Steamy, subversive, exotic & bizarre! Behind the Pink Curtain takes the reader on a wild joy ride deep into the hinterlands of Japanese culture, society and radical politics by way of the weird and wonderful world of the country's distinctive sex film movements. Behind the Pink Curtain focuses on one of the most notorious sectors of Japanese filmmaking, the erotic Pink Film, or pinku eiga genre, and the closely related Roman Porno films produced by Nikkatsu studios from 1971 to 1988.
From the early '60s onwards major Japanese film studios and independent producers alike have kept up a conveyor belt level of output of pornographic features intended purely for cinema release.
Still today, just short of 100 such titles are shot on 35mm every year intended for screening in a specialist network of adult cinema across the nation. In recent years, many have been released on DVD in the West or screened at international film festivals, while many of Japan's most noted filmmakers today cut their teeth in this industry.
Read about: -- the ins and outs of Japanese censorship from the wartime onwards; -- how topless deep sea diving girls came to woo local audiences in the '50s; -- how a TV nature documentary maker made nude female Tarzan movies; -- how '60s mavericks Koji Wakamatsu and Masao Adachi met John and Yoko; -- how one of Japan's most famous literary figures ended up the subject of the country's first gay porno movie; -- how one of Nikkatsu's leading directors went it alone to make a film about powerboat racing and ended up in the bad books of the yakuza; -- how the sex farce Horny Home Tutor: Teacher's Love Juice was re-titled The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai and became one of the most talked-about Japanese films ever, playing at over twenty international film festivals.
Based on extensive interviews with many of the leading figures in the field, Behind the Pink Curtain is a colourful and exhaustive expose' of Japan's most vibrant and prolific filmmaking sector.
About the Author
Jasper Sharp is the co-editor of the Japanese film website Midnight Eye and has curated for London's Raindance Film Festival and acted as an advisor for the Japan Foundation UK's annual touring season since 2005. His critically-acclaimed book The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film, joint-written with FAB Press author Tom Mes (Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike and Iron Man: The Cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto), was published in 2003.
