Tetsuji Takechi
Tokyo: Tokyo Academy of Arts, 1983.

First edition photobook issued to accompany Takechi Tetsuji’s controversial late-career film Oiran, “A mixture of romance and sex combined with surrealistic horror elements.” The story is loosely based on the work of Jun’ichiro Tanizaki in which a 19th century Japanese prostitute moves to America and her dead lover manifests as a mole on her leg. Takechi was a prominent critic and kabuki director before moving into directing films in the 1960s. His 1964 feature Hakujitsumu is regarded as the first big budget pink film (Japanese movies with nudity or sexual content), and also the first Japanese production subjected to systematic fogging censorship. The following year, Black Snow (1965), led to his arrest on indecency charges, a landmark case he ultimately won, significantly reshaping Japanese film censorship and opening the way for the flourishing of the pink eiga genre through the late 1960s and 1970s. After a decade-long hiatus from cinema, Takechi returned with a more explicit remake of Hakujitsumu before directing Oiran in 1983. The film again brought him into conflict with the censors whom “edited and fogged in 98 different places, altering the film from a near-hardcore opus to a very soft costume drama.” Takechi promoted the film by proclaiming it featured “the first multicoloured penis in Japanese cinema.” The present photobook, issued uncensored, retains many of the film’s erotic stills and remains an important visual record of Takechi’s work. As usual for the period, explicit male nudity is absent. References: WEISSER: The Sex Films: Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia.