With a career beginning in the 1960s, Meiko Kaji became a Japanese screen legend. From playing a Yakuza leader in Blind Woman’s Curse to playing the tough, betrayed heroine of Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion, or embodying vengeance as Yuki in Lady Snowblood and its sequel, Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance, Meiko Kaji became widely known for her formidable, silent, action-forward characters and her unforgettable, piercing stare. Her work in Lady Snowblood, including her singing contributions to its soundtrack, became a direct inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s own revenge epic, Kill Bill.

American Cinematheque and Beyond Fest joined forces for a five-film tribute to Meiko Kaji’s influential career. Included in the retrospective were screenings of Lady Snowblood and its sequel, Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion, Blind Woman’s Curse (all at LA’s historic Egyptian theater), and Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss (at Santa Monica’s Aero Theater). For the retrospective, That Hashtag Show’s Jeff Ewing interviewed Meiko Kaji about her illustrious career.

Perfecting Strong Silences in Female Convict #701: Scorpion

The silent, action-forward, powerful characters she was known for were Kaji’s own design, particularly in her early career. “The decision not to speak in the role of Matsu [in Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion] was one of the conditions that I put out to the producers and the directors for me taking that role,” she says, “so in regards to my actions, and in terms of performance, the sensibility of what I was going through internally was very important.” As a consequence, she leaned into the character’s physicality. “I think that was reflected in my eyes, and in the performance with my eyes,” as well as her bodily performance in general.

“I consider action to be part of a performance, so I took care in every action, every act that I did,” she says, “And even in you’re just acting with movements, you need the emotion behind it.” It was, indeed, a very physical role, one that required her character to fight and withstand physical torture. “I would say that the physical endurance of it all was the most challenging,” she says.

Meiko Kaji Made Film History with Lady Snowblood

Her aptitude with on-screen combat fueled an excellent performance in Lady Snowblood, with excellent sword combat:

“It was so difficult, so challenging, and the reason was that there was hardly any time for rehearsals. Barely any, for instance, compared to TV shows [where] the actors have the time to train quite a lot, and carefully. But that was not the case at the time, the way the films were made back them. We were going at the pace of about 2 weeks to shoot one film; that was the pace.”

Simultaneously, director Toshiya Fujita worked hard to make the combat something unique. “The director,” she says, “was very careful not to shoot those swordfight scenes in the formulaic ways that are often seen in the period films of the time. So he thought that doing it in one take and in long take would be much better, that tension and the rawness of it would make it more impactful, but it was quite difficult. That’s how we did it, and I did manage to do it in one take.”

Lady Snowblood Journeyed Westward To Influence Kill Bill

Lady Snowblood went on to have an impactful Hollywood legacy. As she notes in meeting Tarantino for the first time, “Tarantino and I would eventually go on to meet, and he would often tell me that without Lady Snowblood there would be no Kill Bill.”

Kaji sang the theme song for both the Female Convict Scorpion series (“Urami Bushi”) and Lady Snowblood (“Flower of Carnage”), and both songs were included on Kill Bill‘s soundtrack, the latter in an iconic showdown between The Bride and O-ren Ishii. “The way it happened was that the composer of the song ‘Flower of Carnage’ gave me a call, and he said, Some Hollywood filmmaker is asking us if it’s possible to use the song in their film, and he asked me, ‘is that okay?’ And I asked her, ‘Well, if that’s okay with you, it’s fine with me.’

She admittedly had a few doubts over whether or not it would work for a Hollywood film. “2 years later, I completely forgot about that phone call,” she explains. “But when Kill Bill was released, the Japanese distributor asked me to come see the screening. And I was quite worried at that time [about] how a very traditional Japanese pop-folk song would fit into a very cool, Western film… I was worried to watch it.”

After seeing the final inclusion, it assuaged Kaji’s fears. “But once I saw that scene, the screening, and I heard that 1st refrain of my song, well, I got goosebumps… I think that’s a testament to Tarantino’s keen perception.”

Meiko Kaji Risked Death For Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance

Lady Snowblood‘s sequel, Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance, was an excellent follow-up, concluding on an epic showdown involving a staircase sword fight that spilled into an open courtyard.

“What I can say about the shooting of that particular scene is that we were shooting under the worst of conditions,” she says:

“For instance, that staircase was so narrow, and I was wearing geta sandals, so I was petrified that the geta sandals would get stuck on the edge of the stairs. And I think I was really risking my life going down those stairs. I don’t know if you can believe this, but we did that descending the stairs shot in one take, so I think if I had tripped, I wouldn’t be here today. I think when you look at the scene now, you can sort of see the fear on my face for that particular performance.”

With new audiences continuing to discover Kaji’s work, we asked the legend which of her many films she’d recommend to newcomers approaching her oeuvre for the first time. “I would say a more underrepresented film of mine is The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, which was based on the playwright Chikamatu’s work. He’s known for writing kabukis. That’s the film I would choose.”

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