Hairstylist
Filme basado en cuatro historias del escritor Lafcadio Hearn. "Pelo negro": un samurái no soporta a su mujer y la abandona por una princesa. Años después vuelve a casa para realizar un terrible descubrimiento. "La mujer en la nieve": dos leñadores se refugian de una tormenta de nieve en lo que parece ser un cobertizo abandonado. "Hoichi": el fantasma de un samurái le pide a un músico ciego que toque una balada en la tumba de su señor. "En la taza de té": un samurái se asusta ante la visión de un hombre reflejado en su taza de té.
Hairstylist
In this first episode, we are introduced to Takezo, what Musashi used to be before he became the man of legend. His beginning are not exactly auspicious. He sides with the Toyotomi at Sekigahara, and as a result finds himself on the losing side of the historic battle. He and his friend Matahachi manage to escape the slaughter although the latter is wounded in his leg. They stumble across the young Akemi who makes her living with her mother Oko by robbing corpses of their armor and anything else they can sell. Oko takes it into her head to seduce Matahachi, which she does first by skillfully sucking the gangrene from his blood, and then just by sucking.
Hairstylist
A successful textile industrialist from the provinces, who is beloved by his employees for his kindness, cannot find a wife because of a disfiguring birthmark on his face. Even the courtesans in Yoshiwara refuse to entertain him, until an indentured peasant prostitute, Tamarazu, takes the unsavoury assignment and treats him with brash tenderness.
Hairstylist
The adopted son of an Osaka courier falls in love with a prostitute and, discovering that she is about to be purchased by a client, steals money from his employer to redeem her. Hunted criminals, the two young lovers take flight to Yamato, but, as in Chikamatsu's other domestic tragedies of love and duty (known as sewamono), they must be pursued and their passion destroyed by death. Favourite Uchida themes, such as the indenturing of a prostitute (cf. YOSHIWARA; A BLOODY SPEAR AT MT. FUJI), and his characteristic emphasis on performance and theatrical artifice re-emerge here; but the daring device of having Chikamatsu appear as a character - not unlike having Shakespeare interpolated into a film adaptation of one of his plays - is just one of many surprises this remarkable film holds. “Extraordinary” (Donald Richie).
