Demon Pond

A traveller arrives at a remote mountain village parched by drought, looking for a friend who disappeared there. Near the village lies Demon Pond, and the belief holds that the dragon living in it will flood the whole valley if the bell is not rung three times a day. The young couple who took on the ringing, Yuri and Akira, have kept to the task for years. As the drought drags on, the villagers start looking for another solution. Masahiro Shinoda directed, from a play by Izumi Kyoka. At the centre of the film is a casting decision: Tamasaburo Bando, an onnagata master of the kabuki stage, plays both Yuri, the village woman, and the dragon princess of the pond, and these were his first roles on film. In the second half the film crosses entirely into the language of theatre, with a world beneath the water, talking creatures and stylised sets. Shinoda abandons realism deliberately, which is why the film stands less as an adaptation of a folk tale than as the stage carried into cinema.