The Japan­ese cult clas­sic that paved the way for the mod­ern female action hero

When Meiko Kaji moved from Nikkat­su to Toei in 1971, she was try­ing to steer her career away from the ​‘Roman Porno’ films the stu­dio would soon become noto­ri­ous for. Hav­ing already earned a feisty rep­u­ta­tion for her roles in Blind Woman’s Curse and Stray Cat Rock: Delin­quent Girl Boss, both from 1970, she was assured that a new home would be her tick­et to freedom.

But this was the height of the exploita­tion era. Stu­dios were reliant on eco­nom­i­cal­ly-pro­duced fran­chise films to pry a pre­dom­i­nant­ly male audi­ence away from the lure of home tele­vi­sion, and so Toei’s first offer to Kaji was the lead­ing role in Female Pris­on­er #701: Scor­pi­on, a vio­lent women-in-prison pic­ture rife with nudi­ty and poor­ly char­ac­terised female char­ac­ters. Alleged­ly, it was Kaji’s pas­sion­ate rejec­tion of the role that end­ed up con­vinc­ing the stu­dio to rewrite it rather than to seek a replacement.

Kaji por­trays Mat­su, the tit­u­lar con­vict with a sting in her tail. Betrayed by her crooked cop ex-lover Sug­i­mi, and raped by a gang of yakuza, she is impris­oned in an all-female facil­i­ty and forced to fight for sur­vival after the male prison staff pun­ish the inmates for Matsu’s failed escape attempt.

In one of the film’s first scenes, we’re giv­en a glimpse into what would make Kaji a fem­i­nist icon. Tear­ing through lush green pad­dy fields while prison guards and attack dogs trail in pur­suit, Mat­su turns to con­front one gun-wield­ing offi­cer, over­pow­er­ing him before star­ing down the rest of his troop in a defi­ant stand-off. Bound and thrown into soli­tary con­fine­ment, she con­tem­plates revenge with her will intact.

But this dra­mat­ic intro­duc­tion is off­set by a pre­pos­ter­ous plot point. Mat­su and her prison com­pan­ion Yuki are on the brink of escape until the lat­ter sud­den­ly begins men­stru­at­ing, forc­ing the duo to break their stride. This fatal bio­log­i­cal flaw of the fair­er sex proves to be their undo­ing; the women are cap­tured and the men resume control.

The film is filled with such absur­di­ties. Women are forced to march around the prison com­plex in the nude as a form of pun­ish­ment, while sev­er­al dia­logue scenes inex­plic­a­bly take place in the com­mu­nal show­ers. A queer romance between inmates adds lit­tle to the plot oth­er than cheap tit­il­la­tion, while a major prison riot results in the women tak­ing sev­er­al guards hostage, smoth­er­ing them with their breasts as a means of torture.

Kaji escapes much of this dis­crim­i­na­tion through the posi­tion­ing of her char­ac­ter with­in the plot. Mat­su is an out­sider; she is betrayed by her antag­o­nists, preyed upon by the guards and tor­ment­ed by her fel­low inmates. It’s her against the world, and first-time direc­tor Shun­ya Itō makes this explic­it through reg­u­lar allu­sions to Japan­ese flag.

A cathar­tic groin stab­bing by Matsu’s hand at the film’s cli­max aligns the cor­rupt Sug­i­mi with the nation­al gov­ern­ment by hav­ing him bleed out red into his white linen trousers. This thin­ly-veiled cri­tique of the sys­tem Itō was work­ing with­in can be inter­pret­ed, too, as a sub­text for Kaji’s retal­i­a­tion against the exploita­tive nature of the industry.

Aside from this uncon­ven­tion­al depth of mean­ing, Itō also does a great job of ele­vat­ing the film through vivid colour sym­bol­ism and hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry dream sequences, such as in the flash­back to Matsu’s first sex­u­al encounter with Sug­i­mi. This piv­otal scene, set in a vast blue room full of bil­low­ing white sheets, is there­by imbued with a sense of oth­er­world­li­ness which height­ens it’s poten­cy amidst large­ly set-bound prison con­fronta­tions. Anoth­er mem­o­rable shot finds Mat­su lay­ing against a fire-red floor, her hair stand­ing on end, sig­ni­fy­ing her trans­for­ma­tion as she pre­pares a vio­lent streak of vengeance.

Female Pris­on­er #701: Scor­pi­on and its three sequels are essen­tial texts in under­stand­ing the influ­ence of Meiko Kaji on strong female char­ac­ters like Princess Leia, Ellen Rip­ley and Sarah Con­nor. But this exploita­tive women-in-prison flick, like so many of Kaji’s oth­er films, is best appre­ci­at­ed as a time cap­sule. Prob­lem­at­ic as it may be, the film remains a vital chap­ter in the his­to­ry of female action cinema.