Pink film

A pink film theater.

Pink film (ピンク映画, Pinku eiga) refers in Japan to movies produced by independent studios that includes nudity (hence 'pink') or deals with sexual content.[1] This encompasses everything from dramas to action thrillers and exploitation film features. Many pink films would be analogous to erotic thrillers such as Fatal Attraction, Fifty Shades of Grey, Basic Instinct and 9½ Weeks.

Independent studios that release pink films include OP Eiga, Shintōhō Eiga, Kokuei and Xces. The phrase 'pink film' came into use after the major Toei began advertising some of its movies as 'porno' in 1971 and another major Nikkatsu switched to producing only Roman Porno films later that year.[2]

Until the early 2000s, they were almost exclusively shot on 35 mm film. Recently, filmmakers have increasingly used video (while retaining their emphasis on soft-core narrative). Many theaters swapped 35mm for video projectors and began relying on old videos to meet the demand of triple-feature showings.

Films that are now regarded as pink films became wildly popular in the mid-1960s, and made up a large part of the Japanese domestic market through the mid-1980s.[3][4] In the 1960s, the pink films were largely the product of small, independent studios. Around 1970, the major studio Nikkatsu started focusing almost exclusively on erotic content, but Toei, another major film production company, started producing a line of what came to be known as Pinky Violence films. With their access to higher production values and talent, some of these films became critical and popular successes.[5] Though the appearance of the adult video led viewers to move away from pink film in the 1980s, films in this genre are still being produced.

  1. ^ Thomas and Yuko Mihara Weisser. 1998. Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films. Vital Books.
  2. ^ e.g. Jasper Sharp. 2008. Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema. Fab Press.)
  3. ^ Richie, Donald (2001). "After the Wave". A Hundred Years of Japanese Film: A Concise History. Tokyo: Kodansha International. ISBN 4-7700-2682-X. For a time, almost half of the annual film production figures released in Japan were composed of these hour-long mini-features.
  4. ^ Domenig, Roland (2002). "Vital flesh: the mysterious world of Pink Eiga". Archived from the original on 18 November 2004. Retrieved 19 February 2007. Since the mid-1960s, pink eiga have been the biggest Japanese film genre... By the late 1970s the production of pink eiga together with Roman Porno amounted to more than 70% of annual Japanese film production.
  5. ^ Domenig, Roland (2002). "Vital flesh: the mysterious world of Pink Eiga". Archived from the original on 18 November 2004. Retrieved 19 February 2007.