Lady Snowblood is a 1973 Japanese jidaigeki film directed by Toshiya Fujita and starring Meiko Kaji. It is based on the manga series of the same name, recounting the tale of Yuki, a woman who seeks vengeance upon three of the people who raped her mother and killed her father and brother. The film's narrative is told out of chronological order, jumping between present and past events. Lady Snowblood was released theatrically in Japan on December 1, 1973, and was distributed by Toho. It spawned a sequel, , and served as inspiration for the Quentin Tarantino film Kill Bill.
Plot
In 1874, a deathly-ill woman named Sayo gives birth to a baby girl in a women's prison. Naming the child Yuki from seeing the snow outside, Sayo confided to the inmates who helped deliver the baby how she was brutally raped by three of the four criminals who murdered her husband Tora and their son Shiro a year ago. While she managed to stab her captor Shokei Tokuichi to death when the chance presented itself, she was arrested and imprisoned for life. Sayo then seduced many prison guards in order to conceive Yuki. Her final words were for the child to be raised to carry out the vengeance against the three remaining tormentors. In Meiji 15, the child Yuki undergoes brutal training in sword fighting under the priest Dōkai to become her mother's wrath incarnate. Yuki, now twenty and an assassin going by the name Shurayuki-hime, blocks the path of several men and a rickshaw and kills them and their leader Shibayama using a sword concealed in the handle of an umbrella. Yuki appears in a poor village looking for a man called Matsuemon, the leader of an underground organization of street beggars, and asks him to find her mother's surviving tormentors in return for having killed Shibayama for him. Matsuemon's intel leads her to Takemura Banzō, an alcoholic wreck with gambling debts whose daughter Kobue works as a prostitute to support him. After convincing the gambling house's owners to pardon Banzō after he was caught cheating in a card game, Yuki leads him to the beach and remorselessly kills him after revealing her identity. Yuki then learns that the last of her mother's rapists, Tsukamoto Gishirō, had suspiciously died in a ship wreck three years prior when she first attempted to find him. After attacking Gishirō's tombstone in frustration, Yuki finds herself being followed by a reporter named Ryūrei Ashio. She warns him to stay away from her. Ashio learned of Yuki's story from Dōkai who persuaded him to publish it as a means to draw out one of Sayo's tormentors, and the man who murdered Shiro: Kitahama Okono. Okono sends men to kidnap Ashio, threatening him with torture for Yuki's location, but Ashio refuses to tell. Yuki enters Okono's estate and kills several of Okono's men while pursuing Okono. Yuki and Ryūrei find Okono's dying body hanging within a room. Yuki slices Okono in half. Ashio tells Yuki that Gishirō is his father, and had faked his death when he learned of Yuki's mission. She finds Gishirō at a masquerade ball and kills a man acting as his decoy. Ashio and Yuki find and follow the real Gishirō, who shoots Ashio. Wounded, Ashio grapples with Gishirō and stops him from shooting Yuki as she swings on a lamp between balconies. Yuki stabs through Ashio into Gishirō's chest. She then cuts Gishirō's throat as he shoots her. He falls over a railing and onto the ground floor full of guests. Yuki, wounded, stumbles outside where she is stabbed by Kobue. Then Yuki runs away and falls on her face in the snow, awakening the following morning.
Lady Snowblood was produced on a relatively low budget and filmed with a minimal length of film. At one point, a special effect blood spatter went wrong, covering Meiko Kaji in fake blood.
Release and reception
Lady Snowblood was released in Japan on December 1, 1973, where it was distributed by Toho. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 100% based on seven reviews, with an average rating of 8.05/10. TV Guide gave the film three-out-of-five stars, calling it "certainly entertaining, but unnecessarily distancing".
Sequel and influence
The film spawned a sequel, , released in 1974. Another adaptation of the original manga, titled The Princess Blade, was released in 2001. Lady Snowblood was a major inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. According to Meiko Kaji, Tarantino made the cast and crew of Kill Bill watch DVDs of Lady Snowblood during filming breaks. The music video for "rockstar" by Post Malone featuring 21 Savage, references scenes from Lady Snowblood.
Home media
Lady Snowblood was released on VHS in 1997, and was later released on DVD by AnimEigo in 2004. In 2012, the film was released in a box set with Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance on Blu-ray and DVD by Arrow Video. In January 2016, the film was again released with Love Song of Vengeance on Blu-ray and DVD by the Criterion Collection.
