“Stray Cat Rock: Machine Animal”, Original Release Japanese Movie Poster 1970, Meiko Kaji, B2 Size (51 × 73cm) E147
This is an original, rare Japanese B2 theatrical poster from 1970 for Stray Cat Rock: Machine Animal (野良猫ロック マシン・アニマル / Nora Neko Rokku: Mashin Animaru), starring Meiko Kaji and directed by Yasuharu Hasebe. Released in Japan on 22 November 1970, Machine Animal was the fourth film in Nikkatsu’s cult five-film Stray Cat Rock series, one of the defining cycles of Japanese youth and counterculture cinema of the period.
The poster is an original Japanese B2 theatrical sheet measuring approximately 51.5 × 72.8 cm (20.3 × 28.7 inches) and features an extraordinary psychedelic photomontage centred on Meiko Kaji, motorcycles, gang imagery and blazing Pop Art colour.
Film background
Set around Yokohama, Machine Animal follows Maya, played by Meiko Kaji, and her gang as they become involved with Nobo, Sabu and Charlie, an American military deserter whom the two Japanese men are attempting to help escape overseas. Their plan involves selling a supply of LSD to finance Charlie’s passage to Europe, bringing them into conflict with a rival group led by Sakura and setting off a volatile struggle involving drugs, motorcycles and competing youth gangs.
The film was made during a remarkable period in Japanese cinema when youth rebellion, Western music, psychedelic culture, fashion and changing attitudes toward authority were being absorbed into commercial genre filmmaking. The Stray Cat Rock series compressed that atmosphere into five films released between 1970 and early 1971, with Meiko Kaji emerging as its defining presence.
Machine Animal was directed by Yasuharu Hasebe, who also directed the first and third entries in the series, with a screenplay by Ryūzō Nakanishi and cinematography by Yoshihiro Yamazaki. The principal cast includes Meiko Kaji, Tatsuya Fuji, Jirō Okazaki, Bunjaku Han and Eiji Gō.
Meiko Kaji background
The poster is particularly significant for collectors of Meiko Kaji, capturing her immediately before the roles that would establish her as one of the great icons of 1970s Japanese genre cinema. Her work in the Stray Cat Rock series helped develop the cool, rebellious and visually commanding screen persona that would soon reach its fullest expression in the Female Prisoner Scorpion films and Lady Snowblood.
Here she plays Maya, the leader of the female gang, and the Japanese campaign understandably makes Kaji the dominant visual presence. Rather than simply reproducing a conventional film still, the poster transforms her into an almost graphic-design object — simultaneously fashion model, outlaw and countercultural icon.
Poster design
Printed in the classic Japanese B2 theatrical-poster format, this is an exceptional example of early-1970s Japanese Pop Art-influenced movie advertising.
The entire composition explodes from a saturated yellow and orange radial background, overlaid with clusters of blue, pink and white stars. Against this intensely graphic field, photographic cut-outs of the cast and motorcycles are arranged almost like panels from an underground comic.
At the upper centre, Meiko Kaji dominates the poster, dressed in white with extraordinarily long black hair and a huge black wide-brimmed hat. She stares directly outward while raising one finger, giving the image the cool, confrontational quality that would become inseparable from her later screen persona.
Immediately beside her, a motorcycle is photographed almost head-on, its handlebars, headlamp and front wheel thrust toward the viewer. The extreme perspective gives the upper half of the sheet tremendous physical energy and reinforces the motorcycle-gang culture at the heart of the Stray Cat Rock series.
Across the centre, the title is treated with extraordinary graphic confidence. 野良猫ロック (“Stray Cat Rock”) appears in huge white characters against a dark magenta rectangular field, while マシン・アニマル / Machine Animal cuts diagonally across the composition in violent hot pink. The typography feels almost hand-cut and deliberately rough, perfectly matching the rebellious tone of the film.
The lower half becomes an increasingly frenetic collage of Kaji, motorcycles and the film’s ensemble cast, with bold blue, red and white cartoon-like cloud forms separating the photographic portraits. Smaller motorcycle images race around the margins, turning virtually every part of the sheet into movement.
The design is particularly interesting because it refuses traditional hierarchy. Fashion photography, biker imagery, movie-star portraiture, psychedelic colour and comic-book graphics all compete for attention, producing a distinctly Japanese interpretation of late-1960s and early-1970s counterculture.
The original sheet prominently prints 監督 長谷部安春 — “Directed by Yasuharu Hasebe”, alongside its original cast and production credits, the Eirin theatrical classification mark and Dainichi Eihai distribution branding at the lower edge.
This poster is in Very Good+ to Excellent condition. It was originally folded for distribution and has subsequently been stored flat. The original vertical and horizontal fold lines remain visible, with some minor handling creases and light wear concentrated around the folds and their intersections, as would be expected for an original Japanese theatrical poster from 1970.
Importantly, there are no pinholes, no tears, no tape and no staining. The verso remains very clean overall, with some natural show-through from the heavily printed front artwork and minor age-related handling consistent with the poster’s history.
The colour is particularly impressive. The intense yellow and orange background, hot-pink typography, blue graphic elements and photographic imagery remain exceptionally vivid, giving the poster tremendous visual presence despite the original folds.
Please refer to the imagery (front, detail and verso), as this is the exact poster that is for sale. It was previously folded and subsequently stored flat, and once framed it will display excellently.
It is over 55 years old.
It is not a reproduction or a reprint.
