Those familiar with the previous reissues of Meiko Kaji‘s albums will hardly be surprised by the music on Yadokari, her third album from 1973. Influences from Japanese pop music, which in turn is strongly characterized by traditional folk music, meet the contemporary Western soundtrack aesthetics of those years. With a love for detailed arrangements that has long since been lost in the folk mainstream, strings, (mariachi) wind instruments, funky guitar licks and harmonica merge into a global pop that remains emotionally comprehensible even without knowledge of the language. The fact that Meiko Kaji turns up the emotional switch in her singing is a basic requirement for this music – not an exaggeration, but a stylistic device.
Meiko Kaji became an icon of exploitation cinema as an actress in Japan in the 1970s (“Lady Snowblood”) – and also sang the theme songs for her films. Her persona later inspired Quentin Tarantino to make the Kill Bill movies, on whose soundtracks two of her songs can be heard. The vinyl edition of Yadokari contains a bonus 7-inch single featuring the song “Shura no Hana”, which was used in Kill Bill Vol. 2.
