Above is a January 1978 cover for Australia’s Adam, a magazine you know well by now if you frequent this site. The art here illustrates Terry P. Duval’s story “The Final Run,” in which a hapless truck driver picks up what he thinks is a damsel in distress, but who soon shows she’s a pure femme fatale. Adam began in 1946, and this is the magazine near the end—it folded, looks like, in May 1978. Inside this issue you get the usual literary, artistic and photographic treats, including five pages of Patti Clifton shots, plus skiing Nazis, and a profile of the notorious but misunderstood Tokyo Rose, who we wrote about last year. Readers also get to visit a Dakhma, aka Tower of Silence, a Zoroastrian structure where dead bodies—considered in the religion to be unclean—are left to be sun baked and picked apart by scavenging birds, thus preventing putrefaction which would pollute the earth. Mmm. Fun! The author visits a tower near Yazd, Iran, and must have gotten there just before the government shut all such structures down permanently. Today, the only towers still used for ritual exposure are in India. So put those on your travel itinerary. And lastly, on the rear page, you get Paul Hogan in another ad for Winfield cigarettes. Forty-seven scans appear below.

Above is a poster for the Japanese sexploitation movie Tôkyô neon chitai: Josei jishin de go shidô itashimasu, aka Tokyo Neon Zone: Lesson to You, which is pretty much in the same vein as this movie for which we showed you a poster a few weeks ago. Tôkyô neon chitai starred Rina Nagisa, Mami Sakura and Ami Takashima, and was directed by Shoichi Ikeda. Nagisa made several other pinku/roman porno flicks, all of which seem to be fairly obscure today. That is to say, we haven't been able to track down a copy of any of them. However we do have another Nigisa poster we’ll show you later. Tôkyô neon chitai: Josei jishin de go shidô itashimasu premiered in Japan today in 1977.

We love this. It’s a poster for Nikkatsu’s 1971 sexploitation flick Yoru no saizensen: Tôkyô onna chizu, which starred Satoko Sato and her interesting leather outfit, and was released internationally as Secret Zone of Tokyo. But that isn’t a literal translation of the Japanese title. If you glance at the bottom of the poster, the first two figures, if you’re looking left to right, say “Tokyo.” The red shape with the heart in the middle is a nifty mash-up of the two figures that make up the word “women.” And the last two figures say “map” or possibly “atlas.” Of course, in Japan reading is done right to left, but whichever direction you go, it says “Tokyo Women Map.” Which is something that we really could have used at times in the past. 

Last week we watched Meiko Kaji’s Kaidan nobori ryu, aka Blind Woman’s Curse, and were too busy being cute with our summary of the film to mention that the blind woman was played by Hiroko (Hoki) Tokuda, who is better known to many people as author Henry Miller’s last wife. When they met she was working as a lounge pianist in L.A. and Miller, who had established himself as one of the most important American writers ever, was living in Pacific Palisades. Tokuda told the New York Times in 2011: “Henry started asking every week to meet me. I realized he just wanted a Japanese woman to add to his collection, and I would always ask myself, ‘Why me?’ Soon after we met, he started telling people he was going to marry me.” And marry her he did in September 1967. She was twenty-nine and Miller, who had been born in 1891, was on the verge of turning seventy-six.

By early 1970 Tokuda had left Miller and was back in Japan, where that year she filmed Blind Woman’s Curse. Miller died in 1980, and Tokuda is in Japan today, running a piano bar called Tropic of Cancer, after her ex-husband’s most famous book. She says her marriage with Miller was never consummated, which may or may not be true—Miller isn’t around to contradict her. She also says she only married him for a green card,and has even joked about him being a bad kisser. "Terrible," she describes it. "Wet." It strikes us as a bit cynical for her to pretend the marriage was an inconvenient mistake when she’s borrowing the name of his most famous book in order to brand her bar, but that’s just our opinion. In any case, being a pulp site, we just thought we should offer a little background info, since Tokuda was married to a guy who changed English language literature forever. The above photos both date from September 1967, when their love—if it ever existed—was new.

Above, two mugshots from today 1946 of Iva Toguri D’Aquino, who was one of many women who broadcast English-language radio from Tokyo during World War II. These broadcasts were aimed at Allied personnel in the Pacific, and the soldiers referred to all the women collectively as Tokyo Rose, despite whatever they actually called themselves on air. D’Aquino called herself Orphan Ann, and her radio stints were limited to twenty-minute segments on Radio Tokyo. It wasn’t much time, but her low, raspy voice made an impression on listeners. What did she say? History.net answers that question by providing an example of a typical D’Aquino intro:

Hello there, Enemies! How's tricks? This is Ann of Radio Tokyo, and we're just going to begin our regular program of music, news and the Zero Hour for our friends—I mean, our enemies!—in Australia and the South Pacific. So be on your guard, and mind the children don't hear! All set? OK. Here's the first blow at your morale—the Boston Pops playing ‘Strike Up the Band!’

When the war ended D’Aquino, who was an American citizen, was taken into custody and shipped back to the U.S., where she was tried and convicted of treason. There was no actual proof that she had done anything traitorous—in fact her humor-tinged broadcasts had often undermined her Japanese employers’ intentions—but she neverthelesslanguished in prison for six years. D’Aquino’s legal troubles only ended in 1977, when U.S. president Gerald R. Ford pardoned her after evidence emerged that witnesses had lied at her trial. Cleared of wrongdoing, and the constant threat of deportation lifted, D’Aquino lived the rest of her days quietly and died in 2006 at age 90.

We couldn’t resist posting this. It’s part of a calendar originally published by the Japanese men’s magazine Heibon Punch. We’ve seen the image in several places, but we suspect it originated at the website bullesdejapon. Riding without any protective gear whatsoever is Ayako Uzimetai, aka Megi Ayako, et.al., who appeared in the Nikkatsu flicks Red Assault, and Tokyo Eros: Thousand and One Nights. This shot is from 1980. 

Above, Marilyn Monroe on the cover of the Japanese cinema magazine Eiga No Tomo, aka Friend of Movies, which published between 1947 and 1957. This issue, with its candy-like striped motif, is from March 1954, promoting her film How To Marry a Millionaire, which would open in Tokyo on March 17. 

We found this Japanese promo art for the original version of Willard. In the film, a young man trains a pack of rats to do his bidding, which is all fun and games at first. But complications arise when Socrates, who is basically the Frank Sinatra of this pack, is killed, leaving Ben, the impulsive Dean Martin rat, to take over. Eventually Willard sends the pack to dispose of his tormentor, played by Ernest Borgnine, and let’s just say they turn him into a tartare that makes those cooking rats from Ratatouille look like real culinary hacks. But Ben is a mercurial rodent, and when he subsequently feels rejected by Willard, well, we think you gnaw what happens next. Willard and his rat pack swarmed Tokyo for the first time today in 1971.

Below, two posters for Norifumi Suzuki’s actioner Kyôfu joshikôkô: Onna bôryoku kyôshitsu, aka Terrifying Girls High School: Women’s Violent Classroom, with Reiko Ike and Miki Sugimoto. It premiered in Tokyo today in 1972. 

Above is a poster for Seijan Suzuki’s 1967 underground gangster flick Koroshi no rakuin, aka Branded To Kill, with Jo Shishido and Annu Mari. This is about as stylish a movie as you could hope to see, with some stunning directorial flourishes and a cool jazz score. When Tokyo’s No. 3 Killer misses a mark because a butterfly lands in front of his rifle scope, he must pay the price for his failure. Pretty soon he’s facing off against No. 1 Killer, who was supposed to be a myth but turns out to be very real. Shot in black and white, Koroshi no rakuin is all shadows, flames and frantic shootouts between guys in skinny ties. Suzuki goes on a whirlwind tour of Tokyo and its environs, seeking out every unusual backdrop imaginable for his meticulous and surreal set pieces. We think the movie is worth viewing for the fire stunt alone—a gangster holes up in a WWII bunker, and when it catches fire he flees while fully aflame and manages a fifty yard sprint down a rocky slope, running so fast that the wind of his passage pushes the flames behind him like the crest of some exotic bird. Like everything else in Koroshi no rakuin, the moment is over all too quickly. That could also be said of its theatrical run—the film was a flop, and its failure resulted in conflicts between Suzuki and his studio Nikkatsu that got him blacklisted for ten years. In a sense, we can understand Nikkatsu's disappointment—it's clear Suzuki didn't take his assignment to direct a gangster film as literally as he might have. But as always, the most important critic of all is time, and Suzuki’s nervous, absurdist, disjointed noir masterpiece has survived. Koroshi no rakuin opened in Tokyo today in 1967.