In 1966, Jack Hunter says, when the notorious publication "Death Scenes," photographs of murder/suicide victims, was imported into Japan, "customs officials were reportedly outraged -- because a few of the mangled, rotting corpses were naked."
Filmmaker Koji Wakamatsu makes a similar point. "To show S/M and violence in a film is perfectly OK," he says in his interview in this publication, "but for love scenes, some limits have been fixed. Which means one can't show everything, you understand?"
Specifically, says Hunter, "Japanese censorship permits (virtually) anything except the depiction of genitalia." This can lead to ludicrous results, as when "The Crying Game" was deprived of its plot point, or when Harvey Keitel's omnipresent penis was relegated to the shadows in one of the key scenes of "The Piano."
The most ridiculous result of all was the censoring of Nagisa Oshima's luminous "In the Realm of the Senses." which, as Rosemary Jarman writes "is the least pornographic film possible."
Here, "carnal love with all its sadness -- because there is always a subtle reminder of mortality, and the acute responses of the flesh serve, paradoxically, to underscore this -- is the theme."
Indeed, as she continues in her thoughtful essay -- the best thing in this book -- without the hard-core scenes "the film would probably have ended up as hollow, sentimental." Paradoxically, the Japanese way of the censor, which obliterates the offending portion, has rendered the film dirty and offensive because it hides what in the original is open, honest, true.
However, Jarman believes that "the innate prudishness of Japanese cinema, which never balks at scenes of torture and bloodshed, yet places a ban on graphic sexuality, was a blessing in disguise for Oshima." He had to use all of his skill, his intelligence and his integrity to produce (under such conditions) a work in which "exquisitely explicit scenes show a totally natural beauty, and a natural honesty."
This is also one of Hunter's themes in the main body of the text. He feels that Japanese censorship, "doubtless by default, has nonetheless provided what Western cinema has suffered from: lack of boundaries. For many European directors the all-too-easy descent into hard-core pornography inevitably goes hand in hand with the negation of vision and creativity, as the depiction of close-up penetration becomes the sole function of their art."
This is quite true, and the chapters in this book on the Japanese "underground" cinema indicate this. At the same time most of the book is devoted not to what is missing but to what is permitted -- those numerous films which (encouraged as it were by Japanese censorship) revel in rape, torture, mutilation and other forms of bloodletting.
The infamous "Rapeman" is discussed, as are such deliberately atrocious films as those in the "Guinea-Pig" series and those by Hisayasu Sato, who once announced that his ambition was "to make a film which has the influence to drive its audience mad, and make them commit murder."
But murder, probably, only of women, since the thrust of Japanese S/M is seemingly almost entirely in that direction. As filmmaker Masami Akita is quoted as saying, "S/M is different in Japan. It is not about mutual enjoyment. This has to be seen against the relevant position of Japanese women in society." So it does, and these films are crammed with women trussed up and suffering.
This fantasy is so extraordinarily widespread (the comic books, the ordinary straight cinema, advertisements, otherwise respected publications) that one must suspect that it is nothing more than a fantasy -- and a most peculiar one at that.
Though Hunter does not follow this promising lead in his book, there is room to believe that these grotesque scenes are not to be read in any way conventionally. I say this because the commercial venues for S/M "play," as it is called, do not have one writhing bound beauty, not a single defiled school girl.
Rather, they are run by very strict women and are filled with writhing businessmen and bound-up "bucho." They are very expensive, but they make the fantasy a reality. And, to the extent that people can afford them, they are popular.
Consequently, I would then ask, when such "pink" or erotic S/M films are viewed by their all-male audiences, with whom are the spectators empathizing? It would not seem to be the crazed, macho maniac with the big whip.
While this volume contains a vast amount of information (story lines for most films discussed) and is pictorially explicit (but, apparently agreeing with the Japanese authorities, no genitalia), it is not a scholarly publication, nor is it intended to be. There are lots of information notes, but no published sources whatsoever.
Actually, the book seems as much for the gratification as the instruction of the reader and I note that Hunter has done similar work on "freaks" and on horror films, and that among the publisher's other offerings are "Deathtripping" and "Meat is Murder!"
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