Above is a poster for the roman porno flick Osanazuma: Zekkyô. We haven’t watched a roman porno since the summer, and there are good reasons for that. They’re not often fun. This one had no Western release, thus no English title. Its official title 幼な妻絶叫!! means in English “young wife screams.” Okey dokey. We watched it and it’s another cookie-cutter entry from Nikkatsu pictures, this time starring Rina Nagisa, who according to legend was discovered in a nightclub and, after an appearance in Semi-dokyumento: Sukeban yôjimbô, eventually installed as the latest hot thing in Japanese sexploitation cinema.
Nagisa plays an eighteen-year-old smalltowner who elopes to the big city with her boyfriend Nagatoshi Sakamoto, but falls on hard times. She and her man both take low wage jobs, and it’s at Nagatoshi’s gas station attendant gig that he’s noticed by none other than Naomi Tani. Burdened by the knowledge that Rina wants to attend night school, he shags Tani in exchange for 50,000 yen to pay for classes. The tryst leads to lingering problems, but meanwhile, on the opposite side of the roman porno plotline, Rina is noticed by a pervy old stranger who clearly believes that desire and consent are two different beasts. We won’t reveal more.
Roman porno movies, which we’ll note again aren’t hardcore but rather the equivalent of envelope pushing r-rated fare, all have the same sexually violent underpinning, and the same unblinkingly voyeuristic approach. In this era, they all read as indictments of male cinematic tastes. In our efforts to understand the genre we’ve learned mainly one thing: there’s a feminist reckoning coming to Japanese society one day, and movies like Osanazuma: Zekkyô will be right at the center of the discussion. It premiered today in 1976.
