Several months ago we shared some covers of the Japanese cinema/celeb magazine Movie Information/Movie Pictorial. It was a publication that in aiming at both a Western and local audience uniquely offered simultaneous billing to Western and Japanese cover stars by putting one each on the front and back of every issue. But really, that’s a misnomer, because there was no back of the magazine. Because English and Japanese are read from opposite directions, both of the above covers could be considered the front. The magazine even seemed to have two names. In English it was Movie Pictorial, but the Japanese characters on the opposite face translate as “Movie Information.” These issues are from 1955 and 1956, and you can see scans of more colorful 1970s issues here.

Every time we see a cover of the Japanese celeb/cinema magazine Movie Information/Movie Pictorial we find ourselves thinking how cool they look. It’s a publication that goes all the way back to the early 1950s, and it had a few different periods, graphically speaking, but for some reason we always preferred these clean, colorful late-1960s early-1970s covers. So we thought we’d upload a few fronts and backs we’ve found over the years and see if you agree. As far as the name goes, we usually see the magazine referred to in English as Movie Pictorial, and in fact the back cover does say that, obviously. But the front cover writing definitely says “Movie Information.” So there you go. But we’ve actually turned screwing up these translations into a fine art, so we won’t be heartbroken if we’re wrong. Anyway, see below. And FYI, the girl in the scuba tank is Barbara Bouchet, so she’s on three covers. The scuba image is a promo shot from Voyage To the Bottom of the Sea. You can see two more front covers here and here.

Here’s an image of Claudine Auger we bet you’ve never seen before. That’s because it comes from the hard-to-find Japanese film magazine Movie Pictorial, published September 1970. Auger, a former Miss France, debuted in cinema in 1960, but became known in the U.S. when she played Domino in the James Bond film Thunderball in 1965.