ABSTRACT

From the 1950s into the 1960s, new regulations surrounding film censorship saw former underground pinku (soft pornography) filmmakers like Seijun Suzuki utilise the power of major film studios to bring their visions to wider audiences. Incorporating their own take on the hip films emerging from Europe’s New Wave and neorealist directors such as Godard and Fellini, Japan’s own Nuberu Bagu (New Wave) included Suzuki, Yasuzo Masumara (Blind Beast [Moju] 1969), and Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses [Ai no korîda] 1976), directors who could explore the possibilities of film, seemingly without restriction. Masumara’s Blind Beast is an intense, bizarre story featuring a sadistic blind sculptor who has made a gigantic model of a nude woman. With the help of his mother he kidnaps a young woman and unleashes a series of torturous, sado-masochistic acts, mostly on or around the sculpture. While Blind Beast seemed about as depraved as cinema could get, Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses pushed the boundaries even further with its sexually violent and explicit tale based on a true story.