When Kurosawa learned that a producer he knew had just commissioned a feature-length horror film for Kansai Telecasting Corporation, he recommended Shimizu for the job of directing one or more sections of the film. To complete this task, Shimizu wrote several scripts, each roughly thirty minutes in length, only to be asked to make two brief three minute segments ("Katasumi" and "4444444444"), as the television movie was intended to be an anthology of short films. After being edited together, the collection of four shorts (one of which was helmed by Kurosawa) was titled "Gakkô no kaidan G", which roughly translates to "School Ghost Story G" ("G" supposedly standing for "Great"). It was first broadcast on Kansai TV on September 27, 1998, and ran for around 70 minutes, meaning that Shimizu contributed to just under 10 percent of the finished product.