A little while back I read the first volume of Koike and Kamimura’s Lady Snowblood and was impressed with the craft but repulsed by the content. Basically it seemed to me that the work contrasted a nostalgic code of honor with a decadent modernity, and used that contrast as an excuse for vicious and racialized murder, rape, and the general fetishization of force and death. It made me understand more clearly than I had done before what strands of thought in Japan might have allowed that nation to reach an agreement with Germany during World War II.
A commentor encouraged me to try the Lady Snowblood movie from the early 1970s, suggesting that it avoided many of the problems of the book. So I’ve finally seen it…and the commenter was correct to some extent. Lady Snowblood doesn’t force a man to rape an innocent girl at knife point. The racial subtext — the positing of decadent Western modernity as a crime itself worthy of vengeance — is sort of, kind of still present, but it ends up way down in the mix.
But nevertheless…even for somebody like me who finds a lot to like in rape revenge films like “I Spit on Your Grave,” this movie is awfully hard to get behind — at least for a pansy liberal Westerner like me. The plot is built around the idea not of individual revenge, but of generational honor killing — the protagonist Yuki’s father was killed by a gang in front of her mother’s eyes; they then raped the mother. Mother then set out to revenge herself, but ended up in prison for life. So sheset about getting herself pregnant by sleeping with anyone she could, so as to have a child who would carry out her vengeance. Mom dies in childbirth, and Yuki ends up with a friend of Mom’s and a foster dad. Step-dad eagerly takes up the task of preparing the child for vengeance, explaining to her that she’s an inhuman monster devoted to killing and sets up a rigorous training program from the time she’s like 6 or 8 or something, putting her in barrels and rolling her down hills and beating her with sticks. So eventually Yuki grows up to be an inhuman killing machine just like her daddy and mommy wanted and we get to watch her chop a bunch of bad folks up. Whoo hoo.
The thing that really stuck in my craw here wasn’t the killing or the spurting blood, all of which is standard fare for rape revenge films and/or horror films and/or lots of movies I rather like. Instead, what disturbed me most was the treatment of Yuki by her parents (biological and foster). The idea that you would actually create a child solely and specifically to take care of your own random shit — as a parent I’m perhaps identifying overly here, but I just can’t support that. People aren’t things, or as Kant would say, people are ends, not means. Yuki always shouts “an eye for an eye” while doing her dirty work, but the actual economy of the film is one person’s death for somebody else’s unrelated life. The worst act of injustice here is not what is done to Yuki’s mom or dad — horrible as that is — but rather what is done to Yuki.
I guess you could argue that that’s the point of the movie — that is, it’s supposed to make us sympathize with Yuki and see the pointlessness of her honor and her revenge. I don’t think that’s what’s really going down, though. Nobody in the film ever even suggests to Yuki that maybe the revenge thing is not what it’s cracked up to be. Instead, everyone seems to more or less happily accept the idea that spending your life taking care of your broken mother’s unfinished business is a really good idea. Even the voice over narration gets into the act, telling us what a wonderful person Yuki really is beneath that unrelenting mask. And then there’s Yuki’s own internal monologue, in which Yuki says she actually remembers her Mom from when she was like five minutes old, and it’s those personal memories which drive her revenge.
The point ultimately seems to be that honor, and particularly family honor, is the only self you have. Your honor is your psychology, your personal motivation, your soul — that’s all there is to you. As such, the individual is, in fact a means, and the end is the family or the collective or, ultimately, the nation. And, again, that seems a fair approximation of fascism. As a mealy-mouthed liberal relativist embarrassed about his own Judeo-Christian heritage it’s hard for me to come out and say this, but — I think that’s evil, damn it.
_________________
For a more positive take on Koike and Kamimura, you can read Richard Cook on Lone Wolf and Cub here.
Update: Koike yes, but not Kamimura, as Richard explains in comments.
Update 2: Suat defends Lady Snowblood here.
“… the individual is, in fact a means, and the end is the family or the collective or, ultimately, the nation.”
Welcome to Japan!
Yeah. I kind of wanted somebody else to say it though….
Minor correction: Kamimura didn’t work with Koike on “Lone Wolf and Cub.” That was Goseki Kojima.
Noah: Would I be correct in assuming that you haven’t watched much of the long running Gundam anime series? If you want a children’s series with a subtext loaded with militarism and nationalism that would be the one to watch (they try to dilute it with with some pacifist messages though). Which doesn’t mean I hate it – much of it is above average anime.
Lady Snowblood, if I’m not mistaken, was initially published in a men’s magazine or something similar. The whole Gundam thing is being directed at much more malleable minds.
Hey Suat. I haven’t seen Gundam. My objections to Lady Snowblood aren’t on the basis of a fear of its harm to children. Comic and movie are clearly, clearly aimed at adults. I basically just think the philosophy is evil, whether or not children (or anybody) is influenced by it.
Yes, but wouldn’t it be more “evil” if it was directed at children?
When Bill writes “Welcome to Japan!” isn’t he implying that the kind of thinking on display in Lady Snowblood is so much a part of Japanese popular culture that you would have to avoid whole swathes of it if we were to exclude works on that basis.
I brought up Gundam partly because of its enormous and continued popularity suggest that it taps deeper into the Japanese cultural psyche. Even if it’s all wish-fulfillment, it does tell you something about the people who are devoted to it.
It’s interesting that you had such a bad reaction to Lady Snowblood. The kind of philosophy/behavior on display in it is virtually the norm in Chinese wuxia movies or novels though it’s not always seen to be virtuous or beneficial. I’ve essentially become enured to it.
I don’t actually think it would be more evil if it were directed at children necessarily. I mean, obviously you wouldn’t want to show Lady Snowblood to children; they’d be horrified and freaked out. But if it’s an evil idea it’s an evil idea, no matter who it’s directed at.
Obviously the idea that you should sacrifice individuality for honor, in various iterations, is important in Japanese popular culture in various ways. But no culture is unitary, and there are lots of ways to work through it that don’t involve torturing small children for fun and profit. Ooku, for example, presents a girl child who is essentially tortured for the needs of the state — and that decision is presented as possibly inevitable, but ultimately not okay. Her desire for vengeance is also presented as understandable and wrong.
I guess I don’t think I have to reject all of Japanese culture to really dislike the morality of this movie. I mean, pacifism is stronger in a lot of ways in Japan than it is here, though that’s somewhat counterintuitive.
Well, you certainly won’t have to reject all of Japanese culture because you dislike the morality of Lady Snowblood.
But Lady Snowblood is the equivalent of manga popcorn and not anywhere close to the fried manga testicles symbolized by the works of King Terry, Nemoto et al. It’s meant to be taken just about as seriously as a James Cameron movie. Koike works have always been rather brutish but he’s probably as cuddly as Will Eisner to most manga readers – just look at the adaptation of one of his works in the Hanzo the Razor movie series. Almost of all his “adult” works have appalling morality if looked upon with a straight face.
And relating back to one of your earlier blog posts: Ooku has higher aims (middle brow) but I don’t think it’s as successful as some of the works of Koike (low brow) at what it wants to say/do. But we can talk about that later in the week when I post about Ooku.
Well, there’s appalling morality and then there’s appalling morality. I don’t have any trouble with lots of things that are variously horrific, from Johnny Ryan to Female Prisoner Scorpion to slasher films.
I mean, I guess you can say, “well nobody takes it seriously” and have that be that. But I don’t know; the film is carefully shot; and the moral/honor code discussed is insistently and enthusiastically sold. It’s not clear to me why the fact that it’s broadly accepted is supposed to make it better. Blackface representations are rife in old beloved comics, and more or less accepted as part and parcel of their greatness. As you discussed, this is not necessarily ideal.
Nor do I get why the fact that it’s successful is really an argument. I mean, I think the movie’s successful; it’s effectively shot; it’s well plotted, it’s exciting. It also just happens to basically suggest that it’s reasonable for a parent to treat a child as some sort of avatar of their own needs and desires, up to and including torture — (and this in a context in the book which is pretty clearly nationalist and racist.)
I take James Cameron movies seriously; the Terminator movies are fantastic, and fairly thoughtful about a whole range of issues: technology, fate, gender, love and friendship, apocalypse. They’re certainly not quasi-fascist by any stretch of the imagination.
I mean, I’m not saying Lady Snowblood should be banned or anything. But I am saying it’s hard for me to entirely enjoy a work that seems so thoroughly reprehensible.
Pingback: Princess Knight rides again « MangaBlog
Pingback: Princess Knight rides again | Anime Blog Online