Japan Society Screens 13 Rare Movies Starring Actresses Ayako Wakao, Meiko Kaji and Mariko Okada Source: Japan Society Special Thanks to Joel Neville Anderson Up next from New York City`s Japan Society is the 2010 Globus Film Series “Mad, Bad… & Dangerous to Know: Three Untamed Beauties”, presenting 13 rare movies of actresses Ayako Wakao, Meiko Kaji and Mariko Okada. At the opposite end from the stereotype of docile Japanese women— heroic good mothers, chaste daughters and hardworking faithful wives— the three actresses embodied the transgression of limits, breaking rules, flouting norms and generally upsetting everyone. This series explores the idea of unconventional beauty that these spellbinding actresses created through an unparalleled body of films. Both Wakao and Okada were muses and inspiration for two major film directors, Yasuzo Masumura and Kiju (Yoshishige) Yoshida, respectively, while Kaji navigated between filmmakers, a wild card of Japanese cinema at the time. “Mad, Bad… & Dangerous to Know" runs from March 31st to April 18th. Tickets for regular screenings in the series are $11/$7 members, students & seniors. Japan Society is located at 333 East 47th Street between First and Second avenues (accessible by the 4/5/6 at 42nd Street-Grand Central Station or the E and V at Lexington Avenue and 53rd St.) For reservations visit www.japansociety.org/buy_tickets or call the box office at 212-715-1258. For further information call 212-832-1155 or visit the Japan Society website.

Ayako Wakao: Passion Made Flesh

TATTOO (??, Irezumi, aka THE SPIDER TATTOO) Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 7:30 PM 1966, 86 min., 35 mm, color, in Japanese with live English subtitles. Directed by Yasuzo Masumura. With Ayako Wakao, Akio Hasegawa, Gaku Yamamoto. Print courtesy of The Japan Foundation with permission from Kadokawa Pictures, Inc. Opening screening followed by the DRESSED TO KILL! after party with drinks and hors d`oeuvres. Guests are encouraged to dress as their favorite femme fatale, show off their wicked tattoos and fancy kimono, and model the latest haute couture prison wear. Ticket prices for this event and screening are $15/$10 members, students and seniors. A dark erotic tale from the director of BLIND BEAST, TATTOO follows the descent of a woman whose extreme beauty and ferocious nature bring her to the abyss. Otsuya, the daughter of a wealthy pawnbroker, charms her weak-willed lover into eloping with her. As they try to escape, she is abducted and sold to a geisha house by unscrupulous ruffians. Soon, she catches the eye of a tattoo master who uses her body as a living surface for his unholy art: he engraves into her flawless ivory flesh a large and monstrous spider tattoo. As if under the invisible influence of its evil force, Otsuya grows ever more wicked as she excels in the trade she has been forced into, eventually consuming the lives of the unwitting men she holds in her thrall. Did the tattoo artist transform her into the creature she has become, irredeemably spoiling her soul and skin, or in fact unleash the beast within? Adapted by Kaneto Shindo from the acclaimed 1910 short story by Junichiro Tanizaki. RED ANGEL (????, Akai Tenshi) Thursday, April 1, 7:30 PM 1966, 95 min., 35 mm, B&W, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Yasuzo Masumura. With Ayako Wakao, Shinsuke Ashida, Yusuke Kawazu. Print courtesy of The Japan Foundation with permission from Kadokawa Pictures, Inc. In RED ANGEL, Ayako Wakao gives a performance of extraordinary focus and intensity as Sakura Nishi, a deceptively naive nurse sent to the Manchurian front during the Sino-Japanese War. Tending to the massive number of injured Japanese soldiers, Sakura fights her own desperate battles as she finds herself the prey of her compatriots’ unwelcome assaults. "Through the fierceness of its expression, sex becomes the symbol of the will to live," eminent critic Tadao Sato wrote of this controversial film. Before long, her selfless attempts at ministering to a soldier who raped her bring her into the company and service of Dr. Okabe (Shinsuke Ashida), a morphine-addicted surgeon who in turn becomes dependent on her, despite (or because of) his impotence. A romance fleshed from the grief of his sexual failure, with its foreshadowing of death, blooms between the two, while men continue to fall on the battlefield. Is Sakura, as she herself suspects, fated to doom those she most wishes to save? Is she both an angel of mercy and a dealer of death? 18+ This film is unrated, but may only be viewed by persons 18 years of age or older. SEISAKU`S WIFE (????, Seisaku no tsuma) Friday, April 2, 6:30 PM 1965, 93 min., 35 mm, B&W, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Yasuzo Masumura. With Ayako Wakao, Takahiro Tamura, Nobuo Chiba. Print courtesy of The Japan Foundation with permission from Kadokawa Pictures, Inc. On the eve of the Russo-Japanese war at the beginning of the 20th century, small-town girl Okane has married an old wealthy man to escape a life of poverty. Upon her husband’s sudden death, she withdraws to her small farming village where she stoically submits to public opprobrium and lives the silent sullen life of a pariah. Along comes Seisaku (Takahiro Tamura), the local “model youth”, returning from his army duty: while she is the shame of the village, he is the pride of his community. Nevertheless, the disreputable beauty and the honorable patriot begin an unlikely and tumultuous love affair that will eventually render him as marginal as she. In this film, Masumura`s fetish actress Ayako Wakao delivers one of her best performances ever: she won both the Kinema Jumpo Awards (the Japanese Oscars) and the Blue Ribbon Awards prize for Best actress for this role. A WIFE CONFESSES (??????, Tsuma wa kokuhaku suru) Friday, April 2, 8:30 PM 1961, 91 min., 35 mm, B&W, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Yasuzo Masumura. With Ayako Wakao, Hiroshi Kawaguchi, Eitaro Ozawa. Print courtesy of The Japan Foundation with permission from Kadokawa Pictures, Inc. Possibly the most intriguing film directed by Masumura, A Wife Confesses is both a film noir study of the hypocrisies of marriage and a lush psychological thriller featuring a wondrously ambiguous female protagonist played by Ayako Wakao, simultaneously a sympathetic victim and one of the most sophisticated femme fatales ever portrayed in cinema. Young widow Ayako Takigawa (Ayako Wakao) goes on trial for the murder of her husband in a mountaineering accident. She stands to gain five million yen from his life insurance—that is, if she is cleared of the charge. Her version of the facts: the fall that claimed the life of her abusive husband nearly dragged her and his student Koda along to their deaths; Ayako had no choice but to cut the rope. Did the widow kill her brutal spouse in cold blood so that she and young Koda could enjoy the money from the policy that the student had urged Professor Takigawa to buy?

Meiko Kaji: A Mad, Bad Unholy Easter Weekend

FEMALE PRISONER #701: SCORPION (??????????, Joshuu 701-go: Sasori) Saturday, April 3, 3 PM 1972, 87 min., digibeta, color, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Shunya Ito. With Meiko Kaji, Rie Yokoyama, Isao Natsuyagi, Fumio Watanabe. Print courtesy of Media Blasters with permission from Toei Co., Ltd. Stabbing. Shooting. Scalding. Raping. Rioting. Feral sapphic sex. Beating. Burning. And copious amounts of female nudity. Shunya Ito’s film set the ultimate template of the "Women In Prison" (W.I.P.) movie genre. Expertly riding the fine line between arthouse imagery and car crash-like anti-aesthetics, the storyline of FEMALE PRISONER #701: SCORPION follows the quest for vengeance of Nami Matsushima, an unjustly imprisoned woman, to whom Meiko Kaji lends her unique star presence. Used, abused and betrayed by her first love, a corrupt cop, “Matsu”, endures a variety of exotic punishments that would make even Cool Hand Luke cry, and eventually becomes “Sasori” (Scorpion), a byname for vengeance. Prepare yourself for lock-down, this is sexploitation cinema at its most ferocious and classiest, easily transcending the B-film revenge-tale that serves as its pretext. FEMALE PRISONER #701: SCORPION spawned three direct sequels, a pair of spin-offs, and a 2008 Hong Kong-Japan co-produced remake. 18+ This film is unrated, but may only be viewed by persons 18 years of age or older. STRAY CAT ROCK: SEX HUNTER Saturday, April 3, 5 PM 1970, 85 min., 35 mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Yasuharu Hasebe. With Meiko Kaji, Rikiya Yasuoka, Tatsuya Fuji, Jiro Okazaki, Mie Hanabusa. Print courtesy of Vitagraph Films with permission from Nikkatsu Corp. If you haven’t seen this classic hallucinatory girl gang flick, with no actual sex hunting, but ample sex and hunting (and a politically radical racial subplot), you really haven’t lived. Directed by the late sexploitation master Yasuharu Hasebe, SSTRAY CAT ROCK: SEX HUNTER stars cult film legend Meiko Kaji as Mako, a girl gang leader sporting the best hat in film history and wielding Molotov cocktails like a pro. Mako’s gang assists The Eagles, an all-male gang of typical young delinquents led by the cooler-than-thou Baron (Tatsuya Fuji), speeding around in army jeeps left by the American occupation, hanging out in über-hip clubs, swindling cash from businessmen to buy sexy pants, and generally indulging in testosterone-fuelled ruckus-raising. Life rocks, rolls and swings by nicely for the cheerful youths until one of the Eagles loses his girl to an African-American/Japanese man. Baron suddenly develops a serious fetish for racial purity and goes on a crusade against all the local “halfs,” mixed-race Japanese citizens. The trouble is: Mako has a soft spot for dark-skinned hunk Kazuma, a newly arrived Half who is searching for his long-lost sister. Sides will be chosen and rampage will be wrought in this full-on war of the sexes as Kaji’s Mako takes the opinion that sexual slavery and hunting mixed-race people are definitely not okay. 18+ This film is unrated, but may only be viewed by persons 18 years of age or older. LADY SNOWBLOOD: BLIZZARD FROM THE NETHERWORLD (????, Shura-yuki-hime) Saturday, April 3, 7:30 PM 1973, 97 min., 35 mm, color, in Japanese with live English subtitles. Directed by Toshiya Fujita. With Meiko Kaji, Toshio Kurosawa, Masaaki Daimon. Print courtesy of Toho Co., Ltd. A baroque blood-fest of a picture, deftly blending samurai, ninja, yakuza, and manga motifs, LADY SNOWBLOOD is a revenge tale with many a stupendous turn and a major twist: the ruthless seeker of righteous retribution is a kimono-clad beauty (Meiko Kaji) with stern regal features and avenging-angel eyes, who makes grown men cry in the night. Born in a dark hellhole of a prison, Yuki “Snowblood” Kashima was raised by an ironhanded priest who trained her in the arcanes of sword fighting. Dressed and hardwired to kill, she will find and wreak her bloody vengeance upon the four villains who butchered her family. Quentin Tarantino drew on LADY SNOWBLOOD as the inspiration for KILL BILL VOL. 1 (2003). As impressive as one might find Tarantino’s film, fans should definitely experience the formal beauty of the original, a mad mix of shameless grindhouse exploitation and surreal arthouse extravaganza driven by a full-blooded devotion to unstinting gory action. 18+ This film is unrated, but may only be viewed by persons 18 years of age or older LADY SNOWBLOOD: LOVE SONG OF VENGEANCE (????: ????, Shura-yuki-hime: Urami Renga) Sunday, April 4, 3 PM 1974, 97 min., 35 mm, color, in Japanese with live English subtitles. Directed by Toshiya Fujita. With Meiko Kaji, Yoshio Harada, Juzo Itami. Print courtesy of Toho Co., Ltd. This sequel to LADY SNOWBLOOD, fuelled by the sheer force of overkill—the disturbingly joyful violence and the stylized application of physical power—finds the iconic killing machine / smooth-skinned beauty, Yuki “Snowblood” Kashima (Meiko Kaji) imprisoned for the ghastly vengeance she waged on her family`s behalf. She has sent 37 people to hell and though most of them were hardened criminals and cold-blooded murderers, that simply cuts no ice with the judge: she is sentenced to death. While waiting her turn to the gallows pole, a white-gloved secret agent makes Yuki an offer she cannot refuse: assassinate an enemy of the state (who is also a friend to the common people) in exchange for her pardon. Can the “child of the netherworld” see her sins redeemed at the cost of her life, or will she ignore the plight of the powerless—at the cost of her conscience? A sequel that offers both the savage amusement of foul violence and a razor-sharp political edge. 18+ This film is unrated, but may only be viewed by persons 18 years of age or older. FEMALE CONVICT SCORPION JAILHOUSE 41 (????? ??????, Joshuu sasori: Dai-41 zakkyo-bo) Sunday, April 4, 5 PM 1972, 90 min., 35 mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Shunya Ito. With Meiko Kaji, Fumio Watanabe, Kayoko Shiraishi. Print courtesy of Toei Co., Ltd. JAILHOUSE 41 finds the deadly Matsu, better known as “Sasori” (Scorpion) in a realm shut off from all hope and goodness: the darkest depths of a maximum-security prison, where God Himself dares not peek—or so it would seem. Taking her first chance at escape, she and six other female prisoners embark on a crazed rampage through a ghost town. The battered past of the women is revealed through a pop-art prism of kabuki theatre influences and frenzied baroque camerawork, as they trade surreal acts of sadistic vengeance with their pursuers and the men who fall in their path. Highly stylized even for the standards of this exceptional franchise, Shunya Ito gives free reign to his experimental tendencies in this sequel to FEMALE PRISONER #701: SCORPION, offering a brutally compelling film, haunting and intoxicating in equal measure. 18+ This film is unrated, but may only be viewed by persons 18 years of age or older.

Mariko Okada: The Discreet Charm of the Adulteress

IMPASSE (???, Hono to onna, aka FLAME AND WOMEN, FLAME OF FEELING) Wednesday, April 14, 7:30 PM 1967, 101 min., 35 mm, B&W, in Japanese with live English subtitles. Directed by Kiju Yoshida. With Mariko Okada, Isao Kimura, Mayumi Ogawa. Print courtesy of Shochiku Co., Ltd. As the title implies, Mariko Okada and Kiju Yoshida`s fifth collaboration is a moral furnace of a film, stoked with guilt and vengefulness. A labyrinthine exploration of the decomposition of a middle-class couple, the bewitching, fractured narrative artfully shuffles the time scheme, as the protagonist, Ritsuko (Okada, in a highly nuanced and restrained performance), stumbles out of the sluggish half-life of her sterile marriage and towards a troubled search to restore her emotional self. After giving birth to a son through artificial insemination (presented here as science fiction), she starts nourishing a forbidden but irrepressible desire for the biological father of her child. THE AFFAIR (??, Joen) Thursday, April 15, 7:30 PM 1967, 101 min., 35 mm, B&W, in Japanese with live English subtitles. Directed by Kiju Yoshida. With Mariko Okada, Yoshie Minami, Tadahiko Sugano. Print courtesy of Shochiku Co., Ltd. With this radical erotic “anti-melodrama”, Kiju (Yoshishige) Yoshida became not only the cineaste of women but the cineaste of one woman: Mariko Okada, starring here as an unhappily married woman confronting the decadent legacy of her mother, who made no secret of her affairs with younger men. Okada faces this inheritance by initiating sexual relationships herself, forming a strange love triangle between her, a sculptor who had been her mother’s lover, and a rough construction worker to whom she surrenders with the reluctant passion of a Japanese Lady Chatterley. Events unfold—flashes of warmth, wintry blasts of ire—in a patient procession of details and descend calmly into the uncontrolled. All the while Yoshida’s cautious camera hovers over the quakes of jealousy and tidal surges of desire, filmed like the progress of a haunting.

WOMAN OF THE LAKE (??????, Onna no mizuumi) Sunday, April 18, 6:30 PM 1966, 94 min., 35 mm, B&W, in Japanese with live English subtitles. Directed by Kiju Yoshida. With Mariko Okada, Shigeru Tsuyuguchi, Tamotsu Hayakawa. Print courtesy of Shochiku Co., Ltd. Based on a novel by Nobel prize-winning author Yasunari Kawabata, Kiju Yoshida’s film approaches the topic of sexual encounters in the manner of a fogbound documentary and the nocturnal gravity of a requiem. In this surrealist erotic story reminiscent of Antonioni’s visual universe and some of Bergman’s formal experiments, it is indeed hard to tell where character ends and texture begins— so much of the film seems to unfold near the skin. Here, Okada’s trademark character— a woman of quiet intensity and strong will, yet fumbling for undefined sexual fulfillment— takes a lover to escape the somber dissatisfaction of her loveless marriage. One night, she allows him to take nude pictures of her, but the negatives are soon stolen and she faces threats of blackmail from an anonymous stranger. She complies with the blackmailer’s demands and travels to recover the negatives, embarking on a journey that soon aligns her darkest desires with those of her shadowy aggressor. TWO WIVES (???, Tsuma futari) Sunday, April 18, 8:45 PM 1967, 94 min., 35 mm, color, in Japanese with live English subtitles. Directed by Yasuzo Masumura. With Ayako Wakao, Mariko Okada, Koji Takahashi. Print courtesy of Kadokawa Pictures, Inc. For the first time outside Japan, Masumura’s TWO WIVES will be on the silver screen. When did you last see a film that offered two great roles for women? Everything you need to know about TWO WIVES is there in the faces of the two actresses: Mariko Okada and Ayako Wakao, who hold the camera’s attention without strain or scheming. After a random encounter at a bar, two couples collide. Two men, two women, embroiled in a love-and-hate drama that threatens to engulf them. The sexual anxiety between the interwoven couples tautens right up to the nearly unbearable tension of the climax, in this rare masterpiece by the director of MANJI and BLIND BEAST.

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About Japan Society

The Japan Society Film Program offers a diverse selection of Japanese films, from classics to contemporary independent productions. Its aim is to entertain, educate and support activities in the Society`s Arts & Culture programs. The Film Program has included retrospectives of great directors, thematic series and many U.S. premieres. Some original film series curated by Japan Society have traveled to other U.S. venues in tours organized by the Film Program. Since 2007, the Program has presented the annual summer JAPAN CUTS Festival of New Japanese Film in collaboration with the New York Asian Film Festival. The Monthly Classics series are yearly events inviting guest curators to organize film series with once-a-month screenings. Established in 1907, Japan Society has evolved into North America`s major producer of high-quality content on Japan for an English-speaking audience. Presenting over 100 events annually through well established Corporate, Education, Film, Gallery, Language, Lectures, Performing Arts and Innovators Network programs, the Society is an internationally recognized nonprofit, nonpolitical organization that provides access to information on Japan, offers opportunities to experience Japanese culture, and fosters sustained and open dialogue on issues important to the U.S., Japan, and East Asia. Japan Society 2009-10 Film Programs are generously supported by the Lila Wallace-Reader`s Digest Endowment Fund. Additional support is provided by the Globus Family, Yoshiko and Tim Schilt, David S. Howe, Dr. Tatsuji Namba, Joshua S. Levine and Nozomi Terao, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a State agency.