Legends of the Poisonous Seductress: Female Demon Ohyahu (1968)

Revenge is delicious. It’s irresistible, pornographic, and cathartic. The thirst for righting a personal wrongdoing is one of humanity’s most primal and powerful emotions. Stories of revenge are old as time itself. The drive to kill, crush, consume, eliminate, and conquer someone that fucked you over is overpowering and all-consuming. It can give you a focus and purpose in life that not only satisfies that urge but can also cross societal lines and change the world around you. Ishikawa Yoshihiro crafted the beautifully vicious sexually charged Jidaigeki with…

Legends of the Poisonous Seductress: Female Demon Ohyaku aka Yoen dokufuden: hannya no ohyaku - After her mom’s suicide, Ohyaku (Miyazono Junko, Gosha’s Samurai Wolf) survives. She becomes a geisha/grifter of sorts. Her routine includes a high wire act (performed by Miyazono herself) as well as personal time with clients. Things get dicey and she runs off with one of the few good men she’s encountered, Shinkuro Onda (Murai Kunio, Gojira 1985). His past is similar to hers. Love blossoms between the two. His gang plans a government gold robbery. It fails. Shinkuro and Ohyaku are caught. She survives another tragedy, harsh prison sentence, and gets her revenge.

I’m sure I have already mentioned Jidaigeki before in prior reviews but a little reminder won’t hurt. In essence, Jidaigeki are period costume dramas usually set in the Edo era. There are a few notable subgenres within this, the most famous being Chanbara. These are costume drama action films, at heart. The Chanbara goes back to the beginning of Japanese film. As soon as they could film sword fights with period costumes they did. Ishikawa draws on the familiar traditions and patterns of the historical action film while infusing it with Hollywood melodrama. The spirit of Mizoguchi possesses Ohyaku. It’s the sleazy version of something like Life of Oharu or Flame of My Love spliced with Utamaro and His 5 Women. Class and gender are the thematic backbone, infusing the rage of the social and economic inequality with ease. You could easily ignore this aspect and enjoy the road to vengeance.

A consistent theme running through nearly every single review is the air of classism. In certain countries like the United States, classism is overlooked even though the effects and attitudes associated with it are still extremely present. Japan’s struggle with class inequality and that rage is eternally front and center. Looking at Shoplifters, a very recent (and phenomenal film), tackles this directly. The ties between this and Female Demon Ohyaku are minimal but the point stands. Classism will never die. This was deeply entrenched in Post-War Japan and the Post-War (a favorite subgenre of mine) Japanese films. Even though Female Demon Ohyaku is a historical period film, it fits well into that framework.

The mood and fury behind Ohyaku’s actions are that of a woman betrayed by society. The power structures were permanently altered by the arrival of Americans. Organized crime, political corruption, and the subjugation of women hit new heights with the influx of a foreign power (This gets covered in the piece on the entire Rica series https://jailhouse701.blogspot.com/2017/12/konketsuji-rika-half-bloods-revolt.html). With the threat of assault and rape, emergence of a foreign threat on their soil, and culture clash with the role of women, survival was all of a sudden a major priority. A married or taken woman was still at risk. Poor women had it the worst, as is always the case. Moving up in this society was a Herculean task. Ohyaku came from a poor family with a single mother with no options left, seemingly other than suicide. She’s raised in a world of survival above all. You don’t get to pick and choose. You don’t get the luxury of leisure. You don’t inherit anything besides psychological scars and anger. Ohyaku’s life story isn’t spelled out but it’s clear where she came from and how she arrived there. In a brief exchange with her only love, Shinkuro. In brief statements explain everything we absolutely need to know about them. They come from different places but ended up in the gutter. The corruption rampart in culture and society shoved them to the side. For the first time, she met a man who isn’t going to just use and discard her.

Like any other Japanese Post-War film, happiness can’t last. Society won’t allow that. The brutality present is over-the-top but it perfectly matches the melodrama. The emotions are wild. The violence is wilder. The typical dazzling swordplay is there but nowhere near center stage. Ohyaku’s specialty is not a blade but rope and chain. These are used not just for her stage show but in combat. A certain film, *cough* Kill Bill *cough* might borrow a bit from a certain fight. Though few and far between, the fight scenes are scarce but effective. She’s an uncaged animal unleashed. While in prison, she was the only woman prisoner there with dozens of dangerous men and one woman at every turn lusting after her. However, this is not the most extreme punishment forced upon her (that she later enacts on her target). At one point, she’s getting hanged via her hair over a fire. Nearby, Shinkuro is bound and placed in a guillotine. A rope’s connecting them using her as a counter weight holding blade mid-air. The sequence drags on mercilessly as the couple gets tortured. Her hairline begins to bleed before her captors cut the rope. In a small sign of mercy, she is allowed to crawl like a worm to his severed head. When Ohyaku gets her chance to repeat this horrific punishment, she deafens the wife as her target tries to reassure his wife. No one in her way lives. It’s beautiful, fucked-up, and so satisfying.

The promise of sexuality is there from the start. Ohyaku is quickly established as not only a geisha but a grifter willing to do most anything for some cash. However, she’s not passive or submissive. Her femininity is deadly. It can manipulate and subdue anyone when she puts in the effort and sometimes by someone merely noticing her. In prison, Bunzo (Sekiyama Koji, Itami’s Minbo no Onna and Invasion of the Neptune Men with a young Chiba) the resident unfuckwithable badass falls under her spell after a dozens of men lustily chase after Ohyaku. Only to get nearly raped by her momentarily savior but she fights back. Bunzo respects and becomes her musclebound Renfield. The tease of maybe getting to have her at some point keeps him in check whilst she breaks up the marriage of one of the prison officials. She knows that the husband is a peeping tom and seduces the tattoo artist wife letting him watch. She entices not only men and women into her web but the audience. The raw eroticism of her seductions ooze off the screen. She shames the audience and the prison official for peeping, Ohyaku’s still a person. She abuses her sexual prowess with the same disregard as that society its power over her. It's only fair.

The struggle of survival in a toxic world, full of toxic people out only for themselves, creates monsters. Ohyaku is not a good person, but no one in her life is redeemable (though Shinkuro comes closest to a decent human). The influence of Female Demon Ohyaku is undenaiable the spirit of lower class women fighting back and fucking up shit flows directly into the Pinky Violence Wave. It’s intertwined with the DNA of the Female Prisoner Scorpion series, School of the Holy Beast, Criminal Woman: Killing Melody, and so much more.

Legends of the Poisonous Seductress: Female Demon Ohyaku is on available on DVD.