By Bianca James
As a blonde female Caucasian with enormous breasts who has lived in Japan for the past several years, take it from me: The Land of the Rising Sun is a man's society.
Cheesecake stroke-books and pornographic comics take up about half the magazine racks at any given convenience store. In fact, you might be pretty hard pressed to find a magazine that doesn't have a picture of a naked woman in it somewhere, not to mention the late-night T&A fests on TV and the graphic flyers advertising in-call "massage" that every apartment dweller in Tokyo finds clogging up mailboxes on a daily basis.
There's a catch to all this hedonism, however: selective censorship. All depictions of genitalia, from the spread beaver to the merest hint of pubes, are dutifully pixilated into oblivion or scratched out by censors (reputedly nice little old ladies who are immune to the lascivious lure of naked flesh).
Naturally, this makes viewing Japanese porn a frustrating experience. Some porn directors get around the ban on genitalia through the creatively ingenious use of wet panties, anal penetration (pussy is off limits, but ass is fair game, apparently), dildos in the approximate shapes of smiling animals (laws banning sex toys are neatly evaded by marketing these dongs as "novelty items"), even resorting to drawing representations of genitalia on the outside of panties.
Other directors have managed to skirt this limitation by making the most of the sick shit they can get away with, be it bukkake, men getting kicked in the crotch, or school girls getting mock-molested by groups of horny bastards on public buses.
However, this brand of perversity is by no means limited to the world of pornography. The Japanese art-film genre is chockfull of weird sex that would make John Waters blush. Even mainstream film actresses seem to have gratuitous nudity written into their contracts. Most Japanese starlets have done a topless scene or three in their careers.
Forget wide-angle shots of Scarlett Johansson's panty-clad ass in Lost in Translation (Picture: - 2); the world of Japanese film has a lot more to offer than yuppie angst in overpriced hotel bars.
A Fool's Love a.k.a. Chijin no ai (1967)
Hapless middle-aged perv Jyoji adopts Naomi (vintage nudie cutie Michiyo Yasuda), a sultry, sulky waitress from a local coffee shop, in the hopes that he can pull a Pygmalion and transform her from slut into well-behaved young lady. He should have taken a tip from Snoop Dogg: "You can't make a ho a housewife." He tracks her "growth" through a series of nude photos, but the only thing that appears to be developing is Naomi's cup size. Naomi ultimately takes Jyoji for all he's worth, has a threesome in his living room, and rides him around the house like a pony--and he can't get enough of it. Check out the same director's film Manji (1964) for some old-school lesbo action.
In the Realm of the Senses a.k.a. Ai no corrida (1976)
This is the godfather of all Japanese "art films", the tale of the ultimately fatal obsessive sexual relationship between a Japanese man and his sexy servant (Eiko Matsuda) (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3). It's supposedly based on the true story of a woman who wandered around Tokyo with her lover's disembodied penis in her pocket for several days. This film contains some seriously weird sex, including strangulation, intercourse with senior citizens, and penetration with foreign objects (perhaps the most memorable being a scene where Matsuda has an egg shoved up her cooch, which she then proceeds to squeeze out chicken-style). And it comes complete with all the twangy shamisen mood music you could possibly desire.
Tampopo (1985)
This goofy film about an ambitious Ramen shop owner, interspersed with segments about people's bizarre obsessions with food, contains food sex scenes that make 9 1/2 Weeks (1986) seem tame. A white-suited Yakuza gangster, holed up in a hotel room with his mistress (played by the aptly named Fukumi Kuroda), makes the most of room service by dipping her perky tits in whipped cream, squeezing salt and lemon juice on her erect nipples before sucking them down, and upsetting a bowl containing brandy and a live shrimp on her bare stomach. The gnarly egg-sex theme from In the Realm of the Senses in revived in a scene where the couple passes an egg yolk back and forth between their mouths before it bursts in her mouth and drips down her chin like bukkake gone nauseatingly wrong. I guess she doesn't like to swallow. There's also a scene involving a nubile young pearl diver (in the most traditional sense of the word), clad in a clingy wet cotton shirt, who licks the blood from the Yakuza's lip after he's cut by the shell of the fresh oyster she sells him. You don't have to be a film-school graduate to pick up on the symbolism there.
Tetsuo a.k.a. The Ironman (1988)
A low-budget but intensely weird black-and-white cult film, Tetsuo starts with a normal salaryman, going about his day-to-day business, discovering a piece of metal is sprouting from his chin. Then, on his commute to work, he is chased by a woman with a giant metal arm. He tries to escape his workday stress by getting a piece from his girlfriend (Kei Fujiwara), but she turns quite literally into a psycho hose beast, sprouting a wieldy metal hose from her crotch region that she uses to ream him. As if that weren't bad enough, his erection has been replaced by a rotating metal drill, upon which his girlfriend meets her unfortunate end. Better luck next time, Tetsuo.
Tokyo Decadence a.k.a. Top? (1992)
Tokyo Decadence is the tale of Ai (Miho Nikaido) (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3), an unhappy hooker working for an outcall S&M agency. This film rivals In the Realm of the Senses for no-holds-barred grisly sex. Ai crawls on the floor with a vibrator duct taped to her snatch, pees in a bowl for a slave to drink, and indulges in lesbo loving with a dominatrix who serenades her with a swiveling vibrator. And she looks utterly devastated and miserable the entire time. If that's what you're into, this is the place to get it.
Sadistic City a.k.a. Maohgai (1993)
Salaryman Kishi is just a normal Japanese guy in a staid marriage, until he's lured into a world of dangerous sexual intrigue by an old acquaintance, in a scenario quite similar to Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Cheesy '80s sets (think pianos, neon lights, and lots of drapy fabric) and John Zorn experimental jazz soundtrack. Bushy-eyebrowed porn actress Sakurako Akino makes an amazing transformation from bespectacled secretary to sex kitten, and her larger-than-average (by Japanese standards) T&A are highlighted in many a gratuitous shower scene.
I.K.U. (2000)
Director Shu Lea Cheang described her film I.K.U. (Japanese slang for orgasm) as being a "sci-fi porn sequel to Blade Runner." And it is, if you're willing to accept the android Rachel is re-named Reiko and getting fucked with a dildo space gun in an elevator by a transgendered, African American Rick Deckard. Reiko's mission is to collect orgasmic data for the GENOM Corporation by having a myriad of sexual experiences over the course of the film in seven different android bodies (robot flesh provided by an entourage of Japanese porn actresses and other hotties, including Miho Ariga, Yumeko Sasaki, Maria Yumeno, and Tsousie). Despite the smutty premise, this film is way too artsy and bizarre to qualify as true porn and would probably appeal to fans of Hentai Anime and students of post-modern film.
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge a.k.a. Akai hashi no shita no nurui mizu (2001)
Like Mizu no onna (which we'll get to later), this film plays on the symbolism of water and sex, but to a further extreme. After escaping to the countryside, businessman Yosuke (played by Tampopo's Yakuza food fetishist K?Yakusho) spies Japanese Jennifer Tilly lookalike Misa Shimizu at the local supermarket, standing in what appears to be a puddle of her own piss. He follows her home, and she seduces him while her grandma sleeps downstairs. She begins having violent female ejaculations that would put Moby Dick to shame--indeed, the local fishing industry is dependent on her peeing in the water to attract fish. The film continues in multiple-orgasmic squirtacular fashion, albeit with a disappointing lack of (female) nudity.
Platonic Sex (2001)
Platonic Sex is one of those overblown exploitation films that might seem campy in another twenty years but is far too much of a cautionary tale to provide any decent titillation. Nubile schoolgirl Aoi (Saki Kagami) (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3) slides down a slippery slope of despair after getting kicked out of her parents' house--first working at a hostess club, then filming a series of porn films to pay off her massive debt from a designer bag addiction. She finds her true love, who gets her pregnant, makes her to quit porn, and then dies in an accident. This can't be called a spoiler in a film so predictably lame that it makes illicit school-girl sex seem dull.
Kamikaze Businessman a.k.a. Tokkou Kashain Riiman (2001)
It's unlikely that this delightfully trashy B-film will ever see the light of American TV screens--it's pretty much straight-to-video material. Tokkou Kashain is sort of like Japan's answer to Grease, only with a lot more boobies. It's the tale of a young thug who decides he wants to take a break from leading his biker gang in order to break into the world of business consulting. Not even Chinatsu Ito's perky D cups (an actress whose range of talent is basically limited to jumping up and down, high-pitched squeaking during sex, and having clothes ripped off in catfights) can distract him from his new career--until he's sent on assignment to the "Sekuhara Kaisha" (Sexual Harassment Company).
Woman of Water a.k.a. Mizu no onna (2002)
Trying to sit through this soggy blanket of an art film is about as appealing as enduring two hours of Chinese Water Torture, so you might as well fast forward to the good parts. Protagonist Ryo (played by tanned, lanky jazz singer Ua) runs a public bathhouse. This means lots of gratuitous shots of naked bathers, which is good or bad depending on whether you have a thing for gumming grannies and ready-to-pop pregnant ladies. Things start to heat up when she hires a pyromaniac to stoke the fires in the boiler room. It's not long before he's sweeping her chimney in a steamy underwater sex scene where it can become difficult to determine whose smooth, hairless ass is whose.
