is a 1975

1975 in film

The year 1975 in film involved some significant events, with Steven Spielberg's thriller Jaws topping the box office.-Events:*March 26 - The film version of The Who's Tommy premieres in London....

 Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese film in Nikkatsu

Nikkatsu

is a Japanese entertainment company well known for its film and television productions. It is Japan's oldest major movie studio. The name Nikkatsu is an abbreviation of Nippon Katsudō Shashin, literally "Japan Cinematograph Company".-History:...

's Roman porno series, directed by Akira Katō and starring Kumi Taguchi.

Synopsis

After the director's message, "I visualize the romance of Roman Porn and I attempt to share that image," a loosely-connected series of softcore sex scenes unfolds. The plot concerns Kyoko, a young Japanese woman married to a man in France. When he abandons her, she returns to Japan. With her sexual appetite now at a high pitch, she engages in sexual escapades with a wide assortment of people, including old friends, both male and female, and an entire soccer team.

Cast

• Kumi Taguchi
• Fujio Murakami
• Naka Fuyuki
• Mitsuko Aoi
• Namio Sokame
• Mitsuyasu Maeno
  Mitsuyasu Maeno
  was a Japanese actor who appeared in roman porno films. He died in a suicide attack on Yoshio Kodama, a multi-millionaire right-wing leader and leading figure in the Lockheed bribery scandals.-Background:...
  
  

Background

Director Akira Katō was a competent, but not highly successful member of the Nikkatsu Roman Porno team. His Crazy for Love (1971) was part of Nikkatsu's second Roman Porno double-release, and he stayed with the studio throughout its 17-year production of the series. Tokyo Emmanuelle was Katō's first successful film. Later well-regarded films by the director include Slave Wife (1976) and Momoe's Lips: Love Beast (1980).

The film's star, Kumi Taguchi was a popular model who had been scouted while working in a beauty parlour. She was of half-Japanese, half-Caucasian ancestry, and also appeared in films for Toei

Toei Company

is a Japanese film, television production, and distribution corporation. Based in Tokyo, Toei owns and operates thirty-four movie theaters across Japan, a modest vertically-integrated studio system by the standards of the 1930s United States; operates studios at Tokyo and Kyoto; and is a...

, including Kan Mukai

Kan Mukai

aka Hiroshi Mukai and was a Japanese film director, cinematographer, producer and screenwriter, known for his pioneering work in the pink film genre...

's Tokyo Deep Throat (1975). Tokyo Emmanuelle was her first starring role for Nikkatsu. She would star in the film's sequel, and join fellow mixed-race performer Runa Takamura

Runa Takamura

was a J-pop singer, actress, and dancer of Japanese and German descent.Takamura was a member of , a musical group promoted by Watanabe Productions, composed of young women of mixed Japanese and foreign ancestry who sang and go-go danced on the Fuji TV show BEAT POP...

 in director Masaru Konuma

Masaru Konuma

is a Japanese director most famous for his Roman Porno films for Nikkatsu during the 1970s.-Early life:Masaru Konuma was born in Otaru, Hokkaidō, on December 30, 1937. Konuma retains no memories of his father who was a teacher...

's Cloistered Nun: Runa's Confession (1976). Later in 1976 she would star in two other Roman Pornos: Shōgorō Nishimura's Exposure: Call Girl's Testimony and Katsuhiko Fujii's International Stewardess: Erotic Flight. Besides Toei and Nikkatsu, she also starred in films at Shochiku

Shochiku

is a Japanese movie studio and production company for kabuki. It also produces and distributes anime films. Its best remembered directors include Yasujirō Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Mikio Naruse, Keisuke Kinoshita and Yōji Yamada...

.

Tokyo Emmanuelle has some notoriety for one of the supporting actors in its cast. This was the first billed film appearance of Mitsuyasu Maeno

Mitsuyasu Maeno

was a Japanese actor who appeared in roman porno films. He died in a suicide attack on Yoshio Kodama, a multi-millionaire right-wing leader and leading figure in the Lockheed bribery scandals.-Background:...

. Maeno made international headlines in March 1976 when he died in a kamikaze

Kamikaze

The were suicide attacks by military aviators from the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, designed to destroy as many warships as possible....

attack on Yoshio Kodama

Yoshio Kodama

was a prominent figure in the rise of organized crime in Japan. The most famous 'kuromaku', or behind-the-scenes power broker, of the 20th century, he was active in Japan's political arena and criminal underworld from the 1950s to the early 1970s....

, a multi-millionaire right-wing leader and leading figure in the Lockheed bribery scandals

Lockheed bribery scandals

The Lockheed bribery scandals encompassed a series of bribes and contributions made by officials of U.S. aerospace company Lockheed from the late 1950s to the 1970s in the process of negotiating the sale of aircraft....

. In this film he made love to the lead actress while flying a plane. In the years after Maeno's death, his Roman Porno appearances attracted a cult following among enthusiasts of the genre.

Tokyo Emmanuelle made an appearance in Chile

Chile

Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

an writer, Antonio Skármeta

Antonio Skármeta

Antonio Skármeta is a Chilean writer, born November 7, 1940 in Antofagasta, Chile. He was born to Croatian immigrants from the Adriatic island of Brač, region of Dalmatia....

's 2003 novel, The Dancer and the Thief. In the novel, lead character, Ángel meets his love interest in front of a Japanese movie theater. The poster advertising Tokyo Emmanuelle becomes a point of connection between the two.

Critical appraisal

In their Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films, the Weissers note that the film's plot is a weak construct designed only to give lead actress Kumi Taguchi opportunities to appear nude. They also note that this is not a bad thing. The nude Taguchi seen horseback riding on the beach and riding a porpoise are highlights of this good-looking film, according to the Weissers. The lack of good plotting, however, harms the film. "With just a bit of creativity, they write, "this could have been a great pinku eiga instead of a trendy Penthouse-ish pictorial."

Pink film scholar Jasper Sharp writes that the film appealed to the taste for the exotic in both Japanese and Western audiences. For the Japanese audiences, the association with Emmanuelle Arsan

Emmanuelle Arsan

Emmanuelle Arsan, the pen name of Marayat Rollet-Andriane, born in 1932 as Marayat Bibidh, is a French novelist of Eurasian origin, most famous for creating the fictional character Emmanuelle, a woman who engages in an exploration of her own sexuality under varying circumstances.Arsan was born in...

's novel Emmanuelle

Emmanuelle

Emmanuelle is the lead character in a series of French softcore erotic movies based on a character created by Emmanuelle Arsan in the novel Emmanuelle...

and the 1974 film

Emmanuelle (film)

Emmanuelle is a 1974 French softcore erotic film, directed by Just Jaeckin, and starring Sylvia Kristel. The screenplay was written by Jean-Louis Richard, based on the novel Emmanuelle: The Joys of a Woman by Emmanuelle Arsan. The music score is by Pierre Bachelet. The film was highly successful in...

 based on it, gave the film a touch of class. For Western audiences, the interest of a distant country was an attraction. Both Japanese and Western audiences, writes Sharp, were able to appreciate Kumi Taguchi's "well-proportioned figure and smouldering dark looks".

Availability

Tokyo Emmanuelle was released theatrically in Japan on July 1, 1975. It was unusually widely-circulated for Nikkatsu Roman Porno film. It was released in Germany under the title Wilde Emmanuelle im Paradies der Lust. In 1977 Tokyo Emmanuelle became the first of Nikkatsu's Roman Porno films to be distributed in Britain, when the exploitation studio Intercontinental released the film under the title Emmanuelle in Tokyo. Under the title Tokyo Emmanuelle, it was also playing in Canadian theaters in mid-1977. It was also released in Hong Kong by the Shaw Brothers

Shaw Brothers Studio

The Shaw Brothers Studio , owned by Shaw Brothers Ltd., was the foremost and the largest movie production company of Hong Kong movies.From their distribution base in Singapore where they founded parent company Shaw Organization in 1924, and as a strategic development of their movie distribution...

.

Tokyo Emmanuelle was released on VHS in Japan on August 10, 1988 and re-released in December 1994.