Kuroneko
1968 film by Kaneto Shindō
Kuroneko (Japanese: 藪の中の黒猫, Hepburn: Yabu no Naka no Kuroneko; lit. "A Black Cat in a Bamboo Grove"; or simply The Black Cat) is a 1968 Japanese jidaigeki horror film directed by Kaneto Shindō, and an adaptation of a supernatural folktale. Set during a civil war in feudal Japan, the film's plot concerns the vengeful spirits, or onryō, of a woman and her daughter-in-law, who are raped and murdered by a band of samurai. It stars Kichiemon Nakamura, Nobuko Otowa, and Kiwako Taichi.
Kuroneko was shot in black-and-white and in TohoScope format, and distributed by Toho. It was not dubbed in English, but was released with subtitles in the United States in 1968.
Plot
Yone and her daughter-in-law Shige, who live in a house in a bamboo grove, are raped and murdered by a troop of samurai, and their house is burned down. A black cat appears, licking at the bodies.
The women return as ghosts with the appearance of fine ladies, who wait at Rajōmon. They find the samurai troop and bring them to an illusory mansion in the bamboo grove where the burnt-out house was.
“Kuroneko” enters the record as 1968 film by Kaneto Shindō. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Kuroneko, film and Kaneto can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2698704. The first chronological checks are 1968.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kuroneko” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.