Pink film


Pink film refers in Japan to movies produced by independent studios that includes nudity or deals with sexual content. This encompasses everything from dramas to action thrillers and exploitation film features. Many pink films would be analogous to erotic thrillers such as Fatal Attraction or Basic Instinct.
Independent studios that release pink films include OP Eiga, Shintōhō Eiga, Kokuei and Xces. The phrase 'pink film' came into use after the major Toei began advertising some of its movies as 'porno' in 1971 and another major Nikkatsu switched to producing only Roman Porno films later that year.
Until the early 2000s, they were almost exclusively shot on 35 mm film. Recently, filmmakers have increasingly used video. Many theaters swapped 35mm for video projectors and began relying on old videos to meet the demand of triple-feature showings.
Films that are now regarded as pink films became wildly popular in the mid-1960s, and made up a large part of the Japanese domestic market through the mid-1980s. In the 1960s, the pink films were largely the product of small, independent studios. Around 1970, the major studio Nikkatsu started focusing almost exclusively on erotic content, but Toei, another major film production company, started producing a line of what came to be known as Pinky Violence films. With their access to higher production values and talent, some of these films became critical and popular successes. Though the appearance of the adult video led viewers to move away from pink film in the 1980s, films in this genre are still being produced.

Description

The "pink film", or "eroduction" as it was first called, is a cinematic genre without an exact equivalent in the West. Though called pornography, the terms "erotica", "soft porn" and "sexploitation" have been suggested as more appropriate, although none of these precisely matches the pink film genre.
The Japanese film ethics board Eirin has long enforced a ban on the display of genitals and pubic hair. This restriction forced Japanese filmmakers to develop sometimes elaborate means of avoiding showing the "working parts", as American film historian Donald Richie puts it. He wrote:
To work around this censorship, most Japanese directors positioned props—lamps, candles, bottles, etc.—at strategic locations to block the banned body parts. When this was not done, the most common alternative techniques are digital scrambling, covering the prohibited area with a black box or a fuzzy white spot, known as a mosaic or "fogging".
Some have claimed that it is this censorship that gives the Japanese erotic cinema its particular style. Richie wrote:
Richie makes a distinction between the erotic films of the major studios such as Nikkatsu and Toei as against the low-budget pink films produced by independents such as OP Eiga.
Contrasting the pink film with Western pornographic films, Pia Harritz says, "What really stands out is the ability of pinku eiga to engage the spectator in more than just scenes with close-ups of genitals and finally the complexity in the representation of gender and the human mind."
Richie and Harritz enumerate the fundamental elements of the pink film formula as:
  1. The film must have a required minimum quota of sex scenes.
  2. The film must be approximately one hour in duration.
  3. It must be filmed on 16 mm or 35 mm film within one week.
  4. The film must be made on a very limited budget.

    History

Background

In the years since the end of World War II, eroticism had been gradually making its way into Japanese cinema. The first kiss to be seen in Japanese film—discreetly half-hidden by an umbrella—caused a national sensation in 1946. Although throughout the 1940s and early 1950s nudity in Japanese movie theaters, as in most of the world, was a taboo, some films from the mid-50s such as Shintoho's female pearl-diver films starring buxom Michiko Maeda, began showing more flesh than would have previously been imaginable in the Japanese cinema. During the same period, the taiyozoku films on the teen-age "Sun Tribe", such as Kō Nakahira's Crazed Fruit, introduced unprecedented sexual frankness into Japanese films.
Foreign films of this time, such as Ingmar Bergman's Summer with Monika, Louis Malle's Amants, and Russ Meyer's Immoral Mr. Teas introduced female nudity into international cinema, and were imported to Japan without problem. Nevertheless, until the early 1960s, graphic depictions of nudity and sex in Japanese film could only be seen in single-reel "stag films," made by film producers such as those depicted in Imamura's film The Pornographers.

First wave (The "Age of Competition" 1962–1971)

The first wave of the pink film in Japan was contemporary with the similar U.S. sexploitation film genres, the "nudie-cuties" and "roughies". Nudity and sex officially entered Japanese cinema with Satoru Kobayashi's controversial and popular independent production Flesh Market, which is considered the first true pink film. Made for 8 million yen, Kobayashi's independent feature film took in over 100 million yen. Kobayashi remained active in directing pink films until the 1990s. Tamaki Katori, the star of the film, went on to become one of the leading early pink film stars, appearing in over 600, and earning the title "Pink Princess".
In 1964, maverick kabuki, theater and film director Tetsuji Takechi directed Daydream, a big-budget film distributed by the major studio Shochiku. Takechi's Black Snow, resulted in the director's arrest on charges of obscenity and a high-profile trial, which became a major battle between Japan's intellectuals and the establishment. Takechi won the lawsuit, and the publicity surrounding the trial helped bring about a boom in the production of pink films.
In her introduction to the Weisser's Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films, actress Naomi Tani calls this period in pink film production "The Age of Competition". Though Japan's major studios, such as Nikkatsu and Shochiku made occasional forays into erotica in the 1960s, such as director Seijun Suzuki's Gate of Flesh —the first Japanese film from one of the big four major studios to contain nudity—the majority of erotic films were made by the independents. Independent studios such as Nihon Cinema and World Eiga made dozens of cheap, profitable "eroductions". Among the most influential independent studios producing pink films in this era were Shintōhō Eiga, Million Film, Kantō, and Ōkura. Typically shown on a three-film program, these films were made by these companies to show at their own chain of specialty theaters.
Another major pink film studio, Wakamatsu Studios, was formed by director Kōji Wakamatsu in 1965, after quitting Nikkatsu. Known as "The Pink Godfather", and called "the most important director to emerge in the pink film genre", Wakamatsu's independent productions are critically respected works usually concerned with sex and extreme violence mixed with political messages. His most controversial early films dealing with misogyny and sadism are The Embryo Hunts In Secret, Violated Angels, and Go, Go, Second Time Virgin.
Three other important pink film directors of this time, Kan Mukai, Kin'ya Ogawa and Shin'ya Yamamoto are known as "The Heroes of the First Wave". In 1965, the same year as Wakamatsu became independent, directors Kan Mukai and Giichi Nishihara established their own production companies, Mukai Productions and Aoi Eiga.
The "first queen of Japanese sex movies" was Noriko Tatsumi, who made films at World Eiga and Nihon Cinema with director Kōji Seki. Other major Sex Queens of the first wave of pink film included Setsuko Ogawa, Mari Iwai, Keiko Kayama, and Miki Hayashi. Other pink film stars of the era include Tamaki Katori, who appeared in many films for Giichi Nishihara and Kōji Wakamatsu; Kemi Ichiboshi, whose specialty was playing the role of a violated innocent; and Mari Nagisa. Younger starlets like Naomi Tani, and Kazuko Shirakawa were starting their careers and already making names for themselves in the pink film industry, but are best remembered today for their work with Nikkatsu during the 1970s.

Toei Porno

Most exploitation films produced in the 1960s were made by low-budget independent companies. The major studio Toei released a few films with female nudity, starting with Kunoichi ninpō in 1964 by director Sadao Nakajima. In films like his ero-guro series and Joys of Torture series of the late 1960s director Teruo Ishii provided a model for Toei's sexploitation ventures by "establishing a queasy mix of comedy and torture."
In 1972, Richie reported, "In Japan, the eroduction is the only type of picture that retains an assured patronage." To tap into this market, Toei began advertising some of its films using the English word 'porno,' a new word at the time. Onsen mimizu geisha directed by Norifumi Suzuki and starring Reiko Ike was the first such in July 1971.
Producer Kanji Amao designed a group of series—shigeki rosen, ijoseiai rosen, and harenchi rosen, today referred to by English critics as Toei's "Pinky Violence". Most of Toei's films in this style used eroticism in conjunction with violent and action-filled stories. Several of these films have the theme of strong women exacting violent revenge for past injustices. The series was launched with the Delinquent Girl Boss films starring Reiko Oshida. Other series in the Pinky Violence genre included Norifumi Suzuki's Girl Boss films, and the Terrifying Girls' High School films, both starring Reiko Ike and Miki Sugimoto.
Other examples of Toei's films in this genre include Shunya Ito's Sasori series of women in prison films based on Toru Shinohara's manga. Starting with Female Prisoner#701: Scorpion, the Scorpion series starred Meiko Kaji, who had left Nikkatsu Studios to distance herself from their Roman Porno series. Toei also set the standard for Japanese nunsploitation films with the critically acclaimed School of the Holy Beast directed by Norifumi Suzuki. Toei also produced a whole series of erotic samurai pictures such as Bohachi Bushido: Clan of the Forgotten Eight .