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.
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 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.]
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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