Shinji Imaoka and ‘pink eiga’ sing and dance ‘Underwater’

TOKYO (TR) – The soft-core porn genre known as pinku eiga, or pink films, has over its half-century in existence dabbled in just about every imaginable theme — including incest, adultery, and torture — to bring eroticism to the screen.

Yet this year’s fantasy “Underwater Love,” by veteran pink director Shinji Imaoka, is probably the first film within this fading genre to interweave song and dance sequences — as in a full-blown musical — into the narrative.

Following a press screening last week at The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, the director admitted that such a unique approach, along with the other quirks in the film, which features a mythical kappa creature, as characterized by a tortoise shell and beak, in the male lead, will likely make it a bit challenging for filmgoers to embrace. Read more

Reporn: Ueno Okura Theater raises new ‘pink’ curtain

TOKYO (TR) – Given their unseemly reputation, a porn theater boasting of high-quality interiors and modern fixtures is equally as improbable as 15 minutes passing on the screen without bare flesh hitting the tatami.

Yet that is the case following last month’s opening of the replacement to the rundown, all-night Ueno Okura Theater, which enjoyed a near half-century period as Japan’s most highly regarded home for pinku eiga, or pink films, a form of soft-core pornography.

Located near Ueno Park in Taito Ward, a dozen yards from the original, the three-screen theater offers 40-inch promo monitors in the lobbies, brightly lit hallways and plush seats — all an attempt to attract younger clientele, and more women. Read more

Tokyo’s ‘pink’ Ueno Okura Theater goes out in style

(Photo by Tokyo Reporter, July 31, 2010) Read more

Porn again: Historic Tokyo ‘pink’ theater upgrades, seeks female audience

TOKYO (TR) – The Kabuki-za theater in Ginza is not the only notable Tokyo structure dating back to the 1950s that has shut its doors this year.

With large illuminated lettering affixed to its pasty white facade proclaiming “Adult Movies,” the all-night Ueno Okura Theater, located in Taito Ward close to Shinobazu Pond and at the edge of Ueno Park, has been entertaining fans of erotic cinema for nearly five decades.

The two-screen building, however, closed Saturday due to safety concerns and aesthetic problems resulting from its aged interiors. But the theater widely regarded as Japan’s top outlet for soft-core “pink” pornographic films will continue inside a new complex across the alley and begin targeting a different type of cinemagoer: women.

“Female customers can’t typically come to this kind of place because they feel embarrassed,” says the theater’s bespectacled general manager, Hidekazu Saito. “But we want them to come without hesitation.” Read more