In the Japanese cinema of the 1970s, Meiko Kaji really slayed. Yakuza, crooked cops, rapists: Nobody was safe from the avenging angels she played in a string of highly stylized exploitation movies, including the “Female Prisoner Scorpion,” “Lady Snowblood” and “Stray Cat Rock” series.
“There weren’t actresses like that at the time,” she says, speaking at the Tokyo offices of her record label, Teichiku. In person, Kaji — now 76 — is warm, chatty and quick to laugh, a far cry from the steely image she presented at the peak of her early 1970s notoriety.
When she joined the movie studio Nikkatsu fresh out of high school in 1965, the company’s roster of female talent was “nothing but ‘model students.’” Kaji didn’t fit the bill. She’d show up wearing faded jeans and a white open-collar shirt, which she’d chosen because she wouldn’t have to iron them.