Wandering Ginza Butterfly
1 & 2
Year: 1971/1972
Country: Japan
Ratings: 7.5/ 7.0
Wandering Ginza Butterfly - 1971
It's Ginza, Jake. "In Ginza an honest person
can not survive". In the neon lights of Ginza are a myriad of hostess bars,
hostess girls, gambling dens, Yakuza thugs, drugs, victims, wide ties, high
school girls in the daytime; selling favors at night. In this milieu sentiment
and honor is hard to find but it is there if you look for it.
It also has Meiko Kaji and what more can
you ask for if you are a fanboy. Meiko Kaji is an iconic actress in female
empowerment - generally through the sharp edge of a sword or knife - fighting
her way through a rough man's world. By 1971 she had appeared in a series
of films termed Stray Cat Rock and other hard girl films for Nikkatsu, but
she moved over to Toei in 1971. Her first outing was this film followed soon
by the second in the series. But it ended there. Soon though she was launched
into the Female Scorpion series and then the two Lady Snowblood films. These
cemented her legendary status. I am a big fan of hers. Not trained in martial
arts as far as I know, she was just very graceful, beautiful, charismatic
and with a cold eyed stare that could freeze your blood at 20 yards.
After three years in prison for a murder
of a mobster, she moves back to Ginza and finds a job in a hostess bar. She
generally stays silent as events around her bar turn sinister until she can
take no more and she reaches for her . . . pool stick! She plays the Yakuza
in a version of billiards called Carom Billiards in which you have three
balls and use one to hit another ball that then has to carom three times
off the cushions and then hit the third ball. When this doesn't settle matters
she finally goes into full Lady Snowblood mode in kimono, umbrella and sword.
Really enjoyed this but not sure how much for the film and how much for Meiko.
Wandering Ginza Butterfly 2 - 1972
The second (and last) film in the Wandering
Ginza Butterfly series is a bit rougher and certainly bloodier than the first
one. This captured a trend in Japanese films in the 1970's that were becoming
bloodier as the decade progressed. By the time you get to Lady Snowblood
just a year later it had become a bloodbath. Compare that to the Zatoichi
films of a few years before in which loads of people are killed but the blood
is kept tasteful, minimalistic and not spurting like the Trevi Fountain.
Strangely, Meiko Kaji plays Nami Higuchi
as she did in the first film, but the character seems to have little resemblance
to her. This time out she is a professional gambler of a game translated
as Bon and she comes to Ginza to gamble but in reality to find the murderer
of her father 18 years previously. She once again gets entangled in the affairs
of the Yakuza in order to help out a friend. She also meets up with Sonny
Chiba and after a long lead up in which Nami is quite passive the two of
them take on a gang of about 30 men and slice and dice their way through.
Seeing the two of them side by side, swords in hand, blood stained as a betel
nut is quite the iconic image. Too bad that this was as far as the series
got but Meiko did shortly go on to do Female Prisoner Scorpion and Lady Snowblood.
I think I could watch her in anything - just balefully glaring at an empty
chair for 20 minutes would be fine but unfortunately the vast majority of
her films are not available with English subs.
I was reading that Toei hired her to replace
Junko Fuji who had just retired when she got married and who had been their
go to actress for action films - in particular in the genre they termed ninkyo
eiga which are period - usually in the 1800's - gangster films. If you ever
come across Junko's Red Peony Gambler series grab it. This Wandering Ginza
film certainly feels like a ninyko eiga film but brought into the modern
day with Meiko garbed in kimonos, gambling and finally bringing out the sword.
