EROS IN HELL: Sex, Blood and Madness in Japanese Cinema. Texts by Jack Hunter, Rosemary Hawley Jarman, Johannes Schonherr, Romain Slocombe. London: Creation Books, 1998, 228 pp., b/w photos, profusely illustrated, 14.95 British pounds.

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."