An actress who appears next to the likes of Pam Grier on Quentin Tarantino’s Mount Everest of female action stars, Meiko Kaji is best known for her roles in Lady Snowblood, Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion and Stray Cat Rock.
Tarantino loved the themes for those first two films — which Kaji sang herself — to feature them prominently on the soundtracks of Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2, perhaps as a more conspicuous nod to their undeniable influence on the two-part revenge opus. Her body of work has exerted an undeniable impact on world cinema, thanks to stylish visuals, ruthless action, and most of all her mesmerizing acting. Kaji said it herself recently during a public Q&A in Los Angeles: “I don’t think any other actress is quite as good at playing killers.”
Appearing at Beyond Fest at the American Cinematheque, Kaji was selected by programmers for the first-ever in-person U.S. retrospective of her incredible filmography, presenting screenings of the above films as well as Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance, Blind Woman’s Curse, and Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss. Each double feature was accompanied by conversations with prominent filmmakers and film scholars, and in two cases, led to live a capella performances of her most famous movie themes, “The Flower of Carnage” and “Urami Bushi.”
Before speaking to filmmaker Sean Baker (Anora) and film critic Jen Yamato on stage about her work, Kaji spoke to Screen Rant about the honor of being celebrated by American genre film fans, and about the influence her work made on cinema over the past 55 years (Blind Woman’s Curse, the earliest of the films screened in the series, was first released in 1970). In addition to reflecting on the legacy she created, she discussed her history in the Japanese film industry, and offered her tips on giving the perfect, piercing stare to cower your enemies.
Meiko Kaji Didn’t Plan On Becoming An Action Icon
Screen Rant: You’re so well-known for all the genre movies that you made in the ’70s. Was there a sub-genre in particular that was your favorite?
Meiko Kaji: These genres are full of murderous roles that most actresses don’t play, and that’s what makes it tough. But I didn’t want to stop there. I stopped playing Nami Matsushima [in Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion] after four films, because as an actor, I wanted to try a variety of different things. But in Japan, once you have a hit, you get an image, and only roles similar to that come your way. So that’s the toughest part. I’m grateful, and it’s an honor to be recognized for the genre films, but I don’t want to end there as an actor in my career. That’s one of the reasons I’m not particular to any genre. To a certain extent, television was a place where I was able to play a variety of roles, so I think it was on television that I truly learned acting.
Screen Rant: These films feature these really tough, resilient women while also subjecting them to a lot of violence. What were your thoughts, either then or now, about that juxtaposition?
Meiko Kaji: I don’t think I ever considered any roles as particularly feminine or masculine. That was not really my concern. I always looked at my role as a human role. I was always looking at the humanity of each role.
Screen Rant: Well, you have been canonized as an action heroine alongside Pam Grier by people like Quentin Tarantino. Do you look at your work, even in retrospect, as feminist?
Meiko Kaji: It was not a conscious decision for me in the context of how I was making the film back then and the choices that I had. It wasn’t really a choice that I had, to seek out feminist roles back then. But for some reason, my image was playing very strong characters. So, even when I would play the mother role, I was always expected to be a very strong mother. Even nowadays, a recent role that I had [on What Did You Eat Yesterday] was a mother to a gay son, and it was a very socially conscious TV show in Japan and the gay son would grow up to be a lawyer and a very upright citizen. So I can’t really put it into words. What does it mean to say it in terms of feminism? I don’t know.
Screen Rant: In Lady Snowblood, did you have an opportunity at all to develop a relationship with the actress who played your mother or the actress who played you as a young girl?
Meiko Kaji: I’ve actually never met either of them on set.
Meiko Kaji On Acting, Singing, And That Piercing Stare
Screen Rant: In Female Convict #701: Scorpion, was there, perhaps in spite of the fact that your character was so adversarial to everybody in that movie, a sense of camaraderie at all among yourself and the other women who acted with?
Meiko Kaji: It doesn’t matter what film, for some reason, whenever I am all set, I don’t talk much. Otherwise, you can’t have a back-and-forth. In film, it’s rare to shoot one scene in one take. If we were shooting a film of us conversing, it would take 10 takes maybe. And it wouldn’t always be chronological. The cameras would move. So when I’m on the screen and there’s a close-up, I’m actually acting towards the lens, so if I don’t pay close attention, if I don’t see how the other person is acting, it won’t work. I’m very sensitive about that sort of thing. So I don’t have any pointless chatter anymore.
Screen Rant: I understand that you chose not to work internationally because you did not feel comfortable working in other than your native language. Were there opportunities in retrospect that you maybe wish you had taken or that you might have had the opportunity to work with somebody really exciting in another country?
Meiko Kaji: I was born and raised in Japan, and I came across this job and spent my youth in Japan’s most dynamic era. So, the Japanese language is very important for me, and it’s something that I cherish, acting and singing in Japanese. I love the Japanese language, and I think it’s a wonderful, fluid language, and there are things that cannot be expressed in English or French that you can [in Japanese]. And that subtlety is something that I love very much, so it is very important for me to continue to embrace that language within my acting roles. I did Netflix’s YuYu Hakusho recently, and the actors involved are all Japanese, and if that had been English, I don’t know if that’s something that I could have taken on.
Screen Rant: How has your musical career either challenged or fulfilled you in a different way than your acting?
Meiko Kaji: I made my debut at Nikkatsu, a film company. [Actors like] Yujiro Ishihara worked there, and when they appeared in their own films, they automatically released a record. There wasn’t a single Nikkatsu actor who hadn’t released a record, and they were affiliated with [record label] Teichiku. So, if I had a scene where I sang in a film, it was recorded. From that point on, I had no choice but to sing. A lot of the film production studios also owned the theaters, and back then we were expected to do intros before the film. And I was a young actress, so there wasn’t much for me to say in those introductions. So, the company would make a directive to basically force me to sing. At the time, I didn’t have my own songs yet, but the sheet music of my seniors was [available] so I had no choice but to choose the songs I could sing from among them. So in that sense, whether I could sing or not because of the company’s orders, I was still a rookie, so I was forced to sing. And I’ve been singing ever since.
Screen Rant: After years of destroying men, what is the secret to your perfect, piercing stare?
Meiko Kaji: When you read a script for a film, it basically consists of stage directions and lines. There’s not a single word saying, “your role is like this, so do it like this.” When I was starting out, I really struggled with the idea of how to put life into the dialogue, into the words. But one day, I was watching TV and I saw a news reporter interview a woman who was involved in a tragedy. She actually wasn’t saying anything, but I saw through her expression what she was going through and her emotions. And that’s when I realized that a film is communicated through not so much a dialogue, but a sensibility, expression through the face. I realized that the camera really does reflect the heart, and that was the revelation for me, and that really reflected on my acting.
