Noboru Tanaka

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Noboru Tanaka (1937-2006), Japanese film director
Noboru Tanaka (1937-2006), Japanese film director

Noboru Tanaka (田中登 - Tanaka Noboru) (August 15, 1937 - October 4, 2006) was a Japanese film director best known known for his Roman Porno films, including three critically-respected films known as the Showa trilogy: A Woman Called Sada Abe (aka Sada Abe: Docu-Drama) (1975), Walker In The Attic (1976), and Beauty's Exotic Dance - Torture! (1977), all three starring Nikkatsu Roman porno queen Junko Miyashita. The first film in this trilogy recounted the story of Sada Abe a year before Nagisa Oshima's internationally-released In the Realm of the Senses (1976), which told the same story. Though at the time he was working, his career was overshadowed by directors such as Tatsumi Kumashiro, many critics today judge Tanaka the best of Nikkatsu's Roman porno directors.[1]

[edit] Life and career

Tanaka was born in Hakuba in Nagano prefecture in 1937. He studied French literature at Meiji University in Tokyo.[2] While still in his senior year he began working in the film industry, serving as a production assistant on Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961). After graduation, he joined Nikkatsu studios as an assistant director. In this capacity, he worked under some of the studio's best director of the time, including Seijun Suzuki and Shohei Imamura.[3]

Tanaka was given his first chance to direct in 1972 with the early Roman porno, Beads from a Petal. Though criticized for some heavy-handed symbolism, this first film showed Tanaka's ability to give a movie a strikingly interesting look.[4] The same year, Tanaka directed Night of the Felines, an unusually realistic look at the lives of a group of prostitutes. This is considered one of Tanaka's early major films.[5] Also in 1972, he gained critical approval for his Woman on the Night Train. Even in this early work Tanaka's direction is called, "some of the best in any pink film."[6]

In 1973, Tanaka directed the second entry in the Secret Chronicle trilogy, Secret Chronicle: Torture Hell. In contrast to the first entry in the trilogy, a satirical depiction of a 19th-century brothel, Tanaka's film was a serious look at religious-sexual ceremonies at a temple.[7] For this effort, the Japan Society of Film Directors gave Tanaka the New Director Award for 1973.[8] The last film of this trilogy, Secret Chronicle: She Beast Market (1974) returned to the satirical style of the first film. The cast included the popular poet Sakumi Hagiwara playing the memorable role of a man who simultaneously commits suicide and wipes out a gang of yakuza when he explodes a gas-filled inflatable sex-doll.[7]

As his career progressed, Tanaka's films became known for their imaginative, sometimes surreal, use of color and poetic imagery within the setting of a harsh, brutal world.[9] The first film in his Showa Trilogy, A Woman Called Sada Abe is more conventional than most of his films,[8] but still well-regarded by the critics. The second entry in this trilogy, The Stroller in the Attic (1976) was a minor breakthrough for Tanaka in Japan. Called "a frenzied fantasy treat,"[8] this adaptation of an Edogawa Rampo novel also starred Sada Abe's Junko Miyashita. Mainstream critics recognized that Tanaka's work in this film made it stand out from its modest pink film origins. The Peer Cinema Club Annual, a conservative publication which did not normally concern itself with Pink films, judged it "a perfect marriage of decadence and art."[10] The third film in the series, Beauty's Exotic Dance - Torture! (1977) while still a box-office hit,[11] perhaps because of its more extreme, sado-masochistic theme, was not as critically well-received at the time as the two preceding entries.[12]

Rape and Death of a Housewife (1978), despite its sensationalistic title, is considered one of Tanaka's masterpieces, and was his major mainstream critical break-through. Both the Japanese Academy of Films and Motion Pictures and Kinema Jumpo gave the film their "Best Film" awards for 1979.[13] Tanaka's 1978 film, Pink Salon: Five Lewd Women was praised for its sympathetic view to the women characters, somewhat unusual for a Roman porno. The story's surprising similarity to Ridley Scott's 1991 Thelma & Louise has been noticed by some critics.[14]

After a few lean years, Tanaka made a come-back effort with the third entry in the Angel Guts series, the critical and box-office success, Angel Guts: Nami (1980).[15] He then left Nikkatsu to try his hand at directing mainstream films for other studios. He directed several hits including his 1983 film for Shochiku, Village of Doom.[16] A director of films "so adventurous and bizarre that he soon became one of Japan's most celebrated directors," just as some international recognition was beginning to come to Tanaka's work, he died in 1991.[2]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Weisser, Thomas; Yuko Mihara Weisser (1998). Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films. Miami: Vital Books : Asian Cult Cinema Publications, p.323, 359. ISBN 1-88928-852-7. 
  2. ^ a b Crow, Jonathan. Noboru Tanaka (Biography) (English). at All Movie Guide. Retrieved on 2007-03-14.
  3. ^ Thompson, Bill (1985). "Jitsuroko [sic] Abe Sada", in Frank N. Magill: Magill's Survey of Cinema: Foreign Language Films; Volume 4 (in English). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Salem Press, p.1572. ISBN 0-89356-247-5. 
  4. ^ Weisser, p.58
  5. ^ Weisser, pp.292-293
  6. ^ Weisser, p.511-512.
  7. ^ a b Weisser, p.376.
  8. ^ a b c Thompson, p.1573.
  9. ^ Thompson, p.1569.
  10. ^ Weisser, p.454
  11. ^ Weisser, p.273-274.
  12. ^ Weisser, p.61
  13. ^ Weisser, p.323-323
  14. ^ Weisser, pp.311-312
  15. ^ Weisser, p.44
  16. ^ Weisser, p.400. and Thompson, p.1573.

[edit] Sources

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