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“The Scorpion Doesn’t Die”: Japanese Actress Meiko Kaji on Her 60-Year Career
Meiko Kaji. Photo by Daniel Eagan Starting in the 1970s, Meiko Kaji tore through the Japanese film industry, delivering iconic performances that resonate to this day. Few performers commanded the screen with her authority.
Kaji played delinquents, gang bosses, daughters sold into slavery, unrepentant killers—characters far outside societal norms. Through them all she was an implacable force, seeking vengeance and delivering retribution in a world of corrupt, perverse men. For the next 60 years, Kaji battled for her place in cinema, switching studios, working freelance, collaborating with novice directors, working in television and pop music when necessary.
Kaji visited New York for the first time in decades to attend sold-out screenings during a retrospective of her films at Japan Society. Titles included Blind Woman’s Curse (her break-out role), three entries in the Scorpion series, The Love Suicides at Sonezaki (her favorite role), and Lady Snowblood, an inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.
In person she can be fierce and unyielding, still bitter about her treatment some 50 years ago. She’s also unexpectedly funny, quick to mock herself and her roles. In Q&As she charmed audiences by singing everything from “Urami Bushi” (featured in Kill Bill) to the pop chestnut “Sentimental Journey.”
Kaji spoke with Filmmaker before a screening of Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41.
Filmmaker: I know your previous flight was cancelled and you just arrived.
Kaji: I definitely feel a little bit of jet lag. We had to do another interview earlier and I couldn’t remember the titles of the films I was trying to talk about. But The Scorpion doesn’t die, so…
Filmmaker: What kind of training did you have to become an action star?
Kaji: I had no training. In the Japanese system at the time there was no such thing as training actors or nurturing them to become professionals. I was scouted and then immediately thrust in front of a camera. If I asked the director why he was criticizing me, he would say, “You’re standing in front of the camera, so I’m treating you like a pro. Don’t say to me that you can’t do something.”
Filmmaker: So how did you learn your action scenes?
Kaji: I learned everything on set. The director would frame the shot and decide how he would shoot it, and then the choreographer would step in and show me what I was meant to do. Then I would just have to do it.
Filmmaker: Those long, intricate fight scenes in Lady Snowblood?
Kaji: Yes. That’s what I had to do.
Filmmaker: Was it the studio system that prevented time for rehearsals?
Kaji: I can’t speak to the other studios, but at Nikkatsu, that’s how they worked. The executives there were largely from an older generation. I would describe it—in fact the film industry in general—as a man’s world. They made many, many films with fight scenes, and I remember being so shocked that these actors could remember such intricate choreography in just one go.
Filmmaker: In a male-oriented industry, how do you establish your own voice? How do you control your career?
Kaji: I just really needed to make sure that I was recognized and known. Once you debut in a system like this, you’re not immediately introduced to every producer and every director. You have to kind of make your own requests, seek out your own roles. I had to make sure that people knew I was available and ready to work.
Filmmaker: I understand that you reworked the Scorpion scripts, that you and director Shunya Ito made the decision to remove her dialogue, leave her silent.
Kaji: Before the Scorpion series, I worked in the Wandering Ginza Butterfly series. The Scorpion films had the same producer. When the role was offered to me, I had this idea of having the heroine be someone who doesn’t speak any dialogue. In the back of my mind, I realized this might end up becoming a very unpleasant film to watch. But I thought whether it’s a success or a failure, it was an idea that was worth a try. I was very confident that it would be an interesting, worthy effort.
I’m very happy that Scorpion is still so popular internationally. It’s the film series that people ask me about the most, for example, when I meet directors in France and America. The idea of a hero who doesn’t say a single word, I think, is still a very fresh concept. I knew I was going out on a limb, that it would be very risky for me as an actor because it might cut me off or distance me from other roles I was looking for.
Filmmaker: Scorpion’s power comes in part from the fact that we don’t know what she’s thinking. We don’t know what she wants, or what will satisfy her. Throughout these movies she’s a force who is almost separate from the narratives, operating on a different level.
Kaji: The only way she could show or signal her sense of pride and honor was through this image or presentation of worthlessness, of ignoring or being oblivious to what was happening to her. Her enemy in those films was the establishment. That also was a huge risk for me to take.
One thing that helped was that the series was an adaptation of a very popular manga. That meant we didn’t have to stick to anything that was typical in film drama. Because the world of manga could be a place where the heroine doesn’t speak, where things could happen that seem perhaps distant from reality. That’s why I thought it was a worthy challenge to have this character be the way she is.
Filmmaker: What’s ironic is that with Scorpion’s silence, she found her voice. Like her, a lot of the characters you play in this series are rebelling from what society expects from them. They’re fighting to define themselves.
Kaji: It’s interesting that you say that because it’s also reflected in my entire career within this very specific part of Japanese society called the film industry. So when you make a hit film, like for instance the Scorpion series, then you only start receiving offers for the character that you already played. The challenge became: How am I going to distance myself from being pigeonholed into this character? There’s really nothing that an actor can do within that studio system.
I didn’t think Scorpion would become a series. I just wanted a challenge. So was my career after that a walk in the park? No, it was absolute hell. I tried to pivot to television, but they told me I was too dark for television, that my image wasn’t “lively” enough to be beamed into living rooms.
One thing that I had going for me was that I could sing. And so there were times when I would lean on that talent instead of acting. Thankfully, in the 61 years of my career, I’ve never had a year where I didn’t work. But it was just a constant process of trying to find a new direction or way to pivot, because the studio system, for better or for worse, had this very bad quality of quickly pigeonholing actors. You think of someone like Tora-san, you know, the character in this long running series of some forty films. A hit is a wonderful thing, but it’s also the beginning of this very intense trial as an actor.
Filmmaker: Despite trying to avoid being pigeonholed, I find a consistent persona in your roles. You’re playing a woman who’s strong, rebellious, who won’t play by the rules.
Kaji: The similarities in those roles, all the things that you described, was very intentional. It might sound like an exaggeration when I say this, but Japanese society during that time was a place where women in particular weren’t encouraged to express themselves in a very direct way. In fact, it was a place where you were supposed to be one or two steps behind men, both figuratively and literally. A woman was seen as a doting wife, kind of following in her husband’s tracks.
I was not interested in pursuing that kind of role. I certainly didn’t want to be pigeonholed that way. Although times were changing, ideas about women were changing, there was also something of a lag in Japanese society. In actuality, if I were to rebel or express myself, I would be criticized for it.
As I said, after leaving the Scorpion series, the following four or five years were complete hell. I was totally bashed as an actor. I was prepared for that, I left on my own accord because I didn’t want to play that role until the movies started failing. If I hadn’t stopped when I did, I wouldn’t have had the success that I had later on. So it’s very intentional.
Filmmaker: Was it difficult finding your way through those years?
Kaji: One interesting thing as you take on jobs is that you learn about things that you didn’t know existed before. For me that meant I developed a desire for different roles. I didn’t care so much about my image or having a hit. But even if I worked as hard as I could, that didn’t mean anyone would recognize my effort and offer me wider, more expansive roles. I really had to work and seek those out myself.
Earlier I was telling you about being told I was too dark for television. One day I was offered a role for a domestic drama, Terauchi Kantaro Ikka/Let’s Meet The Kantaro Terauchi Family. I would play a daughter who is injured by her father in an accident at his company. She becomes permanently disabled. I remember saying to the director, “I’m The Scorpion. Are you sure I’m right for this role?” He answered, “I’m not looking for someone as bright as the sun.” Can you believe it? I said, “If I’m offered this role, I’d like to play it as brightly as possible.” He said I wouldn’t be able to be bright like the sun even if I tried. And I said, “Are you offering me the role or not?” In the end I was happy for the opportunity. It was through that role that people started to kind of accept and empathize with me.
