2026年9月、清水崇監督による新しい『八つ墓村』が公開されました。
調べてみると、今回の新作まで含めて『八つ墓村』の実写映像化は、映画4本＋テレビドラマ7本。なんと計11種類も作られているそうです。
あの『白い巨塔』でさえ、映画1回＋テレビ5回の6回。
まあ、それだけ『八つ墓村』という物語には、何度でも映像にしたくなる魅力があるのでしょうね。
僕にとっての『八つ墓村』は、なんと言っても1977年版です。
小学生の頃、「祟りじゃー！」という映画のテレビCMがとにかく怖かった。
ところが『8時だョ！全員集合』でドリフがこのフレーズをネタにしたこともあって、今度は学校中で「祟りじゃー！」が大流行しました。
怖いのか面白いのか、もうよく分からない（笑）。
出演は、
寺田辰弥：萩原健一
金田一耕助：渥美清
森美也子：小川眞由美
先日、柴又へ行って寅さんを見たばかりだったので、「そういえば渥美清の金田一だったな」と思い出し、久しぶりに配信で観てみました。
『八つ墓村』って、子供の頃は単純に「ものすごく怖い映画」だと思っていました。
特に、頭に二本の懐中電灯をくくりつけた男が、夜の村を猟銃と日本刀を持って走り回る場面。
あの映像のインパクトが強すぎます。
もちろん僕は怖すぎて、小学生の頃には映画館では観られませんでした。実際に作品を観たのは、ずっと大人になってからです。
ところが大人になって見返すと、少し違って見えるんですよね。
横溝正史が描いたのは、幽霊そのものではなく、過去を抱え込んだ共同体の怖さだったのではないかと思います。
物語の背景には、1938年に岡山県で起きた「津山三十人殺し」と呼ばれる実際の大量殺人事件があります。
ただし『八つ墓村』は、その事件をそのまま小説化したものではありません。
横溝はそこに、戦国時代の落武者八人の惨殺、祟り、血縁、相続、財宝、鍾乳洞、そして現代の連続殺人を重ねました。
普通の推理小説なら、
殺人 → 捜査 → 犯人
です。
ところが『八つ墓村』は、
歴史 → 伝説 → 集団記憶 → 恐怖 → 殺人
という構造になっている。
ここが面白い。
村人たちは昔の惨劇を忘れたつもりでも、村そのものは忘れていない。
過去の出来事が「祟り」という物語へ姿を変え、何世代にもわたって残っていく。
これは、日本の「穢れ」や「御霊信仰」にもどこか似ています。
非業の死や災厄を、
殺した
↓
恐れた
↓
祟りとして語った
↓
祀った
という形で処理していく。
祟りというのは、単なる迷信ではなく、共同体が処理しきれない罪や不安を「物語」に変換する仕組みだったのかもしれません。
そして僕は、あの鍾乳洞も象徴的だと思っています。
地上には普通の村社会がある。
しかし地下には、血縁、欲望、財宝、そして隠された過去が眠っている。
まるで、
地上＝意識
地下＝無意識
です。
主人公が地下へ降りていくのは、単なる冒険ではない。
自分自身の出生と、村が隠し続けてきた記憶の深層へ降りていく旅にも見えるのです。
そして、何より題名がいい。
「八つ墓」ではなく、
『八つ墓村』。
本当に怖いのは墓ではない。
その墓の由来を、何百年も記憶し続けている「村」のほうなのです。
ちなみに横溝正史は当初、『七つ墓村』という題名も考えていたものの、「ななつばか」と読まれかねないため『八つ墓村』にした、という逸話も残っています。
一つ墓を増やしたことで、結果として日本ミステリー史に残る、忘れられない題名になりました。
横溝正史の世界では、殺人事件というのはしばしば、過去が現在に請求書を持ってやってくること。
『八つ墓村』は推理小説であり、怪奇小説であり、同時に、日本人が「死」「穢れ」「祟り」をどう物語へ変えてきたのかを描いた作品でもある。
横溝正史が『八つ墓村』を書いたのは、1949年（昭和24年）から1951年（昭和26年）です。原作から80年近く経ってもこの作品が何度も映像化され、そして今でも妙に怖い理由が、少し分かる気がします。
Yokomizo Seishi: The 1977 Version of Village of Eight Gravestones
In September 2026, a new film adaptation of Village of Eight Gravestones, directed by Takashi Shimizu, was released.
I looked it up and discovered that, including this latest version, the story has been adapted for live action no fewer than eleven times: four feature films and seven television dramas.
Even The Great White Tower, another hugely popular Japanese story, has had only six screen adaptations—one film and five television versions.
There must be something about Village of Eight Gravestones that keeps making people want to bring it back to the screen.
For me, there is no question: Village of Eight Gravestones means the 1977 film.
When I was in elementary school, the television commercial was terrifying. The words “It’s the curse!” were shouted over and over.
Then the comedy group The Drifters turned the phrase into a joke on their enormously popular TV show 8 o’clock! All Together Now!, and suddenly everyone at school was shouting “It’s the curse!”
It became hard to tell whether the movie was supposed to be frightening or funny. (Laughs.)
The cast included:
Tatsuya Terada — Kenichi Hagiwara
Detective Kosuke Kindaichi — Kiyoshi Atsumi
Miyako Mori — Mayumi Ogawa
I had just visited Shibamata to see Tora-san, and that reminded me that Kiyoshi Atsumi had also played Kindaichi.
So I decided to watch the film again on a streaming service for the first time in years.
When I was a child, I thought Village of Eight Gravestones was simply an unbelievably scary movie.
Especially that scene in which a man with two flashlights strapped to his head runs through the village at night, carrying a hunting rifle and a Japanese sword.
The image is unforgettable.
It was far too frightening for me to see in a movie theater as a child. In fact, I did not actually watch the entire film until I was much older.
But watching it again as an adult, I saw something rather different.
I began to wonder whether what Seishi Yokomizo was really depicting was not the horror of ghosts, but the horror of a community carrying its past with it.
The story is partly inspired by an actual mass murder that took place in Okayama Prefecture in 1938, known as the “Tsuyama Massacre,” in which thirty people were killed.
But Village of Eight Gravestones is not simply a fictionalized version of that event.
Yokomizo layered onto it the massacre of eight defeated samurai from the Warring States period, the curse that followed, bloodlines, inheritance, buried treasure, limestone caves, and a series of murders taking place in the present.
In an ordinary detective story, the structure is:
Murder → Investigation → Culprit.
But Village of Eight Gravestones has a different structure:
History → Legend → Collective Memory → Fear → Murder.
And that is what makes it so interesting.
The villagers may believe that they have forgotten the tragedies of the past.
But the village itself has not.
The events of the past are transformed into a story about a curse, and that story survives from one generation to the next.
There is something here that reminds me of the Japanese concepts of kegare, or ritual impurity, and goryō beliefs—the idea that the spirits of those who died unjustly or violently may return to cause disaster.
A violent death or catastrophe is processed in a sequence something like this:
Someone is killed.
↓
People fear what happened.
↓
The event becomes a story about a curse.
↓
The spirit is enshrined.
Perhaps a curse is not simply superstition.
Perhaps it is a way for a community to transform guilt, anxiety, and unresolved trauma into a story it can live with.
And I think the limestone cave is symbolic as well.
Above ground, there is an ordinary village community.
But beneath the ground lie bloodlines, desire, treasure, and the secrets of the past.
It is almost as if:
The surface = consciousness.
The underground = the unconscious.
When the protagonist descends into the cave, it is more than an adventure.
It can also be seen as a journey down into the deepest layers of his own origins—and into the memories the village has tried to keep buried.
And then there is the title itself.
Not Eight Gravestones,
but Village of Eight Gravestones.
What is truly frightening is not the graves.
It is the village that has remembered the story behind those graves for hundreds of years.
There is also an interesting story about the title. Yokomizo initially considered calling the novel Village of Seven Gravestones, but apparently worried that the Japanese title might be misread as Nanatsu-baka, which can sound like “seven fools.” So he changed it to eight.
Adding just one more gravestone resulted in one of the most unforgettable titles in the history of Japanese mystery fiction.
In Yokomizo’s world, a murder is often the past arriving in the present to collect a debt.
Village of Eight Gravestones is a detective story and a tale of the supernatural.
But it is also a story about the way Japanese people have turned death, ritual impurity, and curses into narratives that can be passed down through generations.
Yokomizo wrote Village of Eight Gravestones between 1949 and 1951.
Nearly eighty years after the original novel was written, the story continues to be adapted for film and television—and it still manages to feel strangely frightening.
I think I now understand a little better why.
