Seijun Suzuki, born Seitaro Suzuki, was a Japanese filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter. His films are known for their jarring visual style, irreverent humour, and entertainment-over-logic sensibility. He made 40 predominately B-movies for the Nikkatsu Company between 1956 and 1967, working most prolifically in the yakuza genre. His increasingly surreal style began to draw the ire of the studio in 1963 and culminated in his ultimate dismissal for what is now regarded as his magnum opus, Branded to Kill (1967), starring notable collaborator Joe Shishido. Suzuki successfully sued the studio for wrongful dismissal, but he was blacklisted for 10 years after that. As an independent filmmaker, he won critical acclaim and a Japanese Academy Award for his Taishō trilogy, Zigeunerweisen (1980), Kagero-za (1981) and Yumeji (1991).
Pink film in its broadest sense includes almost any Japanese theatrical film that includes nudity or deals with sexual content. This encompasses everything from dramas to action thrillers and exploitation film features. The Western equivalent of pink films would essentially be erotic thrillers, e.g. Fatal Attraction, Fifty Shades of Grey, Basic Instinct, 9½ Weeks, as well as the works of directors Russ Meyer and Andy Sidaris.
Toei Company, Ltd. is a Japanese film, television production, and distribution and video game developer and publishing company. Based in Tokyo, Toei owns and operates 34 movie theaters across Japan, studios at Tokyo and Kyoto; and is a shareholder in several television companies. It is notable for creating animated programming known as anime, and live action dramas known as tokusatsu which use special visual effects. It also creates historical dramas (jidaigeki). Outside Japan, it is known as the controlling shareholder of Toei Animation and the owner of the Kamen Rider and Super Sentai franchises.
The Shochiku Company, Limited is a Japanese film and kabuki production and distribution company. It also produces and distributes anime films, in particular those produced by Bandai Namco Filmworks. Its best remembered directors include Yasujirō Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Mikio Naruse, Keisuke Kinoshita and Yōji Yamada. It has also produced films by highly regarded independent and "loner" directors such as Takashi Miike, Takeshi Kitano, Akira Kurosawa, Masaki Kobayashi and Taiwanese New Wave director Hou Hsiao-hsien.
Kadokawa Daiei Studio, formerly Kadokawa Pictures Inc. is the film division of the Japanese company the Kadokawa Corporation. It is one of the four members of the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan (MPPAJ), and is therefore one of Japan's Big Four film studios.
The Japanese New Wave is a group of loosely-connected Japanese filmmakers during the late 1950s and into the 1970s. Although they did not make up a coherent movement, these artists shared a rejection of traditions and conventions of classical Japanese cinema in favor of more challenging works, both thematically and formally. Coming to the fore in a time of national social change and unrest, the films made in this wave dealt with taboo subject matter, including sexual violence, radicalism, youth culture and delinquency, Korean discrimination, queerness, and the aftermath of World War II. They also adopted more unorthodox and experimental approaches to composition, editing and narrative.
Kanto Wanderer is a 1963 Japanese yakuza film directed by Seijun Suzuki and starring Akira Kobayashi, Chieko Matsubara, Daizaburo Hirata and Hiroko Itō. It was a programme picture produced by the Nikkatsu Company to fill out the second half of a double bill with Shohei Imamura's The Insect Woman. The film was based on a novel by Taiko Hirabayashi and had been previously adapted to the screen as Song from the Underworld (1956) by Suzuki's mentor, Hiroshi Noguchi. The story involves Katsuta, a yakuza member who falls in love and is torn between giri (duty) and ninjo (humanity). The Kanto of the title refers to a large plain on which Tokyo is located.
Kōyū Ohara was a Japanese film director known for his popular Roman Porno films, Fairy in a Cage (1977) and the Pink Tush Girl series (1978–1980). One of Nikkatsu's most versatile and prolific directors, filming eight movies in 1979 alone, his stylistic preoccupations led him to be known as "King of Pop Art Porn."
Noboru Tanaka was a Japanese film director known for his Roman Porno films, including three critically respected films known as the Showa trilogy: A Woman Called Sada Abe (1975), Watcher in the Attic (1976), and Beauty's Exotic Dance: Torture! (1977), all three starring Nikkatsu Roman porno queen Junko Miyashita. The first film in this trilogy recounted the story of Sada Abe a year before Nagisa Oshima's internationally released In the Realm of the Senses (1976), which told the same story. Though at the time he was working, his career was overshadowed by directors such as Tatsumi Kumashiro and Chūsei Sone, many critics today judge Tanaka the best of Nikkatsu's Roman porno directors.
Kazuko Shirakawa is a Japanese actress who is best known for her appearances in Nikkatsu's Roman Porno films during the 1970s. She appeared in Nikkatsu's first film in the Roman Porno series, Apartment Wife (1971), and is considered the first of the three "Nikkatsu Queens" of the 1970s. After 1976 she embarked on a successful career in mainstream film.
Mamoru Watanabe was a Japanese film director, screenwriter and actor, known for his work in the pink film genre. Along with directors Genji Nakamura and Banmei Takahashi, Watanabe was known as one of the "Three Pillars of Pink".
Love Hunter is a 1972 Japanese film in Nikkatsu's Roman porno series, directed by Seiichirō Yamaguchi and starring Hidemi Hara, Mari Tanaka, and Sumiko Minami. The film was banned for obscenity, and director Yamaguchi arrested. The resulting trials were the last time that a film was prosecuted for obscenity in Japan.
Rumi TamaakaRumi Kimata is a Japanese film director, actress, and screenwriter, known for her work in the pink film genre. After making her acting debut in 1965, she appeared in independent pink films throughout the rest of the decade, often for director Akitaka Kimata, whom she would later marry, and his son Seiji Izumi. Tama took a brief retirement in the early 1970s, then began appearing in films in Nikkatsu's Roman Porno series in 1975. She began directing in 1981, helming at least 80 films as of 2002.
Million Film (ミリオンフィルム) was one of the early independent studios which produced pink films. Along with OP Eiga, Shintōhō Eiga, Kantō and Kōji Wakamatsu's production studio, Million Film was one of the most influential on the genre during its first decade. Many of the most prominent directors and performers in the pink film genre worked for Million Film.
Shinkō Kinema (新興キネマ) was a Japanese film studio active in the 1930s.
Sushi Typhoon is a Japanese genre film production company founded in 2010 and currently owned by media conglomerate Nikkatsu Corporation, Japan's oldest existing film studio.
Daiei Film Co. Ltd. was a Japanese film studio. Founded in 1942 as Dai Nippon Film Co., Ltd., it was one of the major studios during the postwar Golden Age of Japanese cinema, producing not only artistic masterpieces, such as Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950) and Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu (1953), but also launching several film series, such as Gamera, Zatoichi and Yokai Monsters, and making the three Daimajin films (1966). It declared bankruptcy in 1971 and was acquired by Kadokawa Pictures.
Shintōhō Eiga is a Japanese pink film production company and film distributor located in Tokyo, Japan which has been among the most influential studios in the pink film genre since its beginnings.
