Masaki Kobayashi’s legendary 1965 Japanese ghost-story anthology is coming back to Western cinemas this autumn in a brand new 4K restoration of its original three-hour cut, courtesy of Janus Films – and if you have ever seen Kwaidan on a big screen, you already know this is one of those films that absolutely deserves the treatment.
The new restoration will make its U.S. theatrical premiere at New York’s Film Forum on September 11, 2026, before expanding to cinemas around the country. and Janus is also already showing the restoration as a 4K DCP, with the company confirming that the DCP is the 183-minute original three-hour cut, rather than the shorter 161-minute Cannes version.
And yes, that means one of the most visually spectacular films ever made is about to get even more spectacular.
Four Ghost Stories and an Absolutely Bonkers Visual Style
If you’ve somehow managed to avoid Kwaidan, the basic setup is – Kobayashi takes four Japanese ghost stories, adapted from the writings of Lafcadio Hearn, and these stories include “The Black Hair,” “The Woman of the Snow,” “Hoichi the Earless” and “In a Cup of Tea”, and although they are separate tales, they share that strange, dreamlike atmosphere that makes Kwaidan feel completely unlike almost anything else from Japanese horror.
And this is where the 4K restoration becomes particularly exciting, because Kobayashi didn’t make a film that relies on darkness and shadows to create its horror., quite the opposite – Kwaidan is massively colourful, deliberately artificial and almost theatrical, with enormous painted backgrounds, stylised sets and beautiful cinematography turning the whole thing into an otherworldly nightmare.
Janus describes the film as a quartet of ghost stories featuring colourfully surreal sets and luminous cinematography, which is basically the polite way of saying this thing looks fucking incredible.
It Already Had a Criterion Release
The Criterion Collection has already released the film on Blu-ray, and the current Criterion catalogue still lists Kwaidan as part of its Masaki Kobayashi collection.
The existing Criterion edition is based around the longer 183-minute version, so naturally, the big question now becomes – Does this mean we’re getting a new Criterion 4K UHD release?
Well, probably don’t start smashing that pre-order button just yet.
Criterion and Janus are closely connected companies with different roles – Janus handles theatrical and nontheatrical distribution, while Criterion handles home-video releases – and Criterion’s own FAQ confirms that relationship, but I can’t find an official Criterion announcement for a new 4K Kwaidan disc yet.
Trailer
A Very Different Kind of Japanese Horror
Kwaidan is such a fascinating film, and Kobayashi wasn’t really interested in making a conventional horror film, as yes, it is usually classified as horror, and yes, there are ghosts, curses, supernatural punishment and some properly unsettling imagery, but Kobayashi himself was uncomfortable with reducing the film to the horror label.
The film is much more interested in spirituality, mortality, human weakness and the collision between the material and supernatural worlds, and that comes through in the stories themselves.
People make selfish decisions, people break promises, eople become obsessed with appearances, wealth or status, and then the supernatural turns up to remind them that perhaps they shouldn’t have been such absolute dickheads.
It’s classic ghost-story morality, but Kobayashi presents it with such extraordinary visual control that the result becomes something closer to a moving painting than a traditional anthology horror movie.
One of the Most Important Japanese Horror Films Ever Made
It’s also worth remembering just how unusual Kwaidan was when it arrived – Kobayashi had already spent years making politically charged dramas before suddenly producing this enormous, highly stylised supernatural epic.
The film was adapted from Lafcadio Hearn’s collections of Japanese folklore, with Hearn’s versions of Japanese ghost stories providing the foundation for Kobayashi and screenwriter Yoko Mizuki.
The cast is also stacked with major Japanese performers, including Tatsuya Nakadai, Rentarō Mikuni, Michiyo Aratama, Takashi Shimura and Keiko Kishi, and the film wasn’t exactly some tiny genre production either – Kwaidan was an ambitious, expensive production for Japanese cinema of the period, with the enormous sets and carefully controlled colour palette becoming a huge part of its identity.
It went on to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, while Kobayashi won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes for the film in 1965.
More Asian horror movie news.
- Kathmandu Horror Film Fest Returns to Kathmandu for Three Days of Horror, Fantasy and Folklore
- Ju-On: The Grudge (2002) Gets a New 4K Restoration Trailer
- Takashi Miike’s Gozu Is Finally Getting the 4K UHD Treatment
- Ta Khon: The Cursed Mask Makes Its Latin American Premiere in São Paulo
- A Chinese Ghost Story Trilogy Is Getting the 4K Treatment From Arrow Video This October
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