Women... Oh, Women!

Women... Oh, Women! (日本の夜　女・女・女物語, Nihon no yoru: Onna onna onna monogatari, A Night In Japan: Woman, Woman, Woman Story) is a 1963 Japanese documentary Pink film. The first of these softcore pornographic film directed by Tetsuji Takechi, it was released in the United States in 1964.

Women... Oh, Women!
Poster of Women... Oh, Women! (1963)
Directed byTetsuji Takechi[1]
Written byTatsuji Tsuta
Produced byToyojiro Nagashima
CinematographyKazutoshi Akutagawa
Music byJiro Takemura
Distributed by
Release date
May 15, 1963
Running time
80 minutes
CountryJapan
LanguageJapanese

Background

Origins of the Pink film

In the years since the end of World War II, eroticism had been gradually making its way into Japanese cinema. The first kiss to be seen in Japanese film—discreetly half-hidden by an umbrella—caused a national sensation in 1946.[2] In the mid-1950s, the controversial taiyozoku films on the teen-age "Sun Tribe", such as Ko Nakahira's Crazed Fruit (1956), introduced unprecedented sexual frankness into Japanese films.[3] At the same time, films such as Shintoho's female pearl-diver films starring buxom Michiko Maeda, began showing more flesh than would have previously been imaginable in the Japanese cinema.[4] Nevertheless, until the early 1960s, graphic depictions of nudity and sex in Japanese film could only be seen in single-reel "stag films," made illegally by underground film producers such as those depicted in Imamura's film The Pornographers (1966).[5]

Nudity and sex would officially enter the Japanese cinema with the independent, low-budget pink film genre. Known as eroductions at the time,[6] the Pink films genre would come to dominate domestically-produced films in the 1960s and 1970s.[7] The first true pink film, and the first Japanese movie with nude scenes, was Satoru Kobayashi's controversial and popular independent production Flesh Market (Nikutai no Ichiba, 1962).[8]

Tetsuji Takechi

Before entering film, Tetsuji Takechi was a theatrical director, especially known for his innovative contributions to kabuki. Always attracted to controversy, when his interests turned to the cinema in 1963, he focused on the Pink film. Women... Oh, Women! was his first film.

Synopsis

Women... Oh, Women! is a sex-documentary focusing on the women of Japan, with particular emphasis on participants in the country's night-life. The film is a series of scenes visiting a variety of women such as female wrestlers, strippers, and geisha. Nuns and sea divers are also shown, along with scenes of transvestism and drug addiction.[9]

Legacy

Women... Oh, Women! was produced independently by a company called Sano Art Productions. Shochiku studios, one of Japan's major film companies, picked up the film for distribution. Shochiku would also distribute Takechi's next film, Daydream (1964) and gave it a major publicity campaign.[10]

Women... Oh, Women! was released in the United States, where it opened in Los Angeles on September 18, 1964.[11] The success of Women... Oh, Women! would lead to Takechi's major work, Daydream, which would ensure his position as a controversial leading figure in censorship battles in Japan, and in the Pink film genre for two decades.[12] In October 2006 Women... Oh, Women! was shown as part of a Takechi retrospective, and it was released on DVD in Japan on January 25, 2008.[13][14]

Notes
  1. Infobox data from Krafsur, Richard P. (1976). "Women... Oh, Women! (Japan)". American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures, The; Feature Films 1961-70. New York & London: R. R. Bowker Company. p. 1241. ISBN 0-8352-0440-5.; "日本の夜 女・女・女物語 (Nihon no yoru: Onna onna onna monogatari)" (in Japanese). Japanese Movie Database. Retrieved 2007-10-28.
  2. Bornoff, Nicholas (1994) [1991]. "18 (Naked Dissent)". Pink Samurai: An Erotic Exploration of Japanese Society; The Pursuit and Politics of Sex in Japan (Paperback ed.). London: HarperCollins. p. 602. ISBN 0-586-20576-4.
  3. Sato, pp. 212–213.
  4. Anderson, Joseph; Donald Richie (1982). The Japanese Film: Art and Industry (Expanded ed.). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. 266–267.
  5. Sharp, Jasper. "Tetsuji Takechi: Erotic Nightmares". www.midnighteye.com. Retrieved 2007-03-15.
  6. Domenig, Roland (2002). "Vital flesh: the mysterious world of Pink Eiga". Archived from the original on 2004-11-18. Retrieved 2007-02-19. The term pink eiga was first coined in 1963 by journalist Murai Minoru. But it did not come into general use until the late 1960s. In the early years the films were known as 'eroduction films' (erodakushon eiga) or 'three-million-yen-films' (sanbyakuman eiga).
  7. Domenig, Roland (2002). "Vital flesh: the mysterious world of Pink Eiga". Archived from the original on 2004-11-18. Retrieved 2007-02-19. Since the mid-1960s, pink eiga have been the biggest Japanese film genre... By the late 1970s the production of pink eiga together with Roman Porno amounted to more than 70% of annual Japanese film production.
  8. Weisser, Thomas; Yuko Mihara Weisser (1998). Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films. Miami: Vital Books: Asian Cult Cinema Publications. p. 21. ISBN 1-889288-52-7.
  9. Synopsis based on Krafsur, Richard P. (1976). "Women... Oh, Women! (Japan)". American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures, The; Feature Films 1961-70. New York & London: R. R. Bowker Company. p. 1241. ISBN 0-8352-0440-5.
  10. Weisser, p. 67.
  11. Krafsur, Richard P. (1976). "Women... Oh, Women! (Japan)". American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures, The; Feature Films 1961-70. New York & London: R. R. Bowker Company. p. 1241. ISBN 0-8352-0440-5.
  12. Weisser, pp. 67–68.
  13. 晩秋イメージフォーラムにて大特集「武智鉄二全集」 (in Japanese). www.cinematopics.com. 2006-09-08. Retrieved 2010-03-29.
  14. "日本の夜 女・女・女物語 (Nihon no yoru: Onna onna onna monogatari)" (in Japanese). www.cinematopics.com. Retrieved 2010-03-29.

Sources
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