Lady Snowblood (1973)

Lady Snowblood (1973)
aka: Lady Snowblood: Blizzard from the Netherworld; Snow of Blood; Blood Snow; Lady of Blood
Original Title: 修羅雪姫
Translation: Lady/Princess Snowblood

 

Starring: Meiko Kaji, Toshio Kurosawa, Masaaki Daimon, Miyoko Akaza, Shinichi Uchida, Takeo Chii, Noboru Nakaya, Yoshiko Nakada, Akemi Negishi, Kaoru Kusuda, Sanae Nakahara, Hôsei Komatsu, Hitoshi Takagi, Eiji Okada, Kô Nishimura
Director: Toshiya Fujita
Action Director: Kunishiro Hayashi

 

Lady Snowblood is one of those classic chanbara films that has influenced a lot of filmmakers and other artists, most notably Quentin Tarantino on his Kill Bill movies. Its reputation precedes it in most martial arts cinema circles as being one of the best examples of the 1970s grindhouse fare from Japan. As such, it is frequently of danger of over-adulation, in which newbies who hear and read about may expect a beautiful woman in a kimono to be getting into Crazy 88’s style of swordfights every few minutes. It is not that, although it does feature a beautiful woman in a kimono—the gorgeous Meiko Kaji—hacking people up with a sword.

In 1867, Japan left the so-called “Edo Period”—or the Tokugawa Shogunate ended—after a few hundred years and entered the “Meiji Period,” in which the country was opened up to foreign relations and the country entered the process of modernization. Obviously, such a transition was not always a peaceful one and at one point, there were a series of uprisings known as the Tax Revolts. The government started an obligatory military conscription program for boys as young as 16 in order to quell these rebellions. A lot of rural villages did not relish the idea of giving up their sons—I assume for both personal and practical purposes—and some dishonest, enterprising spirits caught on to this fact.

Charlatans showed up in villages claiming that they knew a way “around” the conscription laws, in which for a small value—270 yen—they could keep their sons out of the army. After fleecing the villagers of their hard-earned money, they filled the villagers’ heads with lies that anyone dressed in white Western clothes were the Japanese equivalent to an American draft agent. Villagers would naturally fall upon these guys and kill them with the understanding that they were saving their kids from forced military service.

And that is just what happened in 1874 in a place called Koichi Village. A gang of four bandits set up an anti-conscription racket and convinced the ignorant villagers that anyone dressed in white was out for their sons. And so an innocent teacher named Gô Kashima (Massaaki Daimon of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla) gets cut down by the bandits while the villagers bash in his son’s head and leave him for dead. Gô’s wife, Sayo (prolific actress Miyoko Akaza), is a bit of a looker, so three of the bandits—one of them is a woman—make sure to rape her up real good. One bandit ultimately takes her with him to Tokyo to serve as his plaything and help out at his restaurant. Sayo ultimate murders him, which earns her a life sentence at a women’s prison.

Distraught that she won’t be able to carry out her revenge in person, Sayo does the next best thing: she seduces the guards on a regular basis until she gets pregnant. The child, Yuki, will then inherit the mission of avenging the wrongs committed against the Kashima family. Sayo dies from complications in childbirth, and a pickpocket named Tajire (Akemi Nigishi, of Sex & Fury and King Kong vs. Godzilla) raises the child, along with a warrior-priest (Kô Nishimura, of Yojimbo and 13 Assassins). The latter trains little Yuki in the martial arts and swordsmanship until she is 20 years old, at which point her mission begins.

Yuki does not know how to find the three surviving bandits, so she gets herself some eyes and ears to help her. More specifically, she kills a corrupt magistrate named Genzo Shibayama (Hosei Komatsu, of Ohyaku, the Female Demon), who is known for harassing the famous Beggar’s Clan. This ingratiates her with the clan’s leader, Matsuemon (Hitoshi Takagi, of Hanzo the Razor: The Snare), who agrees to have his contacts all over the country keep their eyes out for her targets. So let the killing begin…

The backstory for Lady Snowblood is a lot more involved than it was for its Hong Kong remake, Broken Oath. The latter was set in the Qing Dynasty and involved a very generic attempt at a rebellion, but the former is rooted in actual Japanese history. It makes the story a lot more political than it might have been, as it points out that the modernization of Japan (and the introduction of capitalism) came with a price, in that bandits and other awful people could legitimately get rich and gain power. You could argue that feudalism similarly exploited people, but now the more enterprising people had foreign powers to back them up. Moreover, any semblance of a chivalric moral code, even if it only existed in the abstract, was abandoned in the pursuit of profit, which guaranteed power.

To draw out the comparisons between this and Broken Oath even further, it is rather revealing how these two movies—and possibly the Japanese and Chinese cultures--treat religion. In the latter movie, Angela Mao’s character learns kung fu from the Shaolin Temple, but it is obvious that the monks are wary about her character’s tendency to violence. Moreover, there are lots of kung fu movies in which a character goes to the temple to train for revenge, only to be admonished the whole time by the monks that such a pursuit flies in the face of Buddhism. Compare with Lady Snowblood, where a priest specifically trains her for revenge. Not only that, he specifically teaches her to set aside any sort of emotion that doesn’t involve vengeance. The best moment that encapsulates this idea is when the protagonists put into effect a plan to draw out one of her targets by having a journalist-novelist write about Yuki’s adventures, and the priest tells Yuki: “Be patient. If you take a day to rest while your plan for revenge is in effect, Buddha will forgive you.” You would never see a Shaolin Abbot say something like that.

The main draw for a film like Lady Snowblood is to see the beautiful Meiko Kaji prance about in kimonos with a determined look on her face cut down her enemies. At that, this movie excels. Kaji is an important actress for genre fans, having also showed up in the Female Prisoner Scorpion films and the second Wandering Ginzu Butterfly movie. She also was a singer, providing the vocals for this movie’s music. Nerd note: her songs enjoyed a resurgence after the success of Kill Bill and she came out of singing retirement to record a new album. Kaji doesn’t have Angela Mao’s martial prowess, or Yuen Woo-Ping’s team to make her look good a lá Uma Thurman, but she certainly has a screen presence.

Speaking of Yuen Woo-Ping, the action scenes here were choreographed by Kunishiro Hayashi, whose only other credit on the IMDB is the 1984 Hollywood film Ghost Warrior, which involves a samurai coming to life in modern-day Los Angeles. The fights themselves are competent, but don’t expect Meiko Kaji to fight an entire army like Ogami in the Lone Wolf and Cub series. Instead, this is more of the sort of film you watch the revel in the bloodletting, as each slice unleashes gallons of red paint, which the camera lovingly lingers on as if the carnage itself was sexier than the sword technique that caused it. And to be honest, there are some beautiful compositions of violence, like when Yuki cuts down one of her enemies on the seashore, and you see the body lying in the water, repeatedly “baptized” by the red-stained water that the waves keep pushing on him.

If you go into this movie expecting something along the lines of the Lone Wolf and Cub movies, you’ll probably be disappointed. If you, however, can appreciate Meiko Kaji’s beauty and no-nonsense performance, some good photography, and a large helping of Dario Argento-esque gore, than Lady Snowblood is the film for you. I don’t think I consider it one of the classics, but it’s pretty darn good at what it does.

This film is part of a series called "Oh, the Insanity! Oh, the Japanity!" (click the "banner" below):