Sasori: The Eyes of the Scorpion

Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion

            Every filmgoer has their favorite. Their favorite movie, favorite genre, favorite director, favorite star… But there is a difference between favoritism and obsession. Where your favorite may be a ready answer if someone ever asked, your obsession is something that you can go on at length about, even volunteering without being asked at all. Your obsession is not necessarily your favorite because you didn’t pick it; it may have actually picked you. An example: My favorite genre is horror, but my obsession is film in general. My favorite movie might be Halloween (1978) by my obsession is Cannibal Holocaust (1980).

            “So, who is your favorite actress?”

 I can’t answer that question because I have so many actress’ I am in love with. I admire the strength of Carrie Fisher and Jennifer Lawrence, the almost impossible elegance of Keira Knightley, and I can’t help but adore Noomi Rapace, especially in her most famous role as Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009). But then there are the actresses that I am absolutely obsessed with, and they all have the curious distinction of being best known for exploitation cinema from all over the world. There are three that stand out in particular for me. Barbara Steele, especially in her Italian gothic horror heyday, is one. Soledad Miranda, whose allure I’ve discussed in a previous essay on Jess Franco’s masterpiece Vampyros Lesbos (1970), is another. But the third is what I call my favorite obsession: Japanese ice queen Meiko Kaji. Of all the exploitation vixens in cinema, she captures my attention more than any other. Her combination of steely resolve, tender vulnerability, natural beauty, and of course her dead cold stare make her one of the most captivating screen presences in history.

Meiko Kaji is perhaps best known in the United States for her roles as a woman scorned out for revenge against the world of men in various yakuza and chanbara films from the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Yakuza films are the more familiar of the two genres, being essentially Japanese gangster movies. The more unique Chanbara is the Japanese term for ‘sword-fighting movie’, in other words, the samurai film. Quite simply, pictures about samurai and sword fights. Perhaps the most classic example of the genre is Akira Kurosawa’s epic achievement Seven Samurai (1954). These movies have a far-reaching influence on classics worldwide, from A Fistful of Dollars (1964) to Star Wars (1977).

Few such films, however, have become pop culture touchstones as instantly as Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003). Teeming with homages to classic exploitation and art cinema as well as quite possibly millions of references to pop art both obvious and obscure, the maverick director’s flick about a neo-samurai assassin seeking revenge against her former master is as close to a modern masterpiece as the chanbara genre is ever likely to have.

The most influential film on Tarantino’s work, yet perhaps one of the least well-known in America, is Toshiya Fujita’s exploitation epic Lady Snowblood (1973). The story is startlingly similar, about a woman – played with an inimitable icy glare by Kaji – whose family is killed and she embarks on a journey of vengeance against those responsible. She spills gallons of bright red blood without saying so much as a word, leaving a traceable path of bodies and hacked off limbs in her wake. Watching it, one begins to feel as though this is what Tarantino meant to make, except it was completed and released almost exactly thirty years earlier.

Lady Snowblood spawned a rather good sequel, Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance (1974), but Kaji’s film career was in full swing at that point. She had already had headlining roles in both the Stray Cat Rock and Female Prisoner Scorpion series’. Watching any of these films, it’s actually quite difficult to pinpoint which of them really establishes the actress’ status as a cult icon. There are just so many great characters and performances to choose from. Going back to the beginning is as good a place to start as any.

Kaji in Lady Snowblood

Yasuharu Hasebe is the director often credited with first recognizing Kaji’s potential as a starlet when casting her in Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss (1970). However, it was her starring role in Teruo Ishii’s The Blind Woman’s Curse (1970) that originally caught the attention of producers at Toei Studios. Prior to this, Kaji had mostly played bit parts. She appeared in Retaliation (1968) – Hasebe’s sequel to his violent yakuza thriller Massacre Gun (1967) – and in the second installment of the Outlaw Gangster VIP series.

In The Blind Woman’s Curse, Meiko Kaji plays the leader of a yakuza gang who is plagued by a murderous, vengeful curse involving a blind woman and a black cat. It’s curious that her first objectively successful role has Kaji cast as a villain, since the great majority of her subsequent exploitation parts have her playing a determined feminist anti-hero. Still, her presence was impressive enough to turn heads and Hasebe quickly hired her to play a much larger part in Delinquent Girl Boss. The success of that film spurred the Stray Cat Rock series, and opened the path for a career for the starlet.

Kaji in Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss

Though she headlined a short-lived series with Wandering Ginza Butterfly (1972) and Wandering Ginza: She-Cat Gambler (1972), ultimately her real breakout was as Nami Matsushima, the steely-eyed antihero of Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion (1972). Here she cemented her reputation as a proverbial ice queen of the silver screen. The Female Prisoner Scorpion series ran for four films with Meiko Kaji, and two after her (New Female Prisoner Scorpion #701 [1976] and New Female Prisoner Scorpion: Cellblock X [1977]). Considering that these subsequent films are never talked about, it’s clear that the power behind the series lays with Kaji.

She makes Nami – called Scorpion or Sasori by the other inmates – a sort of female quasi-take on Clint Eastwood’s ‘Man with No Name’, speaking very little over the course of four films whilst meting out revenge and justice in equal measure. Her performance helps the character transcend exploitation to become a feminist icon; a woman who takes all the pain and torment that men and the male establishment have to dish out, and turns it back on them tenfold.

Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion melds several genres of exploitation to become something wholly unique. At once it is a vigilante actioner, a rape-revenge thriller, and a women-in-prison film. It centers around Nami Matsushima, prisoner #701, who was sent to prison following an attempt to kill her detective boyfriend after he set her up to be gangraped as part of a sting operation to advance his career. What follows is a sort of Cool Hand Luke scenario in which the male warden and prison guards try their hardest to break Nami and ultimately face her vengeance. Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972), Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable (1973), and Female Prisoner Scorpion: #701’s Grudge Song (1973) continue her story as she breaks in and out of prison several more times in the name of righteousness and retribution. Together these flicks comprise one of the grandest tales of revenge and redemption in cinema.

There are of course many elements that combine to make the Female Prisoner films work so well. The assured direction by Shun’ya Ito (save for Grudge Song, directed by Yasuharu Hasebe) lends an imaginative flourish rarely seen in exploitation. The cinematography and glowing colors contribute an almost psychedelic atmosphere. Naturally, the violence and sex is plentiful and well-done to the point that the scenes of rape feel almost artistic. None of these things however, would be half so effective were it not for Meiko Kaji’s central performance.

One of the most indelible images in the series happens early in the first film, during the retelling of Nami’s backstory of rape and betrayal in a sequence that recalls Japan’s tradition of Kabuki theatre. Lying on a glass floor, backlit by neon lights, her clothes in tatters, Kaji silently glares in cold anger at the camera. It’s a display of fury so convincing that the stylization of the sequence hardly matters. From then onward the film takes on a sense of earnest as we the audience root for her to overcome her captors and wreak havoc on those who wronged her. She manages to make us share in her anguish and rage.

This moment highlights Kaji’s eyes as the most effective component of her performance. This is perhaps what was missing from Clint Eastwood’s approach as the Man with No Name, as he seemed to be frozen in a perpetual squint. As Nami, Kaji may be quiet, patient, and resilient, but she is by no means stoic. With her eyes, she communicates all the rage, sadness, pain, and loneliness she feels without ever saying so much as a word. This approach draws a compelling character out of Nami, who otherwise might be simply another cookie-cutter heroine in a slightly better-than-average grindhouse shocker series. Kaji would continue to employ her less-is-more aesthetic in Lady Snowblood, but it is Female Prisoner Scorpion that showcases her talent best.

Kaji's eyes - Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion

Perhaps the actress’ greatest draw is her status as both a cult icon and a symbol of female empowerment. It almost seems impossible that an actress can emerge as a feminist heroine from a film where she is beaten, raped, degraded, and tortured, but here we are. Though plenty of moral majority blowhards can rant and rave about the misogyny these films and those like them, the truth is they are beacons of tried and true girl power!

Throughout the Female Prisoner series, Kaji is gangraped twice, starved, worked nearly to death, tortured with a hot lamp, burned with boiling soup, violated with a police baton, choked, strung up, and beaten with fists, feet, clubs, gun stocks, and other assorted implements. The sheer variety of atrocities suffered by her character acts as a sort of catalogue of the indignities and evils women have suffered by men throughout the ages. Nami takes these punishments and more, and in doing so seems to shoulder the weight of women throughout history. She transforms their suffering into justice and uses her pain to empower herself to vengeance.

Men in the Female Prisoner Scorpion seem only capable of functioning when women are subjugated in chains. According to them, female sexuality is only allowed to exist when they permit it, and then it is relegated either to possession (as when Nami’s boyfriend takes her virginity) or sexual assault. The scene in which Kaji seduces a female guard undercover as a fellow inmate is a subversion of the patriarchal status quo. In the absence of men, she awakens the young guard’s dormant sexuality and thus makes her an ally to her cause and an enemy of the men who employ her.

Meiko Kaji plays this scene of Sapphic seduction with the same coolness as she plays her scenes of torture or revenge, telegraphing from the start that this is not your typical women-in-prison lesbian sex act. Like with the numerous sexual assaults in the series, this moment serves as an impetus to empower the women involved instead of degrading them as the men in charge would intend.

The ending of Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion is perhaps the most directly feminist statement of all. When Nami finally escapes her detention, she immediately sets about putting the injustices she’s suffered to rights. When she meets her betrayer, her former lover, she is dressed like a widow, completely in black. If ever there was a moment of sheer feminism in paracinema, it must be Scorpion dressed for her lover’s funeral before he even dies!

Over the course of the series, Kaji goes from avenger, to protector, to rescuer, full circle to avenger once again. Though the conclusion of Female Prisoner Scorpion: #701’s Grudge Song is as nihilistic as they come, finding Nami on the run and alone as ever after a betrayal by yet another lover, it stands in solidarity with female independence. She silently soldiers on, unbent and undeterred by her hardships. The ultimate strength of femininity.

As the soundtrack intones, “A woman’s life is her song – her song of vengeance.”