DAYDREAM BELIEVER

If you're going to have a fantasy make it a doozy.


We have two exceptionally beautiful Japanese posters today. These were made for Hakujitsumu, known in English as Daydream. That’s an unusually concise Japanese title, but this won’t be a concise post. The movie is loosely based on a 1926 novel by Junichir Tanizaki, and was one of the first films classified as pinku eiga, as well as one of the first erotic productions to have a big budget and a run in mainstream cinemas. It also played outside Japan, with a screening at the 1964 Venice Festival and a release in Stateside cinemas. And because of its success, director Tetsuji Takechi remade the film in hardcore style, not once, but twice, in 1981 and 1987, both times starring Kyōko Aizome, who we’ve talked about before.

The premise of this is fascinating. Akira Ishihama meets Kanako Michi in their dentist’s waiting room. Later, as both of them are receiving anesthesia, Ishihama looks over and sees—because apparently Japanese dentistry meant placing two patients into the same room—the dentist and a nurse strip Michi, then seemingly suck her blood like vampires. Was it an anesthetic dream, or a real occurrence? Ishihama needs to uncover the truth. He goes to a nightclub where Michi sings, sees the dentist approach her and demand that she leave with him. Ishihama follows—or actually sort of teleports after them—and later sees Michi submit to various forms of kinky bondage. But is any of what he’s seeing real? The title of the film gives that away, doesn’t it?

We wonder if Hakujitsumu used the plot device of fantasy because it softened the idea of the bondage and weirdness Michi goes through. Well, all that would soon become routine in Japanese cinema. In addition this was the first Japanese film to show an actress fully naked—which happens for extended periods. Most write-ups say there’s even pubic hair shown, but we’ll admit we blinked and missed it if that was the case. What we didn’t miss was what a clear precursor to the pinku genre of roman porno Hakujitsumu is. Here those elements seem novel; by the 1970s, they wouldn’t be, and as a result filmmakers were by then pushing the envelope with violence, water sports, and enemas. That envelope could have stayed flat, as far as we’re concerned. Hakujitsumu premiered in Japan today in 1964.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1935—Parker Brothers Buys Monopoly

The board game company Parker Brothers acquires the forerunner patents for Monopoly from Elizabeth Magie, who had designed the game (originally called The Landlord’s Game) to demonstrate the economic ill effects of land monopolism and the use of land value tax as a remedy for them. Parker Brothers quickly turns Monopoly into the biggest selling board game in America.

1991—Gene Tierney Passes Away

American actress Gene Tierney, one of the great beauties in Hollywood history and star of the seminal film noir Laura, dies in Houston, Texas of emphysema. Tierney had begun smoking while young as a way to help lower her high voice, and was hooked on cigarettes the rest of her life.

1937—Hitler Reveals His Plans for Lebensraum

Adolf Hitler holds a secret meeting with Nazi officials and states his intention to acquire “lebensraum,” or living space for Germany. An old German concept that dated from 1901, Hitler had written of it in Mein Kampf, and now possessed the power to implement it. Basically the idea, as Hitler saw it, was for the Nazis to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Russian and other Slavic populations to the east, whom they considered inferior, and to repopulate those lands with a Germanic upper class.

1991—Fred MacMurray Dies

American actor Fred MacMurray dies of pneumonia related to leukemia. While most remember him as a television actor, earlier in his career he starred in 1944’s Double Indemnity, one of the greatest films noir ever made.

1955—Cy Young Dies

American baseball player Cy Young, who had amassed 511 wins pitching for five different teams from 1890 to 1911, dies at the age of 88. Today Major League Baseball’s yearly award given to the best pitcher of each season is named after Young.

1970—Feral Child Found in Los Angeles

A thirteen year-old child who had been kept locked in a room for her entire life is found in the Los Angeles house of her parents. The child, named Genie, could only speak twenty words and was not able even to walk normally because she had spent her life strapped to a potty chair during the day and bound in a sleeping bag at night. Genie ended up in a series of foster homes and was given language training but after years of effort by various benefactors never reached a point where she could interact normally in society.

1957—Soviets Launch Dog into Space

The Soviet Union launches the first ever living creature into the cosmos when it blasts a stray dog named Laika into orbit aboard the capsule Sputnik II. Laika is fitted with various monitoring devices that provide information about the effects of launch and weightlessness on a living creature. Urban myth has it that Laika starved to death after a few days in space, but she actually died of heat stress just a few hours into the journey.

Uncredited cover art for Lesbian Gym by Peggy Swenson, who was in reality Richard Geis.
T’as triché marquise by George Maxwell, published in 1953 with art by Jacques Thibésart, also known as Nik.

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