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After Sean Baker’s sex work dramedy Anora won top honors at the Oscars last week, a Japanese landmark feature from Roman Porno master director Noboru Tanaka exploring the profession has been restored and is getting a U.S. release. The Oldest Profession (aka Confidential Report: Sex Market or Secret Chronicle: She Beast Market), restored in 4K from the original 35mm master negative Nikkatsu Corporation at Cineric in New York and Lisbon, is an uncompromising depiction of the realities of sex work in 1970s Japan. Ahead of theatrical screenings at NYC’s Metrograph on March 28 and 30 and Film Movement’s digital release on April 4, we’re pleased to exclusively debut the new trailer.

Here’s the synopsis: “19-year-old Tome is a sex worker who draws in customers around the red-light district of Osaka. She lives with her mentally disabled younger brother, Saneo, and her mother, Yone, who is also still...

Stars: Jun Etoh, Mari Shirato, Kentarō Shimizu, Seiji Miyaguchi, Junko Miyashita, Yoshiro Aoki, Takashi Kanda | Written by Takuya Nishioka | Directed by Toshiharu Ikeda

Mermaid Legend is a 1984 feature from the late Toshiharu Ikeda (Evil Dead Trap) that had never been released in any format internationally or played at a film festival outside of its native home of Japan. In celebration of the film’s 40th anniversary, this rare exploitation film is rightfully given the chance for a brand-new audience to appreciate it.

The story introduces viewers to fisherman Keisuke Saeki (Jun Etoh) and his pearl-diver wife, Migiwa (Mari Shirato). They are newlyweds who may be growing at odds with each other, but love still remains between them. After witnessing a murder late one night, Keisuke finds that nobody believes him. Things worsen when the fisherman is soon killed by greedy land developers, leaving Migiwa framed for her husband’s murder.

Stars: Jun Etoh, Mari Shirato, Kentarō Shimizu, Seiji Miyaguchi, Junko Miyashita, Yoshiro Aoki, Takashi Kanda | Written by Takuya Nishioka | Directed by Toshiharu Ikeda

As FrightFest unveils its line-up each year, part of the fun is seeing what cult gems they have unearthed to show on a large screen. Amongst 2024’s line-up was Mermaid Legend, a 1984 feature from the late Toshiharu Ikeda (Evil Dead Trap) that had never been released in any format internationally or played at a film festival outside of its native home of Japan. In celebration of the film’s 40th anniversary, this rare exploitation film is rightfully given the chance for a brand-new audience to appreciate it.

The story introduces viewers to fisherman Keisuke Saeki (Jun Etoh) and his pearl-diver wife, Migiwa (Mari Shirato). They are newlyweds who may be growing at odds with each other, but love still remains between them. After witnessing a murder late one night,...

It might be said that besides murder-mysteries, no other genre rejoices as much in the deaths of its human pawns for a satisfying puzzle. The only one to match this gleeful indulgence and exploitation might be pink film. Chusei Sone's Agatha Christie-esque “Case of the Disjointed Murder” marries these 2 cinematic phenomena in an explosion of violent elegance. Though unequal in its attempts at profundity, “Case of the Disjointed Murder” earns memory as a conflicted venture, made during Sone's ironic struggle to depart from pink filmmaking – an artistic struggle that eventually led to his own, equally mysterious disappearance.

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Sone's beginnings as a cinephile for foreign titles distributed by Art Theatre Guild (Atg) possibly cemented that he would always have a taste for the arthouse. Despite becoming a veteran director of Nikkatsu's Roman Porno series by 1977, his...

Probably the source of one of the most characteristic images of Roman Porno (the one featured) here, “The Oldest Profession (aka Confidential Report: Sex Market or Secret Chronicle: She Beast Market), is among the most distinctive titles of the category, was restored in 2021 by Nikkatsu, screened in Venice in 2022 and is now finding its way in Camera Japan.

The Oldest Profession is screening at Camera Japan

It’s the height of summer in Kamagasaki, home to Tsutenkaku Tower, which overlooks Osaka. 19-year-old Tome quarrels with the proprietress of a small restaurant that has been arranging her sex services, striking out on her own. Life for a lonely prostitute, however, is not easy, and even more for Tome, who has to live with her mother, also a sex worker who is jealous of her, and her mentally handicapped younger brother, Saneo, who is looking towards her to satisfy his sexual needs,...

On November 20, 1971, Nikkatsu launched its new Roman Porno line with the double bill of Hayashi Ishao’s “Castle Orgies” and Nishimura Shogoro’s “Apartment Wife: Afternoon Affair”. The following 17-year period saw a grand total of at least 850 titles (another catalogue mentions 1133) released under this new brand name. before the series came to a halt in 1988. The bulk of these, a total of around 710 films, were made in-house by Nikkatsu, with the rest produced under contract by a number of independent pink companies including Shishi Pro and Enk, which meant that one of the three films playing on the triple bills in the Nikkatsu-operated adult theaters would have been made outside of Nikkatsu

Check the review of the book Book Review: Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Cinema (2008) by Jasper Sharp

The films were (in)famously shot under three simple rules, ave a scene of...

“The Woman with Red Hair” is probably the most acclaimed work of the late Tatsumi Kumashiro, one of the most celebrated directors within the pinku genre whose pink films even made it repeatedly to the Kinema Junpo’s Best 10 of the year. This particular one was number 4 that year, and was also nominated for four awards (although it did not win any) from the Japanese Academy, including Best Director, Best Screenplay for Haruhiko Arai, Best Sound for Fumio Hashimoto and Best Actress for Junko Muyashita, who actually won the accolade from the Hochi Film Awards.

The film focuses on the friendship between two construction workers, Kozo and Takao, with the first one being a specialist worker and thus much cherished and somewhat higher up the chain, and the second a simpleton who idolizes him for the most part. The story begins when the boss’s daughter, Kazuko (played by Ako...

Today it was announced that Kie Kitano will be starring in Bakushin (ground zero), a film adaptation of a novel by Akutagawa Prize winner and Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum curator Yuichi Seirai.

Kitano, who discussed the project at a press event in Tokyo, revealed that this is her first time playing a character who confronts death and she felt like she was carrying the weight of many people’s emotions with the role.

Also in attendance at the press conference were director Taro Hyugaji and cast members Izumi Inamori, Renji Ishibashi, Junko Miyashita, and Chizuru Ikewaki. Additionally, it was learned that actor Yuya Yagira plays a boy named Yuichi who falls for Kitano’s character.

In the original novel, various short stories are told about every day lives of individuals living in the areas surrounding the center of the atomic blast that hit Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.

In the film version,...