Text of an intro given at the Prince Charles Cinema, 5th October 2023
There can be few faces in Japanese pop culture as iconic as that of Meiko Kaji. Contemporary Western audiences may have been first introduced to her indirectly through her undeniable influence on Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill which not only featured the song, performed by Kaji herself, which appears the beginning and end of each instalment in the Female Prisoner #701 Scorpion series that launched her into stardom but also drew inspiration in particular from her role as another vengeful heroine, Lady Snowblood.
Kaji had begun her career at Nikkatsu under her birth name of Masako Ota where she generally played a supporting roles in the studio’s signature output of rebellious youth films. By the early 1970s, however, the studio system that had dominated the Japanese cinema industry was in terminal decline with attendance figures falling drastically in the face of competition from television. In response, Nikkatsu shifted its approach wholesale into what it termed “Roman Porno”, essentially softcore sex films that were nevertheless screened in ordinary cinemas and were intended for a mainstream audience as opposed to “pink film” which was a more rigorously defined genre screened in dedicated venues and aimed quite squarely at male viewers.
Kaji was one of many actresses who didn’t fancy joining the Roman Porno revolution and so jumped ship, firstly for television but then accepting an offer to join rival studio Toei which then had a giant hole to fill as its major star, Junko Fuji who had led the Red Peony Gambler series and more or less bankrolled the studio, had retired from acting to marry a kabuki performer, though she would later resume her career under the name Sumiko some years later. Kaji was considered a potential replacement but Toei really had its thinking back to front. The studio’s stock-in-trade at that time had been the ninkyo eiga, tales of gangster chivalry usually set before the war, but audiences had already become tired of the genre and were looking for something more contemporary which was certainly something Kaji could provide if she were allowed to create her own space rather than attempt to fill that left by Junko Fuji.
Unlike rival studios such as Nikkatsu, Toei had a reputation for churning out very cheap period and contemporary action dramas that were largely aimed at a younger male audience and were, in that sense, already heading towards the same territory as Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno in their salacious taste for sex and violence. Now, we have to be a bit careful in using the term “pink film” which is itself something clearly defined by an adherence to a certain set of rules and was generally independently produced not put out by a studio, but we also have to acknowledge that the retrospective term “pinky violence” which was coined later rather than something actively used by Toei’s marketing department takes its from name the erotic associations of pink cinema coupled with the violence inherent in Toei’s exploitation films.
Just as Nikkatsu had shifted into Roman Porno, so Toei pushed its line of female-led revenge and girl gang movies largely built around its roster of stars which aside from Kaji included Reiko Ike and Miki Sugimoto who were often played off against each other as studio rivals at times even appearing in the same film bringing that offscreen baggage with them as in the first instalment of the Terrifying Girls’ High School series or the genre highlight Criminal Woman: Killing Melody. Kaji was however largely uninterested in this kind of cinema and reluctant to take on the role of Female Prisoner #701 Nami Matsushima especially after clashing with neophyte director Shunya Ito who made no secret of his lack of confidence in her ability to play it while she objected to his demands for nudity which was after all what she’d left Nikkatsu to avoid.
Nevertheless, the pair later developed a fruitful working relationship bonding over their shared desire to move beyond the confines of the studio’s exploitation cinema into something with more artistic weight. More than any other of the films later tagged with the Pinky Violence label, the Scorpion series undermines the problematic “male gaze” inherent in the genre and found a strong female following who saw in Matsu an embodiment of their own silent rage towards a patriarchal society.
Even so, as much as the Pinky Violence films can be seen as empowering they were also largely made for male titillation and structured in ways men can enjoy the transgressive qualities of female rebellion and aggression. Many of them are rape revenge dramas which necessarily feature scenes of sexualised violence that are sometimes presented in salacious rather than harrowing terms if otherwise sympathising with the heroine’s desire for revenge which is generally successful though it may incur further cost or moral ruin. The contradiction reaches its height in Norifumi Suzuki’s visually stunning, psychedelic foray into nunspolitation School of the Holy Beast which sees a liberated young woman enter a convent to gain revenge for the death of her mother who was killed by repressed nuns during a sexualised punishment session. The confines of the convent are styled like a prison and the film plays out like a women in prison film yet just as in the Female Prisoner #701 Scorpion series, it’s only really a metaphor for the patriarchal superstructure under which all women are imprisoned.
One of the key directors of the genre, Norifumi Suzuki’s films are often highly stylised though in general like most of Toei’s output at the time most pinky violence movies often aim for a kind of heightened realism If one tempered by the hallmarks of 70s exploitation. By those standards, the film you’re about to see tonight is highly unusual in its bold visual style which incorporates elements of surrealism along with composition influenced by that of manga and the gothic overtones of the classic horror movie. By the end of the original Scorpion series, Matsu has taken on a mythical, supernatural quality of her own as an embodiment of rage and vengeance even at times rising from the water like the iconic long-haired ghosts most familiar to contemporary audiences from films like The Ring. Kaji would eventually move on from the series, but Toei could not, attempting to reboot it on more than one occasion though without the original incarnation’s striking visuals nor the intensity of Kaji’s unearthly glare. More than fifty years on from its original release Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion continues to resonate in an age where not nearly enough has changed.
Windows on Worlds 