Wonderful film based on a novel by Juinichiro Tanizaki, directed by one of the bad boys of 60's Japanese cinema, Yasuzo Masumura and starred by a brilliant and beautiful Ayako Wakao, who plays Otsuya, a beautiful young woman from a middle-class merchant family who is abducted into geisha work, and who catches one day the eye of Seikichi, a tattoo master who marks her back with a huge, monstrous spider. From that moment on, Otsuya will take her revenge with every man who shared her bed..A very perverse story of revenge full of elegant erotism, not showing graphic nude or sex scenes but showing highly suggestive shots (which are more than enough) and made in a very poetical way, I've always been a big fan of how Japanese filmmakers were able to mix entertainment with art. The film is also a reflect of how obsessive and toxic relationships always lead to a tragic ending and is up to the spectator to decide if Ayako Wakao's character is a victim of circumstances or responsible of it or maybe the spider on her back is the cause of her misconduct and bad manners....A PIECE OF ART

Following the doomed and star-crossed love between the feisty daughter of a wealthy merchant and the timid clerk that works for her father, IREZUMI is cut from the mould of classic Shakespearean tragedy but with a distinctly Japanese spin. For reasons that elude me, the Japanese have taken quite an affection to their idea of the deceitful femme fatale, the "spider woman". Here the feisty daughter becomes one quite literally by having a grotesque "spider woman" tattooed by force on her back on orders of the pimp she's sold to. While her lover prowls the red districts of Yoshiwara looking for her, she leads a luxurious life as a geisha by scamming people off their money with her pimp as an accomplice. Weaving together a typical revenge plot and the idea of psychosomatic auto-suggestion as the woman starts to believe that she's "really" a spider woman after being tattooed and urged by her pimp to leech money off her clients, director Masumura and writer Kaneto Shindo (who also scripted MANJI for Masumura and directed some very famous Japanese horror movies like ONIBABA and KURONEKO) create in IREZUMI a bold, beautiful, no-nonsense revenge drama that doesn't skimp on the violence. When people get killed, it's ugly and messy. When they don't, they weave around them webs of lies and deceit or find themselves caught in one.Masumura's assured but laconic direction (no tracking shots, no moving cameras - his camera remains locked on a tripod with the occasional imperceptible pan) is a masterclass in miss-en-scene, careful framing and pacing a movie without calling attention to his work as director. Simply put, the guy knows how to take a great shot and he knows how to pile great shots one upon the other to make a great scene and he knows how to orchestrate his scenes to make a great movie that moves effortlessly from start to finish. Add to that the superb editing and some great acting by Ayako Wakao (gorgeous in the lead role) and you've got yourself a proper forgotten gem from the classic epoch of Japanese cinema. I'm looking forward to catching more of the director's work.

Fascinating movie from Yasuzo Masumura. A perverse little story about a headstrong girl tricked into becoming a high class geisha. A crazed tattoo artist puts a stunning spider tattoo on her back and insists it takes over her soul. She relentlessly devours the men in her path - but is it the spider, or is she evil anyway? Or is she gaining just revenge on the men who see her as property? The movie doesn't give answers, but fascinates all the same.It is by no means perfect as a movie - the characters are not well fleshed out, and the story is excessively melodramatic, even by the standards of the genre. Some of the characters motivations just don't make much sense. But it is superbly shot and staged making it far more than just a cheap exploitation pic. Masumura was a terrific film maker who knew how to make the most of any script, and this one is no exception. Its certainly not the best of his movies, or the among the very best Japanese movies of the period, but it still holds a creepy power and is often beautiful and sensual to watch, so I'd certainly recommend it.

As a character Otsuya is willful and self-centered and her beauty sparks desire in every men who simply are puppets to her. As her geisha her training is not even hinted, being one is just resumed in the movie as a woman whose will and beauty empower her to command her wishes to any man. Her might and her vampire-like behaviour is represented by her tattooed black spider which both fascinates and repulses her lovers who nevertheless got voluntarily caught into her web. The only man she seemed to love is Shinsuke but even him got corrupted by her evil as she finally gnawed and sucked every traces of strenght in him. However some ambivalence resides in her character by the inner desire to find a man who could match her and fully accept her that is both her soft and "spider"parts.