The Rising Sun Is Blue

"You [get set]," ordered the Japanese film director. The cast took their places in the bedroom of a Tokyo inn. "Hajime [action]!" he shouted, and two underclad starlets tore into a frenzied catfight, clawing and crashing all over the minuscule room. The camera shots might have made Hugh Hefner blush, and the violence of the battle literally shook the foundations of the building--until an indignant old lady, the innkeeper, stalked in and demanded: "What goes on here? This is a respectable inn. I want an explanation, and it better be good."

No Days Off. The explanation was good enough. The movie company was shooting an "eroduction," short for erotic production.

And though it seemed like nothing more than a feature-length, slightly bowdlerized stag movie, such eroductions are turning out to be the Japanese film industry's most effective weapon in its death struggle with television. TV sets are now in 80% of the nation's households; cinema attendance is down a disastrous 60% since 1960; and movie houses are going under at the rate of 500 a year. The only way to lure the Japanese back to the theaters, the industry concluded three years ago, was to show them something they could not see on TV. Titles like Ravines of Desire and Agonies of Newlyweds, publicity teasers about "thrills and terrors in brothel lynching" instantly proved such big box office that eroduction totals have doubled every year since. This year the output will be 120, and their hottest starlet, lusty 18-year-old Takako Uchida, has not been given a day off since last spring. By next year the figure should reach 200, or half the features produced in Japan and as many as Hollywood turns out in a year and a half.

In Any Weather. The eroductions, however, are completed in as little as ten days. Scripts are written with alternate dialogue for any contingency. If the weather sours during an exterior, the line "It's wonderful weather" is replaced by "No rain is going to drown our love." What the Japanese film code allows to be seen in the way of love: lots of bare breasts and extensive caressing before the plunge into the futon (bedding) and the fadeout.

For submitting to such exposure, actresses earn about $100 a film, and the whole production budget wouldn't pay the cigar bill on a Darryl Zanuck picture. The average is $8,300, and it is small wonder that the leading studio in the field, Kokuei, paid stockholders a 30% dividend this year. Three of Japan's big five prestige producers--who refused to resort to eroductions--have paid no dividend at all.

In the face of such figures and anguish over the debasement of an industry that in the 1950s was the trailblazer of the New Cinema, Japan's Education Ministry has set aside 48 million yen. The money will provide $55,000 prizes to the producers of the two finest "pure and artistic" films of each year.

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