The success of Lady Snowblood (1973) practically made a sequel an inevitability. After all, the "Lady Snowblood" manga lasted for 51 issues and star Meiko Kaji had already headlined the Stray Cat Rock girl gang series and the Female Prisoner Scorpion women in prison exploitation thrillers. But according to screenwriter Norio Osada, there was no thought of a series when he wrote the original film. "I wouldn't have minded if we'd stopped with the first film," he remarked in a 2015 interview, but he was reunited with director Toshiya Fujita and actress Meiko Kaji to continue the story of Yuki Kashima in Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance (1974).

"With the second film, I wanted to be even more liberated from the original manga," recalled Osada. "I wanted to work freely and not color within the lines set down by Koiki in the original." Osada's story is set a decade after the end of the first film with Yuki alive and well, but relentlessly hunted by the authorities for the murders committed in the name of righteous vengeance. Captured and sentenced to death, she is rescued by a shadowy government official who wants her to work as an agent on his behalf spying on a political activist. The politics are even more pointed in this film, which eyes the growth of nationalism and imperialism in the early 20th century in the wake of victory in the Russo-Japanese war. As capitalism sweeps away feudalism, the rich and powerful get richer and more powerful while the poor and disenfranchised are left behind. The villains, this time a group of decadent officials, are an even more flamboyantly eccentric lot who think nothing of sacrificing swaths of peasants to get rid of an enemy or make a profit, "I was also, in a way, portraying contemporary Japan," explained Osada in 2015. "In the 1970s, the Vietnam war was raging next door. American bombers were taking off from Okinawa to bomb Vietnam. That was the situation, and I wanted that to be reflected somehow in this film."

In the role of the self-described anarchist Ransui Tokunaga, a fictional revolutionary based on the real-life Shusui Kotoku (who was executed for plotting to assassinate the Meiji emperor), Fujita cast Juzo Itami, a charming, likable actor who went on to become an internationally celebrated director with Tampopo (1985) and A Taxing Woman (1987). He plays the role as a scholarly gentleman, attentive to his ailing, fragile wife, devoted to political philosophy and driven to shine a light on the lies and crimes of the officials who executed his fellow revolutionaries on trumped-up charges of treason. To carry on his mission, Yuki turns to the underworld. As in the first film, Yuki allies herself with small-time hoods to take on big-time crooks who use the law to protect their abuses. Born a revenge demon, she becomes the people's hero, a kimono-clad Robin Hood in a corrupt empire.

The script crams in a lot of characters, stories and ideas while director Toshiya Fujita barrels ahead to get it all in. It's a conspiracy film, a political drama and a social commentary, with Yuki acting as a nearly silent witness to the corruption of the new Japan before picking up her sword to fight for an ideal. The script was rushed into production and Norio Osada, who collaborated on the script with an old friend, was never fully satisfied with the screenplay but appreciates the finished movie: "It's a strange film with strange charms and strange flaws. That's how I feel about it." It was also one of Kaji's final roles as an action heroine. She starred in three Kinji Fukasaku yakuza movies in the 1970s, and then transitioned to television in the 1980s as she eased into her thirties, past her prime as far as the studios were concerned. Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance reminds us of what we lost because of it: her distinctive mix of grace, dignity, fury, charisma and intensity behind an enigmatic face and a poise of attentive calm that can explode into action in a heartbeat.

By Sean Axmaker

Sources:
2015 interview with Norio Osada, The Complete Lady Snowblood Blu-ray. Criterion, 2016.
Outlaw Masters of Japanese Cinema, Chris D. I.B. Taurus, 2005.
"Flower of Carnage: The Birth of Lady Snowblood," Marc Walkow. FilmComment.com, January 26, 2016.
IMDb