Irezumi

“Will you walk into my parlour?” said a spider to a fly;
” ‘Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy…”
“Oh no, no!” said the little fly, “to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.”

– Mary Howitt, The Spider and the Fly (1829)

The allegory of the spider as a seductive creature that tricks and ensnares the foolish is a cross-cultural phenomenon. In Japan, this manifests as the jorōgumo, a supernatural entity that shape-shifts between the form of a golden orb-weaver spider and a beautiful woman.¹ In fact, the word jorōgumo is also the name for this species of spider, dissolving a clear distinction between the natural and the supernatural. Tales of this malevolent spider-woman pepper Edo period literature, with themes of deception and murder, particularly the seduction and consumption of men.

Tattooing, too, has a complex history within Japan. Known as irezumi, there is much evidence for it as an ancient practice, with scholars noticing tattoo-like decorations carved into clay figurines from as early as the neolithic Jōmon period.² In the southernmost tip of the archipelago, women from the Amami Islands and the Ryūkyūs (present-day Okinawa) wore hajichi – a type of tattoo stretching from the hands to the torso in a rite-of-passage that dates back to at least the 16th century.³ In the north, Ainu women have been wearing lip and hand tattoos since pre-colonial times. Tattoos as punishment for criminals are recorded in the pseudo-historical works the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, dating from the 7th century. The practice died down in the mid 17th century as ideas about beauty and femininity began to shift from the body itself to that which is clothed and hidden, and which can be appreciated in a dimly-lit room.⁴

During the Edo period (1603-1868), tattooing experienced rapid revival under a suddenly stable and thriving economy. The earliest records of tattoos in this era relate to those who worked in the pleasure district. It is said that the favoured client of a courtesan would declare their eternal love by inking the courtesan’s name into their skin. Tattoos also grew popular for men of certain trades, especially hiyaku (express couriers) and tobi (labourers who climbed tall structures, and acted as firefighters). Due to the physical nature of these professions, men would often strip down to a simple loincloth, and so tattoos were an alternative method of decorating their bodies.⁵ Since the tobi played a crucial role in preparations for festivals and public events, wealthy community leaders would often pay for their tattoos as a matter of civic pride. These young, casual, dashing men adorned with beautiful artworks were considered a symbol of local prosperity. 

Tattoos were also linked with underworld figures, both real and fictional. In artwork depicting literary outlaw heroes, irezumi were considered one of their distinctive, romanticised attributes. Irezumi fashioned in ukiyo-e style took hold as a result of these illustrations, and tattoos grew larger, bolder and more elaborate leading into the 19th century. It’s important to note, however, that tattoos were considered vulgar or distasteful by many commoners and especially the warrior class, who prided themselves on bodily cleanliness and wished to avoid association with criminality. Despite objection from the Tokugawa shogunate, tattoos continued to boom in popularity.

With the collapse of the shogunate and the start of the Meiji period from 1868, tattoos were under pressure to disappear. Contact with prudish Victorian sensibilities objecting to mixed-sex bathhouses and near-naked, full-body tattooed men in public prompted a tattoo ban, which resulted in ink being covered under clothing and out of sight. The Meiji government, fearful of Japan being viewed as uncivilised or barbaric, sought to improve the international perception of the nation. The ban was ineffective at totally supressing tattoos, however, and the mystery of the unseen tattoo only heightened this sense of spiritually charged hidden beauty. Ironically, due to the widely known skill of Japan’s tattoo artists, many international dignitaries travelled to Japan during the Meiji period specifically seeking tattoos, including George V of England and Nicholas II of Russia. The perception of the tattoo, and the sacred space of the body, weave a thread of human expression and sexuality through Yasuzō Masumura’s Irezumi (1966).

Irezumi opens boldly with a scene of a woman being violated. Held against her will, drugged and stripped, we are led to believe she is about to be the victim of rape. Bewilderingly, the attacker instead pulls out a needle and begins etching his masterpiece into her skin. While not a strictly sexual violation, our heroine has nevertheless had her bodily autonomy stolen by this act of forced canvassing as she is repeatedly penetrated by the ink. The artist molests her spiritually and physically, fixated on her milk-white skin as it is irrevocably transformed by his pitch-black painting. This is not just any tattoo but the jorōgumo, the monstrous spider-woman, primed to deceive, seduce and utterly consume men. As his work is completed, the tattooist stares with fascination as his victim twitches her shoulders, his spider moving as though it is truly alive.

Otsuya (Ayako Wakao) is a rich merchant’s daughter who falls for Shinsuke (Akio Hasegawa), a poor man and her father’s apprentice. Forced to run away to escape her furious father, the two lovers find themselves ensnared in a dangerous conspiracy. When Shinsuke is out searching for money, Otsuya is sold into a geisha house for a considerable sum by the very person who vowed to hide and protect her. After she is forcibly inked therein, and renamed Somekichi, a noticeable change comes over her. She learns how to prey on her clientele to separate their coin from its purse, but perhaps she is a little too good at playing this game. Against all odds, Shinsuke is able to locate her, and though her toughened mask seems to briefly slip again in his presence, it becomes clear that she is no longer suited to his naïve and overzealous affections. Like a fly caught in a web, he is entrapped by his own desire, shifting from her lover to her puppet before he even notices. Somekichi, embracing her new name, finds a way to exploit the same underworld that exploited her, exacting revenge on the man who sold her to the house, her boss, and eventually her pathetic lover himself.

To believe that Irezumi is a sanctimonious film about a woman who is punished for using her sexuality to her advantage is to ignore the structural complexity of the film, and Masumara’s deliberate feminism. Everything in the film is carefully curated and wholly shot in a studio, meaning that even the outdoor scenes have an uncanny, dreamlike quality to them. In a 1970 interview with Cahiers du cinema, Masumara emphatically states that he believes Japanese women are particularly mettlesome, and much more dynamic as protagonists than men:

Ultimately, it is the woman who is the most human, right? Men only live for women, dragging their burden like a horse drags his cart, all for eventually dying of a heart attack. Men are anti-human, while women act arbitrarily everywhere, say anything, and therefore are extremely human…men are animals that only live for women. This is why it is extremely uninteresting to paint the portrait of men. He becomes a “hero” if he is not a failure. The most virile men are not interesting.⁶

Irezumi’s complex sexuality and cultural metaphor ensnares us as flies to a web. Like the supernatural entity she emulates, Somekichi’s commanding presence gives her control in every scene, even as she resists being abused by the men around her. Unlike the foolish and weak men who vainly attempt to restrain and brand her, she cannot be caged. She is altogether too clever, too wilful for such trivialities, and refuses to be slowed even by those who are devoted to her. A confident display of unshakeable female power, Irezumi leaves an impression on the soul as irreversible as a tattoo.

Irezumi (1966 Japan 86 mins)

Prod Co: Daiei Dir: Yasuzō Masumura Scr: Kaneto Shindō, based on the novel by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki Ed: Kanji Suganuma Phot: Kazuo Miyagawa Prod Des: Hiroaki Fujii, Shirō Kaga Art Dir: Yoshinobu Nishioka Mus: Hikaru Hayashi

Cast: Ayako Wakao, Akio Hasegawa, Gaku Yamamoto, Kei Satō, Fujio Suga, Asao Uchida, Reiko Fujiwara, Kikue Mōri

Endnotes