Deadly She-Wolf Assassin at Armageddon
A Note On The Text
In 2003, I traveled to Tokyo to study Noh at the National Noh Theater through Theater Nohgaku. I also attended Noh workshops in Bloomsburg and at New Dramatists through Theater Nohgaku and have found the structure of Noh influencing my recent plays. Afterwards, I spent some time in Austin, Texas, writing Stadium Devildare for the Rude Mechanicals, which was inspired by the Japanese novel/film/manga Battle Royale and the Yukio Mishima novella Patriotism. I noticed that a majority of Austin theatre artists had day jobs dubbing anime films into English and that there is a thriving annual anime Ushicon Festival in major Texan cities. I had already started collecting the Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima Lone Wolf & Cub Dark Horse manga books as research with Fred Ho years ago, and I got excited by how many vintage and pop Japanese icons are enjoying a burgeoning popularity among American kids and adults. Both Noh and anime have deeply influenced the creation of the She-Wolf character who has been fatefully stirred to avenge a myth distilled in her very soul.
I think both our She-Wolf and Rogue Assassin characters, like the hero of the Lone Wolf & Cub films, speak to me because they have been struck by fate rather than by a traditional American dream. First, in being given the bloody office of counter-assassin, and then by being hunted and hated by the Empire and all its minions in eventual exile. All are brutally instinctual in mercenary vengeance. They all travel the same road to Hell, living like demons. Yet, in doing so, there is an unbreakable loyalty in each to son or father and to a cause that is beyond any institutionalized intuition. Through the inferno we are taught true independence and integrity that we do not often learn from our monolithically aggressive leaders in America today. Our Assassins are never number one or superpowerful. They never move unilaterally, but rather—like a wolf—prey upon the most corrupted fangs of parasitic power that threaten the survival of the pack.
From 1972 to 1974, six of the original Lone Wolf and Cub chambara (Japanese martial arts/samurai period) films were released, and quickly ignited an international cult following. This cinematic output coincided with the first renaissance of Hong Kong kung [End Page 94] fu films and U.S. black exploitation cinema, respectively. The "Lone Wolf" film music by composers Hideakira Sakurai (who composed the first five film scores) and Kunihiko Murai (who did the last, sixth film), in my opinion, ranks among the greatest movie-television music of all time, including the espionage film music of Lalo Schriffin (the classic Mission: Impossible TV series and Enter: The Dragon), Curtis Mayfield's Superfly score, Ennio Moriccone's spaghetti western soundtracks, and the sword and sandal and sci-fi fantasy scores of Bernard Hermann. The music for the Lone Wolf movies combines Japanese traditional influences with the hippest of contemporary jazz.
Why choose assassins as "heroes" or central characters? In an era of social upheaval and transition, as was the case of the twilight era of the Tokugawa period of Edo-Japan (mid-19th century), and the ominous arrival and contact with the West, the traditional values become diluted, distorted, corrupted, perverted and inverted. When political and moral corruption abound, the assassin or anti-hero who rejects all rules, forsakes all loyalty to the established order, and embraces the cold-blooded capitalist way of "professional for hire" becomes the apotheosis of revolutionary individualism tearing asunder all feudal obligations and ascriptions. And yet, the Assassin and his son, always referred to as "we," disgraced, and who in turn discard social position and proprieties, become the greatest threat to imperial decadence and arrogance.
