Pulp International - Izumi+Shima

Sep 29 2019

Junko Mabuko is unjustly detained yet again.

It's Junko Mabuki again, beset by her usual troubles on this poster for the roman porno flick Dan Oniroku joen fujin, which premiered in Japan today in 1980. This movie seems to have been retitled for its English language release either Blazing Bondage Lady or Madam Rope Flame. Different sites say it's one or the other, but both titles kind of mean the same thing, so both are probably correct.

How does Junko get caged? It's her husband's fault. He accidentally runs over a woman who's a star S&M performer and her widower shows up to claim Junko as his own (and as a bonus also kidnaps her sister, played by the ethereal Izumi Shima). Junko's captor introduces her to aspects of bdsm such as whipping and enemas (always a favorite of roman porno flicks), and her shame and resistance eventually turn to acceptance and pleasure.

Mabuki burst onto the roman porno scene in 1979 and in 1980 made a dozen films. Nikkatsu thought they had another Naomi Tani on their hands and even staged a press conference at which they introduced Mabuki to the assembled journalists while she was done up in bondage gear. These types of publicity stunts weren't unusual for Nikkatsu. They had barely enough time to congratulate themselves for finding a new star when in 1982 Junko abruptly retired.

But Mabuki left behind more than a dozen films and established herself as one of the era's most popular stars. Even so, we rarely recommend these movies and can't recommend this one either, but we love roman porno posters, which taken out of context are always amazing art pieces. Junko is like art too, below. Rest assured, this is not the last we'll see of her.

Japan Nikkatsu Dan Oniroku joen fujin 団鬼六縄炎夫人 Junko Mabuki Izumi Shima Oniroku Dan poster art cinema pinku roman porno bdsm shibari kinbaku nudity movie review

Vintage Pulp

Aug 5 2019

She's just wading for something to happen.

Above, a pretty poster for Hito natsu no kankei, which starred Minako Mizushima, along with Izumi Shima and Tamaki Katsura. There's no English title for this, but if you were to translate ひと夏の関係 it would mean something like “summer relationship.” On the other hand, Hito natsu no kankei means something like “one person's life.” So there you go. This premiered in Japan today in 1978.

Japan Nikkatsu Hito natsu no kankei Summer Relationship Minako Mizushima Izumi Shima Tamaki Katsura roman porno pinku poster art cinema

Modern Pulp

Feb 25 2019

Shima's education costs become too much to bear.

Above is a poster for Dan Oniroku hebi no ana, also known as Snake Hole, starring Izumi Shima. We wish she had made a few movies in the mainstream, but she was a roman porno star, and that means some of her output can be hard to watch. We make no judgments. Well, no, we do make judgments, but we try to be open minded about these crazy flicks. Japanese filmmakers were exploding old taboos and on the balance that was a good thing, but where Toei's pinky violence usually empowered women, Nikkatsu's roman pornos recast them as victims. In this film, for example, Shima is forced to participate in bdsm fantasies. She's shaved, hung from ropes, walked with a dog collar, and is erotically vacuumed (don't ask). This was Shima's last starring role, and it came near the end of Nikkatsu's roman porno obsession. But of course that was just a marketing label. The studio continued its explorations of taboo subject matter. As far as this one goes, we don't recommend it, but we've seen worse films. If it sounds like something that'd interest you—so pee it. Dan Oniroku hebi no ana premiered in Japan today in 1983.

Japan Nikkatsu Dan Oniroku hebi no ana 団鬼六・蛇の穴 Snake Hole Izumi Shima Mai Hana Oniroku Dan poster art cinema roman porno pinku bdsm shibari kinbaku nudity

Modern Pulp

Mar 12 2018

Getting into the place isn't the problem.

In Nikkatsu roman porno the question, as always, is exactly how the script will place the female lead under the control of men determined to use her. In Dan Oniroku kurokami nawa fujin, aka Black Hair Velvet Soul, it's alcoholism and debt. A gambling and philandering husband owes a pile to a slimy financier, so he puts up as collateral the restaurant he owns with his wife. Izumi Shima plays the wife. Because the place was founded by her father and succeeded because of his sweat and struggle, as she notes in a monologue, she sees no other choice but to agree to work off the debt in an S&M club run by the financier. She goes through the usual range of indignities, but in what has to be considered a bit of a twist, she at no point likes it, nor has some inner freak unleashed, nor somehow dies by ironic means. She does her bit, the restaurant is saved, and she leaves her shitty husband. Why watch the movie? Well, because Shima is a shimmering goddess and she's always worth watching. Sixty-six minutes including credits and you're done. Dan Oniroku kurokami nawa fujin premiered today in 1982.

Japan Nikkatsu Dan Oniroku kurokami nawa fujin 団鬼六黒髪縄夫人 Black Hair Velvet Soul Izumi Shima Oniroku Dan roman porno poster art pinku cinema movie review

Modern Pulp

Jan 22 2018

Need a little help around the house?

Above is a poster for Dorei keiyakushu, yet another entry in Nikkatsu's roman porno pantheon, and one that gets viewers to the usual place by a slightly different route. The film opens with Nami Matsukawa having her pubic hair shaved off by a man. She isn't too thrilled about it. Then he gives her an enema, and it's us who aren't too thrilled. Then he binds her in ropes kinbaku style, basically wrapping her like a gift, carefully places her in a crate with some packing material, closes it up and has some delivery guys take the container away. The parcel ends up in the house of Hidekazu Mikami, who's surprised as hell when he opens it, as is his wife, played by Izumi Shima. Imagine explaining that. A sheaf of legal documents around Nami's neck says that she's a slave and will serve as payment of a debt. And just like that it's straight to the kinky sex and domination. You can always count on Nikkatsu—they never fail to get you to bondage land, if indeed that's where you want to go. Us, we can take or leave it. Even though we have many more roman porno posters we'd like to share, we may shift more toward Toei's pinky violence action movies for a while. They're harder to find, but worth the effort—and we can only watch so many enemas. Dorei keiyakushu premiered in Japan today in 1982.

It says she'll do anything you ask. Laundry, dishes, handjobs, whatever.

Baby, I swear I didn't order a slave.

But as long as we have one...

Japan Nikkatsu Dorei keiyakushu Slave Contract Nami Matsukawa Hidekazu Mikami Izumi Shima pinku roman porno poster art cinema kinbaku shibari bdsm movie review

Modern Pulp

Jan 7 2018

When we get together we do the usual stuff—chat, drink wine, endure whippings, have a forced enema or two.

We don't share pinku and roman porno posters just because we're interested in the films. We also share them because, first, the art is always great, and second, it's easy to get. Its availability is a reflection of how many productions of the type were made—in a word, many hundreds. That's two words. Let's go with thousands—which is not an exaggeration. These were incredibly popular films is the point, made by multiple studios trying to place double features into vertically integrated, wholly dependent cinemas every weekend. Many of the movies have fallen prey to the ravages of time, which occasionally leads to us sharing art from movies that no longer exist, but today's offering, Nawa to chibusa, aka Rope and Breasts, starring Nami Matsukawa and Izumi Shima, is one we did in fact find and watch.

The movie premiered in Japan today in 1983, and it involves a couple running a traveling bdsm show who arrive in Kyoto and are hired for a private performance that turns into something more. The woman is planning to retire, but now learns what bondage and discipline really are as she and her man are teased and tortured to within an inch of their sanity. When all is said and done the woman forgets retirement, not because she loves torture, but because she realizes her life is hell anyway and if she has to live in hell she'd like to at least make money from it. Very upbeat stuff. An interesting aspect of the copy we saw is its use of pixelation to obscure the private parts of the actors (see below). Since roman pornos are softcore the masking is purely directorial flourish, designed, we suppose, to give the action a veneer of the forbidden.

For those who've missed our previous discussions about the roman porno genre, the filmmakers generally contend that the sexual abuse depicted is symbolic of patriarchal Japan's subjugation to occupying Americans, or to modern life, or to a burgeoning counterculture, etc. As a smart man once said, when something is symbolic of everything, it's symbolic of nothing. In other words, we don't buy the boilerplate on roman porno, at least

not fully. We think it was primarily money driven, and the more intellectual aspects were secondary, distantly. But the main thing we try to remember as outsiders looking in is that cultural judgement is a slippery slope, and while in this particular 2018 moment of discussion about the all too prevalent dangers men present to women, it's easy to dismiss roman porno films as masculine horror fantasies sprung from the brows of unrepentant misogynists.

But times change, and there are layers to the issue that make such assessments a bit too facile. It's possible to be on one side of a cultural issue during a certain moment in time, but be judged as on the exact opposite side a generation or two later. Today's observers could easily conclude that roman porno filmmakers were conservative nationalists, but in reality many were liberal feminist allies satirizing conservative patriarchs/patriots. Their sexualization of women was spurred in part by studio demands, but there's also no doubt many thought of themselves as modernist trailblazers smashing social barriers through the use of sexual symbolism. The path their output has taken through the decades is parallel to that of Hugh Hefner, hailed as a women's rights hero in 1967, reviled as a cog in a destructive porno machine half a century later. Times change.

If Japanese viewers of 1980s American horror movies had demanded to know why so many productions featured people being lured into the woods to be slaughtered it would have led to some uncomfortable conversations about apocalyptic American attitudes toward sex, as well as the eternal American worship of violence. These discussions would have been much more needed than any concerning 1970s Japanese mores. But as for modern observers, they get to judge earlier filmmakers only up to a point. They weren't there. They forget that work in

commercial media has its demands, if the work is to be secured at all. Old targets are no longer fully relevant, as well as being way too easy to criticize in hindsight. Subversive messages are often slipped into popular art and those messages matter. They wink at us. They say, “You and I both know this is just entertainment, but this other thing—if you are detecting it—is what we're really about here.” But modern viewers of old films often miss these important messages. As culture changes receptivity to these small signals changes too.

So, okay, Nawa to chibusa is a weird movie. It's a weird movie hailing from a weird genre. The genre was meant to both make money and provoke people, and all these years later the films remain as artifacts of an industry embarked upon a radical social discussion, spearheaded by filmmakers who hadn't yet realized that images also carry weight apart from their alleged political intent. In other words, the question becomes whether the same goals could have been achieved by other means—i.e. other means of provocation, other types of imagery. We can't answer that. We weren't there. We don't know of anyone who has tallied the social gains and losses, if any, brought about by all this shocking cinema. All we have is an inadequate twenty-first century perspective, an inadequate Western perspective, an incomplete male perspective, and a whole lot of crazy posters.

Japan Kyoto Nikkatsu Nawa to chibusa Rope and Breasts Nami Matsukawa 縄と乳房 Izumi Shima Hugh Hefner poster art cinema roman porno pinku nudity bdsm shibari kinbaku movie review

Modern Pulp

Nov 27 2017

Junko Mabuki starts a chain reaction.

Junko Mabuki is an important actress of second generation Japanese S&M movies, and that's her above on a poster for Dan Oniroku onna biyoshi nawa shiku, aka Female Beautician Rope Discipline. What you see is what you get here. Junko is a hairdresser who meets a photographer who shoots bondage and discipline. At first she's repulsed, but this being a roman porno flick, the thought of it grows in her mind. Meanwhile we meet Izumi Shima, who's one of Junko hairdressing clients. Junko is attracted to her—and who wouldn't be? Shima also happens to be the ex of the perverted photographer. It's a pretty big coincidence, but not the biggest in the film. The photographer also randomly stumbles upon Junko after she's been tied up and assaulted. It's just the beginning of a descent into degradation, jealousy, sexual assault, and serious male-driven pee-version.

We're still trying wrap our heads around the various forms of Japanese cinema. Toei's pinky violence films usually had cool ’70s street action and ass kicking gang girls, whereas Nikkatsu's roman porno had submissive women and sexual subjugation. They're all generally considered to be pink films, along with output from OP Eiga and other studios, but to us they're night and day. Pinky violence and roman porno represent two big studios in competition with each other, but more and more the patriarchy smashing ethos often embedded in the former versus the sexist subjugation usually present within the latter feel like a corporate level political divide writ large. In this one, though, the sadistic photographer gets his—spoiler alert!—head deservedly bashed in. So lines were occasionally crossed. Dan Oniroku onna biyoshi nawa shiku premiered in Japan today in 1981.

Japan Dan Oniroku onna biyoshi nawa shiku Female Beautician Rope Discipline Junko Mabuki Izumi Shima poster art cinema roman porno bdsm shibari kinbaku pinku nudity movie review

Vintage Pulp

Oct 27 2017

Three may be a crowd, but it's also a lot of fun.

Above is another striking roman porno poster, this one for Tokyo eros senya ichiya. The title means “Tokyo One Thousand and One Nights,” referencing the famed collection of folk and erotic tales from the Islamic Golden Age. But in English the movie was called Eros Nights in Tokyo, which omits the Arabian Nights reference for some reason. We haven't seen this one, but it starred three of our favorite Japanese actresses—Izumi Shima, Ayako Meki, and Erina Miyai—which means we'll be looking for it. If we ever find it we'll revisit this subject. Tokyo eros senya ichiya opened in Japan today in 1979.

Japan Tokyo eros senya ichiya Eros Nights in Tokyo Izumi Shima Ayako Meki Erina Miyai pinku poster art cinema roman porno

Modern Pulp

Aug 28 2017

Please don't tease the animals.

Operating on the same level of explicitness as cable softcore doesn't mean roman porno flicks can't push the envelope. Japanese filmmakers working in this genre were solidly experienced by the time Dan Oniroku aoi onna came along, and it's amazing how adept they were at implying everything while showing little. Content-wise Dan Oniroku aoi onna gets pretty far out. The film had no U.S. release, but the title would be “Oniroku Dan,” after Japan's most famous author of sado-masochist fiction, and “blue girl.” The blue girl in question is Izumi Shima, one of roman porno's truly radiant actresses, who spends most of this film trapped in a perverted private sex club in bondage-related distress. We could describe how she ends up in this place, but why bother? We could also describe the various pokings, proddings, and probings the lovely Miss Zu endures, but there's no point. She's naked and helpless is all you need to know, and that—apparently—is what drew Japanese audiences to these films in droves. Most of the time we like to provide a set of stills or screen grabs to give you an idea what to expect. For this one we're giving you only a single production photo, below. That should about cover it. Dan Oniroku aoi onna premiered in Japan today 1982.

Japan 団鬼六蒼いおんな Dan Oniroku aoi onna Dan Oniroku Blue Girl Izumi Shima sexploitation shibari kinbaku bdsm roman porno pinku nudity movie review

Vintage Pulp

Dec 24 2016

You can't keep a good girl down.

This dramatic poster was made for Nikutai no mon, aka Gate of Flesh, a movie based on a 1947 novel by Japanese author Taijirô Tamura. The book has been filmed five times. The most famous version was made in 1964 with Jo Shishido and Yumiko Nogawa earning acclaim for their lead roles in what was a serious and artistic film, but the above promo is for the 1977 roman porno version starring Reiko Kayama, Izumi Shima, and Junko Miyahsita. Needless to say, the two films diverge rather sharply. However, we need to point out, as we do periodically, that roman porno isn't porno—it's softcore. The “roman” in roman porno is short for “romantic,” and though the movies aren't typically romantic in the normal sense, they aren't explicit. Such depictions were illegal in Japan back then, and remain so today (though filmmakers use pixilation of sexual organs to skirt the law).

When the novel Nikutai no mon appeared in 1947 a different censorship regime existed called the Civil Censorship Detachment, which was under the authority of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, aka Douglas MacArthur. Under SCAP CCD censorship, explicit accounts of fraternization between Japanese and whites were forbidden, as were detailed accounts of the atomic bombings, or anything that could generate distrust toward the American occupiers. Most Japanese authors obeyed. A few wrote obliquely about the forbidden subjects. And a very few broke the rules entirely to describe war horrors—e.g. flashburned nuclear victims walking naked and blind amongst the ruins, their hairless bodies so swollen their sex could not be determined. Tamura's novel falls in the middle. It tells the story of a group of Japanese women trying to survive in the rubble of Tokyo via prostitution.

Where the 1964 movie stuck pretty close to Tamura's fiction, the roman porno focuses more on the sexploitation angle, though it keeps the action set in 1947. A criminal syndicate known as Black Rose provides Japanese girls as prostitutes to the American military, and any who resist the various examinations, training, and indignities are punished with torture and death. When Reiko Kayama arrives on the scene, she eventually inspires the others to follow her as she leads a revolt against her enslavers. You get sex, girlfights, killings, and blood. If you're looking for standard roman porno fare—with perhaps a bit more visual piazazz than usual thanks to director Shôgorô Nishimura and cinematographer Yoshihiro Yamazaki—you've picked the right film. Nikutai no mon premiered in Japan today in 1977.