Meiji · Taishô · Shôwa: Ryôki onna hanzai-shi (1969)

... aka: 明治・大正・昭和 猟奇女犯罪史

... aka: Criminal History of Bizarre Women

... aka: History of Bizarre Crimes by Women in the Meiji, Taisho and Showa Eras

... aka: Love and Crime

... aka: Meiji, Taisho, and Showa Eras: Grotesque Cases of Cruelty by Woman

Directed by:

Teruo Ishii

True crime and "poison woman" films featuring treacherous and usually murderous femme fatales were very popular in Japan at the time so why not combine both? That's precisely what we have here with this particular production, which was actually a rather ingenuous concoction for its time. What better way to get asses into theater seats than the promise of gory, titillating and lurid reenactments of famous crimes? Interesting too is that this is an anthology film featuring four separate tales along with a framing story, which makes it one of the earliest omnibus-style films to tackle multiple true crime stories. A similar concept was later employed by Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers for their five part Criminals series in the late 70s and, of course, these can be seen as precursors to any true crime TV show featuring reenactments. Also making this unique is that the director sought out, and actually got an interview with, one of the reclusive subjects, who gets to tell her side of her own story as a dramatization of it plays out.

At the Tokyo Forensic Institute, police forensics examiner Dr. Murase (Teruo Yoshida) gets the surprise of his life when the latest corpse to show up on his slab is Yukiko - his wife! After performing the gory autopsy over the opening credits, Murase discovers Yukiko had sex prior to committing suicide... and it clearly wasn't with him. Hoping to gain some insight into what may have happened, he gathers together old criminal case files involving female murderers, and these are what comprise the bulk of the running time. The film sporadically returns to Murase and he also narrates portions of the stories.

First up is "Toyokaku Inn Case," which is based on a 1961 incident that led to the first woman being sentenced to death in Japan after the war. Chiyu Saito (Mitsuko Aoi) owns a hotel with her husband, Kosuke (Kenjirô Ishiyama), whom she suspects is having an affair since he disappears so frequently. She's correct in her assumption. Hubby has grown sick of, in his own words, his "old hag of a wife" and has been sleeping with a beautiful younger woman instead. Chiyu has been voicing her suspicions about his adultery to her assistant, Kinue Munakata (Rika Fujie), all this time, as well as relaying her future plans for the hotel; namely her plans on selling it and opening up a brothel instead.

Unbeknownst to Chiyu, her friend and confidant Kinue is her husband's secret mistress and she's been using some of the things Chiyu has told her to further drive a wedge between the couple. While Kosuke is planning on leaving his wife and kicking her out, Kinue suggests they murder her instead. In fact, she promises to help him. With help from gigolo Shibuya (Takashi Fujiki), Kinue does the deed and then the two reveal to Kosuke that they are lovers. Blackmailing the new widower, they're able to get their hands on some money to build an expansion onto the hotel. As the business increases in value, the cold-blooded Kinue decides she wants it all to herself, leading to several more murders.

Though a full length expansion on this case would no doubt be a lot more interesting (same can be said for all of the other featured stories), there's plenty to keep one's interest here, including lots of nudity, sex, sex right next to a decomposing body, a topless cat fight, a poisoning, a bloody axe murder and a maggoty corpse plastered up behind a wall. There's quite a lot packed into just 20 minutes!

In 1936, Sada Abe, a former prostitute then employed as a restaurant apprentice, strangled her married boss / lover to death in bed during an erotic asphyxiation session. She then carved her name on his arm, removed his genitals and carried them around with her for days until she was tracked down and arrested by the police. A nationwide media circus and trial followed, and she was eventually convicted of murder and mutilation of a corpse and sentenced to ten years in prison. After serving six, she was released and capitalized on the public's interest by penning an autobiography and appearing in a one woman stage show. She then was able to blend back into society using an alias and lived out the remainder of her days mostly in anonymity, becoming the subject of many best-selling books and popular movies along the way.

"Sada Abe Incident" features a multiple flashback structure and very scrambled time frame, cutting between a courtroom scene where a pitiable Sada (Yukie Kagawa) recounts her bizarre tale and a series of flashbacks showing her at various stages in her life. She became an out-of-control teen after being raped, was sent to a geisha house to work as a servant at age 16 by her father, where she was raped yet again by a sweaty old pervert (who was nice enough to at least get his wife's permission first), and then became a sex worker being used and discarded by various men while she herself used and discarded various men. Hey, it's a dog eat dog world out there.

We also get reenactments of her intense relationship with restaurant owner Kichizo Ishisa (Eiji Wakasugi), the man she'd later murder, as well as the murder itself ("No one will touch him anymore!"), which isn't as grisly as it could have been all things considered. In its brief time, this segment does both a good job relaying the main facts in the case as well as capturing the insane passion shared by the couple prior to the murder, which began with nonstop sex marathons lasting days before descending into kinkier stuff. That's followed by several vignettes of other disgruntled women, perhaps "inspired" by Abe, who remove their lover's junk with scissors.

This segment is especially noteworthy in that the director managed to track Abe herself down and has the Dr. Murase character conduct a brief interview with her (shot on a bridge from across a busy road), which is edited in with the other footage. In her interview, Abe claims her lover wanted to die, asked her to kill him and died happy, insists she did nothing wrong, doesn't understand the public's fascination with her and says that we only fall in love - truly fall in love - with a single person in our entire life and Kichizo was that person to her. Abe disappeared shortly after filming this interview and her whereabouts remained unknown, though it's reported that she passed away sometime in the early to mid 70s.

While I believe this is the first film to tackle Abe's story, it's also one of the least watched. The Nikkatsu production A Woman Called Sada Abe (1975) and the infamous In the Realm of the Senses (1976) are both much better known and more popular. The latter, directed by Nagisa Ôshima, became a notorious, oft-banned film due to its inclusion of explicit sex, and was an art house hit around much of the world upon release. There were numerous later Abe films as well, including ones produced in 1998, 1999 and 2011, as well as a French-produced documentary about her in 2017.

Next, in an ill-conceived break from the female-centered murderers, we take a look at a male one: little-known Japanese serial killer Yoshio Kodaira. After having served in the Japanese military, where he reportedly engaged in various war crimes (including raping and murdering Chinese civilians), Kodaira returned to Japan, where he raped and murdered at least seven women between 1946 and 1947, and also engaged in necrophilia with some of the corpses. The victims were mostly impoverished young women who were lured into the woods with promises of jobs / food. After his apprehension and trial, Kodaira was sentenced to death and was hanged in 1949.

As this segment opens, a sweaty and grotesque Kodaira (Asao Koike) has already been apprehended and is recounting his crimes to police during his interrogation. His first murder occurs at a military factory in Kanto, where he uses a bombing as an opportunity to get a young woman alone, then rips off her clothes and strangles her to death. Next up is a starving woman he lures into the country and yanks into the woods. To try to avoid being killed, she offers herself up to him willingly, but he strangles her until she passes out and has sex with her unconscious body. When she wakes up and wants to leave, he kills her and goes in for round two. A third victim is also shown being killed during a rainstorm.

After a steady stream of brief murders, the next is shown in greater detail as Kodaira befriends and grooms a poor, fatherless teen named Ryuko (Yumiko Katayama). He gives her food, promises her work and even goes home with her to meet her mother but, despite developing a relationship with her over the course of a few months, she's eventually lured into the woods and beaten, raped and killed just like any other random victim. This murder was to be his ultimate undoing, as Ryuko's mother knew his identity and was able to report him to the police.

Stylistically, this is perfectly fine. Ishii shot it in grainy black-and-white; an apt choice to make this resemble b/w newsreel footage indicative of the WWII era, some of which is also edited into the segment. This also sticks fairly close to the real case, though it's too short to cover all of the crimes and a few other details, namely Kodaira's first victim actually being his father-in-law over a decade earlier, have been altered. With that said, thematically this feels sorely out of place. Despite the narrator's silly attempt to find a connection between it and the other stories ("Do women's bodies turn men into madmen?"), this doesn't really have any business being in a film about murderous women.

Finally, we return to the killer female theme in a segment set during the mid-19th century that covers murderess Takahashi Oden, who was the last woman in Japan to be executed by beheading. Against her wishes, Oden (Teruko Yumi) is set up in an arranged marriage to Naminosuke (Shin'ichirô Hayashi), whom she doesn't love. To make matters worse, her new husband is struck down with leprosy and becomes hideously deformed. Despite that, he can't keep his hands off of his beautiful bride and keeps forcing himself on her. She eventually takes on another lover, a criminal named Tomekichi, who murders Naminosuke after he catches the two of them together.

The lovers then flee to the city where Tomekicki continues on in his criminal ways and sells Oden to a brothel. There, she meets another man and plots to run off with him. A series of murders and betrayals follow until Oden is finally captured and beheaded. There are some very gruesome moments in this one plus a generous helping of nudity from the lead but it tries to cover too much ground in too little time (just 10 minutes!) so we never can get a handle on any of the characters. A feature length version of this same story had been filmed back in 1958 as Dokufu Takahashi Oden (titled Wicked Woman in English) by Nobuo Nakagawa, and would be retold yet again in the 1983 softcore film Koyamu / Crimson Night Dream.

While this certainly has its problems with pacing and the script, as 99% of all anthologies do, good production values, competent acting, some clever directorial and aesthetic choices, nearly nonstop sex and violence and plentiful eye candy provided by at least a dozen gorgeous Japanese actresses keep things highly entertaining throughout. If you're wanting more in-depth versions of any of the true stories, you can always check out one of the other film versions or, better yet, read up on them. However, if you can accept this on its own terms, as being the exploitation film it clearly is intended to be, it delivers in spades for its target audience.

Unlike with many of the director's other films, I couldn't find evidence this was ever officially released outside of its home country. Toei gave it at least one VHS and one DVD release in Japan, which are the only releases that I'm aware of.

★★★

Kyôfu kikei ningen: Edogawa Rampo zenshû (1969)

... aka: 江戸川乱歩全集 恐怖奇形人間

... aka: Collected Tales of Edogawa Rampo: Horrors of Malformed Men

... aka: Horrors of Malformed Men

... aka: L'effrayant Docteur Hijikata (The Scary Doctor Hijikata)

Directed by:

Teruo Ishii

If I wasn't too lazy to get out of my chair right now, I'd probably kick myself for not getting around to this one sooner... especially since I've owned the DVD for a good decade now!

With his sanity and thus the validity of what we're about to see always in question, former medical student Hirosuke Hitomi (Teruo Yoshida) narrates this tale from his cell at a Taisho Era mental asylum circa 1825. Though he suffers from some sort of amnesia and can't remember much of his past, he's haunted by visions of a seashore, a creepy long-haired man in a dress hanging around rocky cliffs and a beautiful woman whose face keeps changing into that of an ugly man. The only thing seemingly tying it all together is a distinct lullaby. Late one night, a bald man in an adjacent cell sneaks out and attacks him. Hirosuke kills him and then manages to escape. Outside, he hears someone humming the familiar lullaby and finds out it's a young woman named Hatsuyo (Teruko Yumi), who works at a traveling circus that just so happens to be in town and claims she may have keep kidnapped. She's able to help place the lullaby as coming from an island before she's mysteriously murdered in broad daylight; leaving Hirosuke holding the bloody knife. He's blamed for the killing and flees.

While taking a train ride to the coast, Hirosuke happens to glance down at a newspaper and finds a man who looks identical to him listed in an obituary. The man, named Genzaburo, was the son of the wealthy Jôgorô Komoda (Tatsumi Hijikata), a local eccentric with bad eyesight and webbed fingers who purchased a nearby island with plans on turning it into some kind of amusement park. Jôgorô had retreated to the island to live full time with his wife, leaving Genzaburo to be raised by a nurse on the mainland. Per a blind masseuse who regularly worked on Genzaburo, Hirosuke has the same identical scar (shaped like a swastika) on the sole of his foot. Same face and now the same distinctive scar? Can that possibly be a coincidence? Hirosuke begins to suspect he may actually be Genzaburo himself. Just to be sure he's not, he exhumes the grave. Nope. Genzaburo's corpse is there. He just happens to be a dead ringer for him.

Since he's now wanted for several murders, Hirosuke decides to perform a little identity switcheroo. He leaves a suicide note by the shore, swaps clothes with the corpse, throws the body in the water and thus effectively kills off Hirosuke for all intents and purposes. He then lies down in the graveyard and is discovered by some monks. Newspapers are soon filled with stories about Genzaburo's miraculous resurrection. He return to Genzaburo's home to live with his widow Chioko (Michiko Kobata), distant relative Shizuko (Yukie Kagawa), servant Hirukawa (Asao Koike), elderly nurse Gindashi (Kyômi Sakura) and some maids. Seeing how all of these people knew the previous master and his quirks very well, Hirosuke must make some big adjustments to his typical behavior, including pretending to be left-handed and having poor vision to emulate Genzaburo. However, some things can't be faked, like the family dog not recognizing him or his scent and attacking as if he were a stranger.

Hirosuke also has to get a feel for the household dynamic. Though he starts fulfilling his husbandry bedroom duties to please Chioko, he also discovers that Shizuko was having an affair with Genzaburo, which means he has to pick up where the former master left off with her as well. You know, so no one gets suspicious! Making matters even more complicated, he also has to continue with the family business ventures and things aren't looking so good there. Not only does he not know what he's doing but they're teetering on bankruptcy and a lot of the paperwork requires a verifiable signature. He's able to buy himself a little more time spilling tea on documents but that's not going to work forever. Trying to impersonate someone else, even someone with loads of privilege and money, isn't quite as easy as he expected!

As if everything isn't stressful enough already, it turns out that Genzaburo may have been murdered, so whomever was responsible for that will probably come after him as well. Deadly snakes are snuck into a bathroom to try to kill Shizuko and blackmail notes are left in various family member's bedrooms. In one, the blackmailer reveals they know about the affair. In another, they repeat private bedroom conversations between husband and wife verbatim. Several strange deformed men show up to terrorize everyone and Chioko awakens from her sleep in severe pain, spits up blood and then dies. Hirosuke decides it's then time to go against Genzaburo's reclusive father's wishes and visit the island... and then the film gets really, REALLY weird.

I've seen some ludicrously overly-complicated plots in my day but this one about takes the cake! I'm not even going to go into much further detail about all of the characters and their various alliances, betrayals, false identities and such. We only have so much time in one day! Instead I'd like to point out that what starts out as a strange mystery turns into something more along the lines of The Island of Dr. Moreau at around the midway point. This actually does a very good job pacing itself and sets aside plenty of time in the second half to unleash a bunch of bizarre, gruesome and surreal surprises.

Using a false employment agency in Tokyo as a front, Genzaburo's father Jôgorô and his accomplices (including a hunchback) have been able to kidnap hundreds of young women and transport them to the island, where they've either been turned into slave girls, mindless zombies or half-human / half-animal hybrids. White-painted women in thongs run around in herds making animal noises and being whipped, silver-painted men and women put on a Vegas-style show (!) with mirrors, acrobatics, sparklers and colorful lighting, some girls have taken on identities of fish, birds or sheep, bandaged people are kept in cages and fed grass and the deranged mad scientist has even perfected the first-ever male-female Siamese twin, with the female half - Hideki (Teruko Yumi again in a second role) - eventually becoming Hirosuke's lover after she's separated.

Sepia and pink tinted flashbacks feature such sights as a crazed, sadistic transvestite torturing imprisoned topless girls with a knife while cackling with glee and red and green tinted ones detail Jôgorô's unhappy marriage to the unfaithful Toki (Mitsuko Aoi), whom he's been keeping prisoner in a cave, where she's been forced to eat crabs and bugs off her dead lover's corpse (!) to survive. There's plenty of blood and gore, endless female nudity, incest, a real snake getting killed, an amazing Trojan Horse-style grope chair and an absolutely hilarious finale featuring a couple committing suicide via fireworks explosion, which send their heads and various body parts flying across the evening sky!

This is definitely a case where a film with a problematic script (cobbled together using numerous stories from Japanese writer Edogawa Rampo) is carried by directorial flair, originality, artistry, oddball visuals, a distinct lack of good taste and overall craziness. And Tatsumi Hijikata should have been showered with awards for his mesmerizing, truly demented performance as the father.

This Toei Company production went unreleased on any home viewing format for nearly 40 years but was finally unearthed by Synapse Films and Panik House Entertainment, who released it on DVD for the first time in 2007. That was followed by a 2018 Blu-ray release from Arrow Video. Watch and be amazed!

★★★