Love Letter (top) and The Woman with Red Hair

Pornographic film is a genre that exists in critical twilight. Western genre studies usually exclude it.1 Other theoretical or critical approaches are often overshadowed by a need to conform to feminist criticism of filmed sexual acts as the degradation of women for the pleasure of male viewers.2 The difficulty of discussing pornography is compounded by the fact that the term itself is pejorative, often paired with evil, violence, greed, and other unsavory acts or desires. Not surprisingly, pornography in film, or in general, is almost impossible to define objectively.3

The status of film pornography is further confused when "serious" filmmakers use pornographic elements, as for example Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses), Catherine Breillat (Romance), Claire Denis (Trouble Every Day), and Patrice Chéreau (Intimacy).4 Critics almost always treat such films not as representing the pornographic genre but as aberrations, exceptions or justified variations on the auteurs' usual approaches.5 I hope to throw a different light on the pornographic film by focusing on the reverse situation‹an indisputable maker of screen porn whose films also deserve "serious" interest: the Japanese director Tatsumi Kumashiro (1927-1995).

Japan has never had a dominant religion that viewed the pleasure of sex as immoral, and although Japanese society may be termed sexist by Western standards, it has generally assumed that women may enjoy sex as much as men.6 The depiction of sex on Japan's commercial screens since World War II may seem superficially to have followed a similar pattern to that of the United States, with mainstream films shown in regular theaters and soft-core porn (that is, excluding scenes with genitals or actual sex) shown in specialized theaters, until the development of hard-core video in the late 1980s drove the latter out of business. In Japan, however, the border between mainstream and porn was much more porous. Many Japanese filmmakers who began in porn moved into the mainstream, while some mainstream directors made films with soft-porn-like content, such as Kon Ichikawa with Kagi (The Key [Odd Obsession], 1959), and Shohei Imamura with The Pornographers (1966).7

Following Desire

The typical Japanese soft-porn films of the 1960s and 1970s, known as pinku eiga ("pink films"), were quickies made on minimal budgets with minimal (and usually inexperienced) crews. They were often filmed in a single location, with little use of color even after color became the standard, and rarely ran longer than one hour. Meanwhile, Kumashiro was gaining film experience of a different kind. He had joined the Nikkatsu Studio in 1955 and became one of the last Japanese filmmakers to go through a traditional mainstream apprenticeship, working as an assistant director and also writing screenplays. When he finally got a chance to direct, in 1968, his film failed at the box office, and he reverted to assistant.

By 1971, attendance at Japanese movie theaters had fallen so low that Nikkatsu was close to bankruptcy. The studio heads therefore decided that from now on they would produce nothing but soft-core porn (and also some films for children). Their porn would, however, be of higher quality than pink films: it would have much bigger budgets (though still small by mainstream standards), experienced crews (including not only Kumashiro but also his frequent cinematographer Shinsaku Himeda, who worked regularly with Imamura), ten-day shooting schedules, running times of 70 to 80 minutes, and widescreen color. The only porn requirement was a sex scene every ten minutes; otherwise filmmakers were free to make whatever kind of films they liked. To distinguish these films from the pink kind, Nikkatsu dubbed them roman poruno--romantic porn.8

Some directors quit Nikkatsu rather than become involved in porn, and Kumashiro was promoted again. Already 44, he seized the opportunity to extend the range of soft porn to issues, situations, and approaches that appealed to him. His second roman poruno, Following Desire (Ichijo Sayuri: nureta yokujo [1972]) was a tremendous box-office success, and in the next two years Kumashiro completed ten films, acquiring a reputation as the "king" of roman poruno. Other companies invited him to direct films for them, and although these had no porn label they fitted into the varied range of roman poruno that he continued making for Nikkatsu.9

One reason for the fit is that in Kumashiro's porn and non-porn films alike, he focused on sex and the sexuality of women as a crucial element of human life. In his non-porn films he did this with visual discretion. In his porn films, though they are visually less revealing than many R-rated films today, he could make his sex scenes appear close to hard core. At the same time, he integrated the obligatory sex scenes into an almost unlimited range of other elements‹dramatic, comic, satirical, social, political. In short, Kumashiro saw porn as imposing fewer constraints on theme and narrative than almost any other genre.10

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Notes

1. Most American studies of film genres focus on Hollywood cinema and therefore exclude pornography. Of the texts I checked, the most mentions (some as "adult films" or "stag movies" and all incidental) were five in Rick Altman's Film/Genre (London: British Film Institute, 1999). Of course, since the generic requirements for porn filmmakers are usually no more than a minimum number of sexual scenes, other genres often supplement the narrative. Without embarking on a long discussion of the fluidity and mixing of genres, I think it's reasonable to say that the presence and nature of the sex scenes determine whether a film is considered pornographic.

2. Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin are the best known feminist opponents of porn. Linda Williams, in Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and "the Frenzy of the Visible" (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989), is by no means so dismissive. In her conclusion she writes: "Porn is not one thing, but sexual fantasy, genre, culture, and erotic visibility all operating together. And if fantasy, coming from the deepest regions of the psyche, is most resistant to change, then genre and culture are most capable of change" (270).

3. Williams, ibid., defines film pornography as "visual (and sometimes aural) representation of living bodies engaged in explicit, usually unfaked, sexual acts with a primary intent of arousing viewers" (29-30). That definition (offered only as minimal) is as good as a usefully short one could be, but "intent" has to rest on assumptions.

4. Experimental films are rarely taken into account, although they have a fairly long tradition of using porn elements. Barbara Rubin's lyrical Christmas on Earth (1962), for example, not only provides its own scenes of frontal nudity and sexual interplay but also borrows a hard-core cum shot. Jack Smith's softer but cheekier Flaming Creatures (1963) became legendary for being hounded by the police.

5. Susanne Kapler, in The Pornography of Representation (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), rejects the distinction between porn and "artistic" films containing porn elements, such as Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses (1976), and although I disagree with her blanket condemnation of both she does raise a good point, since Oshima's film is just as likely to arouse viewers as a less polished version of sexual activities. David Desser, in Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988), argues that "there is a specifically political dimension to [In the Realm of the Senses]. In this instance, politics is present by its absence. . . . We must conclude that any relationship which tries to deny the outside world by creating a private world . . . is doomed" (27-28). This attempt to place the film above porn is ingenious but unconvincing. In the furor that arose in Japan (primarily over the publication of the screenplay, illustrated by stills), Oshima questioned what was wrong with obscenity. The most reasonable political reading of the film is as a call for freedom of pornographic expression.

6. Akane Shiratori, a woman script supervisor who joined Nikkatsu the same year as Kumashiro and worked regularly with him, reports his saying about one of his films: "A woman came to live in a man's room. This is the male point of view. It is also possible to see it as a film about a woman who finds a man who satisfies her sexual desire." Quoted in a speech given at the Japan Society, New York City, March 21, 2001.

7. Kagi, based on a novel by Junichiro Tanizaki that involves scopophilia and other erotic variations, was remade by Kumashiro in 1974.

8. Some sources interpret the term as coming from the French word roman and meaning "novel-type porn." This would fit Kumashiro's work better than "romantic."

9. Partly because of poor health, Kumashiro's productivity declined sharply in the 1980s. He was in and out of hospital and sometimes had to use an oxygen tank while directing.

10. Note that I have seen only eight of Kumashiro's 34 films, and although I have studied synopses and critiques of his others, my statements about his work in general should be understood as referring fully only to those eight.