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Last time we saw a promo image of Japanese actress Natusko Yashiro—co-star of action films such as Kyôfu joshi kôkô: Animal dôkyôsei, aka Terrifying Girls High School: Animal Courage, and roman porno films such as Hirusagari no onna: chohatsu!, aka Woman of the Afternoon: Incite!—she was wisely contemplating the snow from an indoor perch. Sadly, she didn’t get to stay there. Again, it’s amazing what pinku actresses did for their photographers, but the results were always striking.
Above: a bo-ekibari style promo, and a zoom, for the pinky violence clash Kyôfu joshi kôkô: Animal dôkyôsei, known in English by the attention garnering title Terrifying Girls High School: Animal Courage. It starred Reiko Ike, Ryôko Ema, and Natsuko Yashiro. You can see the tatekan promo here, and the standard promo here, as well as read what we thought about the film.
We talked about Reiko Ike’s 1974 pinky violence flick Kyôfu joshi kôkô: Animal dôkyôsei—known in English as Terrifying Girls High School: Animal Courage—a long while ago, but we wanted to highlight this rare promo in tatekan format. You can see the original poster and learn a bit about the film here.
And we couldn’t go with just one femme fatale. We have so many scanned at this point we may never get to them all. So let’s double up. Here’s a beautiful shot of Natsuko Yashiro, who appeared in such fare as Inzetsu ama: Uzuku, Shikijô ama midare tsubo, aka Lusty Ama: Stirred-Up Pot, Onna keimusho, aka Women’s Prison, Okasu!, Hirusagari no onna: chohatsu! aka Woman of the Afternoon: Incite!, and about twenty other flicks. For someone with such an extensive filmography, we don’t get the impression she was ever a top star, but we could wrong about that. This dates from 1974.
Ever get sexually aroused when having your teeth drilled? No? Us either. But Nikkatsu Studios’ infamous roman porno films leave no fetish unexplored, so in the opening sequence of Hirusagari no onna: chohatsu! aka Woman of the Afternoon: Incite!, Yûko Asada gets turned on when a dentist drills her teeth. Weird, right? But we aren’t disparaging the dental masochists among us. If inner ear vibrational resonance floats your boat, we say just do it.
Later Natusko Yashiro gets plain drilled in a dentist’s chair. This dentist is her husband, and she doesn’t want to bear children because it will ruin her body. After being pressured on this issue she flees in her car, and thus begins an odyssey of Grecian proportions. During her travels she has several bizarre mishaps and stumbles upon assorted weirdos who, for reasons ranging from persistent neurosis to sheer psychopathy, all bring her to harm. The harm escalates to degradation, most of which takes place at a rural restaurant several bad men take over and turn into a carnival of violence and rape.
You’d suspect the point of all this is something about social decay, but we’re not qualified to venture a guess. We just know that by the end credits, which arrive a mere sixty-seven minutes after Nikkatsu’s opening logo but feel fifty reels too late, we thought we’d had our teeth drilled—with zero sexual arousal involved. Roman porno films may be softcore, but they sure can be hard on the psyche. Hirusagari no onna: chohatsu! premiered in Japan today in 1979.
We’re doing a pinku double-dip today because life is short and the shit we want to post keeps piling up. Even at an increased rate it’ll take another ten years to get this stuff uploaded. Will websites as we understand them even exist then? Will blogs exist? We’ve already read that blogging is dead. Multiple times. Well, we keep chugging along, and today’s journey involves two more promos, these for Nikkatsu Studios’ infamous roman porno drama Dabide no hoshi: Bishôjo-gari, aka Beautiful Girl Hunter, which is based on a Maasaki Soto manga and premiered in Japan today in 1979. That’s Hiromi Namino on the art, who as far as we know made only one other film.
So we watched this, and yup, it’s twisted. Long story short, an escaped lunatic commits a rape which results in a pregnancy, and the rape child grows up to become a rapist. Every taboo is shattered in this one, including ones you’ve never imagined. As we always note for readers unfamiliar with this genre, there’s no actual sex, no frontal nudity. Everything is done with camera angles, the power of suggestion, and acting. Still… holy fuck. But what you really want to know is whether the movie is any good. Objectively it’s well made, but it also made us question whether liking roman porno posters and being interested in the genre’s history and culture are sufficient enough reasons to keep watching the films.
Yet there are also serious points in this movie about intergenerational violence, and whether it’s at all possible for parents to love (or even treat decently) a child conceived via rape. To us, neither question feels responsibly examined enough to justify the existence of the movie. After all, it’s first and foremost a piece of sexploitation, and the steady supply of nudity sort of undercuts any serious intent. We much prefer Toei Company’s pinky violence films. The women in those either win or cause a hell of a lot of trouble trying. By contrast films like Beautiful Girl Hunter feel deliberately regressive, as we’ve noted before. These Nikkatsu guys will be the end of us yet.
Above: a nice poster with Erina Miyai and Natsuko Yashiro for Onna keimusho, aka Women’s Prison, about a woman whose fiancée strays on their wedding day, prompting her to attack her romantic rival, leading to her being sentenced to a stint in the big house. Friends and enemies are made, sex and sexual assault occurs, and an escape leads to a showdown with the fiancée whose wandering dick started the whole mess in the first place. The photos below show Miyai and Yashiro in happier times, before they became hardened felons. Onna keimusho premiered in Japan today in 1978.
Here you see the promo poster from Nikkatsu’s roman porno Shikijô ama midare tsubo, aka Lusty Ama: Stirred-Up Pot. It’s the tale of a beautiful young ama (female pearl or abalone diver) and her relationship with her brother, or half-brother—we don’t know which because we weren’t able to track down a copy of this one, nor even a real review. But it’s probably in the same vein as this one, which we discussed a few months ago. Like that movie, Shikijô ama midare tsubo stars Natsuko Yashiro, and in addition to being featured on the poster she appears below in an almost identical promo shot. As always, we feel compelled to mention that roman porno stands for “romantic porno” and such movies feature no actual sex, despite the interesting connotations of the “stirred-up pot” metaphor. However, plenty of good-natured nudity is pretty much guaranteed in these movies and for people like us that more than suffices. Shikijô ama midare tsubo premiered in Japan today in 1976.
Above is a poster for Isao Hayashi’s 1978 roman porno Inzetsu ama: Uzuku, which if you run across in English will be called… well, we don’t really know. Most websites that use English call it “Lewdness Woman Diver,” which doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. It isn’t a direct translation either, because we know that the big red characters staring you in the face say “tingling.” We also know that an ama is a female diver who traditionally foraged in the water for delicacies like sea urchins and lobsters, but these days is more famous for pearl diving.
So you have a tingling female diver here. And we’re tingling too, just a little. Anyway, we looked around for a review and all we were able to find out is that it’s about an ama in a fishing village. The movie falls into Nikkatsu’s misleadingly named roman porno genre, misleading because “roman” is actually short for “romantic” and these aren’t porn movies, but rather softcores. We mention that every time, don’t we? Well, our parents read the site. Understood, parentals? Not porno.
In any case, the poster is a real eyecatcher. We did an extensive search online and we’re sure this is the only place you can see it without Natsuko Yashiro’s boobs obscured, because apparently breasts are absolutely corrupting and you’ll start foaming at the mouth if you see even one. Although maybe we shouldn’t joke. We are still tingling. Okay, that’s enough rambling for today. Except to say that Yashiro, who you also see in two promo shots below, did at least one more of these ama movies and we’ll show you the even nicer art for that on its premiere date in July.
American journalist, playwright, and author Richard Harding Davis dies of a heart attack at home in Philadelphia. Not widely known now, Davis was one of the most important and influential war correspondents ever, establishing his reputation by reporting on the Spanish-American War, the Second Boer War, and World War I, as well as his general travels to exotic lands.
In Mexico, revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata is shot dead by government forces in the state of Morelos, after a carefully planned ambush. Following the killing, Zapata’s revolutionary movement and his Liberation Army of the South slowly fall apart, but his political influence lasts in Mexico to the present day.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is published in New York City by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Though Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s best known book today, it was not a success upon publication, and at the time of his death in 1940, Fitzgerald was mostly forgotten as a writer and considered himself to be a failure.
American clergyman and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., is buried five days after being shot dead on a Memphis, Tennessee motel balcony. April 7th had been declared a national day of mourning by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and King’s funeral on the 9th is attended by thousands of supporters, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
In Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta is sentenced to seven years in prison by the nation’s British rulers for being a member of the Mau Mau Society, an anti-colonial movement. Kenyatta would a decade later become independent Kenya’s first prime minister, and still later its first president.
Major League Baseball player Hank Aaron hits his 715th career home run, surpassing Babe Ruth’s 39-year-old record. The record-breaking homer is hit off Al Downing of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and with that swing Aaron puts an exclamation mark on a twenty-four year journey that had begun with the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro League, and would end with his selection to Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame.
