spill the rice all over the floor of the house they're moving them into, and the villagers are just scooping it up by by with their hands in a frenzy.
Yeah. Yeah, so there's almost all there's a lack of decorum, even such as their excitement for the rice.
There is also a scene where a man is out hunting a fish that flops in the shallow mud of a pond under a sign that says no fishing aloud, and he's singing a great song. This is the translated lyrics of the song are there's no lack of goblins, which is just like, I want that to be a book title, album title.
Great. I was thinking this could be straight up a rocky ericson song right here.
Just yeah, there's no lack of goblin. Yeah, there's no lack of goblins. They come in many shapes, one eyed monster, water imp goblin, cat, bucking echo, goblin, cat Goblin of the sea. Then there's that one with an egg like face, and I think we see that one, think we do. Yeah, he's spooky.
Yeah.
So the fisherman, I don't know if he's actually a fisherman or just in this moment opportunistically has caught a fish in his hat. I'm gonna call him the fisherman. He catches a fish in his hat and decides he's gonna sell it to the assemblyman and get a good price.
On the way back to the village, though, he's carrying this fish in his hat, and he stops to peek in the window of Yuri and Akira's house, and he sees Yuri by herself, and then she slowly turns to look at him through the window, and then suddenly he is frozen with fear and then shouts in pain because a crab has crawled onto his foot and pinched him. So he, I think, takes this as some kind of
horrible sign. He drops the fish into the little pond beside the house, and then we see the crab crawling down a rock into the pond as well, and then he's gone. He takes off in terror, and we're about fifty minutes into the movie at this point, and then it takes a turn because now we get our first encounter with supernatural creatures. Clear like whatever's going on with Uri she it could just be weird energy. Up to the you know, there's nothing explicitly magical, but now we
get our first explicitly supernatural creatures. The music becomes strange and whimsical, and we zoom down into the magic of pond World and meet the humanoid spirit embodiment of the fish that was caught. Is this the carp spirit, the one they call car plators? Oh yeah, yeah, the of the carp and the crab that saved him. And so the fish spirit is a inhumanoid form, is a gleaming, slime covered black mass in the moonlight who looks like he's got this giant, soggy bloom of hair around his head.
And the crab spirit is very crabby. He's painted bright red. He has these huge claw hands, prosthetic claw hands, and he walks with a hunched posture. He is more aggressive, the more aggressive of the two rob I don't know if you have any other notes on on our first goblins here, but they're wonderful.
They are wonderful, there's a death. These are not necessary. There's not really yokai. But again they remind me a lot of yokai movies, live action yokai movies from Japan. There is, they look great, but there is not an attempt here to make the crab man look more than like twenty five percent crab. I don't know, right, you know, Like he's it's very obviously a man with crab arms. And then the fish spirit is looks mostly like a
grimy human. But they have the essence of these animals that they are portraying, and it would works, but it's very well, it strikes a very comedic cord for sure.
The crab guy is, he's just like a wild guy with crab claws painted red. And the fish is the fish could be like a member of the band corn covered in like crude oil. Yeah yeah, yeah, so yeah. And they have spirit banter too, like they're they're buffoonish characters.
They get angry at the discarded sedge hat that the fishermen had used to catch the fish in, so they stomp on it, and then they decide that it's not actually the hat's fault that the fish was caught Also the hat starts talking, the hats like, not my fault.
Yeah, if you just saw this sequence, you would have a totally different idea of what Demon Pond would be about.
You would not at all get the strange, quiet, haunted feeling of everything that's happened up to this point. But yeah, so it becomes very goofy and funny. The hat says, it's not my fault, and then they throw the hat in the air and lands on the head of a shrine statue. They say, look how it flies, just like a man's head, suggesting that sometimes they behead people and throw their heads. So, I guess these are I don't know, dangerous, dangerous crab and fish spirits.
Yeah, they're they're not overly kind concerning humanity, and we'll see more of them a bit.
No, they don't like humans. And they so they say they're going to travel to the fish's parental home, which we assume is Demon Pond. They're going to Demon Pond, and they talk about the Princess of the Pond. They say, does she have any intention to let it rain? And they say, ah, the drought, it's none of her business, it doesn't concern her. And then they start talking about
something that will become important dragon princess lore. They say, she loves the young man of Singja Pond at King Gamine. She thinks of him constantly. They say, why can't she just spread her sleeves and fly to go see him, Because she can't do that because if she leaves Demon Pond, there will be a terrible flood and the whole valley will be submerged. But then the crab says, oh, what of it, that would expand my habitation. Let the village become a muddy marsh.
Gotta love crab.
Yeah, And they also passed the bell. They talk about how if the bell is not wrung, the flood will be unleashed and the world will become a paradise for them. So they're kind of looking forward to this, And this is the moment when the music they're like regarding the bell, and suddenly the music goes from this whimsical boot dey boop stuff into the night on bald Mountain.
Yeah, we're switched on Mazorski at this point, I guess.
Yeah. So they're cavorting in the moonlight and they sing a song, actually a kind of eerie song called turn the mountain into a river. Later, we see them encounter another animal water spirit on a journey to the Demon Pond. This is an old man hobbling through the woods with these catfish barbles hanging from his face. We learn that he is called Black Catfish Priest, a catfish who was
turned into a monk. And he's got a letter from the gentleman of Sinja Pond to deliver to the princess of Demon Pond.
Uh oh, yeah, and I love Black Catfish Priest. He's tremendous. He's great, great makeup here.
So Also at this point, Akira and Gakowin are on their journey to the Demon Pond, and Akira recounts the legend of the pond to Gakuwin. It goes like this quote men fought the water. The village seemed doomed at that time. A holy man can find the Dragon God to that pond. The dragon the dragon God said, my freedom is lost, as I pledged to save men from drowning. Cast a huge bell, ring it thrice each day to
awaken me and remind me of my promise. I long for freedom to move around, to have my own way, to forget the pledge making the water of this pond overflow. In gaining freedom, I care not how many men and beasts perish. And yet the pledge will be kept. But I must be reminded of it lest I forget. Do not neglect to ring the bell. Okay, So the story again is, Yeah, the dragon god is confined against its will to the demon Pond and I, and it wants to get out, and if you let it get out,
it is going to cause a flood. But it has promised it will not leave, and you've got to remind it of its promise three times a day with the bell.
So an ancient, an ancient pact, an ancient promise preventing cataclysm, and tradition is essential to secure the pact.
That's right. Also, we get some flashback here where Akira tells the story of how he came to take over the bell. So he says that an old man tended to the bell for fifty years before he arrived, and when Akira first came three years ago, he stayed with the man in his house. This is the house Akira now lives in. But one night, upon returning from ringing the bell, the old man collapsed and the dying man begged a Kira. He's like, take over my duties. If
no one rings the bell, everyone will die. And at first Akira he agrees to this promise, and he does it just to placate a dying man. He intends to ring it only once and then convince someone from the village below to take over for him. But when he explains the legend to the villagers, the villagers are not bought in on this. They just laugh in his face. No one believes the story, and so nobody's willing to
do it. So it falls to Akira. He has to go back and keep ringing the bell because nobody else will take over. A few other scenes in here, there's a scene where we get to see the villagers feasting. They're going and gorging themselves on the polished rice that the politician brought. But I was wondering what did they cook it with? They don't have any water, Like, did they have to use breast milk to make their rice?
Maybe they were able to get just enough rain water for this.
Yeah, So the fishermen who got pinched by the crab spirit is here and we learn in this scene that he has a reputation about town as a scoundrel, like the men mock him for always hanging out by the belfry hoping to see Uri. And then also at this time, we see Yuri at home having a weird communion with the moon and with her doll. She talks about how the night is so long and she is alone, and then she repeats the song she heard the spirits singing
through the wall. She starts singing, turn the mountain into a river, which is a little bit frightening, and it implies that there is some connection between the spirit world and the physical world. I mean, I guess we already saw that in that the crab spirit did pinch the fishermen, and also Yuri has been hearing their songs sings it too.
So Crab Karp and Black Catfish Priest make their way down into the layer of the Dragon Princess under Demon Pond, and they pass through this wonderfully bizarre cave set that is kind of hard to describe, but it's full of these roots and mud, and it's populated with all sorts of humanoid spirit creatures where you've got various fish, turtles, frogs, crab and then other less watery demons, just assorted demons and goblins of muck that I can't really see an animal comparison for.
That, kind of like egg face dude is here.
He's kind of Cyclopean with a cone head or an egg head, and he's making like a vulcan salute with his fingers. And the catfish priest here before he meets the dragon princess he makes he becomes anxious about the contents of his letter. He's like, what if it tells the dragon princess to cut him up and eat him? And then he remembers a story of a time when he got in trouble with his own pond lord because he was watching a beautiful woman bathe naked in the water,
and the other spirits think this is hilarious. A lot of like crab and fish spirit antics here again, these these comedic performances. And then the crab decides to use its scissors to cut open the letter box so they can read what's in the letter. But before they can read it, a voice cries out and says, away with you creatures of mud, like, oh no, here she comes, and we finally meet the dragon Princess. So things are getting real. Now once again, this is this is Bando
also in the performance as the Dragon Princess. The Dragon Goddess is an elegant queen in a red gown embroidered with flowers and gold lining. She has this beautiful crown of gold and crystal with these dangling pieces that sway when she moves. Her face is pale with kabuki makeup, so she has a scented eyebrows and deep red lips. And she kind of swoops in with her retinue, which includes all kinds of figures, these monstrous samurai and these
ghostly women with faces painted white. And she takes the letter from Catfish and tries to read it. First, she says how irritating it is to read a letter by moonlight, And then one of her servants says, oh, you know, your majesty, as the incarnation of the Dragon God, your own radiation. The implication is should be enough to read by,
and it's true enough. She glows and then reads the letter by her own glow, and we come to understand it as a very good love letter, very well written, gentle and beautiful in its language, and the Dragon Princess is smitten. She desperately wants to go to Singapond and be with this other pond lord. He must be a great, awesome pond lord, so she wants that. But her nurse, who is an older woman with the catlike appearance and these and like wispy white hair, the nurse reminds her
of her duty. She cannot leave. The nurse makes it clear she's like, I'm not saying I love humans. I don't care whether they live or die. In fact, she refers to them as monkeys without tails. But she says a promise is a promise, and the princess cannot break it. The princess reacts to this with rage. She tries to order her soldiers to go and destroy the bell, but her nurse rebukes her again and tells her no, she cannot command this. And then the nurse starts trying to
bargain or compromise. She tells her like, look, you only need to wait a little bit longer. It won't be thirty or fifty years, just a little bit longer before you can be free. And I was trying to think, what's going on here is the nurse. Does the nurse think she's telling her? The truth is she reasoning, pretty soon they'll forget to ring the bell, and then you'll be free of your pact, and then you can flood the valley and go be free. Or is she just
trying to kind of like tide her over. I don't know really what the nurse is thinking.
Yeah, that's a good point though about like if you just keep if you just keep at it, you know, don't but break the pledge, the humans are going to forget about it, and the bell's not going to be wrong, and then we're free.
Yeah. Yeah, So I don't know. Maybe the nurse is just trying to get through one day at a time. But the Dragon Princess, she's furious. She wanders around the dark cavern and she says, a yearning, a yearning heart will overcome all barriers. I am unwilling to wait, and she's just acting out these feelings. She can't stand it.
And then here it also turns into I mentioned that there are multiple scenes of this in the movie, of a kind of moral bargaining, where the princess starts making a lot of excuses for doing what she knows is wrong. She talks about how humans break their promises all the time. Yeah, they break their promises. She also says promises are arbitrary, and then she says, my ancestors made this play out of convenience. Why should I be bound by what they pledged?
And again her servants and advisors tell her that she cannot break the pledge, and they remind her, you know, if the humans ever fail, if they ever fail to ring the bell three times a day, you are free and can leave at your own will. But until then you have to do your duty. But she she's like, no, no, no,
And so she leads her retinue to the bell. And so her whole like drenched court comes out of this pondly other world and out into the area of the bell, free, and they're standing there with like the wind whipping at her hair and clothes. And she says she doesn't care if there is divine punishment. Love is more important. Quote how blissful to dissolve in the stream of affection. Let my body be crushed to pieces, my soul will still yearn for him. Is hope as faint as a firefly's
dim light. And I love this part because maybe I'll mention some more parallels later. But so self destructive love and passion is a major theme of Pale Flower as well, so something in both of these Shinoda movies I've seen. So the princess is getting ready to do the unthinkable, to violate her packed and destroy the bell, whatever divine
punishment may come to her. But then she is she's given pause because she hears Yuri singing, and from this example she learns that when separated from a loved one, singing to oneself can provide comfort, like her nurse is saying, yes, it's exactly that, Yes, singing to yourself can be comforting, and this kind of causes her to come to her senses, and she talks about, you know, if the bell were destroyed,
innocent good people would die too. The implication is that like Yuri, who seems to be an innocent good person, would perish, though general opinion of the villagers remains low. And then Yuri herself comes out to ring the bell because Akira is away for the night, so she comes out to ring the bell, and once she rings the bell, like hits the log into the bell, the princess and
all of the other creatures are sent reeling. They are drawn by some powerful force like a hurricane back to the Demon pond.
Almal shades of a night on bald Mountain, right, Yeah.
Yes, actually, so we see them like whipped about by this magical wind and slow motion, which is interesting because it's like the reminder of the bell is physically efficacious. It's not just psychological for the spirits, it literally forces
them back. And there is this strange, beautiful gravity defying kabuki dance when we watch the dragon princess sinking down beneath the water, and then at the same time we see her sinking into the water, and at the same time in the mundane world, Akira and Gakuin are at the physical demon pond, standing at the edge, and we don't see them encounter each other at all. Is a kind of different world's thing, parallel worlds in a way. So this is the scene where Gakuwin and Akira kind
of compare worldviews. Like Gakuwen is a man of science and rationalism, Akira is a lover of legends and myths. Gakuwin does not typically accept magical reasons for things, like Akira says, you know, but if the pond is not magical, why is it that no leaf rests on the pond's surface and Gakuwan gives an explanation related to the wind, though I think it's interesting that he makes an exception for Yuri. He is frightened of her, and he tells Akira that she is not human. Gakuwin wants Akira to
leave his wife and escape with him. There's something strange about her and about this place, and he's in danger, and Akira becomes angry. He violently resists this, and they have a brief fight where Akira knocks down his old friend and forces him to apologize. And at this point I think another motivation for Gakuwin comes into focus. Maybe why he's feeling so strange about Uri. It's not just
the vibes she's giving off. It's also maybe jealousy, jealousy of the fact that she has had his old friend for all these years and he has not, So there's a jealousy there. And then I wonder also if it's jealousy the other way, like he finds her beautiful and is attracted to her in a way and is jealous of Akira because it seems that Gakuin does not have
a family of his own. This scene gives way into what we were talking about earlier, where Akira remembers, like, there's a flashback to how he fell in love with Uri.
He remembers the day that he met her. He was planning to leave the village, but then they met at opposite at ends of opposite docks jutting into this shallow marsh, and she tells him that she found papers that he left behind on which he recorded the legend of the Bell and the Demon Pond, And in this instant he falls in love with her, and he can't leave because he can't bear the thought of Yuri in particular being killed in the flood, so he stays to tend to
the bell and becomes her husband. He doesn't seem to be all that bothered by the idea of anybody else in the village being killed in the flood, but if Yuri were killed, he's like, that would be unacceptable. And we see them falling in love in a montage set to again these strange electronic pads with the swirling sounds, and they embrace and kiss and they talk about the
moonflowers and settle into the house by the belfry. Now next we get into the final showdown of the movie, which is set up by a long sequence where the villager is presided over by the politician the diet member. Now that they have feasted on polished rice, they begin to talk themselves into the idea that there is only one way to solve the drought and bring rain, and
that is to have a human sacrifice. I think the diet member is the one who first suggests it, and they decide they have to sacrifice the most beautiful young woman in town. So there is searching around for which woman will be sacrificed. Do they argue about it? Like the guy who caught the carp earlier has to defend his own daughter against being sacrificed by implying that she is sexually promiscuous, humiliating her in front of the town.
But there's maybe a sense that he's making it. He's like youths come in the night or something like that.
Well, he's like making it up, and she seems humiliated.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, she's humilated either way. But also where are these youths with no sign of them? But he's saying what he has to say to save her life. At least that was my read.
But the blood thirst tests to turn to somewhere, and I think it is him that suggests what about Yuri, And there's a kind of there's a kind of vengeful jealousy suggested here because I think he sees her from Afar, but he can't have her, and this turns into a kind of resentment where he suggests her, you know, she
should be the one punished. So then led by the village elders, like the mainly the diet member, but then also the village has man, the schoolmaster, and the Shinto priest, the villagers head up to the house and they capture Yuri, saying that they're going to tie her to an ox and slaughter her on the mountain side. Actually, first they lie to her. They tell her, oh, we're not going to kill you, just we'll tie you to the ox
and then we'll kill the ox. But that is obviously not their attention, and so Akira and Gakawin on their way home, they hear the commotion and they come to Yuri's rescue, and this turns into a big long argument and confrontation with the crowd where the two of them try to convince the crowd not to do this, but the bloodthirsty leaders, especially the diet members push the crowd to move ahead. So first Akira very bravely defends his
wife and will not step aside for them. Like they try to tell him that he'll be fine, they'll leave him alone if he'll give her up, but he won't. And then Gakawin appears to their rationality and argues against what they're doing. Like there's one part where the Shinto priests say to him, you sound like a Buddhist priest preaching, and Gaquin then, I don't know if he's telling the truth here he says, I am a priest. I didn't fully understand the implications of this part.
Yeah, I wasn't sure if he was speaking metaphorically or
if this is just another dimension to his character. Because one thing I do get from Goquain is like quite fitting, is like he's a man that has a foot in different worlds, you know, like he is a teacher and a naturalist, and maybe he is a priest or in some sense is a priest, and therefore the things that he's doing that are very modern are also deeply rooted in things that are very traditional, Like a naturalist is kind of a priest in some way.
Yeah, yeah, I can see that.
Especially when you're considering Shintoism and so forth.
Well, I want to get into the idea of traditionalism in just a minute here, but first I'll finish describing the scene by saying that after this, the diet member gets up and he gives this vicious, bullying, demagogic sermon about sacrificing for the national spirit. Like he talks about how real men, real warriors, used to kill their own wives before going into battle so that they would not
think of home, only of victory. And it's that kind of he's like, and he accuses the people defending ury of being snivelers and weak, and he kind of rouses the bloodlust of the crowd and accuses Akira of being a traitor. And then there's an interesting moment where Akira confronts the diet member. He's like, well, if somebody has to be brave and die, how about you? How about you take this sickle and kill yourself? And Akira shames the whole crowd. He says, do you not remember tradition?
And he speaks of these traditional stories where human sacrifice went wrong. But this leads into something I thought was actually really interesting about the traditional status or lack thereof, of human sacrifice. Most movie narratives or most fictional narrative generally where the characters debate the institution of human sacrifice.
I think most of the time this is about old ways versus new So the human sacrifice is presented as an ancient tradition that must be continued, and then you have characters representing new ways of thinking that doubt or resist it. But I think that is not the case here. That is not how it's being presented.
Yeah, we have kind of an inverse Wickerman here.
Yeah. Yeah. The human sacrifice plot put into motion by the villagers and the diet member especially feels improvised and half cocked at best. Its relationship to tradition is one of a compromised, half remembered imitation of some ancient practice that is resorted to out of a shameless desperation and cruelty. It is not a faithful attempt to keep the old ways alive, and Akira makes an appeal against it by
appealing to tradition. So I think that's really interesting and it actually this is where I think some of the subtle political themes of the film come out, because I know Massa hero Shanoda generally is understood as having been very opposed to right wing nationalism and right wing authoritarianism, and this film is sometimes interpreted as having those themes.
And it does make me think about how a lot of right wing nationalist movements appeal to a simulacrum of the past because they appeal to a past that never actually existed. What they're trying to create is actually a new thing that is calling itself a restoration of the past.
Yeah, yeah, I was thinking about this too. We see, unfortunately, see numerous echoes of this in our contemporary world, calls for intolerance and blood lust that are rooted in some again, like you say, some half remembered imitation of the past.
Yeah, So I detect that kind of critique in this movie, that there's something about people thinking that they are enacting a tradition and like retrieving the wisdom of their ancestors, but actually they're just bumbling into viciousness.
Yeah. And the traditions, especially in the context of this film, the traditions are what is keeping cataclysm from taking place.
Ye, these they're acting opposite that. Yeah, they don't understand the tradition. What they think tradition is yeah. So anyway, this leads all into a physical fight at the belfry where Akira, Uri and Gakawin they they are chased onto the belfry by the village's war the villagers warriors and swordsmen.
Uh.
And in this final confrontation, Uri she kills herself, I think to I think the idea is she's trying to save Akira.
With that tool with the sickle.
Yes. And after this happens, in despair, Akira cuts the cords of the log that is used to ring the bell, so the bell remains unwrung at dawn as dawn breaks, and this leads into the final apocalyptic conclusion of the story, because now the pact has been rent, has been sundered, it has been you know, they've they've cut the cord. They broke their end of the pact, and so the demon, the Dragon Princess, is no longer bound by her end.
And so the sky darkens and this giant water spout comes up out of the demon pond and pours into the sky. And now too late, the villagers beg Akira to ring the bell, but nothing can be done at this point. And then comes a tidal wave that flows over the mountain and not only destroys everything in the village,
but destroys the land itself fundamental rends the landscape. This part is it has some miniature work and some camera tricks to show these horrible like these tidal waves rushing over the village as the people are running away in terror. There's one shot of the like the cowardly, you know, vicious diet member and the other leaders are like up on the top of a house and people are trying to crawl up onto the house for safety, and they're like kicking them to get them to, you know, come down.
But eventually everyone is washed away.
Yeah, and speaking like shifting tones in this movie, like now we're in full blown disaster movie mode and special effects movie mode, tremendous water spout.
And it's terrifying. Yeah, And so everything is just destroyed and then finally the only person left is Gakawin. Everyone Gakawin survives by tying himself with a rope to the post of the belfry, which it turns out in the end is the only structure left standing. And get a final vision of the liberation of the Dragon Princess where she rises out of the pond elated and she flies away.
She's depicted. Maybe there is a more direct to Japanese inspiration for this, but what it actually looked like to me was she looks like an angel in a Renaissance European painting, like drifting with you know these kind of like other figures kind of reclining against her as they all flowed up into these rays of light from the clouds. Yeah, and the implication is finally she is free and she's going to sin Japan to meet her love, to be
reunited or not. I don't know if they've ever been united before, to meet her love from Afar, the lord of Sinjapond.
Yeah, Yeah, an impressive ending here, because then we're left with Gokuin on the like the edge of this tremendous waterfall. And this is actually Igazoo Falls in Brazil, so there's not a Japanese location, but they needed something that just seemed like this cataclysmic, you know, this much water has been unleashed by demon Pond and to your point, the idea that the world has just been shaken and changed by it.
The entire landscape is transformed into these rocks and waterfalls, and only the belfry is left, the only structure of human creation left here is a reminder of the promise that was kept for so long and then broken.
Yeah, so quite a finish to the film.
So we've talked about a lot of the themes as we went through talking about the plot, but it's just so rich with things to think about the way the
movie treats the relationship between humans and nature. That there is a power in nature that is only kind of barely held back, and that we are ants compared to the power of nature, and we just operate with complete obliviousness to that power most of the time and don't respect it at all until we do something to screw it up and unleash the devastating potential of that power
upon ourselves. There's a lot about fidelity and duty, keeping promises, keeping to one's duties, and the difference between the kinds of situations people can be in, or the types of personalities that cause one to be to have fidelity to a promise or keep to a tradition versus wanting to
violate and break it. There are, as we were talking about just a minute ago, these political themes where I think it's doing something really interesting with like trying to deny a kind of bloodthirsty right wing politics the authority of associating itself with tradition, And I think that's an interesting move. Talking just I think it generally is about
that respecting tradition comes with a sense of humility. That's an important thing, like that one cannot actually respect tradition from a place of arrogance.
Yeah, I know, that's a great point.
Yeah.
I think in general, like this film is just such a fertile bed of ideas concerning these themes that you can I feel like you can rewatch it multiple times and you can sort of draw different connections each time. Yeah. So yeah, tremendous. Oh.
Also, one thing I wanted to revisit. I don't know if you have any thoughts on this. Maybe we'll just have to ponder it. But demon ponder it is that both this movie and Pale Flower have this seems like or maybe it's just these two movies, who know, who knows, they're the only two Shanoda movies I've seen, But I thought it was interesting that both of them have scenes of people talking themselves into or giving justifications for doing
what is clearly the wrong thing to do. That's a process that I find very interesting, like the justifications people come up with for doing what's wrong. But that both movies have scenes where characters dwell on this. You see them working themselves up into doing the wrong thing.
M yeah, yeah, that's a good point. And you know, we watch movies all the time where people do the wrong thing. If people just did the right thing, what kind of movie would you have?
Though?
Of course, sometimes people complain about that. They're like, oh, the characters in this movie, they were so stupid, they did the wrong things. But mistakes have to be made. That's what greases the wheels of narrative half the time.
Yeah, but I like that it's showing that it's not always easy to do the wrong thing. Sometimes it takes work. Yeah, like sometimes you got to really convince yourself.
Yeah.
Yeah, and yeah, so other things. Just to mention a few of the things I noted about Pale Flower. One thing that I really liked in the cinematography of Pale Flower, and I wonder if you see any connections here, is that in Pale Flower, we see a lot of shots of people through other people, like the subject people in scenes are in the background framed by people in the foreground.
Something about that seemed kind of significant, And I don't really know if there was an equivalent to that in Demon Pond, but you just wanted to throw it at you.
Having not seen that other film, You do you think it sort of frames the interconnectedness or social dynamics of different groups, because I could it would be interesting to go back and look at some of the especially the townsfolk scenes in this movie with that in mind.
Yeah, yeah, I guess that would be interesting. A lot of times it creates a feeling of social claustrophobia but also alienation. Like it something about the way these people are framed suggests that they are surrounded by people and can't get away, but also do not fit in and are not part of the group.
Oh wow, very much, very much on point with this film as well, that we see those themes explored multiple times.
Another thing that's pretty cool in Pale Flower is a focus on physical ritual, which you can definitely see in this movie. In Pale Flower, it's not religious ritual. There's no religion at all that I recall in that movie, but a big focus on ritualized gambling scenes. So the characters go to these gambling parlors and we see the cycle of the games repeat with these there are a lot of sights and sounds that happen in sequence over
and over, and they're kind of hypnotic. With the dealers in these gambling in these games, chanting as they call for bets, and the clacking of these cards as they go through to the next motion seem to very I don't know, I noticed a connection there with the emphasis on the physical process of ritual in this movie.
Interesting. Yeah, I don't know enough about say, American gambling culture. Really the comment I'm wondering, are we seeing something We're talking about something distinctly Japanese, because there certainly plenty of examples where like the Japanese version of the thing takes on like additional physical ritual in a very evocative way.
Like just thinking, this is not a maybe this doesn't compare greatly with what we're talking about, but I think of like cocktail culture in Japan, something I have gotten, I have had the opportunity to witness firsthand, with like the shaving of the ice and the way a drink is prepared and it takes on, it has a sort of theater all its own.
Yeah. Yeah, there's a feeling of care and attention taken at multiple steps than a process that are repeated over and over, and a big emphasis on interesting and pleasing repeated sites and sounds as we go through those steps over and over. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, so I recommend Pale Flower. Also, I'm, like I said, I'm a new Shinoda fan. Now I want to see all these movies, all right.
Well, as we close out here, we would love to hear from folks out there who have thoughts on other Shinoda movies or certainly Demon Pond. If you had the chance to see it back in the day and whatever form was available to you, or if you've had the chance to see it on the big screen or via the Criterion releases, let us know we would love to hear from you. We'd love to carry this discussion on
into future episodes of Listener Mail. Just a reminder for everyone out there that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. And we've been doing these episodes for a while while Now I was looking back, it's like, have we been doing like five years of Weird House cinema? Is that even possible?
Could it be?
Really?
I guess that's right.
Yeah, maybe so we've been doing it all wet as.
Like it just started. Really the past five years have been meant something.
Yeah, yeah, we started during the pandemic. I think yeah, we did yeah, early, early and pandemic. So at this point we've covered a slew of films. So if you want to go back and look at all of them, you'll find a full archive of Weird House Cinema episodes wherever you get your podcasts in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. Also, if you're on letterbox dot com,
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