The Blind Swordswoman: The Coffin Maker's Son

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.