Tag: Sanae Ohori

Sister Street Fighter (女必殺拳, Kazuhiko Yamaguchi, 1974)

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As the Japanese cinema industry continued to decline in the face of competition from television, there was perhaps paradoxically more space available for small-scale genre films. Shinichi Chiba had ushered in a new age of unarmed combat with his Bodyguard Kiba karate movies. The Street Fighter series followed hot on its heels and was enough of a hit for the studio to take notice. They suggested a new spin-off line that would feature a female action star with Chiba appearing in a supporting role and so Sister Street Fighter (女必殺拳, Onna hissatsu ken) was born.

Producers apparently first wanted Taiwanese-born Hong Kong actress Angela Mao who had starred with Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon by which the film is clearly influenced. Angela Mao was, however, unavailable, which is what led them to take a chance on Chiba’s then 18-year-old protégé Etsuko Shihomi. Shihomi had joined his Japan Action Club out of high school to study stunts, martial arts, and gymnastics and had only limited acting experience but soon proved up to the challenge of carrying a movie as a female action lead. 

Koryu is the sister of a martial arts champion who has gone missing in Japan. She then finds out from his boss that he was actually an undercover narcotics agent trying to break a Japanese drug ring. As Koryu’s mother was Japanese and she still has family in Yokohama, the police inspector thinks she’d be a perfect fit to head out there, find out what’s happened to her brother Mansei (Hiroshi Miyauchi), and maybe take out the drug dealers too. 

In some ways, it’s an interesting subversion of the Sinophobia often found in Japanese films of this era that this time it’s a half-Chinese woman squaring off against Japanese drug dealers. Her brother was apparently so upset about not being able to stop the drugs flooding Japan that he decided to do something reckless that directly led to his disappearance. The Hong Kong police also have a second operative, a woman, working inside the gang but have lost contact with her. In contrast to Koryu, Fang Shing (Xie Xiu-rong) has been sent in as a classic honey trap to use her femininity as a weapon by becoming the boss’ mistress to get the lowdown on the gang. But as a consequence, Fang Shing has also become addicted to drugs which the boss uses as a means to control her. 

Koryu, by contrast, immediately stands up against male patriarchal control by beating up a bunch of guys that were trying to hassle her in a bar. Nevertheless, Mansei’s martial arts master says that her brother was hoping she’d get married and have a “normal life”, which does seem like quite a chauvinistic thing to say and especially to the martial arts-obsessed Koryu. Even so, he introduces her to another young woman, Emi, who got into Shorinji Kempo when Mansei saved her from being raped. These skills do after all give them the means to defend themselves against an often hostile and violent society along with granting them a greater independence than they might otherwise have.

Still, there are a selection of strange villains on show with death by blowgun and ex-priests along with the Amazon Seven team of Thai kickboxers and “Eva Parrish”, apparently the karate champion of the Southern Hemisphere. The action is quite obviously influenced by Hong Kong kung fu films and most particularly Enter the Dragon, though to a lesser extent Shaw Brothers in the warring schools subplot that sees the Shorinji Kempo love is power philosophy challenged by the gang’s very own martial artist, who feels he must wipe them out to overcome his humiliation in being defeated. Nevertheless, Koryu effortlessly takes out the bad guys as she battles her way towards saving her brother, whom the gang have started experimenting on in an effort to acquire more complex data about tolerance and safe levels for consumption of drugs. The bad guys have a full on lab in their basement where they’ve come up with an innovative solution to the smuggling issue by using wigs! It’s all quite surreal and cartoonish even when it starts getting grim, but rest assured Koryu is here to sort it all out, and sort it out she will.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

School of the Holy Beast (聖獣学園, Norifumi Suzuki, 1974)

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“Why is sex wrong?” a rebel nun enquires, hinting at the hypocritical atmosphere of the convent which comes to stand in for the patriarchal superstructure of the contemporary society. That it does so might in a way be surprising given that Christianity has relatively little cultural relevance in Japan save its stance as a persecuted religion during the feudal era. Director Norifumi Suzuki jumps on the nunsploitation bandwagon but does so with a baroque romanticism mixed with punkish youthfulness as two young women find themselves rebels in the house of God.

They are both there for reasons largely unconnected to religion. 18-year-old Maya (Yumi Takigawa) is searching for the truth behind her birth and her mother’s death, while Sister Ishida (Emiko Yamauchi) claims she’s been sent there by a wicked stepmother. Ishida also kicks up a stink during a class by questioning the truth of immaculate conception which is quite odd for someone who wanted to become a nun, while otherwise punished for drinking whisky in the middle of the night. Punishment does seem to be the main thrust of their religious practice with the transgressions of “adultery”, which includes all impure thoughts, murder (!), and theft taken the most seriously. On her first night at the convent Maya is woken by the sound of another nun furiously whipping herself though in fairness there just isn’t much else to do. 

Suzuki rams home the erotisicm of ritual in the baptism Maya undergoes during her initiation as a nun in which she is totally nude and instructed to stand with her arms out as if on the cross in front of the altar. She must then bend to kiss the crucifix before receiving her veil as a bride of Christ. The nuns talk of lives of eternal virginity while burying themselves in asceticism in an effort to deny their natural desires but have to a degree sublimated their lust in violence. The most common form of punishment is whipping, while Maya is later tortured with thorns and artfully battered by roses. When one nun steals money in guilt for having abandoned her impoverished family to begin her spiritual journey to Christ, she confesses herself to a priest who offers her the same amount so that she can help her family and ease her conscience by returning it. But in reality the priest has tricked her. He resents that she feels as if her sin has been forgiven and she may forget her guilt, cruelly telling her that she will never hear the voice of God before going on to violate her. 

The act of betrayal, of himself breaking the code to which he should subscribe, is only a echo of an societal corruption which allows men to abuse their power often with the complicity of the women around them such as the abess who has long been in love with him. Kakinuma (Fumio Watanabe) is a man whose faith has been shaken. He bears the scars from exposure to the atomic bomb in Nagasaki which is centre of Christianity in Japan. After telling Hisako (Yayoi Watanabe) that God will not see her, he asks if anyone has actually seen him and why he does nothing when his people suffer. 

Both he and the abbess are trapped in a hell of their own making, though as the girls both say the convent is akin to a prison. When Hisako’s sister visits her they talk to each other through glass as if she were a prisoner, though in many ways she is oppressed by her own repressed desires while those of the other nuns have begun to drive them quietly out of their minds and into sadomasochistic fury. This peculiar madness is only deepened by the arrival of a new Mother Superior who returns from Europe insistent on rooting out “witches” in league with the devil. Suzuki signals the absurdity by playing a chorus of elation when a tortured nun wets herself over a tablet featuring a crucifix in the inversion of a bizarre Edo-era ritual designed to identify secret Christians who were at that point illegal. 

To break free of the covent and return to her liberated life in contemporary Japan as seen in the cheerful opening sequences of her date with Kenta (Hayato Tani), Maya must also free her mother’s ghost and the souls of her sisters by forcing Kakinuma to reckon with his crimes if in the most ironic of ways. Suzuki shoots with febrile romanticism, the pastel colours of the church lending it a hellish glow even before the resurrection of a ghost enacts karmic revenge in a feverish atmosphere of romantic jealously and masochistic repression.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

*Norifumi Suzuki’s name is actually “Noribumi” but he has become known as “Norifumi” to English-speaking audiences.