Above you see a killer promo poster for an unknown Roman porno flick made by Nikkatsu Studios, circa 1978, starring Miyako Yamaguchi. When we say unknown, we mean it had no western release, thus has no English title we can use to refer to it. But we can make one up. Based on the characters we recognize, we’re going to give this the English name “Desire in a Grassy Place”. Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, we know, but “Tiger’s Wood” was already taken. 

If there’s one indisputably true statement about Japanese cinema, it’s this: they will try anything. 1974’s Hana to hebi, aka Flower and Snake, is a bondage comedy based on a novel by Oniroku Dan, who specialized in S&M fiction. For the screen version, Nikkatsu Studios recruited reliable sexploitation queen Naomi Tani, who had already appeared in a previous version of the same film entitled Hana to hebi yori: niku no shiiku, aka Flower and Snake: Rearing the Flesh. Where that version was a mere pinku film, this new version would be a Roman porno—which simply meant Nikkatsu would spend more money in an effort to elevate the genre into something mainstream Japanese would accept. In the film, Tani plays an aristocratic wife who asks for a divorce but instead is forced into bondage and submission by a man hired for the task by her husband. She experiences a sexual awakening, the employee forms an emotional bond, and complications ensue from there. We haven’t read the novel, but apparently it’s very different from the film and its adaptation was a source of friction between studio and author. But it didn’t matter—Hana to hebi was a smash. It was the first of Nikkatsu’s many Roman porno flicks, and the first of what would become a Hana to hebi franchise. It premiered in Japan today in 1974. 

Hana to hebi: kyûkyoku nawa chôkyô was released with the English title Flower and Snake 4: Rope Magic, which is a very pretty collection of nouns for an exercise in torture porn. Fairly hard torture porn, too, probably because by the time this was made by Nikkatsu Studios, adult video was taking a major bite out of Japan’s pinku market. The plot here is simple: a gambler with debts loses his wife and daughter to the Yakuza, who proceed to humiliate the women in various fiendish ways. There’s an escape attempt that goes awry, but basically the story is just a framework for increasingly devilish forms of sexual degradation. You got your dildos. You got your hot wax. You got your urine. This is soooo not our thing. But what is our thing is the promo art, which is just lovely, even while evincing the film’s highly dubious nature. Experienced pinku fans, or those into the Japanese art of Kinbaku-bi (beautiful bondage) may dig this movie. All others proceed with caution. Hana to hebi: kyûkyoku nawa chôkyô, premiered in Japan today in 1987.     

If you’ve been visiting Pulp Intl. regularly, you know we feature promo art from Japanese pinku films. The above poster is for Onna kyôshi, aka School Mistress, aka Woman Teacher, which isn’t technically a pinku flick, but instead falls into a parallel category known as roman porno. The term has nothing to do with ancient Rome—it’s actually just a mash-up of “romantic” and “pornography.” The main difference between the roman porno and pinku styles is that the former was the creation of Japan’s oldest movie studio Nikkatsu, and the films they produced had a higher budget and were often less violent than the pinku productions pioneered by studios like World Eiga and Nihon Cinema. However roman porno isn’t anything like American-style porn. Instead these are artful productions made for mainstream audiences and lack explicit visuals due to Japanese censorship laws. To suggest sexual action the moviemakers developed clever techniques such as interposing vases of flowers and other phallic objects between the viewer and the action. In fact, many film experts believe circumventing the censors is what gave roman porno films their defining characteristics. We have about a hundred more of these pinku/roman porno posters, few of which, to our knowledge, have ever been seen on the Internet. We’ll be sharing them in the future. Onna kyôshi opened in Japan today in 1977.      

Nora-nekko rokku: Sekkusu hanta, aka, Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter is the third installment of a Nikkatsu Studios-produced pentology of loosely connected Stray Cat Rock films. This one attempts to address two real world issues: the notorious Japanese penchant for racism, and Japanese resentment concerning the post-war occupation of their country by American troops. Meiko Kaji and her friends, who comprise a girl gang called the Alleycats, run afoul of a J-supremacist street gang called the Eagles when one of the Alleycats refuses to betray her half-Japanese/half-black boyfriend. Parallel to this, Meiko finds herself drawn to another mixed race boy who happens to be in town searching for his missing sister. The leader of the Eagles, twisted by the traumatic memory of his sister’s rape at the hands of American servicemen, goes fully bughouse insane over all this race-mixing and decides to solve it by embarking on a citywide rampage against anyone he thinks isn’t pure Japanese. As usual, we won’t spoil the film by giving a full synopsis. Find it, rent it, watch it, love it, and then go bash some racists. It's good clean fun. Nora-nekko rokku: Sekkusu hanta opened in Japan today in 1971.