Yasuzô Masumura's blood-soaked 1966 effort Irezumi is about as noirish as a non-film noir can get because Ayako Wakao's Otsuya is the quintessential femme fatale. But she doesn't start out that way. On the contrary, she's a luminous young woman in love during Japan's Edo period.
In another context, it might mark the beginning of a sweeping romance, except her merchant father doesn't approve. He would prefer to see her betrothed to a suitor of his choosing rather than his lowly apprentice, Shinsuke (Akio Hasegawa).
Headstrong Otsuya, accustomed to getting what she wants, decides to elope. The couple can't believe their good fortune when island innkeeper Gonji (Suga Fujio) offers to put them up. Unbeknownst to the two innocents, he runs an illegal gambling parlor. Worse yet, he's a sex trafficker. When Gonji tells Shinsuke that Otsuya's father has asked to meet with him, he leaves in a boat with the innkeeper's associate.
The minute he exits the scene, Gonji attempts to rape Otsuya. She fends off his advances, but still finds herself sold into sex slavery. To prevent her return to straight life, brothel owner Tokubei (Asao Uchida) hires tattoo artist Seikichi (Gaku Yamamoto) to ink a man-eating spider across her back. Meanwhile, the contract killer Gonji hired attempts to end her fiancé's life, except Shinsuke gets the drop on him—stabbing him through the forehead.
After two months on the lam, he reconnects with Otsuya, who happily hides him from Gonji's camp. Once he gets over his shock at her transformation, he can't fail to notice she's such a skilled courtesan that she's become a free agent. Even more alarmingly, she enjoys it. Now both Gonji and Serizawa (Nagisa Oshima favorite Kei Satô), a high-ranking samurai, have offered to make her their concubine.
In a fit of anger and jealousy, Shinsuke takes his revenge on Gonji. It won't be his last kill, but nor will it be sufficient to bind the increasingly chilly Otsuya, who sheds no tears over any of these deaths, to his side. If anything, her growing imperiousness frightens Seikichi, who believes he has created a monster, confessing, "The woman terrifies me." From that point forward, the blood flows freely as the bodies literally pile up.
Masumura's lesson, which predicts later extreme Japanese horror films, like Miike Takashi's Audition: men made Otsuya into the Lady Macbeth she would become. As she puts it, "I can only live by feeding off of men." In screenwriter-turned-director Kaneto Shindô's hands, Taishō author Jun'ichirô Tanizaki's 1910 story becomes a supernatural noir, akin to Shindô's famed Onibaba, but without any of the demonic imagery. Cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (Rashomon, Sansho the Bailiff) makes artful use of color, particularly the vibrant reds of Otsuya's increasingly elaborate kimonos.
The extra features include an introduction by Tony Rayns, a video essay from Daisuke Miyao, and commentary from David Desser, all of whom provide illuminating details about Masumura, Shindô, and frequent Masumura collaborator Wakao, who anchors the beautifully tragic scenario with her fully committed performance. Highly recommended.