Object #22 - Yuki's Kimono - Lady Snowblood (1973)

Dir. Toshiya Fujita 

One of the most iconic images of Japanese cinema is Yuki Kashima's (Meiko Kaji) blood-splattered white kimono. Most Western audiences recognize it unconsciously due to the influence of Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol.1 (2003) where Lucy Liu's Yakuza-boss O-Ren Ishii is almost a spitting image of Lady Snowblood herself. Although it isn't the red-on-white aspect I want to discuss, but rather the role the kimono has in the final confrontation of the film.

Yuki infiltrates an English-style masquerade ball in order to seek revenge on one of the men who raped and caused the death of her mother. Gishiro Tsukamoto (Eiji Okada), after faking his own death, is now a prominent arms-dealer in Japan, with ties to the Japanese army itself, in the run-up to the first world-war. Yuki, dressed in the traditional Japanese kimono, a samurai-style sword on her back, and an eye mask on her face. She is, in a word, traditionally and iconically Japanese. Her surrounding aren't. There is classical music playing, composed by Europeans, and the ball itself is French/English in origin. She sticks out like a sore thumb, and the ball-goers notice her quite obviously, whispering behind her back and staring. 

Gishiro earlier in the film makes a point that he doesn't have time for "twenty year old vendettas" (paraphrasing), as he feels the oncoming war will dominate his attention. Japan itself has changed at this point in time at the end of the 19th century. The rule of the Shogun have ended, and the country is now predominantly government-led, with an influx of Western practices such as the masquerade ball. This is sub-textual throughout the film, but is encapsulated here as Yuki's kimono, and her vengeful purpose, stand-out from the ever-modernizing age. 

The scene moves on, with Yuki killing a double of Gishiro, staining her dress with blood. She works with the estranged son of Gishiro, Ryurei Ashio (Toshio Kurosawa), her new love to murder Gishiro on the balconies above the ballroom floor. Yuki comes out on a separate balcony, as Gishiro pulls an automatic pistol and aims at both Yuki, and at Ryurei, who is on the same balcony as Gishiro. I think this is a great little touch. The gun being automatic in this time-period really shows the oncoming industrialization of the world at war, with men like Gishiro at the forefront. It also ties into the old vs. new by simply being a gun, a projectile weapon, rather than a sword. 

Gishiro shoots Ryurei multiple times as they grapple, with Yuki finally diving across the balcony, and stabbing both the men to kill her target. She is shot herself in the process as she delivers one last killing swipe. Gishiro falls from the balcony, clutching the Japanese flag, a symbolic choice if ever there was one. As he dies swathed in the flag of Japan, he becomes a symbol of this new, mechanized, Western-influenced Japan, killed by it's own past in the form of Yuki, herself clothed in the traditional kimono. The film ends with her, bloodied, leaving into the snowing outside. She falls to the ground, staining the snow with her blood, grabs a handful, and crushes it in her hand as she screams. 

Lucy Liu as O-Ren Ishii in Kill Bill

It's worth commenting on the obvious here. White has always been associated with goodness, virtue, and innocence. By having her white kimono stained with blood, Yuki's loss of purity is physically shown in contrast. This lack of purity ties back to her raped mother, who slept with many men afterwards for the main reason of having a child to seek revenge on her rapists. Yuki discusses how she and her mother are one in spirit, literally. They are both driven by the same vengeful soul. Having the kimono stained then reminds us of the purity that was taken from Yuki's mother by her rapists.

Before Yuki delivered the final killing slash to Gishiro, she shouts "An eye for an eye". And that just sums it all up really. The whole phrase is, as you likely know, is "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind". We see it in the blood on the kimono. The violent rape of Yuki's mother is cyclically returned as her rapists' blood stains the daughter's kimono. It's also shown oh-so-brilliantly as Kobue Takemura (Yoshiko Nakada), daughter of Banzo Takemura (Noboru Nakaya), one of the original rapists Yuki killed earlier in the film in revenge, stabs Yuki as she steps into the snow. It's the final blow atop the bullet wound and general injury she'd sustained in the assassination. And it's so true that violence begets violence in the film, as the daughter of a murdered parent seeks revenge on a woman who is motivated by the same purpose.

Lady Snowblood is a superb film, and one that any fans of Kill Bill, samurai films, kung-fu films, and above all, revenge films should see. Frankly, watching this film and then Kill Bill would make the parallels all the more obvious: The Bride's motivation for revenge, the upwards shot of the four rapists/murderers (three men and one woman in Snowblood, three women and one man in Kill Bill), the kimono O-Ren Ishii wears, and the locale of the Crazy-88 fight all hearken back to Lady Snowblood. I seem to have a bit of a recurring motif of looking at the originators of a lot of iconic cinema tropes,images, and characters (see my Mabuse post). I'm doing it again here, and I'm sure it won't be the last!