It's been a long time since we featured Japanese actress Yayoi Watanabe. While she wasn't the most important pinku star of her era, she appeared in an absolute mass of cool promo photos, one of which appears above. This one captures our sense of optimism for the upcoming decade. We expect huge leaps of progress, wider horizons, amazing new discoveries, and limitless fun. We mean on our website. What—did you think we meant the world? No, that's totally screwed. Let's not think about that at all. 

Above, a poster for Noribumi Suzuki’s Ero shogun to nijuichi nin no aisho, aka Lustful Shogun and His 21 Mistresses, aka The Erotic Shogun and His Twenty-One Prostitutes, which starred Tôru Abe, Yasumori Hikita, and also features three of our favorite pinku actresses, Reiko Ike, Yayoi Watanabe, and Miki Sugimoto. We had a bit of a debate here at Pulp HQ as to the actual number of buns 21 women possess. Would it be 21 or 42? The PI girlfriends just rolled their eyes at this question, by the way. But it’s worth exploring. In the strictly physical sense, a bun possesses two halves, right? Thus one woman has one bun, comprising two halves, each of which might be useful for an open face sandwich, perhaps, but which cannot by itself constitute a whole. Alternatively, when referring to a person’s backside, you might observe that she has nice buns. More to the point, if there were, say, a tattoo there, you might say, “She has a tattoo on her right bun.” Actually, first you might say, “Poor girl. That looks really frickin’ trashy and she has no idea.” But then you’d say she has a tattoo on her right bun. Or left bun, as the case may be. Or saddest of all, across both buns. All of which would seem to imply that 21 women have 42 buns. The PI girlfriends suggested we go with the British term “bum,” which is not in any way ambiguous, but also doesn’t rhyme with “gun,” which was really the whole point. Actually, it technically could rhyme with gun, depending on how loose your interpretation of rhyming is. Certainly, a rapper would agree that bum rhymes with gun, but we don’t rap, so in the end, we went with bun. That is, one woman has one bun. All pretty confusing, truthfully. At this point we’d normally do a quick review, maybe show you some still shots of these 21 mistresses that populate Ero shogun to nijuichi nin no aisho, maybe even mention that it premiered in Japan today in 1972, but after dragging you through the cramped, dark spider hole of our editorial process, the least we can do is show you an/some actual bun/buns. So there’s Reiko’s below. Hooray!

Here’s another replacement post. Which is to say, something else existed here until we went back into our archive and changed it. Sometimes we just grow dissatisfied with some of things we’ve done, and when that happens we replace it with something more amusing or interesting. This falls into the interesting category—a mid-1970s promo shot of Japanese pinku star Yayoi Watanabe, who we’ve featured a couple of times before. She appeared in movies such as Seijû gakuen, aka School of the Holy Beast, and Ero shogun to nijuichi nin no aisho, aka Lustful Shogun and His 21 Concubines, and she was born sixty years ago today. See more Yayoi by clicking her keyword below. 

Here’s a little something to get you leaping this lovely Friday—a Yayoi Watanabe calendar page from February 1972, which was a leap year. Aren't the promotional materials that were produced for these pinku stars just amazing? This is the best yet. We have more Yayoi coming but if you want to see another of her promo pieces now, leap over to this page. 

Japanese actress Yayoi Watanabe, who appeared in the pinku classics School of the Holy Beast and Female Prisoner Scorpion: #701’s Grudge Song, seen here circa 1973 on a poster we’re proud to have uploaded to the internet for the first time. 

Sometimes you just have to have a little Reiko Ike, so we brought her back today on a poster from her 1971 sword opera Sukeban burûsu: Mesubachi no gyakushû, aka Girl Boss Blues: Queen Bee Strikes Again, aka Girl Boss Blues: Queen Bee's Counterattack. In this first installment of the Girl Boss series, Reiko plays the leader of the Athens girl gang, who use thier bodies to engage in blackmail for profit. She breaks in a fresh young gang member, finds heself in a rivalry with a newly arrived veteran criminal played by Yukie Kagawa. Disobedient Kagawa instigates a blackmail plot—without Reiko's permission, uh oh—that has the potential to rock Japanese society.

There's even more going on here plotwise, but the main thing is that, as usual, Reiko finally decides to make a big score and a lot of violence results. While this isn’t the strongest of director Norifumi Suzuki’s films, it’s pretty entertaining. It's got the requisite portions of sex, violence, and audacious shock. Oh, and we should mention it has a famous group sex-on-motorcycles scene you should probably see. For fans of the genre, that’s probably more than enough by itself. But in case it isn't, Ike's gang includes Miki Sugimoto, Yayoi Watanabe (both below), and other hotties. Sukeban Blues: Mesubachi no Gyakusyû premiered in Japan today in 1971.