Tani Naomi in Playboy and Adam Film World

I have read that Tani Naomi appeared in a Playboy magazine feature called "The Girls of the Orient" in 1968. I have no reason to doubt this but I still haven't seen the goods. Since it was Playboy, I'd be surprised if any of the photos were of Tani in bondage.

Sometime in the '70s, the now-defunct Penthouse magazine ran a series of Japanese bondage photos. I seem to recall reading that they were taken by a well-known photographer in Japan so I guess Penthouse just bought the rights.

Audubon Films and Nikkatsu

US release of the Japanese film Zoku Akutokui: Joi-hen

Continuing on from the previous post...

Synapse Films licensed Madame O  from Radley Metzger's Audubon Films in New York City. Metzger, who should be about 83 years old now, made a business out of tracking down provocative and prurient mainly European films and releasing them in the US. Internet Movie Database calls him "One of the pioneers of...American adult cinema..."

He also directed his own films including The Image (aka The Punishment of Anne), an SM flick from 1975.

Madame O Is Available on DVD

Early SM pink film, Top Secret:  Women's Torture

One of the many early Tani Naomi films I'd like to know more about is Top Secret: Women's Torture (aka Absolutely Secret: Girl Torture; aka 極秘--女拷問 Gokuhi: Onna Gōmon).

This is an early SM pink film (i.e., made outside the studio system). It came out in 1968 and although it was distributed by Shin-Toho, it was produced by Koei, one of the scads of pink production companies that came and went back in the day. The director was Komori Kyoshi.

Raise Her Spirits with Konjobo

Update: It now appears that "konjobo" is not an accurate word for this instrument. See this post.

There was a discussion at one of the groups on FetLife recently concerning the instrument depicted in the above photo. A friend of mine, a moderator at Forum Bondage, provided the correct info. It's called konjobo in Japanese -- spirit stick.

I guess after getting smacked a few times with one of these, you will become more spirited.

A  simple yet devious device, it consists merely of a length of bamboo split down the center about three-quarters of the way with the uncut portion forming the handle. Some have a hole in the handle through which a length of cord is inserted to facilitate transport.

Pink Film Budget

According to this fellow's site, a budget for an independently produced adult film back in the pink days would have been around $40,000 US (at the current exchange rate), or about 3,500,000 yen.

Here's his breakdown (in yen):

• Director -- 200,000
• Screenplay -- 150,000
• Ass't Director -- 150,000
• Shooting/lighting -- 400,000
• Editing -- 100,000
• Actor -- 450,000
• Film stock -- 450,000
• Processing -- 600,000

Seems like a lot of dough to me even at today's exchange rate. Back in, oh, 1968 or so, that would have been considered a lot more money.

When he first started making pink films, Yamabe Nobuo of Yamabe Pro was known to throw quite a bit of cash into his productions. Subsequently, though, he became rather tightfisted.

Oka Naomi in Nihon no Kinbaku, 1980

Obviously, buying and processing film was a major expense. Small wonder so many producers these days are going with digital which can look, under the best conditions, almost like film.

It appears that Yamabe was probably the one responsible for attaching the Flower and Snake bit to some of the early pink SM films whose screenplays were written by Dan Oniroku. Thanks to the magazine Kitan Club, the words flower and snake became associated with SM just as the name Dan Oniroku later became synonymous with SM.

According to one of my associates, it seems that Dan, who was a novelist first and foremost, was not initially gung-ho about the idea of adapting Flower and Snake to the big screen. But Yamabe, an astute businessman who had no interest himself in SM, thought it would put more butts in seats. He was right and that explains why there are so many Flower and Snake films today.