[KineJapan] Reiwa Destroyed Pink Film

Fri May 24 11:49:02 EDT 2019

Markus (who already knows) and everyone -

I was there at the last Pink Taisho. Due to some financial difficulties (an
unreliable job market, a couple years of low to no pay, and zero research
funds... ouch!), I hadn’t been able to come to Japan for a very long time.
When I heard that this May's event at Ueno Okura would be the "last" Pink
Taisho, I squeezed my savings and raised my credit card limit to pay for a
private trip to see it all go down. I'm hoping to stay long enough to study
a few of the new digital pink movies and viddy the other adult cinemas
still open around Tokyo and Osaka, budget and energy permitting.

I arrived in Tokyo a couple of days before the event. It was good timing.
The Laputa Asagaya cinema is currently running a late-night series of 35mm
prints of Shintoho films--the third chapter of what they’re calling the
"Last Film Show." Currently, this cozy art cinema west from Shinjuku on the
Chuo line is the only place in the region where people can watch Pink films
on film. I have to confirm with the Shintoho folks if this is actually the
last time they’re going to lend out 35mm prints.

The night before the Pink Taisho, I attended a screening of the scary,
surreal, and very cinematic "Renzoku Bokan" (1983; I think I translated it
as “Serial Violent Rape” in my dissertation), directed by Takita Yojiro,
who twenty-six years later won an Academy Award. The small Laputa was over
capacity, with a healthy mix of male and female viewers, and many
cinephiles. I arrived right before start time and was given a folding chair
to sit in along the wall. My companion for the trip (a close friend and
rock’n’roller who has done soundtrack work on several pink films in the
past) ended up with a zabuton on a step in the aisle.

The print was a little worn, with some scratches at the beginning and end
of the reels, but it was in overall very good condition. The movie was
followed by a thirty-minute talk with actor Hotaro Yukijiro (who plays the
adult cinema manager in the story) and veteran pink actor/director Ikejima
Yutaka (who didn't have a role in this particular title, but acted in a
number of Takita’s other early films). At the end of the talk, Ikejima
plugged the next day's Pink Taisho event, describing the atmosphere of the
pink cinema the same way he usually does at non-adult-cinema pink
screenings. I'm quoting and paraphrasing from memory here, but this is
mostly accurate:

"Pink cinemas are usually seen as really scary places. Sure enough, if you
walk into one on a regular day, you will get attention. The other customers
aren't there to watch a movie. They're looking for a hookup. When you go
into a pink cinema, you're signaling that you want to take part in that
environment. You have to know what you're getting into. If you enter alone,
whoever you are, someone will probably hit on you within minutes. If you go
as a single lady, you'll immediately attract admirers. If you go as a
couple, people will gather around to watch, expecting you two to put on a
show. But don't worry! Tomorrow's Pink Taisho event at the Ueno Okura will
be different! The perverts know to stay away during the Awards or when cast
and crew visit a theater for a new film release event. I am certain that
nobody will try to grope you if you attend the Pink Taisho tomorrow."

Ikejima might be the only pink person I know who speaks openly about what
actually happens in pink cinemas. In the past I would occasionally bump
into him on weekday afternoons at regular screenings in some of the (now
closed) Tokyo theaters. During his advertisement for the Taisho, he
repeated an anecdote about how he once entered a pink cinema on a regular
day with an actress, and was soon touched by one of the other patrons. When
that person realized who Ikejima was, he apologized profusely for being so
forward, praised the director and actress’s work, and then went off to do
other things. Ikejima repeatedly made the point that the Pink Taisho is a
special day, and that normal people are welcome and would surely be left
alone.

The awards presentation was held mid-afternoon on Sunday, May 5. There were
several rounds of movie screenings before and after the event. I arrived
about an hour before the scheduled kickoff time, and the seats were already
completely filled, with very little standing room left. (After it all
ended, I bumped into an old friend and film fan who told me that the seats
had been completely packed all day long, from that morning, long before the
awards even started.)

When the ceremony got rolling, I managed to squeeze into a standing spot
behind the back row and watch the presentation--a long string of
announcements and awards for cast and crew in recent Okura Pictures movies
that I hadn't seen. OP is the only company still producing Pink, at a pace
of 36 “straight” films plus two “gay” films each year. They’re all shot
digital now, with mostly synch sound, often with squishy stories about
lonely virgins and clumsy anti-socialites trying to find love. From the
short amount of footage I watched, I momentarily tried to imagine the new
movies along the rules of classical Pink Film screenwriting,
cinematography, and editing. Honestly, they don’t really look or sound like
pink movies anymore. But maybe that’s just my own projection, since the
movies themselves didn’t matter that much to begin with.

After an hour or so, I got tired of grumpy, pushy fans trying to elbow me
out of the way so they could take a snapshot of their favorite
performer--it was definitely not the kind of gentle tactile invitation one
gets in a normal day at a pink cinema--and retreated to the lobby, to wait
with various bored staff, cast, and crew members. Some of the faces I hoped
to see didn’t appear. Ever since Shintoho and other companies stopped
producing years ago, and the Pink Taisho essentially turned into the Okura
Taisho, most pink pros who aren’t receiving awards or don’t have active
business with Okura don’t bother attending.

Ikejima had been only partly right. His assurance that the "perverts" would
completely avoid the Awards turned out to be an overstatement. Several
regulars were standing and sitting there right next to me, in the lobby, a
few all dressed up in their Sunday best, chatting with the cinema staff and
patiently waiting for the crowds of "Fans" to disappear so they could get
back to the scheduled business of not-movie-watching in, on, and around the
seats in the auditorium.

I gave some “long time, no see” greetings to actors and directors and had
short conversations with folks who were, like me I suspect, not interested
in sitting (standing?) through a ceremony like this anymore. After two and
a half hours of awards and speeches, when the last presentation ended, the
vast majority of customers quickly poured out of the auditorium and left
the venue. I waited around after the show, rubbed shoulders with other
people I recognized but didn't have direct invitations to talk to, and then
slowly floated back to my monthly apartment. It felt strangely
anti-climactic.

I returned to the Ueno Okura the next Friday afternoon to see what was
really up. The very clean, still new-ish Ueno cinema is more or less what I
expected. There were twenty-five or thirty customers inside; retirement age
people in plaid shirts and beige slacks, thirtysomethings in shorts and
t-shirts, a few businessmen in suits, and a handful of others in dresses
and high heels. Many sleeping, several making out, at best one or two
masturbating (completely out of synch with the sex scenes, though), and
four or five constantly walking around the floor looking for a partner. I’m
sure I was the only one there semi-seriously watching the movies.

The program I caught had one old Shintoho Pink and two new digital OP
movies. Someone at the Taisho told me that the Okura had recently upgraded
to blu-ray projection. The OP movies looked like they were shown in 720p.
The Shintoho movie was at best DVD resolution, and an old video transfer,
with occasional interlacing and combing problems. A trailer for a
forthcoming OP release played between the second and third feature. I was a
little surprised that it had both Japanese and English credits at the end.
(OP used to have a YouTube page with trailers for their digital movies, but
I can’t seem to find it now.) The sound throughout the program was loud and
clear.

I haven’t paid the premium ticket charge to sit in the balcony at the new
Ueno Okura yet, and I haven’t returned to the neighboring Tokusen Gekijo
theater that shows 500 yen single features on this trip. Last time I walked
into the Tokusen, years ago, there was no place to sit, and I kept getting
goosed wherever I stood, so I ended up circling the auditorium floor trying
to avoid my followers. That only attracted more attention. One particularly
persistent guy came up to me at one point and flirted, “Hey, I saw you in
one of these movies a while back. That was you, wasn’t it?” I lied and said
I had no idea what he was talking about, and then left. Maybe I need to
give that place another shot.

Two days after Ueno, I visited the Cine Roman in Ikebukuro. There were at
least thirty people in the seats, and only a few couples were fooling
around near me. But this was also a special occasion. The Cine Roman was
doing a series of celebrated Nikkatsu Roman Porno movies (triple features
with one RP and two Xces pink movies). Most of the people were there to
watch--to actually watch!--the Kumashiro Tatsumi/Uchida Yuya Roman Porno
playing that day (on blu-ray), and the majority of the audience immediately
disappeared when that one finished. Only a handful remained for the ugly SD
video transfer of the old Xces movie that played next, and those people
were either sleeping, cruising, or moaning.

The Koonza in Yokohama, which I entered earlier this week, is another
world. I’ve been there several times in the past. I thought a Wednesday
afternoon would be relatively quiet, but it was shockingly busy. It
reminded me of the crazy scene I saw in Osaka's Shinsekai six or seven
years ago. The Koonza has two screens (the “gay” theater 1 and “normal”
theater 2), with different programs running, different ticket prices, and
completely segregated audiences. One of the reasons it was so busy on a
weekday might be that, aside from the busy Ueno screens and the
occasionally movie-oriented Ikebukuro, all of the other greater Tokyo-area
cinemas are gone. The Koonza 1 is also the only remaining gay pink screen
in the Kanto area. There are still three other gay pink screens open in
Osaka, Fukuoka, and Hiroshima.

I caught the tail end of the first movie in theater 1’s double feature. It
was an aging Hamano Sachi feature, written as always by her partner
(himself a pink director) Yamazaki Kuninori, with Nakamitsu Seiji,
Yoshiyuki Yumi, and other actors I couldn't identify. I arrived in time to
see the last scenes, but had to play it cool when other customers creeped
up behind me to see if I was looking for action. I couldn’t focus on the
picture. After I said “no, thanks” several times (quite strongly to one
poor fellow, who then pouted and sneered every time he passed me as he
continued to cycle around the floor) the other people left me alone.

I was able to get a better look at the second movie; an old Tomomatsu
Naoyuki flick called “Wagamama Sensation” that, like some of Tomomatsu’s
more recent work, plays wildly with film style. It was a story about an
experimental theater troupe that was littered with jump cuts, full of
handheld and undercranked shots, shot I think on a mix of film and video,
and decorated with questionably diegetic screens-within-screens. The sound
was really low in the Koonza 1, so I’m not sure how much of the story I
got, but that’s definitely one movie I’ll go back to. As always, most of
the regular crew and cast members in these movies work(ed) fluently in both
gay and straight pink films. There was even a different, straight
Hamano-Yamazaki film playing on screen 2 that same night, but I didn’t
catch that part of the program.

The man at the counter gave me a very puzzled look when I walked back up to
buy a ticket for the other show (only 500 yen at the end of the day). While
pink cast and crew mix freely between gay and straight films, the audiences
at the Koonza do not. Theater 2 had, in some ways, a much more diverse (and
slightly older, on average) group of customers. This “normal” auditorium
was also very active. I had to squeeze my way past a big crowd of people,
some dressed, some not quite so dressed, who were fooling around just
inside the doors to the auditorium. A number of other people and couples
were in the seats, but the majority of customers that night--a group of
twenty people or so--were standing behind the back row, getting busy.

I won’t go into detail about what they were doing. You can all probably
imagine. But from the conversations and other utterances I heard, I can say
that it sounded fully consensual and pleasurable. There was one
grandpa-aged customer who, after finishing what seemed like exhausting
activities with a person in a dress, sighed, laughed out loud, and then
thanked his partner profusely. “That was amazing! Thank you so much! I hope
you come back another time so we can meet again.”

I don’t remember much about the last movie of the day, “Tsundere musume:
okute na hatsutaiken,” directed by someone I didn’t recognize. It was
another recent digital OP. The theater mostly emptied out after the big
party in the back of auditorium 2 ended. One Lady quietly walked up to me
ten minutes before closing time and asked if I wanted to “do it.” I said
“no, thank you” and she peacefully retreated. Adult cinemas in Japan are
not necessarily or essentially abusive or exploitative environments at all,
but they do take a bit of training to navigate. I was the last customer in
the Koonza when the lights came up at 9 p.m. I said my thanks to the
manager and walked out. They closed the shutters behind me. And then I had
a long train ride back to Tokyo to think.

Markus wondered if pink film is finally gone. The pink “film” is, in some
ways, dead and buried. But I don’t think pink is. Reiwa didn't kill pink.
At least not yet. The new, post-celluloid movies are definitely something
else, in form and in content. But not in function. There are definitely
fewer adult cinemas in Japan than there were five or ten years ago--around
thirty in total now--and as far as I can tell, so far, the communities and
audiences at those theaters have not changed. I suppose we could phrase it
as another soft/hard distinction; not so much between soft-core and
hard-core, since pink is almost always soft-core, but between the software
and hardware of the adult film industry in Japan. Outside of occasional
special screenings and events that attract “fans,” nobody is watching the
movie. I try my best, and am constantly being reminded that the movie is
the least interesting thing happening in the room. The movies are changing,
but the space remains the same.

One last note. I’ve also spent a few days with Sano Kazuhiro. Thankfully,
Sano-san appears to be relatively healthy at the moment. I was able to
convince him to show me his recent return to feature directing, “But Only
Love.” Despite the murky image and audio mix problems on the sample DVD we
watched, it is a good movie, with sharp cinematography, a sincere script,
and occasional flashes of the kinds of psychedelic montage that made Sano’s
earlier adventures so visually interesting. It was much better, in my
opinion, than Sano’s last film for Shintoho twenty years ago. In fact, But
Only Love felt more Pink than the recent, very melodramatic, brightly-lit
Okura videos. I believe Sano originally wrote this with the intention of
distributing it as a pink film. Some years ago he talked about a project to
make the “last” pink film on film, and even thought of shooting on 8mm for
a while, but that fell apart. Despite its digital format, this new one
certainly feels like it fills that role. I’ve talked to Sano about the
possibility of subtitling it--that is, I am currently begging him to let me
subtitle it--but there is no commercial video release yet, in Japan or
anywhere.

I might have other stories to tell, but perhaps I’ll save them for another
post.

Reiwa did not destroy pink film. Happy New Era, everyone!

Michael Arnold

On Mon, May 6, 2019 at 1:59 PM Markus Nornes via KineJapan <
kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:

So last night was the final Pink Taisho, the pink film awards. It was the
31st edition, meaning it was roughly bound by the Heisei era; needless to
say, no one has mentioned this in all the silly hoopla around the start of
the new era. There were still nearly 40 pink films made last year. But they
were all from Okura, so it's not much of an awards competition
(interestingly enough, this reveals how these award shows are as much about
competition between companies as between films or filmmakers). Here is
their page announcing the event's demise, along with the competition films.

http://pg-pinkfilm.com/news/31pinkfes.html

I couldn't go. I was throwing a Cinco de Mayo party. Adachi Masao was on
hand. I told him about the award show and its announced end. He could care
less. It says as much as Adachi as an artist as it does the heterogeneity
and historical transformations of pink.

I know at least one colleague from KineJapan was there. Waiting for a
report from the ground..........

Markus

---

Markus Nornes
Professor of Asian Cinema
Department of Film, Television and Media, Department of Asian Languages and
Cultures, Penny Stamps School of Art & Design

Department of Film, Television and Media
6348 North Quad
105 S. State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285

_______________________________________________
KineJapan mailing list
KineJapan at mailman.yale.edu
https://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/kinejapan

On Mon, May 6, 2019 at 1:59 PM Markus Nornes via KineJapan <
kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:

>
> So last night was the final Pink Taisho, the pink film awards. It was the
> 31st edition, meaning it was roughly bound by the Heisei era; needless to
> say, no one has mentioned this in all the silly hoopla around the start of
> the new era. There were still nearly 40 pink films made last year. But they
> were all from Okura, so it's not much of an awards competition
> (interestingly enough, this reveals how these award shows are as much about
> competition between companies as between films or filmmakers). Here is
> their page announcing the event's demise, along with the competition films.
>
> http://pg-pinkfilm.com/news/31pinkfes.html
>
> I couldn't go. I was throwing a Cinco de Mayo party. Adachi Masao was on
> hand. I told him about the award show and its announced end. He could care
> less. It says as much as Adachi as an artist as it does the heterogeneity
> and historical transformations of pink.
>
> I know at least one colleague from KineJapan was there. Waiting for a
> report from the ground..........
>
> Markus
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---
>
> *Markus Nornes*
> *Professor of Asian Cinema*
> Department of Film, Television and Media, Department of Asian Languages
> and Cultures, Penny Stamps School of Art & Design
>
> *Department of Film, Television and Media*
> *6348 North Quad*
> *105 S. State Street*
> *Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285*
>
> _______________________________________________
> KineJapan mailing list
> KineJapan at mailman.yale.edu
> https://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/kinejapan
>
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