 The Human Tarantula; aka, In the Spider's Lair (Nemuri Kyoshiro: Hito hada kumo, 1968) takes our by-now predictably misogynist anti-hero & indestructible ronin Kyoshiri Nemuri, & provides insights into his character that make him, if not greatly comprehensible, at least more easily forgiven his more gruesome traits.
The titular "tarantula" is a murderous woman who, along with the brother who is in love with her, kill without warrant because they are wealthy & above the law. Kyoshiro the homeless masterless wandering samurai has nothing to lose, & no scruples anyway, so can reproach even the powerful with ease. He is thus, for all that he has broad streaks of villainy all his own, a champion of the people by default.
He says to a retainer who has slit his belly so that Kyoshiro will give samurai mercy to a dying man's lord, "I have no samurai mercy. I have a man's mercy," then chops off the retainer's head to end his pain.
In this film, the evil woman is really very much more evil than similarly manipulative women in other episodes, women Kyoshiri cuts down as easily as he cuts down any man, even if they are unarmed. And yet this woman, worse than the most he has shown no mercy, is the one he does not kill.
 She kills herself after her brother is slain, fleeing into the burning castle after her final words to Kyoshiro, to the effect that she might die on this day, but Kyoshiro Nemuri would live to kill & kill & kill, spilling more blood than ever she in her infamy ever spilled.
The inference is that Kyoshiro is no more moral than an incestuous murderess. This is the recurring message of many samurai films that deal with issues of evil & of killing. But in Kyoshiro's case there is less irony in the supposition that a hero too can be evil, since in fact he's pretty much a stinker most of the time, despite that we like him, root for him, & accept him as the heroic anti-hero to end all anti-heros.
It might be viewed as a lack of consistency, that Kyoshiro can be an outright rapist-murderer in a given film, but merely a man without scruples in the film after that. His genuine ambiguity of character allows for shifting assumptions about him.
A film viewer in the west may not fully understand how great is the prejudice in Japan against half-Japanese individuals.
Many of the most racist assumptions about American black males being oversexed rapists & dangerous criminals is what Japanese feel about "half breeds" in Japan, who have lousy employment options, marginalized educational opportunities, & believed to be a major source of crime & veneral disease.
The prejudice is its worst in Okinawa where to be a halfbreed is to be associated with American Occupation, with one's mother assumed to have been raped, corrupted, or an outright prostitute.
So a lot of the demonic & criminally sexualized nature of Kyoshiro is really just borrowed from standard racist assumptions about half-Japanese people. The red hair could be missed if a viewer has only watched old 35 mm copies for these films, with everyone's hair having turned red from faded prints.
But The Human Tarantula makes a big to-do of his red hair. Kyoshiro's goodness is his Japanese half, his devotion to his personal warrior code. But his evil streak is his European father, a Christian missionary who worshipped Satan, because how many of them didn't.
If Kyoshiro as Son of the Black Mass is to be understood as though he were a "real" person (by suspending disbelief & forgetting he's a modern invention only), his villainous streak can be regarded the result of internalization of the racism he has always experienced in sundry overt & subtle ways from infancy to adulthood.
 As his character becomes increasingly familar through several films, his sexual "exploits" & his pseudo-lordly stuck-up nature begins to fall apart. He's really very insecure.
Superior fencer that he has become, he is yet an inferior human by the standards of his time, & ours, thus apt to kill men for crimes no worse than his own, & to kill women just because he can.
He can pretend to be a loner who decided to be ronin because it is pure freedom permitting him to be as bad or as good as he decides at any given moment. In larger fact, he's a loner because of his culture's attitude about what they perceive as tainted blood. And he is "marked" by his red hair; he can't hide his half-breed status; he is set apart from other Japanese people because he is not thoroughly Japanese.
So too every time he sees a crucifix he is tortured by it. Tortured by his uncertainty that christianity isn't inherently as evil as his Black Mass origins. Uncertainty that that part of the Christian world that is inside him has not made him at least half-evil, or half-outlaw.
He proves himself time & again by the most atrocious means. Rape proves his manhood. Putting on airs proves his superiority. Killing men proves he's stronger & worthier of life. False assumptons heaped upon false assumptions.
He's really quite a wretch. Anlike most samurai anti-heros, his nihility & alienation is not really the result of his environment or his knowledge of his ability to kill or his doubting feudal norms or some tension between duty & humanity struggling within him. Rather, it is all because he hates himself a great deal. Like many another rapist-murderer, Kyoshiro merits some degree of pity.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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