Pinku Eiga

[Anne McKnight]

Jonathan,

here's a couple more references to throw in for your pink inquiry.  I
don't have my books with me, so this is missing some details, but should
be something to go on.

Since the "song-and-dance" numbers of sexuality in these movies occupy
very different positions in terms of the way they weave in & out of all
sorts of different genres of power politics being negotiated (i.e. sex,
gender), I would be remiss if I didn't first off highly recommend Linda
Williams' book Hard Core, (UC Press 1989).  The book is a cultural
history of the American hard core porn film from a photographic
pre-history in conventions of photographing the body, to its stag days,
up until the more pedagogically oriented films (i.e. better sex is
better A, B, C, whatever, etc., your basic knowledge=enlightenment
thesis) of the 70s, finishing with feminist pornography.  The book
mostly analyses depicting heterosexual sex & its enabling fantasies, as
does pink film in general with some notable exceptions.  It is extremely
readable and maps out the coordinates of several periods of the genre,
does genealogies of a bunch of key words (e.g. hard core) & provides a
lot of plot summaries, as well as a lot of ways of talking about movies
that talk about sex that are portable to other national cinemas besides
the US example she talks about.

In the Yuriika (Eureka) special issue on post-Takeshi film that came out
in 97, there was also a special section on Kumashiro Tatsumi, well worth
taking a look at.  

Sato Tadao's history of Japanese cinema has a short chapter on Nikkatsu
roman poruno, p. 160-66 of volume 4 (Iwanami shoten).  As Aaron pointed
out, RP strictly refers to Nikkatsu productions, and Sato restricts
himself to those, which tend to allow for more auteurist readings than
pink films (as the dressy french tag would indicate, these films by &
large are more "classy" than your run of the mill pink, and constitute
the bulk of pink films that are currently shown, in my experience).  

Yomota Inuhiko gives a nice run-through of historic, generic &
institutional coordinates of pink film in a series of short pieces he
did I believe in 97 in the journal *Sekai*.  I think the piece might
actually be on Zeze Takahisa.  As far as I can recall, it follows the
common critical conventions of stating that pink film is typically
despised for its vulgarity, creating a sympathetical critical distance,
and then finds something redemptive in it for the sake of its
monogatari, or for the sake of spawning future more respectable talent
(e.g. Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Aoyami Shinji, the director of Gambatte
ikimashou -- he gave a speech combining these two threads when his film
was shown at the Kameari last picture show this month, it was rather
touching in a Horatio Alger sort of way...etc etc).  

I find it is rather amazing how often critics feel the pressure to "make
an honest movie" of a pink film.  I guess Nicholas Bornoff's book *Pink
Samurai* (?--correct me if I mixed up title or author, I'm doing this
from memory) would be the flip side of this mode of description, as it
is bent on being as dishy as possible about "Japan" and sexuality, with
tons of facts and "insider story" dishy descriptive passages.  

There's a book specifically about the Nikkatsu roman poruno trial (one
of the 4 film-related obscenity trials of that period).  It's called --
get this -- *Nikkatsu roman poruno saiban*.  

The *Silverstar Club* magazine has  a special issue sometime in the last
3 years on pink films.  It has a quite interesting variety of essays,
interviews by industry people, critics, etc.?

For a more up to date take, you might want to check out Nakazawa
Mitsuo's set of interviews with AV actresses originally run in AV info
mags.  He has a companion volume called *Fuuzoku no hitotachi*.
?????? (??????????????????2,800?)
AV Joyou, Nagazawa Mitsuo, Birejji sentaa shuppankyoku, 2800Y
You can find a pretty jokey review of the book by writer TAKAHASHI
Gen'ichiro in the 10-31-97 issue of Shuukan Asahi, p. 128.

The RP book put out by Film Art sha that Aaron mentioned (the RP as
program pictures one) is also not to be missed for the carefully chosen
contributions by Hasumi Shigehiko (who by the way uses video in class if
not promiscuously, fairly often.  This is at least in his late,
"institution-builder" phase as opposed to his more active critic phase,
which I would hazard probably coincides with the demise of the meigaza &
its poorer pink relations.)  

Then, there are the fanzines and "goods" which keep meticulous track of
past & present activities of productions and especially actresses. And
there are books out by Wakamatsu Koji (on Daguerro, check the Image
Forum Website) & Yamatoya (scripts & essays).  

That, at least, is probably more than you wanted to know.  
amck.