Lady Kayō Fujin Displaying Severed Heads

Lady Kayō was a legendary femme fatale purported to have originated in a kingdom near India, where as queen she was said to have corrupted the princes with her seductive charms. She persuaded them commit the killings of thousands of their own subjects to satisfy her lust for blood sport and amusement. We see her here displaying decapitated heads, perhaps some the heads harvested during her reign of terror in faraway India. The heads appear to have strong “Western” or Caucasian features such as curly hair and prominent noses. Lady Kayo herself is shown in exotic Indian dress, wearing jewelry typical of Buddhist iconography. This image combines exotic “otherness”, seductive beauty and shocking grisly horror, just as many horror movies do today.

Lady Kayo is said to have lived for many centuries and crossed the Asian continent in a bloodthirsty reign of terror. She was blamed for the downfall of China’s Zhou dynasty in 220 BCE, and she was said to have nearly succeeded in seducing a Japanese emperor in the 12th century. She is sometimes depicted not as a human but as a nine-tailed fox, a supernatural creature thought to have great supernatural powers.

Lady Kayo can be seen as a manifestation of the familiar trope of women who are dangerous because they are powerful and self-assured, alluring and threatening. Can you think of other examples of the femme fatale archetype?