AW: Help Needed (pinku eiga identification)

[Roland Domenig]

A minor correction to Jasper's detailed comment:

J?ji no rirekisho was produced by Kokuei and not by Wakamatsu Production (as for instance also the JMDB database wrongly states). Wakamatsu Production was established a couple of month after the release of "J?ji no rirekisho" - the first film credited as produced by Wakamatsu Production was "Kabe no naka no himegoto" (Affairs Within Walls, 1965), although in fact it was commissioned by Kant? Movie. However, the enormous commercial success of "J?ji no rirekisho", which earned Kokuei handsome profits but not Wakamatsu, might have been one reason for establishing his own production company shortly after. 
The film, by the way, features a scene of a naked woman fleeing in agony through a snowy landscape, which is very similar to the most controversial scene of Takechi Tetsuji's "Kuroi yuki" (Black Snow) which was put on trial for obscenity. Wakamatsu is said to have been mad that everyone was talking about the "scandalous" scene in Takechi's film, but nobody took notice of the resemblance to this scene in his film which predated "Kuroi yuki".  

Roland Domenig
Institute of East Asian Studies
Vienna University

P.S.: Yamashita Osamu, the director of the third "J?ji no rirekisho" films, gives a memorable performance in the leading role of Wakamatsu's "Nihon b?k? ankokushi - B?gyakuma". 



-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu im Auftrag von J.sharp
Gesendet: Mi 01.11.2006 17:47
An: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Betreff: Re: Help Needed (pinku eiga identification)
 
Stephen's right. Its JOUJI NO RIREKISHO.
It's an early masterpiece of the pink genre, a highly influential film, and
one of Wakamatsu's best in my opinio. It was also the first he produced
through his own company, Wakamatsu Pro (though he'd made plenty of others
for companies such as Nihon Shinema in the few years running up to this.)

Note that the imdb lists an English title of George's Love Affairs, which is
utterly wrong - as is the claim that it was a Nikkatsu production.
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0291282/)

The film is best known in English as Chronicles of an Affair. It's heavily
indebted to Imamura's Insect Woman, and forged a template which was used in
many 60s pink films (at least, on the evidence we have of the dozen or so
pink films from this decade currently available) - young girl from a small
parochial country village is raped and ravaged at the hands of local
roughnecks, escapes to a new life in the big city of Tokyo, and finds a
pretty similar fate awaiting her there. There's a political subtext in the
form of a critique of patriarchal authority buried somewhere within all the
exploitation, as manifested by the neon sign referring to the Ampo Treaty in
the final frame. Very interesting film - needs to be more widely seen.

Another giant of the pink genre Kan Mukai made a sequel (though probably in
name only) entitled Continuation: Chronicles of an Affair (Tsuki: Jouji no
Rirekisho) the following year in 1966, though the film no longer seems to
exist, while the last part of this unofficial trilogy New Chronicles of an
Affair (Shin Jouji no Rirekisho) came from the lesser known Osamu Yamashita
in 1967. This last film was made available on vhs by Hummingbird, and is
noteworthy for being one of one the first batch of 3 full-colour pink films
(another is Kan Mukai's Blue Film no Onna, which is also still extant).

Yamashita's film is also very interesting in that as well as reprising the
opening of Wakamatsu's original film, changing it from a poor country girl
from the mountainous Tohoku area being raped in the middle of a snow drift
to a young ama girl being raped on the beach who later attempts to start a
new life as a nude model in Tokyo. It also ends with a scene of the girl
molested by two GIs outside Yokotsuka Airbase - remember Takechi Tetsuji had
been prosecuted for obscenity a mere 2 years before for a similar scene in
Black Snow.

Jasper




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