Lady Snowblood



Lady Snowblood (1973) is another Japanese movie that inspired Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (2003), in particular the character of O-Ren Ishii. It’s the story of a woman out to get revenge, but unlike most revenge tales where the main character’s motives are simple, in Lady Snowblood the revenge is just about as complicated and unlikely as possible.

It all starts in the early years of the Meiji restoration (around 1874). The government has instituted the first general draft. Four conmen (actually three men and a woman) are going around taking money from peasants, claiming that the payments will exempt their sons from service, then skipping town. At the same time a rumor is spreading around the country that people dressed in white are going around and stealing blood from conscripts to sell to other nations. (This is, incidentally, based on real history.) The conmen come upon a schoolteacher and his wife all dressed in white, so they publicly murder him and kidnap his wife.


The Japanese remake of Sam Peckinpah's Salad Days.

Here’s where I was a bit confused. I’m not quite sure how the exemption fees scam and the murder of someone wearing white fit together. If these conmen know enough about government policy to run this scam, surely they know that the blood rumor is false. I would think that committing a murder in the open would invite unwelcome scrutiny of their activities, so it wouldn’t be a good idea.

In any case the conmen rape the wife, and one of them takes her to a city and forces her to live with him. She waits until she has an opportunity and kills the man, but is tried for the murder and imprisoned for life. While in prison she sleeps with any man she can find and eventually gets pregnant. She dies shortly after the birth of a daughter, Yuki, who is in turn raised by a priest. The priest teaches Yuki nothing but the skills she will need to avenge her mother’s death, which made me wonder what kind of twisted theological arguments were going through this guy’s head. Twenty years later a very stoic Yuki (Meiko Kaji) is ready to search for the killers, who have gone to ground long ago.


"A Monty Python reference? In a review of a Japanese film?"

Lady Snowblood is similar in tone to the Lone Wolf and Cub series (no doubt because it’s based on a manga by the same writer), but with less stress on action. When Yuki does go into battle there are plenty of severed limbs and high-pressure sprays of blood, and it is novel to see a woman play this kind of role. Lady Snowblood is a pretty good movie as far as it goes, but it steadfastly refuses to address the most interesting part of this scenario: What does a person who has been raised to do nothing but take revenge do when there is no one left to take revenge on? Yuki’s life story makes Mommy Dearest look like The Waltons; I don’t think there’s enough therapy in the world to make her a productive member of society. There is a sequel to Lady Snowblood, but I haven’t seen it yet.

Posted: Mon - August 2, 2004 at      

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