ABSTRACT
Kaji Meiko’s Stray Cat Rock genre films, through her mixture of Japanese and African American musical styles called burusu, communicates an Afro-Asian rhetoric of Japanese women’s liberation. While Japanese genre films, have been decried by critics for explicit sexual content and themes as well as glorifying violence, they were also an avenue through which previously taboo subject matter, such as women’s rights and racism, could be directly addressed. This article argues that Afro-Asian rhetorical texts, in the case of this essay Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter (1970), can be an avenue through which counternarratives of, and by, marginalized people can be expressed. It also represents a call for greater attention to the study of “fusion” rhetorics in the quest for a greater and more holistic understanding of human interaction and rhetorical production.
KEYWORDS
African American Rhetoric, Asian Rhetoric, Film Studies, Feminist Studies, Cultural Studies
The blues is a conduit of emotional release and a central element of African American rhetorical expression; it is made manifest through all forms of performance, including preaching, singing, instrumental playing, visual art, literature, and film. Its most obvious manifestation is through music. In the late 1930s, African American blues merged with Japanese musical forms to create burusu, an Afro-Asian musical fusion that would be used rhetorically in the Japanese youth-oriented films of the early 1970s. I broadly define Afro-Asian Rhetoric as the fusion of African and Asian cultural and/or linguistic practices as well as symbols by people of African or Asian descent in order to persuade or create effects on an audience. In Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter (1970), starring Kaji Meiko, the Afro-Asian burusu is linked to a woman’s awakened consciousness, leading her to a mission to help mixed-race, Afro-Japanese people assert their humanity in Japanese society. Kaji’s character, Mako, undergoes a process of transformation from a woman who passively accepts the anti-miscegenation nationalist discourse of dominant society to a woman who is “called” into a counter-discourse that leads her to physically fight for the humanity of Afro-Japanese in Japan. She becomes a part of what bell hooks calls a “site of radical possibility [and] space of resistance” (149). In this article, through a scene-by-scene textual analysis, I argue that Kaji enacts Afro-Asian Rhetoric through her performance of the burusu as well as through her physical actions as a Japanese woman in support of the dignity and social acceptance of Afro-Japanese people. The purpose of this essay is to both uncover the obscured rhetorical significance of often ignored and maligned pop cultural texts as well as point out how a fusion of cultural rhetorical influences can present counternarratives for, and from, marginalized populations. This work adds to the conversation related to Black feminist, Asian feminist, and cultural rhetorics by advocating for the study of rhetorical fusions in the quest for a greater understanding of intercultural human expression.
1. Origins of the Japanese Burusu
The Afro-Asian blending of African American and Japanese musical genres is rooted in a similarity. Both African American and Japanese blues are built around a version of the pentatonic scale. While the African American blues scale consists of a mixture of the major and minor pentatonic scales—first, second, flatted third, third, fifth, and sixth scale degrees (major), and first, flatted third, fourth, flatted fifth, fifth, and flatted seventh scale degrees (minor)—the Japanese blues (burusu) scale consists of the yonanuki minor scale, which comprises the first, second, flatted third, fifth, and sixth scale degrees (Nagahara, 230). This scale was prominently used in Japanese musical forms accompanied by the shamisen (lute), including min’yo (folk song), naniwa-bushi/rokyoku (narrative song), and kouta (ballad), all of which were forerunners to enka (an abbreviated form of enzetsu no uta) (Yano 31-32). Enka was the dominant form of Japanese popular music (ryukoka) from the 1930s until the early 1970s. Interestingly, along with Japanese and Western musical influences, a Korean influence was a huge element in the development of enka. According to John Lie, “The composers most responsible for the popularity of enka [Koga Masao and Miyagi Michio] . . . claimed Korean influence not only from Korean folk music but also from Korean instruments, such as kayagum, and Korean sounds, such as that of kinuta” (67).
African American blues began to influence ryukoka in the 1930s through the wide distribution of music via major labels such as Columbia and RCA, as well as through radio broadcasts, leading to the development of Japanese burusu (blues). According to Yano Christine, “The Japanese version of the blues, however, generally ignored the standard sixteen-measure chord progress[ion] and ‘blue-notes’ characteristic of American blues, latching on instead to its melancholy mood” (36). In other words, it was the mood and feel of the songs of African American blues artists such as ‘Ma’ Rainey, Louis Armstrong, and Bessie Smith that merged with Japanese instrumental practices to produce an Afro-Asian musical hybrid. The performances of burusu by Kaji Meiko in the Stray Cat Rock series was rhetorically powerful in conjuring counterhegemonic possibilities in 1970 Japanese society.
2. Background of Kaji Meiko and the Stray Cat Rock Series
The Stray Cat Rock series was produced by Nikkatsu Studios, a company that specialized in films that “featured gangster anti-heroes but ones who were possessed of some redeemable [qualities] such as honor and loyalty” (Desjardins, 127). Though the series had several directors, its most important was Hasebe Yasuharu, who directed three out of the five films. According to Hasebe, the films were intended to “target young audiences, then in the background [to] make use of the social issues and controversy over public morals” (Desjardins, 133). Though Hasebe did not set out to impose any political agenda, his Stray Cat Rock films, all made in 1970—Delinquent Girl Boss, Sex Hunter, and Machine Animal—were rhetorical in advocating for expanded opportunities for women. Though men were prominently featured in the series, Hasebe says, “I’ve always thought that girls were the focus of the films” (“Hasebe”). In all three of the films Hasebe directed in the series, the women were the leaders; they were the “anti-heroes” committed to achieving justice for those wronged, whether they be women (Delinquent Girl Boss), Afro-Japanese (Sex Hunter), or an American Vietnam War deserter (Machine Animal). Kaji Meiko is the lead actress for Machine Animal and the focus of this essay, Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter (1970).
Kaji Meiko was the symbol of Japanese women’s rebellion during the early 1970s protest era.[1] Born Ota Masako in March 1947, Kaji Meiko became the iconic image of the anti-establishment, rebellious Japanese woman of the early 1970s. As Ota, she was typically cast as the girlfriend of the main character or a college student, but the directors and producers at Nikkatsu recognized her unconventionally strong screen presence and started casting her in “strong women” roles (Desjardins, 66). She fully embraced the strong woman image though she intentionally wanted to depict “her version” of a tough woman, stating,
Whenever I had a strong role I was always concerned to make it even stronger. But a strength originating as much from kindness and an acceptance of one’s elders and of weaker people. To assume the responsibility of being the boss. To maybe go above my elders’ heads to help them and be a leader. I was concerned more about a mental strength rather than any physical strength (Desjardins, 67).
It was her mentor, director Makino Masahiro, who convinced her to change her name to Kaji Meiko in 1969. While Blind Woman’s Curse provided her first lead role, Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter (1970) would be the first to establish Kaji as not only a warrior, but also as a countercultural icon.
3. The Plot and Central Conflict of Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter
Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter’s terrible title was part of Nikkatsu’s promotional strategy in the early 70s. Kaji states, “One thing that happened a lot with Japanese movies back then was to integrate sensational images or catchphrases into the movie titles to draw people into the theaters” (Desjardins, 67). The film stars Kaji as Mako, the leader of a sukeban,[2] Yasuoka Rikiya as Kazuma, who plays an Afro-Japanese man searching for his sister, and Fuji Tatsuya as Baron, the impotent leader of a yakuza who wants to exact revenge on bi-racial people because of the (implied) rape of his mother by a Black American soldier during the Occupation period. The theme of Sex Hunter could be encapsulated as the conflict between “the half and the half-not” as the plight of bi-racial people is the focus of the film (there is even a musical girl group named The Golden Half who performs in the movie). The title likely alludes to Baron’s “hunt” for those who are either bi-racial themselves, or those Japanese who are involved in mixed-race relationships.
The film opens with a close-up of Mako’s broad-brimmed hat as she raises her head to reveal her face. Immediately the film establishes Mako (and Kaji) as the fashionable trend-setter, reflecting the sukebans’ reputation for being fashion-conscious gangsters. Mako and her acolytes have accosted a middle-aged man who inappropriately touched Miki (Aoki Nobuko), one of the gang members. Even as he is denying the accusation, Mako kicks the offender in his private parts while the women take his wallet; Mako, in spite of her unimposing physical appearance, is not averse to using physical violence to make her point. It then transitions into the credits as a hand-held camera focuses on the ladies (with Mako in the middle) as the gang strolls through the city.
After the gang steals a car and Mako slashes Miki’s leg in a knife fight when the latter challenges Mako’s authority, she commands the other girls to depart, leaving her alone at night in a field. As Mako is lying on the grass and daydreaming, she hears the Japanese burusu of Kazuma as he strolls towards her. He stops singing after he is startled with the sight of Mako lying in the grass; she immediately tells him to keep singing before they engage in conversation. She confesses to Kazuma that she feels like she has no purpose in life, foreshadowing that her link with Kazuma will actually lead to her purpose—namely being a defender of oppressed bi-racial people like Kazuma. After comforting her, he tells her that he is looking for a bar called “Mama’s Blues,” which is run by a woman who had a child by an African American man.
In the next scene Mako reunites with her gang in a rock/blues club where The Golden Half are performing. Baron and his yakuza, the Eagles, enter and see the sukeban, and it is revealed that Mako and Baron are in a relationship, establishing a love triangle between Mako, the bi-racial Kazuma, and the purity-obsessed Baron. Thus, Mako’s heart is the symbolic crux of the film, as whichever way it turns will determine her ultimate fate.
The yakuza and the sukeban go to a drug den where they are presumably smoking heroin. It is here that another love triangle is revealed surrounding the relationship between Mari (Koiso Mari), Susumu (Okazaki Jiro), a member of Baron’s gang, and the bi-racial, Afro-Japanese Ichiro (Ken Sanders). After Mari rejects Susumu’s advances and leaves, one of the sukeban tells Susumu to go to Mama’s Blues bar to find out why Mari rejected him. In both Mako’s and Mari’s cases, their attraction to an Afro-Japanese man is symbolic of a way out of their limited and limiting statuses as girlfriends of yakuza members. The Afro-Japanese men are symbolic, physical manifestations of Afro-Asian liberatory rhetoric that will ultimately inspire Mari and Mako to assert and fight for their liberation from traditional, patriarchal roles and mindsets as well as advocate for the rights of Afro-Japanese people in Japanese society.
4. The Afro-Asian Rhetorical Significance of Mama’s Blues
The next scene takes place at Mama’s Blues, a small bar/club that acts as an Afro-Asian safe haven for outsiders, particularly Black and mixed-race people. Echoing bell hooks, it acts as a site of resistance where the marginalized gather (hooks, 152). It blends the African American rhetorical presence, as manifest through jazz and blues music as well as the portraits of Black luminaries such as Martin Luther King, Jr., John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and others that adorn the walls, with the visual rhetoric of a Japanese woman owning the club. It is significant that gender is explicitly emphasized in the very name of the bar, indicating that it is not only a safe place racially, but also for women who are trying to escape the strict confines of cultural expectations. Even the name of the bar is an Afro-Asian fusion, a sort of trans-linguistic pun. Besides the obvious connection of the blues with African American musical heritage, the word “Mama” has significant connotations in both Japanese and African American cultures. In Japan, the “mothers” of geisha houses and bars were affectionately called, mama-san. In African American culture, “Mama” is also a Black English affectionate word for “mother.”
At Mama’s Blues, Japanese and African American bodies and cultures interact freely through dancing, socializing, drinking, and just plain hanging out. Mari and Ichiro are doing just that as they are seated together, looking romantically into each other’s eyes as a blues song plays in the background. At the same time, Kazuma is at the bar talking to “Mama,” searching for answers about the whereabouts of his sister. Moments later, Susumu and some of the gang enter the bar to find Mari. He tells Mari to come with him, but she refuses, leading to Ichiro challenging Susumu to go outside. Outside the bar the yakuza gang up on Ichiro, beating him bloody. Susumu tells Ichiro, “Keep away from my bitch, got it?” (Sex Hunter). When Ichiro refuses, they continue to beat him until Kazuma intervenes. He manages to beat the yakuza and they run away as Mari wipes the blood off of Ichiro’s face. This scene symbolizes the contrast between the freedom and sense of acceptance associated with an Afro-Asian rhetorical presence and the oppressive dominant cultural expectations and standards of the era. First, for Susumu, Mari is his possession, referring to her as “my bitch.” She has no agency; she is expected to satisfy his every whim, sexual or otherwise, at any moment in time. With Ichiro, and by extension at Mama’s Blues, Mari is free to pursue her own interests and love the man she is really interested in. Additionally, in spite of the beating Ichiro experiences outside of the club, Kazuma “has his back” as he attacks the assailants representative of a dominant, exclusive mentality.
Mama’s Blues represents a safe place, a home “from which to see and create, to imagine alternatives, new worlds” (hooks, 150). It is here that Mama was able to create a new site of survival for herself after experiencing the social death resulting from her cross-racial liaison. This space acted as a “church,” in the original meaning of the word, as a “place of gathering.” It is significant that this house of the African American rhetorical presence showcases the essence of Black religion: the blues. Blues is not just an element of black religion—it is Black Religion. While this synthesis of blues and religion might seem strange to the Western idea of strictly separating the sacred and the secular, in African American culture, following African practices, no strict separation exists. In fact, as Geneva Smitherman states, Black discourse operates on “a kind of sacred-secular circular continuum” (93). Black music is the arena where this merging of secular and sacred is most evident, and this was clearly seen in the performances of the great Black women blues singers of the early twentieth century.
A “Mama” who historically made a blues performance like a church service was Gertrude “Ma” Rainey. As mentioned earlier, the blues singer and the preacher were usually one and the same person. As African American churches became more influenced by white religious standards and practices, women within the Black church were increasingly expected to take a subservient role—and preaching was out of the question. The blues woman, however, could be just as assertive and evocative as Black women had been during slavery. This was first clearly seen in Ma Rainey’s traveling shows, where her performances would elicit the same emotional response as a preacher in a revival. Thomas Dorsey, who played piano for her, recalled, “She possessed her listeners; they swayed, they rocked, they moaned and groaned, as they felt the blues with her” (Harris, 89). Even religious language and imagery would be used in her songs, as when she sang in “Stormy Sea Blues,” “Lawdy, Lawdy, I hear somebody calling me . . .” (Harris, 97).
The music of Mama’s Blues is the call to worship, the site of release for the oppressed where the “gospel” of liberation and freedom is experienced by patrons looking for “salvation.” As hooks writes, “I am located in the margin. I make a definite distinction between that marginality which is imposed by oppressive structures and that marginality one chooses as site of resistance—as location of radical openness and possibility” (153). One gets the feeling that anyone who is “different” would be welcome with open arms at Mama’s Blues, while outside of this existential oasis lay danger and death—social damnation.
In the next scene, Susumu returns to the “drug den” and meets with Baron as Mako relaxes her head on his leg. It is here that the central conflict of the film is clearly expressed as Susumu complains, “A half-breed stole my Mari” (Sex Hunter). Baron responds, “They’ll take them . . . They’ll take all our women one day,” referring to non-Japanese, presumably Black GIs, as the scene transitions to a flashback of the rape of his sister. An image of splattered blood is superimposed on extreme close-up scenes of a U.S. military base and then a Black man’s hands caressing a Japanese woman’s body, which is symbolic of the general perception of the Black soldier in Japan in the post-war years.
5. The Perception of the Black Soldier in Japan
The American Occupation introduced a new entity to Japanese society: the African American soldier. While all American military personnel had the taint of being occupiers, it was the Black soldier who was the ultimate source of humiliation for many Japanese. Most African American soldiers were stationed in segregated units throughout Japan immediately after the Second World War but were primarily stationed around Camp Gifu between 1947 and 1952 (Okada, 181). For most Japanese, it was the first time seeing Black people face-to-face. In general, Black soldiers had positive perceptions about their stay in Japan, as they enjoyed greater freedoms than they would have in their home country. However, as Sonia Gomez writes, “The high number of Southerners serving in the Allied Occupation contributed to the Southernization of Japan, where the United States military transported to Japan its racial attitudes” (41). Nevertheless, in many cases, African Americans had cordial interactions with Japanese citizens, especially those who had not been “tainted” by the racist views of southern White soldiers, who were numerous in the American occupation forces. However, the legacy of the Japanese superiority complex regarding other Asian nations, as well as its anti-Black racism influenced by European enlightenment philosophy and racist ideas popular in the post-Meiji era, did not disappear with the presence of American forces.
According to Yasuhiro Okada, “The modern Japanese perceptions of [B]lack people were formed through the employment of the ‘black Other’ or ‘reflexive symbol,’ through which they negotiated their own ambiguous racial identity within the Western-dominated global political system, occupying a place somewhere between ‘European culture and civilization’ and ‘African barbarity and savagery’” (186). In other words, though Japan saw itself as inferior to western nations, the Japanese maintained a sense of superiority over other Asian peoples (such as Koreans) as well as those of African descent. Okada adds, “Japanese preexisting beliefs about the inferiority of people of African descent defined the patterns of racial practices and interactions among U.S. occupation troops” (186). This superiority complex was enhanced by the “American way of racism” spread through racist stereotypes and discourse of White GIs, including the widespread idea that Black people had tails (Okada, 184). Additionally, Japanese constantly heard rumors that Black and White soldiers fought each other in the street, amplifying the trope of the Black soldier as an aggressive, animalistic, figure.
This trope was seen in some of the New Wave films of the 1960s that depicted the immediate postwar years in Japan. Takechi Tetsuji’s Black Snow (1965) was especially notable in this regard. Takechi made the film as a political protest against Japan’s alliance with U.S. foreign policy and its acquiescence in following the American lead, particularly concerning the Vietnam War, nuclear weapons proliferation, and the presence of American military bases on Japanese territory. The symbol of the ultimate humiliation of Japan in the film is a Black soldier, who, in the opening scene, is having sexual intercourse with a Japanese woman—with the soldier symbolizing America and the woman symbolizing Japan. In a later scene this soldier is murdered. The film was controversially banned in Japan, leading to a famous trial in which activists from both the political left and right protested in favor of Takechi. That the ultimate symbol of humiliation was a Black soldier and not a White one, considering it was a White power structure in charge of American foreign policy Takechi was protesting against, is illuminating. In Sex Hunter, Baron and his yakuza go beyond blaming Black soldiers by targeting the innocent offspring of Black people.
6. The Persecution of the Afro-Japanese
As the scenes progress, Baron says, “They mauled her and stomped all over her. She was wailing but I couldn’t do a thing for my sister. What do you suggest we do?” He continues, “Kick ‘em out. We’ll kick every last one of them out” (Sex Hunter). This monologue establishes that Baron, and his gang, are targeting a specific bi-racial group—those with African ancestry.
In the next scene, Susumu and the rest of the Eagles begin their targeting campaign against any Afro-Japanese person they see, starting with Ichiro. He is working at a Coca-Cola bottling plant when Susumu and others corner him. While the others grab Ichiro, Susumu breaks a Coca-Cola bottle and lewdly threatens to castrate Ichiro if he does not leave town. Other bi-racial people are also threatened, including a couple, presumably an Afro-Japanese man with a Japanese girlfriend. Susumu, as an extreme close-up of his face takes up half the screen while the couple is squeezed into the other half, questions them, “Are you two married?” When the man says no, Susumu explodes, “Then don’t sit so close!” (Sex Hunter). They, then, beat the man; when he tries to escape, they chase him down with their jeeps. When Susumu and the gang finish their harassment, they return to Baron. Susumu, laughing, says, “This war game’s fun,” to which Baron responds angrily, “It’s no game! This is real war” (Sex Hunter).
At that moment, Mako and her sukeban see Baron and his yakuza, and casually ask what they are doing, to which one of the yakuza says, “We’re protecting you girls” (Sex Hunter). One of the common reasons given by patriarchal, racist groups—whether they be the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazis, the Shield Society, or in this film, the Eagles, of harassing and murdering people outside of their twisted conception of humanity—is protecting “their” women. From an example from American history, Thomas Dixon Jr., author of The Klansman, a novel which inspired D.W. Griffith’s racist motion picture masterpiece, The Birth of a Nation (1915), described the Klan as contending “‘for their God, their native land, and the womanhood of the South’ . . . [rescuing] white women from the clutches of African Americans—thereby saving the sexual and racial purity of these women” (Blum, 104). Any act of terror is justified under the excuse that their property, as they think of women, and by extension, their “pure” legacy, is threatened by miscegenation.
As the gang drives off, two of the sukeban yell, “Mind your own fucking business! We don’t need your protection!” (Sex Hunter). In this scene, the two opponents are established, each representing a clear point of view. The men-dominated group led by Baron represents the patriarchal, nationalist conception of Japanese society, while the sukeban represent a progressive, more liberating conception of humanity. Mako tries to negotiate with Baron until she realizes that there is no compromise with their competing visions.
Meanwhile, as Kazuma continues his search for his sister, Megumi, the Eagles are on a rampage. Their next target is the safe haven for Afro-Japanese and their allies: Mama’s Blues. As a blues song is playing, Baron and the Eagles stroll in; Susumu interrogates the patrons as he maneuvers between tables, his chauvinism and racism on full display, “Any of you guys ever sleep with our girls? . . . I don’t care what you guys do with your own people. But if you touch our women . . . you’ll pay for it” (Sex Hunter). When Mama tells them to get out, Baron says to the patrons, “Are you all sons of this ex-whore?” (Sex Hunter). The Eagles then proceed to beat up random patrons, including one who responds, “You can’t kill me.” Baron, in laughing mockery, says he can and then chillingly states, “I’ve always known, since I was a kid the time would come when I’d have to do this” (Sex Hunter). Baron and the Eagles then vandalize the bar, throwing bottles at the various portraits of African American political and musical icons, including the one of Martin Luther King, Jr., on whom the camera lingers. It is as if the Eagles are symbolically smashing King’s ideals as they smash up Mama’s Blues. After they do their damage, the yakuza leave.
Mama, as if used to the harassment, is nonplussed, telling the patrons as she cleans up the bar area, “Go home and get some rest. But pay up before you go” (Sex Hunter). However, the patrons do not leave; instead, they help clean up the mess the Eagles made. One of them, as blood continues to stream down his face, even restarts the record of the blues song that was playing when the Eagles entered. It is the blues that expresses their troubles and the blues that sustains them as they sweep up the shattered glass caused by hate. Additionally, as I defined Afro-Asian rhetoric in the Introduction as the fusion of African and Asian cultural practices and symbols by people of African or Asian descent in order to persuade or create effects, the visual of Afro-Japanese patrons restoring the African American portraits while playing a blues song in a bar owned by a Japanese woman speaking Japanese is a striking manifestation of Afro-Asian visual and auditory rhetoric. This rhetoric is expressing the idea or message that people of African and Japanese descent can live harmoniously and work together to create a space of refuge even in the midst of an adversarial social structure.
In the next scene, the folly of a “lone wolf” strategy in stopping injustice is exposed, as Baron and the Eagles arrive at their headquarters and get out of their jeeps, when Mari suddenly lunges from hiding in an attempt to assassinate Baron; she is grabbed by Susumu as Baron barely avoids being stabbed. By herself she is no match for the might of the Eagles or the sadistic vengeance of Baron, who orders Susumu to call Mako before tying Mari up in the headquarters. When Mako arrives, Baron makes an ultimatum. He releases Mari, unharmed, stating, “From now on you keep the fuck out of our business” (Sex Hunter). After releasing Mari to Mako and Yuka, Mari insists on continuing her solo path, except not against the Baron directly, saying, “I’m going to look for Ichiro. I’ll be fine on my own” (Sex Hunter).
Meanwhile, Kazuma continues his search for his sister, Megumi. He finds a random Megumi and questions her extensively until he realizes it is the wrong woman. Mako and the sukeban see Kazuma questioning this mistaken Megumi in the street and agree to help him. After releasing the mistaken Megumi, they go to a bowling alley where their own Megumi is hanging out and tell her about Kazuma. It is obvious that the sukeban Megumi is in fact Kazuma’s sister, and that she has been passing as Japanese—hiding her African ancestry. Kazuma knows this and begins narrating their past as children, explaining, “When I was seven, our mum died. Mum’s friend from Tachikawa adopted you. Mama from ‘Mama’s Blues’” (Sex Hunter). At that revelation, Megumi turns in shame, denying everything Kazuma revealed, saying, “How can I be related . . . to a thing like you?” (Sex Hunter). Unbeknownst to Kazuma, a few of the Eagles have witnessed the conversation, and assume that Kazuma was harassing a Japanese girl, something Susumu explicitly warned against earlier. In the next scene, the Eagles arrive at the car repair shop where Kazuma works and beat him bloody. Mako and her sukeban, including Megumi (who is visibly hesitant to help Kazuma), arrive to witness the beating and say, “Cowards! So many of you and only one of him. You call yourself men?” (Sex Hunter).
In the next scene, at a rock/blues club, Mako and the sukeban tend to Kazuma’s wounds, when Baron and Susumu walk in. They sit at a bar, and Kazuma and Mako sit next to them. Baron challenges Kazuma to a duel like in an old Western, but Kazuma declines, stating that he will leave after he finds his sister (he believes the Megumi of the sukeban was too cruel to be his sister). Mako, angrily responds to Kazuma, “Call yourself a man? So you’ll surrender?” (Sex Hunter). Kazuma basically tells Baron and Susumu not to interfere with his search or there will be a real Western gunfight—an obvious foreshadowing of the film’s end. Mako tells Kazuma that she, and by extension her sukeban, will help him find his sister, thus tying them and her, personally, to Kazuma’s fate.
Mako, with Megumi, shy and noticeably prominent by her side, along with the sukeban proceed to question every woman in the area who appears to be bi-racial—obviously with no success. Incidentally, it is only the darker-skinned bi-racial appearing Japanese who are questioned, while the lighter-skinned bi-racial appearing people seem to be openly accepted, as seen by the performances of The Golden Half, who are all light-skinned bi-racial Japanese. In fact, The Golden Half were performing at the club in the previous scene while Baron and Susumu were in conversation with Kazuma and Mako! There was no violence by the Eagles against The Golden Half. Perhaps the “Golden” indicates the “acceptable” mixture allowed in society, as all of the singers in the group (five) appear to be Euro-Japanese, not Afro-Japanese. This is not to say some of them are not Afro-Japanese, as light-skinned people of African descent in America are common—it is just that they are often “read” socially as white because of their skin tone. The same is likely true in Japan. Nevertheless, whether Hasebe was consciously signifyin,’ as Smitherman would say, on the Japanese racial double-standard or not by his inclusion of The Golden Half in the film and in this scene in particular, it is certainly clear that the double-standard exists as revealed by the prominence of the band compared to the ostracism experienced by all of the Afro-Japanese characters.
The next section of the film is as bizarre as it is revealing about the gender dynamics within 1970s Japan. In their headquarters, Susumu complains that Mako and the sukeban are Kazuma’s underlings—his servants helping him to find his sister. Baron agrees and concocts a plan to “sell them off as a job lot and make a pile [of money],” implying that their fate is in the palms of his hands. He makes arrangements with an agency, a glorified pimp service, in charge of “selling” women (with U.S. dollars) to American businessmen for nightly pleasures. For some unexplained reason, Mako and the sukeban get tricked into Baron’s scheme. While the sukeban prepare to meet the American “gentlemen,” Baron and Mako meet separately as Baron attempts to make a deal with Mako in an effort to repair their rupture, saying, “We’re friends. As long as we help each other, we can both have a good time” (Sex Hunter). Later, while the sukeban and the American “customers” are playing cards and socializing, Baron notices an American touching Mako inappropriately and takes her away. They go to Baron’s apartment where Baron’s ultimate plan unfolds as the Americans, drunk, harass the sukeban. One of them tells Susumu, who is overseeing the fiasco while Baron is off with Mako, “You bastard! You’ve turned into that white pig’s thugs!” (Sex Hunter).
Meanwhile, in Baron’s apartment, Baron and Mako are attempting to make love until the truth of Baron’s impotency is revealed. Baron blames women in general for being “dirty” as the reason he cannot have intercourse with Mako, to which she responds, “Can’t you get it up? I’m right, aren’t I?” (Sex Hunter). He strikes Mako with the back of his hand and says, “Mako, nobody says that to me. Anybody who does, I kill” (Sex Hunter). He then reveals to Mako his scheme, saying, “Tonight’s party is a rape party. Your friends are getting gangbanged right now . . . Because you girls helped the ‘Mama’s Blues’ boys break loose. I thought you girls might as well have real men” (Sex Hunter). After Mako responds in disbelief that Baron would stoop so low as to “sell” Japanese women to White American businessmen and consider that more “acceptable” than miscegenation with a Black person, she severs any ties to him, saying, as she pulls out a small knife that she had concealed in her stocking, “Being with you makes me sick. You’re fucked,” playing on Baron’s impotence. She adds, “I can be quite reckless. After all, I’m just a homeless stray” (Sex Hunter). As Mako holds her knife in front of her face, Baron responds by reminding her of all the material things he had bought her over the years, before asking her if she is in love with Kazuma. After a quick, extreme close-up zoom of Mako’s face, she responds, “I do,” (Sex Hunter) the most offensive thing he could possibly imagine; his lover has fallen for an Afro-Japanese man! After warning her of the danger she has incurred, he responds chauvinistically, “When bitches get in heat like this, they get all reckless,” (Sex Hunter) thus attributing Mako’s love and motivation to help Kazuma not to her sense of justice, but to uncontrollable, irrational urges—the classic patriarchal accusation against women, who are considered more emotional than rational. He also likens Mako to a dog, thereby associating her motivation to inhuman, animalistic impulses rather than a basic sense of humanity and compassion for a suffering human being.
When the pimp who helped arrange the trap arrives at Baron’s apartment on his motorcycle, Mako attacks him, knocking him off the bike. She then takes it and rides back to the party, saying as she is driving, “I can’t let him fuck us over. I’ll never be able to live with myself. Bastard! I’m fighting back our way!” (Sex Hunter). Mako gets Yuka and Megumi, who did not attend the party; they carry empty Coke bottles (a tribute to Ichiro?) and turn them into Molotov cocktails before they enter party where the other sukeban are fiercely fighting off the aggressive Americans. The three enter and start throwing the bottles everywhere, setting the room on fire. As Yuka beats the men off the women, Mako holds off Susumu and the other yakuza with her lit bottles. Her punning parting words, as Yuka and Megumi escort the sukeban out of the enflamed room are, “Don’t fuck with us,” before setting fire to the door after she leaves the room. After the ladies run away from the building, Mako apologizes to the sukeban for putting them in that situation. After letting them take out their anger on her, they return to their rock/blues club hangout. As Mako, Yuka, and Megumi are sitting at the bar, Mari returns and says that she could not find Ichiro and wants to be with the sukeban. Here Mari acknowledges that her “lone wolf” strategy was a failure and that the only way to create a society in which she and Ichiro can love each other freely requires cooperation with allies. Overall, this scene expresses an Afro-Asian feminist rhetoric as the women demonstrate the ribu philosophy of strategic violence against patriarchy and at the same time exhibit the Black feminist emphasis on striking out against those who imperil their oppressed community—in this case the sukeban community. Mako’s strategy was not to charge in angrily and futilely fight with her fists, but to use weapons that would give her an advantage that would ensure her success in rescuing the sukeban, thereby restoring their community.
In the next scene Baron and the Eagles return to Kazuma’s car shop and drag him to an abandoned military airfield—likely the same one that was in Baron’s memory when he recalled his sister’s rape. Mako arrives, alone, to see Kazuma getting dragged and beaten by the yakuza as Baron watches. After the Eagles leave, Mako takes Kazuma to an abandoned hangar on the military grounds where Megumi is. After Mako tends to Kazuma’s wounds, she reveals to her that Megumi is, indeed, his sister, to which Megumi responds, “I have nothing to say to him” (Sex Hunter). Kazuma, accepting of Megumi’s rejection of him, nevertheless says, “Little Megumi. You’re my little sister. I knew it as soon as I saw your face . . . I was waiting for you to come and tell me the truth,” he says before going into more detail about their background, “I was in an orphanage and you were adopted. I thought you were with Mama at ‘Mama’s Blues.’ Why did you leave her?” After Megumi persists in her denial, Kazuma responds, “We share the blood of our old man, Marcus Wilson, and our mum, Harue Okamoto, who died in Yokohama” (Sex Hunter). When Megumi asks for proof, Kazuma pulls up her sleeve and shows a pencil scar that Megumi got after they fought when they were children. After Megumi continues her denial, Mako has finally had enough and slaps Megumi across the face and says, “You idiot!” (Sex Hunter) as Megumi falls to the ground. At this point, Kazuma gives up trying to convince Megumi and storms out of the hiding place; Mako goes after him.
7. The Final Act
In the next scene, Megumi is alone at night at the spot where Kazuma had been beaten by the Eagles. She had been pondering everything her brother had said to her hours before. As she is looking through the metal fence at the abandoned airstrip, standing next to an “Education Center” sign, the Eagles suddenly show up in their jeeps. The “Education Center” sign is in English and reminds one of the “education” the Occupation forces gave the Japanese in the immediate postwar years. One thing they did not educate them on is their own hypocrisy regarding race in America, and by extension, in Japan through the segregated military bases that were standard until the early 1950s. It was the privileged status of the White GIs and the inferior status of the Black GIs in the American military that the Japanese witnessed firsthand, and emulated, in an effort to please (and in some ways imitate) the “superior” race. Megumi’s shame is linked to this imposed racist mentality—the same mentality that could give The Golden Half a big stage to perform on while, at the same time, subjecting all the patrons of Mama’s Blues, including Megumi and Mama herself, to insult and social ostracism.
One of the Eagles asks Megumi, “Hey, where did our punchbag go?”, to which Megumi responds, “My brother . . . isn’t coming back” (Sex Hunter). Thus, she finally accepted the truth of her ancestry—too late for Kazuma. After hearing that Megumi is Kazuma’s sister, Baron and the gang are shocked; Baron feels betrayed that he defended her honor earlier after what he perceived was an Afro-Japanese man attacking a “pure” Japanese girl. After one of them proposes that they should gang rape her, Baron laughingly approves. Ironically, Baron intends to have done to Megumi, Kazuma’s sister, what was done to his own sister at the same military base. As they move to attack her, Susumu unexpectedly steps through the group and protects Megumi. Baron commands Susumu to assault her, but he refuses, saying, “We never did this shit before. We’re acting like . . . impotent losers” (Sex Hunter).[3] Susumu’s direct shot at Baron’s weakness is also an allusion to all violent nationalist groups who are so insecure in their conceptions of women that instead of treating them like human beings they treat them like objects whose every action must be monitored for fear that any independence a woman shows could be a threat to their insecure masculinity.
His pride wounded, Baron commands Susumu to watch as the rest of the gang attack Megumi. Susumu looks in disgust at what is happening and then walks away. Baron, unaccustomed to having his orders disobeyed, drives after Susumu and asks where he’s going. Susumu ignores Baron and continues walking before revealing, “Baron . . . the truth is, I’m a half-breed too” (Sex Hunter). In disbelief, Baron maneuvers his jeep and contemplates Susumu’s revelation. He then pulls his gun out of the glove compartment and says before shooting him in the back, in cold blood, “You’re a half-breed, Susumu. Susumu!” (Sex Hunter).
The next scene returns to Mama’s Blues, where Kazuma is at the bar with Mako. He tells Mama, “Tell Megumi from me . . . tell her she’s sweet and honest. That I’m relieved to hear everybody say that about her. Please Mama-san” (Sex Hunter). After Mama asks if Kazuma has seen her, he says no, perplexing Mako. Of course, Mama knows that Kazuma is still reeling from his sister’s rejection of him. She responds, “I’ll tell her that her brother said that, and to go back to her brother” (Sex Hunter). At that moment, Megumi, her clothes torn and bloody, enters Mama’s Blues crying. After Kazuma sees how hurt his sister is, and as Mama embraces her estranged adopted daughter, Kazuma walks towards the exit and says to Mama, “If you see my sister again,” to which Mama says, “What are you talking about? She’s right here,” but Kazuma continues, “. . . Please tell her not to look for her brother” (Sex Hunter). Kazuma and Mako then go to a gun shop; as Mako holds a knife to the worker, Kazuma steals a rifle. Kazuma shoots the windows of Baron’s headquarters as a challenge to face him. These actions by an Afro-Japanese man and Japanese woman visually signal an assertive Afro-Asian determination to directly fight against the entity that oppresses them. No longer will they be on the defense; no longer will they be the victims. These two representatives of two oppressed groups are united in fighting back. This rhetorically communicates the idea that there comes a time and place when assertive action is necessary in securing the space to live and love freely. Though the boldness of Kazuma and Mako likely means death, they have counted the cost and have figured that their sacrifice is worth it, in order to create a world where a Megumi can walk freely without harm, and no longer has to be ashamed of her identity as an Afro-Japanese woman.
8. Shootout at the Military Base
The final scene fulfills the Western-inspired shootout foreshadowed in Kazuma and Baron’s conversation at the rock/blues club. The setting is the same fateful military base where Baron’s sister was assaulted, Kazuma was beaten, and Megumi was assaulted. In an abandoned watchtower Kazuma and Mako await Baron and the Eagles, as if they are Bonnie and Clyde-like vigilantes determined to strike out against injustice and oppression once and for all. As they wait out the night in the watchtower, Mako asks Kazuma to sing the Japanese burusu he was singing when they first met, but this time she joins in singing, “No questions about where you live or where you’re headed / Let’s shed no tears of regret” (Sex Hunter). In the end, it is through their singing together of an Afro-Asian blues that both find solace and courage to do what needs to be done. This again rhetorically communicates the idea that only in working together in unison can oppressive conditions and social structures be confronted and challenged; lone wolves, as Mari found out, have no chance against an organized system.
The next morning, as the sun rises, Baron and the Eagles arrive armed at the military base; Baron knows that Kazuma is hiding there—but he does not realize that Mako is with him. After Kazuma fires a shot, the gang all begin firing at the tower. Mako pleads with him to give up, but he refuses. Suddenly, Mako appears on the balcony of the watchtower and tells Baron and the gang to stop firing. Baron takes it as a personal challenge and charges the tower alone. Mako pleads for him to stop, but he climbs the stairs anyway to reach them. When Baron reaches the room where Kazuma is, they both start firing at each other, with both of them getting hit multiple times at close range. Mako slumps in horror, outside of the room where the gunfight is happening as she cannot bear to watch the carnage. When the shooting stops, Mako sees Baron dead and Kazuma barely holding on to life.
Suddenly, the sukeban with Megumi are in the field running towards the tower. Fully accepting that Kazuma is family, Megumi runs towards the tower, yelling, “Brother!” repeatedly. He pleads for Megumi not to come and inexplicably says, “I’m not your brother! Megumi, stay away!” (Sex Hunter). She ignores him and continues running towards the tower until Kazuma shoots her. After Kazuma realizes he has killed his sister, he empties the remaining bullets into the ground. Mako watches helplessly as Kazuma slumps to his death, succumbing to the bullet wounds from Baron. The final shot features a reversal of the opening scene, as Mako’s broadbrimmed black hat covers her face as she lowers her head. At the beginning of the film, Mako was innocent and merely listening to an oppressed Afro-Japanese man singing the burusu; at the end of the film Mako was herself singing the burusu as a fully committed and now experienced Japanese woman fighting against the oppressive forces that killed her lover.
9. The Culmination of Mako’s Journey and its Significance
What do we make of this bizarre, unexpected ending? Was Mako’s and Kazuma’s journey ultimately a lost cause? Baron and Susumu, the main leaders of the Eagles are dead; likewise, Kazuma and Megumi. The only survivor to emerge from the carnage is Mako, perhaps symbolizing the start of a new era after the old antagonisms between the nationalists, as represented by Baron and the Eagles, on one side, and the Afro-Japanese, as represented by Kazuma, Megumi, and Mama’s Blues, on the other side, was settled by the gunfight at the military base. Over the course of the film, Mako went from being Baron’s benign lover simply going with the flow of his ideas, and by extension, mainstream society’s ideas regarding Afro-Japanese people, to having her conscience awakened by a blues-singing Afro-Japanese man. Her consciousness was not awakened by a sudden love interest in an attractive man, but in what he represented. As Blues is Black Religion, so Mako answered a religious “call” to a higher purpose by not only the blues of Kazuma, but Megumi’s blues, and Mama’s Blues. Her journey represents the journeys of so many Japanese women who saw in African American music a way to “perform” themselves in a counterhegemonic way in their quest for liberation. Mako’s path to liberation was in performing an Afro-Asian rhetoric through the burusu with her physical actions as a Japanese woman fighting for the dignity and freedom of mixed-race, Afro-Japanese.
10. Conclusion
Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter is a wild, unconventional Afro-Asian rhetorical commentary on the social, racial, and gender dynamics of early 1970s Japanese society. As the post-war prosperity known as “The Tokyo Miracle” was expanding the Japanese middle-class and providing more opportunities than ever for Japanese youth, there was an undercurrent of dissent expressed most provocatively by leftist-leaning college students and filmmakers. Kaji Meiko, as the cinematic representation by numerous filmmakers of the emerging liberated, feminist Japanese woman (uman’s ribu), was the appropriate choice to star in a film advocating for the freedom of Afro-Japanese in Japan. Her character in Sex Hunter goes on a journey inspired by her love for an Afro-Japanese man and fueled by the burusu that emerged from a mixture of African American and Japanese musical and cultural influences. The fusion of two cultural rhetorics as expressed through music provided the soundtrack for a counterhegemonic rhetorical text that argues for intercultural solidarity in the quest for human justice and dignity. The film ultimately acts as a voice to, and for, a marginalized and ostracized population through the visual Afro-Asian rhetoric of Japanese women and people of African descent working together, as well as through the aural Afro-Asian rhetoric expressed through burusu.
Erick Raven is a Research and Teaching Excellence Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Baylor University. He graduated with his PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from Texas Christian University in 2025. He taught middle school in the United States and South Korea before teaching at the university level at the University of Texas at Arlington, Texas Christian University, and Baylor University. His work has appeared in the peer-reviewed journals, The Journal of Popular Culture and Black Camera. Afro-Asian Rhetoric is the core of his research interest as he focuses on its expression in popular culture, particularly the visual arts and music. African American and East Asian women are at the center of his work as he is interested in researching the connection of Afro-Asian rhetoric in relation to Black and East Asian feminism(s) as well as how cultural interactions between these two groups are efficacious in the mutual goal of complete liberation and social equality.
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[1] Kaji’s performances must be linked to the Japanese radical feminism movement that emerged out of the New Left in the late 1960s and early 1970s. What is now considered akin to radical feminism in Japan was associated with the uman ribu (transliterated from women’s liberation) movement that emerged in the early 1970s. The ribu activists endured and spread their ideals through a variety of avenues, including “lesbian activism, feminist music and martial arts, women’s communes, and ongoing reproductive freedom movements” throughout the 1970s (Shigematsu, 190). Several of these, particularly martial arts and communal living, would feature in Kaji Meiko’s films in the early 1970s.
[2] According to Hannah Schmidt-Rees, “The term ‘sukeban’ was created by Japanese police to categorise and explain the rise of teenage all-female street gangs in the 1960s. Meaning ‘delinquent girl’ or ‘girl boss,’ the sukeban were groups of teenage girls that protested against society with their altered fashion, radical solidarity and being involved in offences such as, violence, theft and drug use.”
[3] According to Hasebe, this scene was improvised after the actor portraying Susumu, Okazaki Jiro, refused to take part in a rape scene. The director and writer then decided to give Susumu a logical motivation for not attacking Megumi.
