[KineJapan] Reiwa Destroyed Pink Film

Fri May 24 22:58:41 EDT 2019

Thanks Mike, that was fascinating. Sounds like book material...

So with this "final Pink Taisho" thing, what is Okura thinking? Announcing
the end of something they are still in the business of doing?

You really should subtitle Sano's film. I'd think there'd be interest in
certain regions of the film festival circuit.

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*

On Sat, May 25, 2019 at 12:49 AM M Arnold via KineJapan <
kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:

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