Saturday, July 28, 2012

Out of the Past: Yoshie / Mie / Miki Mogami / Saijô

Today let's fulfill yesterday's promise to take a look at early busty Pink actress, Mie Mogami (最上美枝), who made such an impression on me in her brief appearance in Shûji Kataoka's S&M Hunter (緊縛・SM・18才 - Kinbaku · SM · 18-sai; 1986). Given her early and relatively obscure career, I found quite a few scans and video clips of the actress. Here is a sample video clip for your viewing pleasure. However I found no real information on her, other than some glimpses of her video and pink film career. JMDb is always a good place to start for a filmography of Japanese film personnel. The bad news is her listing there gives only four films. The good news is, S&M Hunter, the one appearance already known to us, is not listed. (I presume her role was to small to be mentioned there, as Pink film listings are usually fairly sparse.) So that makes FIVE known Pink film appearances for Mogami! (As I warned, information on this early actress is very hard to find, so we have to celebrate our victories where we can...)

I can't find much on her AV career-- which normally precedes a Pink film career today. But in these early days of AV, the performers were usually less successful Pink film actresses. The earliest solid evidence I have of the actress is a listing as Mie Mogami at Amazon's description of the video release of Nobuyuki Saitô's Roman Porno Wives' Rape Mansion (人妻暴行マンション - Hitozuma bôkô mansion; 1985-03-23). (Roman pornos were, essentially, big-studio Pink films.) This film was released by Nikkatsu on March 23, 1985, movie.goo also lists Mogami, giving her role name as "Lemon-chan". This appearance in Wives' Rape Mansion indicates that Mogami started with big studio Nikkatsu, apparently didn't make much of a splash, then went onto independent studios, and then into AV. This March 1985 appearance also puts her ahead of Eri Kikuchi, who is often pointed to as the first "big bust" AV performer. Kikuchi debuted in September 1985. There were a few busty models before this era, for example the famously big-boobed Nikkatsu Roman porno actress Ran Masaki who debuted in late 1983, but Kikuchi seems to have been the first to make an AV career out of her bust.

Mie Saijô (西条美栄) seems to have been the name she used only for AV appearances, while Mie Mogami (最上美枝) was her Pink film name. Apparently she was also known as "Miki" (presumably Miki Saijô). Her Arzon profile gives her debut year (presumably her AV debut year) as 1985, which was the same year as Eri Kikuchi's debut. I was well aware of Eri during these years, though, even though a busty Japanese AV star was quite rare in those days, for some reason, she never appealed greatly to me. As I pondered yesterday, I just can't imagine how I missed Mie Saijô at that time, as she would certainly have been my type. (Not so impressive today, with a cornucopia of true Japanese BBWs around, but still quite nice.) My guess is-- and this is supported by the difficulty in finding information on her today-- that she was not as popular as Kikuchi, and didn't make as many appearances either in film, video or print.

Fuller-figured ladies were considered best for S/M demonstrations. S/M guru Oniroku Dan once commented in an interview with Asian Cult Cinema, "An SM heroine must have a certain amount of body fat so the bondage rope makes a clear impression on her skin." It's rather an unfortunate association for us fans of Japanese big-bust / BBW models who have no interest in S/M. All evidence points to the likelihood that Mie was an S/M-specialist performer as well. I find only one real contemporary video listing for Saijô: Shigeki (刺激; AS-115), listed at V&R as released on September 15, 1985. The cover to that video is above, and a sample of the proceedings therein can be glimpsed at left. For more images and a video sample of this SM-fest, check here.

Mogami's first Pink film appearance listed at JMDb is half a year after her March appearance for Nikkatsu. She appears in director Ichirô Kitami's October 1985, Ryôshoku SM kinbaku (猟色SM緊縛; literally something akin to "Colorful S&M Bondage"). Released by Ôkura Eiga, this first film interestingly has Mogami supporting S&M star Hiromi Saotome (早乙女宏美), who would also star in S&M Hunter, performing the iconic (well, it should be considered iconic) death-defying dangling-nude-from-a-crane scene which concludes the film. I don't know anything about director Kitami, and both Jasper Sharp and Thomas Weisser ignore him in their tomes on Japanese sexploitation, so I guess we can conclude he's fairly minor. He does have an extensive filmography at JMDb going back to assistant director at Nikkatsu in 1942. He took up the Pink film genre in 1966 and directed nearly 100 films in the genre, mostly released by Ôkura, including some entries in the Chikan Densha / Molester Train series.

Mogami's next listed film is Yûzûru Ichimura's Buchikomu (ぶちこむ; re-release title, Reipu gekishin; レイプ激震) from November 1985. The following month she appeared in another Ichimura/Ôkura Studio film, Seikan kyokusen (性感曲線; re-release title Honban ura-hyô; 本番うら表). S&M Hunter was released by Shintôhô in February 1986. The U.S. DVD release, from Pink Eiga, credits Mogami as "Yoshie Mogami", which is an alternate reading for "Mie Mogami". It seems like most Japanese sources (Arzon for example), with they syllabalize her name, use "Mie" though... This film (see yesterday's review at this blog) is a satire of the S&M genre. The genre, so popular in the '80s, was apparently "jumping the shark" at this point, making it a ripe target for satire. We might hazard a guess also, that the film's star, Hiromi Saotome, and possibly Mogami herself, were closely enough associated with S&M to parody the genre. Mogami's final theatrical appearance listed at JMDb is in Takashi Sakaki's Takeshita Yukari: Gusho nure no honban (竹下ゆかり ぐしょ濡れの本番), also for Shintôhô, released in May 1986.

Besides the September 1985 release, the only other AVs I can find with Mie Saijô are those at AV-Channel, which are are later compilation DVDs released on VCA's D-Cup label (an early big-bust label). This indicates either that she did make more appearances in the '80s, and I just can't find them online, or that one appearance was popular enough to be re-edited into multiple compilations. (As an indication that this is a possibility, see the more recent case of Moa Anzai, who apparently only performed once, but who has been re-edited into many compilations. And then there is Kimiko Matsuzaka, who only made 21 videos and 2 Pink films, but has been seen in scores of compilations.)

One fleeting hint of hope that Saijô had a much longer career than I have been able to find is given in a video listing for Chikan stalker: Nerawareta bijin model (痴漢ストーカー 狙われた美人モデル), which starred Saori Mizuno and includes Saijô in the cast. According to JMDb this Ken'ichi Fujiwara-directed Shintôhô production was released in June 2001. Whatever name she worked under-- Mie Mogami, Mie Saijô, Miki-- she is easily recognizable not only by the size of her bust (rather unique in the mid-1980s), but also her nipples, which are as large, firm and enticing as grapes. Enjoy one last refreshing look at them below:

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