FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE

A mystery wrapped in a silk kimono.

Promo art for the Japanese sexploitation film Rashamen, starring Helen Swanson as a kept lady in Japan. We’d love to tell you more about this one, but sadly, it’s so rare we haven’t been able to track down a copy, find a premiere date, or locate any information on its star. But we had to show you the great art anyway, and remind you our inbox is always open. So enlighten us. Somebody out there has seen this film, right? Where can we find it?

Edit: Finally some info! In 2021 we’ve finally learned that this premiered October 14, 1964, and the poster star Helen Swanson is not top billed in the film. At the time we originally shared this we didn’t yet know that Japanese promos often, for aesthetic reasons, featured secondary players. The top billed performers are Kensuke Maki, Sanae Mitsuoka, Shirô Okida, and Michiko Wakayama, though we have a feeling Swanson is still the Rashamen (“foreigner”) of the title. We still don’t know where to get a copy, but maybe that will come next.

Japan, Cine Unimonde, Rashamen, Kensuke Maki, Sanae Mitsuoka, Shirô Okida, Michiko Wakayama, Helen Swanson, sexploitation, poster art, cinema

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

September 6

1901—McKinley Fatally Shot

Polish-born anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots and fatally wounds U.S. President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies September 12, and Czolgosz is later executed.

September 5

1939—U.S. Declares Neutrality in WW II

The Neutrality Acts, which had been passed in the 1930s when the United States considered foreign conflicts undesirable, prompts the nation to declare neutrality in World War II. The policy ended with the Lend-Lease Act of March 1941, which allowed the U.S. to sell, lend or give war materials to allied nations.

September 5

1972—Munich Massacre

During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, a paramilitary group calling itself Black September takes members of the Israeli olympic team hostage. Eventually the group, which represents the first glimpse of terrorists for most people in the Western world, kill eleven of the hostages along with one West German police officer during a rescue attempt by West German police that devolves into a firefight. Five of the eight members of Black September are also killed.

September 4

1957—U.S. National Guard Used Against Students

The governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, mobilizes the National Guard to prevent nine African-American students known as the Little Rock Nine from enrolling in high school in Little Rock, Arkansas.

September 3

1941—Auschwitz Begins Gassing Prisoners

Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of Nazi Germany’s concentration camps, becomes an extermination camp when it begins using poison gas to kill prisoners en masse. The camp commandant, Rudolf HÃ¶ss, later testifies at the Nuremberg Trials that he believes perhaps 3 million people died at Auschwitz, but the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum revises the figure to about 1 million.