In the Japanese crime drama Ichi the Killer (2001), director Takashi Miike turns sadomasochism into style. No character embodies this more vividly than Masao Kakihara, a Yakuza enforcer whose devotion to pain becomes an art of personal branding.
Portrayed by Tadanobu Asano, his face is carved into a permanent Chelsea grin—a brutal, ear-to-ear surgical smile framed with gleaming metal piercings, accentuating his wounds. Every detail of Kakihara is meticulously curated — from his sharp suits to his platinum hair, to the symmetrical wounds that define him. In Kakihara’s world, suffering is a currency of identity and respect.
Kakihara is not simply a sadist or masochist seeking status or revenge; he craves sensation — both physical and emotional. The disappearance of his boss, Anjo — a man who controlled him through pain — leaves him in a state of yearning. Kakihara longs not for closure but for someone who can “break” him the way Anjo did, elevating suffering into a ritualistic, almost religious experience.
Ichi the Killer as Fashion Icon
Kakihara’s obsession with Ichi (Nao Ômori), a killer whose acts are drenched in suppressed trauma and tears, is born of fascination. Kakihara sees in Ichi a potential partner in pain, someone capable of delivering the exquisite suffering he desires. For him, pain is not merely agony; it is a language of connection and understanding.
Flesh as Fashion
Kakihara’s body is a living gallery of pain. His Chelsea grin, cinched with silver rings, is a deformed statement of allegiance to his self-fashioned identity. The cuts, piercings, dyed hair, and tailored suits all showcase his pain as couture.
While other charismatic, scarred characters like Freddy Krueger flaunt their deformities as part of their menace, they did not self-inflict their wounds; their personalities flourish in spite of the scars, rather than using pain itself in a deliberate fashion or statement of identity, as Kakihara does. In one scene, he demonstrates his own fashion tailoring sensibility by cutting off the tip of his tongue as an apology, calmly presenting it as a ritualistic offering. This act proves that his scars and modifications are conscious adornments, deliberately chosen to define his identity.
In Takashi Miike’s vision, with his suit and hair colors popping off the screen, Kakihara transcends gangster archetypes to become a walking manifesto — a model of how agony can be elevated to art, how wounds can be beautiful, and how self-destruction can become a powerful form of self-expression.
One of Ichi the Killer’s most memorable displays of ritualized violence occurs when Kakihara interrogates a supposed rival by suspending him from ceiling hooks and pouring scalding oil over his back and head to force a confession. In the way the victim’s body is displayed, dragged, and marked by pain, Miike stages torture as a living exhibition — a grotesque, visceral equivalent to body suspension and ritual piercing. This reinforces the central idea that in Kakihara’s world, agony is a performed aesthetic, a deliberate, stylized expression of control, ritual, and personal mythology.
Kakihara and Ichi function as distorted mirrors. Ichi’s sadism is fueled by trauma and shame, while Kakihara’s masochism is a curated path.
Whereas Kakihara’s violence is ceremonial, meticulously staged, and visually performative, Ichi’s actions are reactionary, impromptu, and distant. He carries a knife strapped to his boot, ready for sudden bursts of lethal force, and his killings are fueled by suppressed trauma and instinct rather than aesthetic or ritualistic intention. For Ichi, pain is a blunt instrument of survival and release.
In this way, the two characters form a mirror of extreme human behavior — one performing suffering as a conscious identity, the other enacting violence as a compulsive, almost mechanical response. The contrast highlights how pain can serve as either a deliberate declaration of self or a tool of survival.
Echoes in Anarchy: Kakihara, Joker, and the Cenobite Parallel
Kakihara’s influence extends beyond Japanese cinema, and his aesthetic finds an intriguing parallel in Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight. Both characters wear their scars as fashion: the Joker’s makeup, Kakihara’s piercings, platinum hair, and loud suits.
Crucially, the origin of these wounds is never fully shown in either film; the audience encounters them already performed and fully integrated into identity. The scars are costume, ritual, and declaration, communicating philosophy, danger, and power instantly.
Beyond his body modifications and ritualized suffering, Tadanobu Asano’s handsome and striking presence amplifies Kakihara’s magnetic power. Known for other daring roles in Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl (1999) and Electric Dragon 80000 V (2001), Asano often blends physical allure with charisma, making his extreme characters both captivating and frightening.
Similarly, Heath Ledger’s Joker benefits from his own charisma and handsomeness, creating a tension between charm and menace. In both cases, the audience is drawn in by the performers’ overall presence, which renders pain and fashion simultaneously alluring and terrifying.
Both figures also share roots in visual source material. Ichi the Killer is adapted from Hideo Yamamoto’s manga, while the Joker originates in DC Comics. In the original manga, Kakihara’s hair differs from Miike’s platinum styling, just as the Joker’s hair and scarring fluctuate across comic and film iterations.
In Tim Burton’s Batman (1989), Jack Napier receives reconstructive surgery after falling into chemicals, leaving him with a permanent grin, while Ledger’s Joker presents a more chaotic, unstable visage. These variations highlight the performative and mutable nature of their physical identities: scars and styling are tools of ideology, aesthetic expression, and psychological communication, not simply backstory.
Additionally, Kakihara’s aesthetic philosophy echoes the Cenobites from Clive Barker‘s Hellraiser (1987)— supernatural beings who literally wear pain as fashion, merging pleasure and agony. Some Cenobites, like the Chatterer, are grotesquely scarred, while others, like Pinhead, display ritualistic piercings or implants across the face and head.
Like these characters, Kakihara’s body is a curated testament to extreme sensation: his wounds, piercings, and styling are simultaneously performative, aesthetic, and symbolic. Across media, these figures demonstrate how physical modification and disfigurement can function as ideology, blurring the line between victim, villain, and artist.
Kakihara’s Philosophy
Kakihara’s personality and philosophy are perhaps best captured through his own dialogue, which reflects the twisted aesthetics of pain and desire that define him:
“Listen, when you’re giving pain to someone, don’t think about the pain that person is feeling. Just concentrate on how good it feels to be causing someone pain. That’s the best thing you can do for a true masochist!” – This line crystallizes Kakihara’s worldview: agony is not just endured, but elevated into a shared, almost ritualistic pleasure.
“Wow… this is great!” — In moments of extreme sensation, Kakihara expresses unfiltered delight in experiencing pain, underscoring how central sensation itself is to his identity. There’s no love in your violence.” — Here, Kakihara judges the emotional and aesthetic quality of violence, distinguishing brutality from the artistry he associates with pain.
“Damn… Nobody left to kill me.” — This line conveys the tragic irony of Kakihara’s existence: his devotion to suffering and desire for annihilation leave him purposeless when no worthy opponent remains.
Taken together, these quotes trace Kakihara’s journey: from the ecstatic embrace of pain, through the evaluation of others’ acts, to the despair of unfulfilled longing. They serve as verbal mirrors to the performative and aestheticized suffering he enacts with his body, transforming his dialogue into an extension of his visual and ritualized identity.
Masao Kakihara redefines pain, transforming it from mere suffering into identity, language, and fashion. His character challenges traditional binaries of weakness and strength, showing that agony, when embraced and performed, can become a source of power and control.
By placing scars, fashion, and ritual at the center of character, Ichi the Killer demonstrates that extreme suffering can be expressive, communicative, and aesthetic, bridging cultural, cinematic, and genre boundaries. Comparisons to the Joker and the Cenobites reveal how pain, when worn and performed, becomes an instrument of identity as sharp as any suit.