JAPANESE SWORDSWOMEN VIII:
A BALLAD OF REVENGE
 Junko Miyazono was the titular character of Quickdraw Okatsu (Yoen dokufu-den: Hitokiri okatsu, 1969) & reprised the character in the immediate sequel Yoen dokufu-den: okatsu kyojo tabi (1969).
Miyazono was also the the first to play Ocho Inoshika, in Delinquent Boss & Inoshika Ocho (Furyu Bancho: Inoshika Ocho, 1969). Such roles helped pave the way for the entire "pinky violence" era of the early '70s, including Ocho's softcore exploits starring Reiko Ike in Sex & Fury (Furyo anego den: Inoshika Ocho, 1973) & its immediate sequel.
The two Quickdraw Okatsu films are among the best samurai swordswomen films ever made. Okatsu became her signature role, & at the height of Miyazono's popularity there was even a doll marketed of her dressed in male samurai garb as the Okatsu character.
Miyazono's characters were almost as violent as Ito Ogami of the Lone Wolf with Cub films. Both of the Okatsu films were directed by Japan's greatest ghost story director Nobuo Nakagawa. While these aren't supernatural he brings some of the atmospherics to bare.
A year earlier than Okatsu, however, another director, Yoshihiro Ichikawa, had launched Miyazono's action-star fame with Oyaku, the Female Demon (Yoen dokufu-den: Hannya no Oyaku, 1968), recently & oh so belatedly given a dvd release with English subtitles, retitled Female Demon Ohyaku, adding the unnecessary "h" to her name. Oyaku is a much darker character than Okatsu but of the same furious brand.
The three films, though only two are actually related, are packaged as a trilogy called the "Legends of the Poisonous Seductress" series. Missing from the series is Miyazono's remaining supercharged nihilistic role as The Flyfot Assassin (Onna Shikaku Manji, 1969).
The black & white widescreen cinematography of Oyaku the Female Demon is so beautiful that there's a Kurosawa classicism to the look, though content-wise many will find it too deeply into exploitation to be that highly regarded.
I very nearly didn't go to see Oyaku, the Female Demon when it was revived on a bigscreen in an ethnic theater way back in the '70s. The trailor I'd seen the week before highlighted "female flesh on flesh" activity (including an oral sex scene between Oyaku & Omon that didn't make it into the actual film).
 The trailer (happily included among the dvd extras!) tried to make the film look like a porno samurai film, the roman-poruno genre I never cared a lot for.
But I decided to go see it at the last possible minute & it turned out not to have the focus of the trailer at all. It was a poetically violent, horrifically cruel film that was to remain, in memory, one of the coolest films I'd ever seen.
Memory can play tricks & as the decades passed & Oyaku's adventure never on dvd & never again revived on a big screen, I did begin to wonder if it was as good as I remembered. Others who saw it "back in the day" however also gave it a legendary status.
Oyaku the Female Demon was filmed a speck before the whole pinku & roman poruno craze for swordswomen skinflicks. It thus pushed an envelope of its day but really didn't go too far to completely abandon artistry, relying not on boobs & buns but on a serious & severe tale of vengeance.
It was everthing I always wished a swordswoman film would be, & it was nothing like I wished they wouldn't be (i.e., skinflicks poorly disguised as samurai films).
When at last it had a subtitled dvd release as part one of the "poisonous seductress" trilogy (combining it with the two films about Quickdraw Okatsu), how relieved & delighted I was that memory had not played tricks. With splendid cinematography & a thrilling cast, Miyazono was able to convey a deeply angry avenger surviving all abuse to get the cruellest conceivable revenge, & do it with surprising dignity & amazing power.
 As the tale opens, a depressed prostitute takes her child in her arms & leaps from a bridge into a river.
But her little girl, Oyaku, survives, with a deep gash in her back. She grows up a con artist & acrobat earning a vicarious livijng, with a soft spot for the downtrodden more desparate than herself.
She falls in love with Shinkuro (Kunio Murai), a ronin & thief who shares Oyaku's opinion that people who are proud, rich, & corrupt should be punished, & a good way to punish them was to rob them of their riches.
Oyaku's hard life seems more than worthwhile now that she has this wild young man's devoted love, & the adventuress in her is happy to be part of a plan to rob a local samurai official (who'd once tried to rape her) of raw gold in transit from the prison mines of Sado Island to the government mint.
With backing of gangster-boss Minokichi of Otawa (Tomisaburo Wakayama of Lone Wolf with Child fame), a scheme develops for the gold heist. It goes well until the moment of betrayal, & Shinkuro's gang is wiped out. Shinkuro barely had time to hide the stolen gold, so when he & Oyaku are captured, they are placed in a grim torture device that has to be seen to be believed.
In essence Oyaku is suspended by her hair over a hot griddle. As she struggles neither to be cooked nor break her neck, the far end of the rope holds up a guillotine blade. If she escapes her situation, Shinkuro will be beheaded. We will see this horrible device again, in the climax, when Oyaku is in the commanding position.
Oyaku's enemies include Hyoe who betrayed his own friend Shinkuro to further his own career, & Sengoku (Koji Nanbara) the samurai who runs the government mint & who tortured her & killed her beloved. Shinkuro makes the signal error of letting Oyaku live, condemning her to the Sado prison mines.
 As she is carted away inside a prisoner-basket, she sees the head of her lover on display, & calls out to him, "Shinkukro wait for me!" as she has every intention of returning from Sado to avenge them both before reuniting with him in the next world.
The center of the tale is life on the Japanese Devil's Island, Sado. Bunzo the Iron Barbarian though at first making the mistake of thinking she'd be easy to rape ends up being like family to her, & their bond helps keep her safe from maltreatment by fellow prisoners in the mines.
When the chief guard's wife Omon sees the beautiful prisoner, she at first wants to sell Oyaku into sexual servitude. But during a romantic sequence in a waterfall's pool, Omon falls in love. As a tattooist, she wants to put ink to Oyaku's perfect skin -- perfect except for the scar on her back. Oyaku bares Omon's lascivious moments in order to get the tattoo, having insisted, "I want an oni devil!"
Omon designs a devil tattoo for Oyaku's back & there are many sensual moments for those weeks when the tattoo is being completed, Omon's husband (Kosei Komatsu) always watching through a peephole. But Omon, though smitten with the prisoner, is smitten even more by her own greed. She still plans eventually to sell Oyaku for a high profit. And Hyoe has arrived from the mainland pretty much seeking Oyaku, so is willing to pay handsomely to possess her.
When the tattoo is completed, Oyaku plots against Omon, using her husband Gonjuro against her. Hyoe she tricks into caressing Omon's corpse, then armed with a sharp chain that whirs like an insect as she whirls it, she achieves an awful vengeance against Hyoe who betrayed their gang for personal advancement, crying out afterward, "Shin! Did you see? I finally got one of them!"
Escaping Sado Island with the giant Bunko, who disguises himself as a monk, they arrive in Edo, assisted again by Boss Minokichi in the great vengeance against Sengoku. She & her companions penetrate Sengoku's treasury compound ninja-like in their actions.
 As her companions empty Sengoku's treasury, Oyaku captures him & his wife, & takes them to the torture chamber where her beloved died, & places Sengoku in his own guillotine, & suspends his wife by her hair.
The torture is lingering & awful, & Oyaku scarcely seems human, having truly become demonic in her revenge, the whole while without kimono or jacket so that her devil-tattoo conveys her psychic state. Such heartless vengeance is less moral than a quick one & it seems likely that Oyaku, like the 47 Ronin & so many other justifiably violent heroic figures, will have to die in the end, having succeeded at her terrifying mission.
Yet our last image of Oyaku is on a horse-drawn wagon weighted down with gold making good her escape, scowling with supreme intensity while crying out to Shin's spirit that she has only just begun, & will cling longer to her violent life.
It's so obviously the first episode of a series that it's all the more surprising that when Miyazono returned in her next film of female vengeance, she is no longer the demonic Oyaku driven by circumstances to sadistic fury, but she's revamped as the woman samurai & iaido expert Okatsu, much more the honor-driven avenger, a lot less frightening a figure.
Someone must've decided Oyaku just pushed the edges of acceptible "heroic" violence too close to villainy. But while it's too bad we never again see Oyaku, there's absolutely nothing tawdry or disappointing about Okatsu.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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