Showing posts with label Tamaki Katori. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tamaki Katori. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

A Pink Digression

OK, it's long past time to check in on this blog again. I've been busy.
TMHK-024 video cover
Recently-found poster image to Kôji Wakamatsu's Sei no hôrô (性の放浪; 1967)
I intended to spend all this year working on my new JAV Archive, but at the beginning of August I got a bit tired of it, and had a hankering to dabble in Pink a little. So I spent all the month of August, and some of October, working on my somewhat-neglected Pink Film Archives. I have been keeping up with the new Pink releases all year-- there are only three Pink films per month released these days, so keeping up with them is not very difficult-- but I decided to look around the 'Net and see if I could find any new images of older Pink film posters... I DID!... I found a few sources for older Pink film posters-- 1960s & '70s, mostly-- which allowed me to start new entries on those films. Some were just-barely-acceptable distorted images from Yahoo Auctions.... But most satisfactorily, some of these posters were to films for which I already had entries illustrated with just stills, or video covers. A nice theatrical poster is always my goal. I also found much better images of posters to a few hundred Roman Porno films for which I already had entries. I upgraded the images for my existing entries for those films.
Japan's first sex film star: Tamaki Katori
While doing this I happened to stumble on a few excellent stills of the first Pink Film starlet, and therefore Japan's first sex film star: Tamaki Katori. These show her in the mid '60s, I believe. The one film I've seen her in was Koji Wakamatsu's The Woman Who Wanted to Die (1971). She was plump, mature & gorgeous in that film. I'll add these images to my only-just-barely-started upcoming blog/archive on Pink film/JAV personnel, which I sort of plan on working on next year-- while coming back to this blog on a more regular basis as well.
Anna Ohura: Branded 'not notable' by a mob of bigoted know-nothing & deleted from Wikipedia
Due to Wikipedia deletions (rant to follow below), I also found a picture archive on lovely early '00s actress/model Anna Ohura. I'm not sure what format this actress/personnel blog will take-- Bios, & pictures, naturally-- but absolutely EVERY picture I can find (as I've done with Chihiro)?... or what?... I'd like it to be a full encyclopedia project-- not only articles on actresses, but also on directors/other personnel, films, videos, genres, etc... I'm thinking it over while accumulating the data in the JAV Archive this year...
TMHK-024 video cover
Miwa Sasaki VHS covers... coming to the JAV Archives
At the time I took the Pink detour I was caught up with the JAV archives. So the bad thing about that detour, obviously, is that it has put me behind in the again... by one month. But by plotting my JAV course systematically, I was able to grab up a month's worth of images & data over the past couple days, and I still have ammunition for future entries while I translate, format & post the data & images. I finished this portion of the catch-up project this morning, allowing me to take time off for some non-JAV work, and to whip out this quickie post here.
TMHK-024 video cover
Ellen Joe's VHS covers soon to grace the JAV Archives
I've been concentrating on building up the representation of VHS covers most recently at the JAV Archives. This results in older, less-spectacularly buxom/BBW subjects, but a better historical perspective. Also, having lived through that era-- even the later Roman Porno era-- it's nice to revisit some old favorites like Miwa Sasaki and Ellen Joe (whom we see above)-- who can still hold their own with today's zaftig lasses-- so I intend to revisit the early days of the busty/BBW genre many times.
TMHK-024 video cover
A new Shizuku Amai DVD
But as soon as these are all posted, I'll dive back into recent debuts-- such as the incredible Shizuku Amai, above-- and catch up on recent releases by old reliables like GAS, Maguro, IZM, Bombom Cherry, & all the rest... The Pink Film Archives are my personal favorites, and, I think, the most important work I'm doing, but the JAV Archive at Tumblr is proving to be, by far, my most popular project. At only just over half a year, I am nearing 1,000 followers.

This concludes the post proper. What follows is another anti-Wikipedia rant, so you can stop reading here. Forgive me... I wasted five years working, writing and contributing information there, thinking that Japanese erotic film is part of the "uncensored sum of human knowledge"... and it is, of course, but Wikipedia has been taken over by Crusaders and bigots... If you want information on subjects they personally don't like, "Google is your friend", as they say-- in other words, Wikipedia is not...
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2010 compilation DVD with an appearance by the 'non-notable' subject of THREE documentaries: Maki Tomoda
Since my last report here, Wikipedia's deletions have finally started in on Japanese erotic cinema. Recently declared notable subjects who blatantly pass even Wikipedia's subjective, original and biased definition of 'notability' include Anna Ohura, Hitomi Tanaka, and Maki Tomoda. Maki Tomoda is not just an AV star, she's starred in several mainstream theatrical films, TV programs (thereby passing one porn 'notability' test), she has won Pink Film Awards and Pinky Ribbon Awards, thereby passing TWO porn notability tests, and has been the subject of THREE documentaries, including a French (international) one-- thereby passing even the GENERAL Notability Guidelines!... The discussion stupidly ignored the heavily reliably-sourced (i.e., 'notable') first award, noted only the second, more minor award, and THEN, when the first one was mentioned, assumed it was the second one, which-- without reading a word of Japanese-- they deemed 'not notable'. It would have been absolutely pointless to point out any of the buffoonish comedy of errors going on during the discussion which resulted from that fact that no one in the discussion either read Japanese or was not biased against the subject. Bigots are as arrogant in their opinions as they are ignorant in them... This is the state of Wikipedia today-- Crusaders gutting subject areas against which they have a clear bias. I have to admit, I was surprised at the brazenness of this Deletion-- she clearly passed Wikipedia's own biased guidelines, but they deleted her anyway. I expect the next step to be a rewrite of those guidelines because nobody objected to the deletion, and then virtually ALL Japanese cinema articles could be deleted if anyone chose to do so. They will be deleted with selective bias, though, naturally...
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Fechi-angle kyonyû Ôura Anna (フェチアングル巨乳 大浦あんな - TWV-035; 2003)
Nearly 100% of deletion "discussions" now result in delete. "Deletionists" have driven off the contributors, and have completely free run of the project now. Anyone with interest or knowledge of the subject area has given up on Wikipedia and gon on to other projects. Contributing anything to Wikipedia is futile-- I've seen articles deleted after passing more than 20 nominations. That's a waste of the time of the editors who put the article together, and the editors who fought to save it after dozens of discussions. So, let them delete the entire subject of Japanese cinema. Wikipedia is already useless on the subject due to the bias of these few, non-productive editors. (When he's not searching WP for any mention of boobies or pee-pees to razor-blade out of the encyclopedia, sexually-repressed obsessive/repressive Hullaballo Wolfowitz, occasionally adds a little to articles on trivial 1950s paperback science-fiction compilations. There would be nothing wrong with that, if he weren't so active in deleting content on much more 'notable' subjects in other areas... and he insultingly sources these sci-fi articles only with open Wikis and databases which he would never allow at an article on a subject against which he is biased.) It will continue to be this way because it is infinitely easier to delete an article than it is to create one.
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Hitomi Tanaka: 65 starring roles & growing at IMDb. Recently deleted as 'non-notable' at Wikipedia
I've seen some of the editors involved in these deletions admit on other sites that they are at Wikipedia only for the "drama", with no intention of ever contributing content... In other words, they are trolls. And I don't blame the trolls-- that's what they do: Have fun disrupting a project until they get caught and thrown off-- "Ha ha! I wasted their time!"... No, I blame Jimbo Wales & the creators of Wikipedia. These trolls are not being thrown off-- They are staying, and the CONTRIBUTORS are leaving... Crowd-sourcing is one thing, but allowing the crowd to govern itself results mob rule. Like at IMDb, editors should be allowed only to contribute information to Wikipedia. Experts/professionals need to be hired to investigate and accept or reject that information, handle formatting & deletions, content disputes & discipline, etc. Giving the editors free reign to create, interpret and enforce rules resulted in the Lord of the Flies atmosphere-- People with no interest in content are in charge, the real contributors are driven off, anti-content Crusades, subject-area purges, non-stop argument-- all to the harm of the encyclopedia. The takeover of Wikipedia by the "Deletionist" trolls. So, delete it all, trolls! Jimbo and the Wikipedia "community" don't care... And subject-specialist sites like IMDb become all the more valuable because of their tolerance of the intolerant...

Sunday, August 31, 2014

1967 Fever

That peek back to the bureaucracy-friendly, information-hostile Hell that is Wikipedia has really re-ignited my enthusiasm for contributing to IMDb. This week I finished the submissions of Pink films released in 1999 in record time, then submitted the Pink Film Award information for 1997-2000. I also gathered and began translating the credits for the Pink films of 2000. (Note that there are currently 104 titles in the 1999 link, and only 8 in the 2000 link. 2000 is about to be beefed up!) Now that it's the weekend, I've gone back to the early era of Pink that I love so much. I'm feverishly submitting info on Pink films released in 1967. So, the bad news is, I don't want to stop and take time out to do a BBW JAV review tonight. The good news is: I've whipped up a trip down mammary lane with some of the naughty beauties of five decades ago. Remember that Japanese actresses were generally thin and flat-chested at the time, so, even if these ladies don't compare to today's BBW standards, they might have qualified for Boobpedia-level buxomicity in their own day. It's all relative. But, without further ado, let's mentally put ourselves back in that day. Pour yourself a scotch on the rocks, sit back, and take a trip with me through the fascinating, mysterious world of the early, pre-JAV days of Japanese erotic entertainment: The Eroduction.
Japan's first Porn starlet: Tamaki Katori
First we must tip our hats to honor the grandest of grande dames in the history of Japanese erotic entertainment industry: Tamaki Katori. As star of Flesh Market (1962), officially the first Pink film, she was, officially, Japan's first porn star. "Porn" here is soft. Very soft. But from little acorns mighty oaks grow. Katori was still in prolific mid-career in 1967, appearing in a very high percentage of the films I've been working on. Her career total supposedly comes to 600 films!
Nami Katsura
Nami Katsura was a lovely lady who graced Pinkies from about 1965 until 1969. Though, oddly, I haven't yet come across a film she acted in in 1967 (JMDb lists one, but it's not at IMDb yet, nor in any of my other sources). [note 2014/09/15: Almost finished with 1967, I thought I found one she was in, but as I added her to the cast of Biyaku no wana, I found out it was actually released in November 1966.]
Nami Katsura
And Nami-san takes her hat off to her audience here. The Weisser book says that Ms. Katsura specialized in the S&M genre, which I can watch, but is not really my cup of tea. In this picture Ms. Katsura bares the ample assets for which she's been on my radar for quite some time. Cleavage like that was worth its weight in gold in Japan in the mid '60s.
Miki Hayashi
Miki Hayashi appears in a lot of the 1967 Pink films I've been inputting these days. She had been in the business since at least 1965 and continued working up til 1973, by which time, like many early indie pink stars, she had joined big studio Nikkatsu. In 1967, she was one of the many nurses massacred in Kôji Wakamatsu's celebrated Pinky-violent masterpiece Violated Angels.
Setsu Shimizu in Seijin Eiga #17, May 1967
Seijin Eiga (成人映画) "Adult Films" was the main journal attempting to seriously cover the new adult film genre in the '60s. Edited, surprisingly, by a woman-- Nobuko Kawashima, it was published monthly by Gendai Kôbô (現代工房) from 1965 to 1973. Here we see Setsu Shimizu, another of the more prolific starlets of 1967, decorating the pages of Seijin Eiga. The Weissers claim that Setsu-san only had two character types: The innocent school girl, or the ball-busting modern girl. 1967 was a big year for her. Having played supporting roles since 1965, she had her break-out role in 1967 in Shin'ya Yamamoto's Onna no seme, leading to starring roles in such films as Kôji Seki's Hentaima (1967), Japan's first 3-D sex film. 
Noriko Tatsumi
Noriko Tatsumi debuted in 1966 and stayed in front of the camera until 1971. She is recognized as the first major Queen of the Pink film. Her mark on world cinema was assured in 1967 when she starred in Atsumi Yamatoya's wacky cult classic Dutch Wife in the Desert.
Noriko Tatsumi
Yamatoya's film, unfortunately, is difficult to find these days, at least outside of Japan. However Noriko Tatsumi can be seen in the titular role in Pink master Mamoru Watanabe's Slave Widow (1967), one of the earliest and best Pink films widely available to English-speaking audiences, thanks to the 2008 DVD release by Cinema Epoch. Watanabe passed away in December last year, and this year was given a posthumous Pink Film Award in recognition of his career.
Naomi Tani early in her career
Also appearing in Slave Widow--in a minor role-- was future super-star, Naomi Tani. 1967 was the year of her debut, and her popularity can be gauged from the fact that IMDb has her listed in seventeen films for that year so far, and I'm not even done yet! Like Setsu Shimizu above, Tani was also featured in the May 1967 issue of Seijin Eiga magazine, as well as June and November of that year, if not more.
Naomi Tani in American Playboy, 1968
By 1968 she was well-known enough in the independent Pink genre to represent the Girls of Japan in a pictorial essay of that name for American Playboy. She would assure her cinematic immortality in Nikkatsu's S&M-themed Roman Porno films of the '70s, starting with the just-OK Flower and Snake, immediately followed by the genre-defining blockbuster Wife to Be Sacrificed, both released in 1974. But a decade earlier, 1967 was a year of major significance both in the career of Ms. Tani, and in the still new field of Japanese pornographic cinema: the Eroduction or Pink film.