The ’70s Japanese Action Star Who Inspired Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill

Writer and director Quentin Tarantino has made a name for himself delivering violent, dialogue-heavy dramas that draw heavily from exploitation cinema. His two-part ode to revenge films, “Kill Bill,” is also part kung fu epic, part spaghetti western and part samurai film, with a few other exploitation genre references sprinkled throughout. However, the film’s biggest inspiration is probably none other than actor Meiko Kaji.

Kaji is a Japanese action star best known for playing the title character in the 1973 samurai revenge thriller “Lady Snowblood”, although she appeared in over 100 film and television roles throughout her career, helping to shape Japanese exploitation cinema of the 1970s. These films, in turn, made “Kill Bill” the harrowing revenge story that it is, particularly “Lady Snowblood” and its sequel, as well as the four “Female Prisoner Scorpion” films. Kaji has also sung the official theme songs for several of his films, including “Flower of Carnage” for “Lady Snowblood” (which appears on the “Kill Bill: Volume 1” soundtrack) and “My Grudge Song” from “Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion” (which appears in “Kill Bill: Volume 2”).

Few female action stars can play the kind of stoic, steely characters as their male counterparts, but Kaji made it her specialty and was absolutely killer at it. There’s a direct line from Kaji to “Kill Bill,” as the actor inspired everything from the climactic fight between “Kill Bill” protagonist The Bride (Uma Thurman) and one of her adversaries, O’Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), in “Volume 1” to The Bride’s very attitude. Other major Japanese stars of this era also influenced “Kill Bill”, including martial arts legend Sonny Chiba and legendary stuntman Kenji Ohba (both of whom also appear in “Volume 1”), but not in the way Kaji did.

Once again, the most obvious and direct link between the film “Kill Bill” and Kaji (besides the soundtrack) is the character O’Ren Ishii. The revenge-focused character clearly draws inspiration from Kaji, particularly his work in the films “Lady Snowblood” and “Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance.” “Lady Snowblood” follows Yuki (Kaji), who is the result of an assault and swears revenge on her mother, who died giving birth to her. Similarly, O-Ren also witnesses the deaths of both her parents when she was a young girl and dedicates the rest of her life to revenge.

The parallels between the two don’t end there either. The final fight between The Bride and O-Ren in the snow in “Kill Bill: Volume 1” is almost directly taken from the climax of “Lady Snowblood,” for starters, and O-Ren’s past is told via animated sequence, just as Yuki’s is shown via manga panels. Both women fight exclusively with bladed weapons, with an emphasis on katanas as well, and both absolutely sport their traditional formal attire. “Flower of Carnage” even plays on O-Ren’s death, further strengthening the connection. This also makes sense: “Lady Snowblood” is one of the best Japanese films of all time.and the references in “Kill Bill” allowed a whole new generation to discover the film (and Kaji with it).

Besides her music career and the “Lady Snowblood” films, Kaji is best known for playing Nami, the Scorpion, in the “Female Prisoner Scorpion” films. He is an anti-hero of very few words, a sort of Japanese “Man with No Name” who spends the first two films in prison before escaping and spend the third film, “Beast Stable”, on the run. Nami is a badass who takes no names (or prisoners), and it’s easy to see how she inspired the vengeful bride in “Kill Bill.” Sure, the bride is a little more talkative, but she’s also a cold-blooded killer who will do what it takes to get revenge. Both have their limits, however, as Nami befriends a woman who sees her try to remove a cop’s severed arm from her wrist in “Beast Stable”, while the bride leaves her own witness in Vernita Green’s (Vivica A. Fox) young daughter, potentially leading her to become the target of future revenge herself.

Despite his fame at the height of his career, Kaji mostly gave up acting in the late 1970s due to overwork and the physical toll of performing repeated stunts. Because of this, she isn’t as well known outside of Japan as she should be, but at least “Kill Bill” helped pay tribute to this incredible artist.