About

I'm not sure but I think I may have unwittingly started the first blog in Japan (in English) about Japanese SM. That would be TokyoBound which came on the scene in December 2006 and is still around today. To be completely accurate, the website by the same name predated the blog by quite a bit.

I can't remember what content was hosted there before but at the time it seemed like a blog would be a good idea and the name fit the bill so we kept it, changed the format and that's how it remains today.

In January, 2009 I moved on to an independently-produced blog which was first called SadoMondo (a name I've been using for several years) but soon after changed to SM Detective.

Below are some of the headers and templates I used back in the early days.

The SM Detective blog had a pretty ambitious mission: to cover anything and everything that was going on in Japan (or at least in Tokyo) that had to do with SM.

That proved to be a bit too ambitious, not to mention expensive. As you probably know, events in Tokyo are rather pricey. You get what you pay for I guess but it can quickly put a dent in your wallet. Plus, I was getting bored with "rope shows".

So in 2012 this new blog, Shocking Pink Cinema, was born and hopefully this is the last one! The approach is now more focused. We are dealing here with mainly older (read: retro) subjects having to do with films, magazines, books and posters from Japan.

This is also intended to be a place for me to showcase some of my own work. I've not been very satisfied with digital (neither moving pictures nor stills) so that's why I bought one of these:

The idea is to go completely retro, using movie film (Super 8mm) and shooting stills with 35mm film. The stills part is doable; not sure yet about movie film. It's really expensive (especially when you consider that file-based digital movie cameras are essentially free -- once you have the camera and media, of course).

I put out a DVD in Japan several years ago, an hour-long production called Cheap Thrills.  It got placed in some very good shops in Tokyo and even got some national distribution. It long ago ran its course in Japan but I still have some copies left that are taking up space in my closet. If anyone outside Japan is interested in a bulk order, let me know.

I've pretty much lost interest in shiny discs these days. I like film for acquisition but for distribution, streaming and downloads seem to be the way to go.