More questions. "Dan Oniroku" ? Who or what????

[Roland Domenig]

Jasper, its good to hear that you enjoyed your visit to Japan.

To your questions:

1. LOVE CINEMA is a series of 6 films produced by CineRocket. All films are
shot on digital video and feature a story about a young girl. 3 films of the
series, Hiroki Ryuichi's 'Tokyo gomi onna', Mihara Mitsuhiro's 'Eri ni
kubittake' and Yukisada Isao's 'Tojiru hi' are completed and have been
released, the remaining 3, Shinohara Tetsuo's 'Harikomi', Shiota Akihiko's
'Gipusu' and a yet untitled film of Miike Takashi are to follow next year.
There are plans to continue the series with 6 more films.

2. As Pete already mentioned, Dan Oniroku is probably the most famous writer
of S/M and fetish novels in Japan.
He was born 1931 in Shiga-prefecture as the son of an owner of a cinema.
After the war and still in high-school he wanted to become an opera-singer
but failed and turned to the theatre, writing scripts and appearing as
actor. While attending university he worked with several theatre-groups as
actor and singer. After graduation he went to Tokyo and began working for
the movie magazine 'Star Story'. He quit very soon, however, because
translating gossip about movie stars from American magazines didn't satisfy
him. He again turned to writing and in 1956 published his first novel in the
magazine 'Kidan kurabu'. Besides writing S/M novels he worked as English
teacher, briefly for Television and in 1969 set up the pink eiga production
company Oni Puro as well as a theatre group. In 1972 Oni Puro stopped its
production and Dan began his cooperation with Nikkatsu. Nikkatsu produced 3
dozen Roman Poruno based on his novels among them the Dan Oniroku-series
with Tani Naomi. Dan himself directed a pink eiga in 1971 (Nikuchigoku) and
had guest appearances in some other films.
In 1989 he announced to resign as a writer and bought the magazine 'Shogi
Journal' (dedicated to the Japanese chess-play). The magazine, however, was
a financial failure and went bankrupt in 1994. Dan Oniroku resumed his
career as a writer and published some best-selling books. Recently he also
published a photo-book featuring Aizome Kyoko, the former star of Takechi
Tetsuji's remakes of his own legendary 'Hakujitsumu'.


Roland Domenig
Institute for Japanese Studies
University of Vienna


 

> Hi everyone,
> 
> I'm just back from a magical two week sojourn in Tokyo / Kyoto / Kanazawa,
> my first ever trip to Japan and boy, am I ever itching to get back there as
> soon as possible. What a magical country!
> Firstly I would like to thnk everyone who replied to my original query for
> information on travelling to Japan about a month ago. All of the replies
> were very useful.
> Secondly, to all Japanese people on this list, I would like to say you are
> the kindest, most helpful people I have ever met in a foreign country and it
> made my whole stay a pleasure from start to finish.
> And finally, a more cinematically relevent query relating to a couple of
> films I saw during my stay. These were two films from a director called
> Ryuichi HIROKI and both came out in Tokyo during my first weekend there. The
> first, TOKYO GOMI ONNA (TOKYO GARBAGE GIRL) was a beautifully naturalistic
> DV-shot feature which was announced as part of a Love Cinema series
> comprised of 6 films all shot on video all centred around contemporary
> Japanese girls. HIROKI shot two films for this series, and Miike TAKASHI's
> name was mentioned in the Love Cinema blurb. Can anyone tell me anything
> more about this Love Cinema group? Hopefully some of this work will make it
> out of Japan at some point, but for now English language information is
> rather sparse, which is a shame because TOKYO GARBAGE GIRL was a real gem.
> HIROKI's second film of the year was as different a kettle of fish as you'd
> imagine - FUTEI NO KISETSU, which came out with the tagline I AM AN SM
> WRITER and starred Ren Osugi. Apparently this was based on an original story
> by someone called Dan Oniroku, and a brief scour around the web brought up a
> few kanji-written web pages which gave me little indication as to who or
> what Dan Oniroku is. Does anyone know? Apparently he was quite a prominent
> writer during the 70s, but more than this I cannot tell you.
> 
> Any information would be gratefully appreciated,
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Jasper Sharp
> 
> 
> 
>