Pinku eiga!

Japan is a study in contrasts. For instance: some of the dirty flicks I’ve seen from Japan make ‘Two Girls One Cup’ look like a Ben and Jerry’s training video. And yet, they seem to have a wierd obsession with propriety, masking out anything vaguely interesting with a wash of obscuring pixels. Japan, am I supposed to enjoy your porn or not? Because you’re making it very difficult.

It seems I’m not the only person on this side of the Pacific that wonders about Japanese pornography, however, as the Japan Times notes a recent upward trend of interest in so-called ‘pink’ films – essentially Japanese softcore porn.

The term “pinku eiga” was first coined in 1963 by the journalist Minoru Murai, who playfully suggested a Pink Ribbon award as an alternative to the Blue Ribbon prize for the year’s top mainstream release as voted by the Japanese press, for the new strain of cheaply made productions that were luring audiences from the major studios’ works with the promise of a bit of bared flesh. In their early days the films were sometimes referred to as sanbyakuman- en eiga (¥3-million films), their shoestring budgets hinting at their throwaway nature and the lowly aspirations of their producers. Today this figure remains fixed at a similar level, necessitating breakneck shooting schedules and near-impossible feats of ingenuity from their makers. This is independent cinema at its most extreme.