Known for Acting
Are bad girls casualties of patriarchy, a necessary evil, or visionary pioneers? By tracing the concept of the bad girl in Japan as a product of specific cultural assumptions and historical settings, Bad Girls of Japan maps new roads and old detours in revealing a disorderly politics of gender. The essays explore deviancy in richly diverse media. Mountain witches, murderers, performance artists, cartoonists, schoolgirls, and shoppers gone wild are all part of the terrain.
A documentary compilation that shows various clips from the Roman Porno series of movies from 1971 to 1988.
Toshio, who works at an architectural firm, visits a fishing port to reminisce about his love with his girlfriend Kyoko, who died suddenly one year ago. On a small island, he meets a woman who looks just like Kyoko. Toshio becomes obsessed with the woman. Soon, a rumor spreads among the fishermen that the woman is the incarnation of a shark.
While on a pilgrimage, young monk Sōchō sees a waterfall turn blood-red, a sight villagers fear is the curse of a woman who drowned herself years ago. Ignoring their warnings, he ventures into the haunted Tenbu Pass to find a missing medicine seller. There, he encounters a stunning woman in a remote house, but anyone who touches her is transformed into an animal…
This biopic is centered on New Year's Day of 1894, when Kitamura is recovering from a suicide attempt. Japan is then under the spell of fervent patriotism because the government wants to build up public support for a war with China. Kitamura's literary friends and militant comrades come to visit. They wonder why Kitamura wants to kill himself. Kitamura at first refuses to receive them, then he sits down with them and looks back on his days as a civil rights militant, his stormy love life and his ardent but destructive desire to live literature to the full.
Toda, a disillusioned journalist that was once a part of the student movement, recalls his former youth when he meets a confident young woman through his work.
Nikkatsu Roman Porno
Kazuko Shirakawa plays herself as a student who is scouted by a pink film producer. She leads a chaotic life until finding success at Nikkatsu studios.
Scantily clad female warriors battle thieves to save a small village. Director Yasuharu Hasebe crossed the Seven Samurai legends of Shichinin No Samurai with his own popular Naraneko Rokku series and dressed it up with some of the most popular softcore pinup queens of the day.
A concubine is exiled from the Shogun's harem after she is found guilty of having tried to smuggle a kabuki dancer into the palace for the purpose of an illicit affair. Another concubine believes she has been framed and keeps investigating.
Tormented by his first sexual stirrings, the teenager Isao dreams every night of his gym teacher Ikuko. He finally opens her heart but she rejects his advances. Frustrated, Isao invents all sorts of stratagies to disgust Ikuko´s fiance, a professor of chemistry in the same school. As his plan fails, he plans a radical solution...and the results turns out to be...
