Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on October 2011
The noise of the city fades as the stream of pedestrian traffic eases. Nestled between a convenience store and a shoe shop is a small movie theater easily missed if not for the provocative posters of sex-starved female characters finding it difficult to keep on their clothes. Inside, the theater’s patrons, all men well over middle age, watch as the triple film bill begins. Some are here to escape the rain. Some are here to escape the wife. Some are asleep before the lights go down. Whatever the reason, over the next three hours, everybody will experience some pink.
The pink film is difficult to shoehorn into other genres. To many Japanese, the genre might appear interchangeable with porn or AV (adult video), yet there are substantial differences. Pink movies are shot on film, usually contain a narrative, and tend to shy away from explicit depictions of sex as seen in Japanese adult video. The result is a movie designed to be shown in a classic theater. With an average budget of $30,000 and a three-to-five day shooting schedule, it’s easier to think of pink film as super-independent filmmaking. What’s more, it has significance within the history of Japanese cinema that reveals its status as more than just jerk-off material.
By the late 1950s, the appearance of cheap sets—combined with the Crown Prince of Japan’s wedding—made the television an ubiquitous commodity. Naturally, this impacted on the sales of cinema tickets. Over the next ten years, according to the Kinema Junpo Film Institute, the number of movie theaters in Japan plunged from 7,000 to a little over 3,000.
Filmmaker Satoru Kobayashi experienced this decline first hand, when he was relieved from directing duties at Shintoho studios after its bankruptcy in 1961. During the next year, he shot and released a sex film called Flesh Market for ¥6 million (the average production budget in Japan at the time was around ¥40 million). The movie told of a 17-year-old girl’s encounter with a Roppongi cartel as she investigates her sister’s suicide.
Authorities deemed the film obscene and confiscated it, something that had not occurred since the days of World War II. The incident was hot news throughout Japan. Noticing the controversy, Kobayashi’s quick-thinking assistant director constructed a second edit of the film from dailies, trimming the more outrageous parts. This new cut made over ¥100 million, turning the heads of all film companies—both major and minor.
In 1971, Japan’s oldest film production company, Nikkatsu, barely had its head above water when the boss decided to divert all resources into making what they termed “Roman Porno”—from roman, as in “romantic.” They began a breakneck production pace, churning out three to five films per month.
While most pink films up to this point had been low budget, amateur affairs, Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno featured moderate budgets, professionally trained crews, film sets, and real actors. “Ninety percent of script writers left at that time because of the Roman Porno situation,” says maverick filmmaker Kazuhiko Hasegawa, who started his film career there as assistant director and scriptwriter. “A producer asked me if I could write scripts. They wanted six per month.”
The rules were simple: four sex scenes in a one-hour movie. The freedom allowed at Nikkatsu and other small pink production companies proved a breeding ground for talent. Hasegawa would later play a pivotal role in Japanese independent filmmaking as producer, writer and director. Along with many filmmakers, many of today’s famous Japanese actors started in the world of pink film, such as Naoto Takenaka, Ren Osugi and Kaori Momoi.
Ten years after Kobayashi’s Flesh Market, pink film accounted for almost 70 percent of Japan’s filmmaking output, according to the Japan Society of Image Arts and Sciences. While the majority of these pink films are easily classified as mindless titillation, some did receive critical praise in Japan and abroad, including the works of Nikkatsu’s ace director Tatsumi Kumashiro and independent pink filmmaker Koji Wakamatsu. Their films, different stylistically, mixed sexual themes with societal concerns of the day including politics, gender, and poverty.
Successful through the 1970s, the genre was to face near extinction in the decades that followed. A lethal combination of adult video and increasing theatrical censorship chopped the legs off the pink film industry. Nikkatsu made its last Roman Porno in 1988. Related production companies and the small network of theaters split up or left the pink completely. The resulting companies merged, split, died, or changed names quicker than the snap of a bra.
Today, the state of the pink film industry has calmed a bit, even if the future seems uncertain. Five small companies make pink films for theatrical release. Of the five, Kokuei has cleverly positioned itself, producing artistically engaging sex films written and directed by an exciting crop of talent. The company started out way back in 1955, producing educational films for schools. Seven years later the company did a 180, and the only educational material they produced was soon of the sexual kind.
Though Kokuei has been around since the genre’s beginning, company president Keiko Sato—known by her male pseudonym Daisuke Asakura—is full of fresh ideas and optimism. Asakura has made a concerted effort to demonstrate the artistic merit of pink film beyond Japan’s borders, frequently having films subtitled and presented at overseas festivals.
The company’s latest effort is a cross-cultural experiment never before attempted: a pink musical co-produced by a German production company and featuring revered cinematographer Christopher Doyle (Hero; Rabbit-Proof Fence). “I had heard about pink film… the collaborative energy of people,” explains Doyle. “I think there are better actors in this film than in other films I’ve worked on.”
Titled Underwater Love in English, the film represents a new approach to the genre. Director Shinji Imaoka observes that the film’s trajectory is different owing to the international talent involved. “We may have created something altogether new,” he says. Clearly, with the traditional pink theatergoer getting older, there is a need for change to keep the genre alive.
Shinji Imaoka, Director
Can erotic musical Underwater Love mark out a new pink perspective?
You write most of your films. Underwater Love was a collaborative effort. Tell me about the process for writing the film.
The first idea was a high-school teacher and student—a very normal love story. Moriya [pink film writer/director Fumio Moriya] and I started writing the script at that time and Moriya wanted to use the kappa [Japanese water-sprite]. Actually, Moriya wrote most of the first draft. Tom Mes and Stephan Holl, the producers, worked together looking over that draft. This correspondence took about two years. The screenplay changed six or seven times.
The film is a musical. How did you approach the music of the film?
I tried to suggest the feel through the writing in the script. In the script, the lyrics were already written, so I could imagine the music. Moriya wrote the lyrics. Stereo Total created the music without understanding the lyrics at all.
Was the initial plan to first show the film first at festivals?
It wasn’t the initial plan, but now it appears to be happening that way. Most pink movies are 60 minutes long—if we did that it would be considered a short film I guess. It’s difficult to release a short film. I was told to make it longer just before shooting—about 80 minutes. That was the hardest part for me. If we had kept the original length we could have only shown it in pink theaters. So, the plan changed. It would be shown domestically in regular theaters and we would worry about the pink theaters later.
The shooting time for Underwater Love was the same as any other pink movie, even though the budget was higher. So, what was different this time?
The budget wasn’t so big. Only double the usual for a pink film. The cooperation between Germany and Japan for this film is what’s different this time. The international correspondence took a long time—especially for post-production. We would edit the film and send it to Germany. Then, they would edit it and send it back to us again. This took a while—about half a year.
What is your average shooting schedule like for a pink film?
Generally, I write a screenplay and show it to the producer at Kokuei and, if it’s accepted, they will decide casting and location within a month. Shooting generally takes one week. Post production—including editing and dubbing—takes a month. There is an editor I work with. I watch and tell him what works or what to cut. We edit for about two days. It’s all done with scissors and hands. From start to finish one film takes two to three months. But my pace is only one film per year. In the case of Underwater Love, the rewrites kept going for two years. This is a rare case. The fastest scenario is when the script is done, the shooting is over after the next month. It depends on the situation.
How do you approach sex in your movies?
In my experience, watching many pink movies, some films have sex scenes that kind of tell the viewer,“Okay, this is the erotic part.” I lose interest in that kind of stuff. I approach sex scenes the same as an eating or dialog scene—every action is just a tool for expressing the character’s feelings.
- Metropolis film writer Rob Schwartz reviews Underwater Love here.
- Here is Rob Schwartz’ review of Behind the Pink Curtain, a 2008 book about the industry’s history.
