From the mid 60’s through to the early 80’s, one of the most prolific and successful of Japanese film genres was a local style of pornography known as pink films. By the late 70’s, they accounted for more than 70% of domestic film production and encompassed material aimed at a wide array of “tastes”.
Among the tastes catered for was S&M, which started finding its way onto Japanese screens in the mid 1970's and attracted enough of a following to turn its female principals into stars who could use their fame to branch out into other areas... like music.
For the past couple years, the boutique label Tiliqua Records has been diligently seeking out the recordings made by these "bondage queens" and re-releasing them in strictly limited editions. Surprisingly enough, what they've found is both slick and musically solid and, in some cases, quite arresting. Take Naomi Tani, for instance.
For much of the 1970's, she was the reigning queen of S&M pink films. When she decided to leave the industry at the end of the decade, she released a musical swansong, Modae no Heya, which combines traditional instrumentation and lush orchestration with "provocative" but tastefully restrained spoken vocals.
Naomi Tani - Showa Kare Susuki
Sadly, the CD that this comes from is pretty much sold out, but a little bit of hunting may unearth others from this series. Even if it doesn't, make sure you bookmark the Tiliqua site so you can be ready when their next installment hits the Web.
Posted by Warren at April 27, 2008 09:33 PM | Sex