The Blind Swordswoman

I feel I write so as to vanquish loneliness. Yet, even in the fictional situations I imagine, people suffer from a longing for real contact with other human beings. The best people suffer inside themselves the most. Their longing drives them to extremes of behavior that in turn provoke orgies of remorse. All of this is simple realism. It may be that literature, like film, is wholly incapable of overcoming loneliness. In such circumstances -- is friendship possible? - ANDREW WILSON

The Blind Swordswoman

What is the strange allure of the swordswoman figure in martial arts novels and movies?

Is it all just pulp garishness? A prolonged adolescent erotic fantasy hangover?

Then why is the swordswoman figure — whether she is blind, tattooed, one-armed, or merely disgraced, outcast, suffering and abused — always so melancholy, so wounded, so tragic?

Listen to these painfully beautiful last lines intoned by a narrator at the end of CRIMSON BAT: THE BLIND SWORDSWOMAN (1969, aka BLIND OICHI STORY: RED BIRD OF FLIGHT): ”Oichi went away on the cold wintery wind, carrying with her her sword-cane and a great deal of loneliness . . . her sightless eyes filled with tears.”

Writing, like cinema, is here only to give pleasure. Sometimes a jolt of pain or sorrow can be pleasurable, once it has been fully absorbed & understood.