Kaibyô nazo no shamisen

Sumiko Suzuki is a performer, who grows jealous of her shamisen-playing lover. They believes he is paying too much attention to aristocratic Kinue Utagawa, who rescued his cat. So she kills the car and Miss Utagawa disappears. Then, however, eerie things happen. When she plays the shamisen, lights go out, and she sees a bakeneko a malign spirit in the shape of a cat; a ghostly Miss Utagawa also appears. As she. Grows more erratic, people begin to take notice and come to some vengeful conclusions.

My reading indicates there was a spurt of horror movies that began around 1936, and Miss Suzuki was a leading actress in many of them. About 1940, Japanese censorship began to crack down on the genre.... although many of the elements were incorporated into children's fantasy stories. Like many horror movies, this requires some familiarity with the surrounding legend. However Kiyohiko Ushihara plays nicely with the lighting and optical effects to achieve a sense of weirdness. Perhaps he was associated too much with the disfavored genre. His directorial career, which had been going since 1921, was slowing down. This was his last movie until he made another in 1949, and then no more. He died in 1985, aged 88.