We thought we'd start your 2017 off right with this January calendar page from a 1974 issue of the Japanese magazine Heibon Punch featuring the always wonderful Mari Tanaka. She's chameleonic and can look very different from shot to shot. For a glimpse of her at her best, we suggest peeking here.

Akira Katô’s crime thriller Shinayakana kemonotachi, for which you see the promo poster above, had the interesting English title She-Beasts, Warm Bodies, and was also known as Sensuous Beasts. It stars Mari Tanaka and is noteworthy for being Naomi Tani’s first movie. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to track down a copy so the poster is all you get for now. We do know that it’s a bit of a black comedy, and the plot revolves around embezzlement, drug trafficking, and of course the yakuza. We’ll keep our eyes open for this one and maybe report back. Tanaka and Tani appear in the promo shots below. Shinayakana kemonotachi premiered in Japan today in 1972. 

Yes, we’re doubling up on the movies today, not because we think the internet needs more amateur reviews, but because we want to show the posters. As always, it’s about the art. We have it, and it’s pointless to have it and not share it. Behold the poster. Done? Great. Okay, regarding the movie, which is called Kanno kyoshitsu: ai no tekunikku, we can sum it up by telling you there’s a scene in which a male character sticks his head in a toilet—in a nightclub—sucks up a mouthful of liquid and spits it in a gentle stream upon the chest of the woman he’s in love with. More strange yet—it turns her on. This visceral horror is counterbalanced, just barely, by a weird yet very affecting fantasy sequence where the same character sprays the object of his affection with water from a garden hose while she’s in a jail cell. Have a look at the screen grabs below.

That is a very provocative expression lead actress Mari Tanaka is wearing. Is it because the water is cold? No—it’s a male character’s fantasy, so that’s supposed to be arousal. Our girlfriends don’t make that face at us, but now we’re seriously considering ways to make it happen. At least, as long as they don’t involve spraying water all over our place. Anyway, you have the yin and yang here—two scenes involving a man drenching a woman with water, of both clean and not-so-clean varietals. Is it symbolic? Maaaaybe just a little.

The plot goes like this: Tanaka teaches at a college and several of her students collude to break up her engagement to a chemistry professor so one can have her to himself. But everything they try only seems to make the relationship between Tanaka and her chemist stronger. Finally in desperation the students rig a lab experiment to blow the chemist to constituent particles, but succeed only separating him from his prostate, leaving him impotent. Since a sizable amount of dialogue is devoted to his prodigious endowment his maiming is a tragedy not just for him, but all women (this from the character Oharu-san, who has encountered the fiancée in her brothel and is reduced to tears at the news of his injury).

Will Tanaka finally ditch her love now that he’s been turned into Jake Barnes (extra credit if you know that one), or is their relationship held together by something more than sex? We’d answer, but we swore off spoilers a while ago, which means only a viewing of this exceedingly strange movie will give you the answer. Meanwhile, below, Tanaka shows her technique for hiding her naughty bits, as required by Japanese law at the time. Kanno kyoshitsu: ai no technique, which was called Excitement Class: Love Techniques in the English speaking world, premiered in Japan today in 1972.

We said we’d get back to Mari Tanaka and here she is again, sooner than you expected, we bet. This poster advertises her 1973 roman porno movie Koi no karyudo: yokubo, aka Love Hunter: Lust, which was a sequel to an earlier film titled simply Love Hunter. Tanaka had a small role in the first film, but in this one she’s the star, playing a stripper who is at one point arrested on obscenity charges. Nikkatsu Studios was doubtless inspired by its own experience being raided and seeing personnel hauled to court on obscenity charges associated with the first Love Hunter. The notoriety did not hurt, though—both the first and second installments were major successes, and a third was made later.

It’s worth noting, as we often do, that these roman porno films are actually softcore in nature, with no actual sex and no frontal nudity at all. We will admit though, that they can be provocative and even shocking. Or put another way, it’s amazing what a director will elect to show when told he/she cannot show genitalia or pubic hair. Charges loomed over the original Love Hunter for years, until it was finally deemed not obscene by Tokyo District Court in 1978. Below is a lovely image of Tanaka, and we can all agree it’s not obscene either, hopefully. As far as we can tell, this is the first appearance for the above poster on the internet. Koi no karyudo: yokubo premiered in Japan today in 1973.

Above are two rare shots of an actress long overdue for some exposure here—Mari Tanaka, who appeared in numerous Nikkatsu movies, including Kanno kyoshitsu: ai no technique, aka Excitement Class: Love Techniques, and the wonderfully titled Joshidaisei: Sexy Dynamite. The photos come from a coffee table book published by Heibon Punch magazine in 1970 celebrating the muses of roman porno. The entire book is dedicated to Tanaka. We have more images of her and we also have a rare movie poster, which means we’ll be coming back to her soon.

Back during the summer, we posted a Malaysian pocket porn diary and mentioned that we had found three of them. Well, today seems like an appropriate day to share another of these gems. The last one was produced by the Syarikat Great Wall Advertising Co., whereas this one is the work of the Tan Liat Seng Tea Co. Which tells us that neither company is legit, and they were actually produced by a bunch of hosers working at some after hours printing press. Like Tijuana bibles, we suspect they were made and supplied in bulk, then sold under the counter at corner stores to various discerning customers. The previous one was all Asian, but this one, made two years earlier, has a mix of Western and Asian women, and we especially appreciate the creative use of cabbage for obscuring the last woman’s, er, patch. We also are absolutely certain the woman in scan five (and four) standing next to a bureau is Japanese actress Mari Tanaka. We’ll get around to posting the third one of these diaries pretty soon.