The greatest of all time, Meiko Kaji, recently came to NYC for a retrospective of her work at Japan Society, so naturally I had to celebrate with a podcast episode in her honor. This is a solo outing, where I discuss the Stray Cat Rock series, which Kaji made for Nikkatsu. It launched her to countercultural stardom and was her last major project for the studio before departing for Toei in 1972 where she went on to greater heights with a series of crime and revenge films.

I discuss the five film series: Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss (1970), Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo (1970), Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter (1970), Stray Cat Rock: Machine Animal (1970), and Stray Cat Rock: Beat ’71 (1971). These are incredibly stylish and often whimsical, though only loosely connected stories of girl gangs, their battles with rival male gangs, racism, the American occupation in Japan, drug use, the Tokyo nightclub scene, and freewheeling hippies. Kaji doesn’t play a recurring character (as in the better known Female Prisoner Scorpion series), but different iterations of a cool, charismatic gang boss and juvenile delinquent with a heart of gold.

In the episode, I mention that my live interview with Kaji from March 28 will hopefully be up on Japan Society’s YouTube page soon (but there is a ton of great Japanese cinema content there already). I also mentioned this Meiko Kaji-inspired playlist which you can find here; I made this a few months ago for my Patreon, but it is a public playlist and perfect for spring weather.