Big in Japan

Japan is crazy. Maybe it’s a cultural side effect from the nuclear fault, maybe they were always this way and the rest of the world just didn’t know, either way, Japan is a weird, weird place. You know what else is a weird, weird place? The Internet. So it’s no wonder that when you combine the two of them, you come up with tentacle monster CGI rape, eel fucking, and pregnant ladies giving birth in pornos. Those are all real things. Here is a picture of the box for that last one.

However, since we don’t speak Japanese, care for digitally censored genitalia, or have a big enough porn budget to cover importing costs, F*Bomb doesn’t pay much attention to Japanese pornography. Yes, we’ve heard all about how you can buy dirty underwear out of vending machines in Tokyo, but we live in America damn it. We know how to get dirty underwear for free by dumpster diving Goodwill.

Still, even though Japanese genitalia measuring gameshow hardcore (another real thing) doesn’t really do it for us, the country does have a rich history of cinematic greatness. From Kurosawa to Miyazaki, Godzilla to Mecha-Godzilla, Japanese film ranges from slow-paced, heart felt social dramas to ultra-violent, hyper-stylized yakuza flicks. And then there’s the sexy movies.

Below are three films that represent some of the unusual and unique ways Japan approaches and discusses sexuality. This isn’t meant to be any sort of essential guide or Intro to Japanese Sex Film primer because we’re not a grad student with manga characters on his shirt trying to get a degree by watching every Takashi Miike film. These are just a few, out of many, nutso Japanese sex films.

HANZO THE RAZOR

Hanzo the Razor is a trilogy of samurai films based on manga by the same artist that did Lone Wolf and Cub, starring Shintaro Katsu (who also played Zatoichi for the nerds in the room) as the titular Hanzo. Hanzo is an honest samurai cop in a dirty feudal era who uses his sword to fight for truth and justice. And by sword, we mean huge fucking dick. Don’t get confused, Hanzo does have a regular sword that he cuts fools up with on a regular basis, but he also has a big ass cock he keeps wrapped up under his samurai man diaper. When Hanzo encounters a lady with information he needs, which happens surprisingly often in these films, he uses his tool to interrogate her.

As excellent as these movies are, Hanzo’s police tactics are very… well, for lack of a better word… “rapey.” Of course, as he interrogates them they get super into it and fall in love with him and want to help him fight the bad guys, and the politics of consent for that scenario are incredibly iffy, but if you overlook that detail, Hanzo is a super tough, dick slinging samurai cop and that counts for something. He trains his mighty wang by beating it with a hammer, his henchman help him fuck babes by dangling them over his dong in a net, and the whole series has a killer seventies funk porno soundtrack. Great films… if you can deal with the not-so PC premise.

S&M HUNTER

Shiro Shimomoto is S&M Hunter, an eye-patch wearing, rope tossing, bondage bad-ass who helps some schmuck take revenge on a sexy all girl gang for reasons unimportant. What is important is all the stuff about eye-patches and rope tossing bad assery. Again, this film promotes a “No” means “Yes I secretly love it!” sort of attitude, but isn’t that what consensual BDSM is all about? The plot is non-existent, the film is barely feature length, but there is a scene where the S&M Hunter ties a girl up in a spider web of ropes that tighten when he shoots the ropes with his gun. Logical? No. Awesome? Yes. Also, Nazi uniforms.

By the way, S&M Hunter is what is known in Japan as a “pink film,” which is a lot like the softcore nonsense you’d find on Skinemax except with an interesting plot and rad shit like dudes in eye patches or women pretending to be cows. The history and scope of Japanese pink films is better left for nerdy ass Asianphile grad students looking for obscure dissertation topics, but PinkEiga, the company that released S&M Hunter has put out other films that look intriguing to say the least. You can check them out here: PINK EIGA. Any company that puts out movies with titles like “Sexy Battle Girls” is more than alright in F*Bomb’s book.

VISITOR Q

It would be hard to call Visitor Q a “good” movie. It was made as the final film for the Love Cinema, a series of straight-to-video films aimed at showing off the possibilities of low budget film making and digital video. Takashi Miike, director of other “Holy shit you have to see this dude!” Japanese extreme films like Ichi the Killer and Audition, probably realized that since he couldn’t afford the intense gore he normally desires, he’d have to get his shock from a different subject matter this time around. Like the works of the Marquis de Sade and Warren Ellis, Visitor Q is more of a check list of sexual and societal taboos than it is an engrossing work of cinema. However, it is quite the list of taboos.

The movie begins with incest and then goes downhill from there; Rape, murder, necrophilia, more incest, scat, lactation… etc. Basically, it’s the Japanese film version of the Aristocrats joke. It’s shock value for its own sake, and while that can often be rather dull (cough cough Human Centipede), it’s nice to know that somewhere else in the world, people are fascinated by the same dirty dirty things we are in America. Only with more eels.