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During the late 1960’s and continuing throughout the 1970’s and arguably into the present day, independent Japanese film makers took a new direction and foray into what was to be called The Pink Movement. ... Not just from these two sources but also our interest over the last decade or so into the world of Japanese cultures and history such as Anime that cleared the way for a genre that seems to be available in every high street shop. The soft core pink film know in Japan as ‘pinku eiga’ was totally unheard of from the west with its use of sexual and graphic images, (still to this day many of these films have not been granted a BBFC certification in the UK) anarchic political viewpoints, and common themes defined through rough sadomasochism had traditionally impeded any wide distribution abroad.
Critics throughout the world now stand divided on this movement as to whether its an important stance on sexual / political / decision to use the sadomasochistic kink as an allegory for the times or is just pure eroticism and pornography. With such films as Tetsuji Takechi’s Black Snow (1964) Seijun Suzuki’s Gates of Flesh (1964) Nagisa Oshima’s In The Realm of the Senses (1976) and modern ‘pink’ films such as Ryu Murakami’s Tokyo Decadence (1991) and Banmei Takahashi’s A New Love in Tokyo (1994) With all these films being made more widely available to the western world it’s no wonder there is a divide between them.
To get a breif idea of how to approach the subject of sex in Japanese cinema I think you must look at the depiction of sex throughout the history of other art forms in Japan. If we were to take a look at pornography throughout the history of Japan especially in comics we would find the same issues arising. Sex in Japanese comics dates back to the 1700s, with the popularity of ‘Shunga’, which were erotic woodblock prints produced in large numbers that continued for the next two hundred years or so. ... The political regimes that lead up to the Second World War were no more liberal, and it wasnt really until after the Occupation was over that eroticism began creeping back into Japanese art. Although it wasn’t until the 1950’s that Japanese cinema featured even a kiss as this was classified as provocative and far too controversial, the same can be said of the comics in Japan. ... Take the medium of film and you can see the influence comics had on the pink period of filmmaking. ... There was from right back in the 1700’s Japan a fascination as most countries in the topic of sex and all the pink period did was to capitalise on this and audiences couldn’t get enough. ... Even in Japan at this time this was considered to be extremely provocative and controversial stuff in a country where the one real taboo in the sexual arena is the onscreen portrayal of pubic hair, but it wasnt this scene, which landed its director in court for Japanese cinemas first obscenity trial. Tetsuji Takechi defended himself to the critics by saying that ”I admit there are many nude scenes in Black Snow, but they are psychological nude scenes symbolizing the defencelessness of the Japanese people in the face of the American invasion”. ... Taken away by the military police, the film ends as he is gunned down by a firing squad. With five major Japanese studios rapidly loosing their grip on the domestic distribution of movies by the mid-60s, the proportion of films that fell under the pink film category had reached almost fifty percent.
Approximate Word count = 3062
Approximate Pages = 12.2
(250 words per page double spaced)
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