Noboru Tanaka

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Noboru Tanaka
Noboru Tanaka (1937 – 2006)
Born	August 15, 1937 Hakuba, Nagano prefecture, Japan
Died	October 4, 2006 (aged 69)
Occupation	Film director and screenwriter
Years active	1972 – 1988
Awards won Other Awards Best New Director, Japan Society of Film Directors: 1973

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 and Chusei Sone, many critics today judge Tanaka the best of Nikkatsu's Roman porno directors.^[1]

[edit] Life and career

[edit] Early life

Tanaka was born in Hakuba in Nagano prefecture on August 15, 1937. He majored in French literature at Meiji University in Tokyo.^[2] Tanaka says that his interest in the cinema came about through a circuitous route, through his interest in poetry. Tanaka remembers, "I wrote a lot of poems. Each expression in a poem may contain countless meanings, otherwise it wouldn't be a good poem. In other words, each expression provides a lot of imagery. Then I thought that in reverse, I could use images to express my poetic world. I thought the image world of film-making might be what I should explore."^[3]

While working on his thesis, dealing with this interest in the relationship between imagery and literature, Tanaka decided to take a part-time job at a movie studio to gain first-hand knowledge of film production. While serving as a production assistant on Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961) Tanaka came to the realization that he wanted to work in the film industry.^[3] Among the films on which Tanaka worked at this time was Imamura's The Pornographers.^[4]

[edit] Roman porno

In the late 1960s, Nikkatsu began having severe financial trouble due to audiences lost to television and an influx of Western films. In order to avoid bankruptcy, Takashi Itamochi, president of Nikkatsu, made the decision to put the company's high production values and professional talent into the adult, or pink film industry as a way of attracting a new audience. Nikkatsu called its line of pink films "Roman Porno", and started the series in November 1971.^[6] Rather than work in sex films, many directors left the studio at this time, opening up positions for younger directors in their wake.^[7] Tanaka remembers his attitude about Nikkatsu's decision, "I was excited and positive about the changes, and was very eager to work in this new genre as a director."^[8]

The studio gave its Roman porno directors a great deal of artistic freedom. Beyond budgetary and time restraints, the only rule was that the film meet the official minimum quota of four nude or sex scenes per hour.^[9] Patrick Macias notes the diversity of styles this format allowed. Director Chusei Sone "specialized in ribald tales from the past," Yasuharu Hasebe, "delivered frightening, raw, and violent images," and Tanaka created films which were "as sophisticated as they were erotic."^[6] In later years, reflecting on his work in the genre, Tanaka pointed out, "We can look at the core of human beings without disguising anything and can express ourselves very honestly. That's why working on Roman porno is such an enjoyable experience."^[10]

Tanaka was given his first chance to direct in 1972 with the early Roman porno, Beads from a Petal. Originally called I Am Burning Up (Moeagaru Watashi), a title Tanaka always preferred, the story deals with the sexual awakening of a frigid woman. Tanaka meant the film to be an allegorical depiction of Japanese society in the post-war years, later saying, "After the war, Japan suffered from frigidity and the film described how the psychological bruises Japan suffered from would gradually be cured as time passed, through a young woman's life."^[11] Though criticized for some heavy-handed symbolism, this first film showed Tanaka's ability to give a movie a strikingly interesting look.^[12] 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.^[13] 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."^[14]

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.^[15] 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.^[16] For this effort, the Japan Society of Film Directors gave Tanaka the New Director Award for 1973.^[17] 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.^[16]

The first film in Tanaka's Showa Trilogy, A Woman Called Sada Abe is more conventional than most of his films, but highly-regarded by critics.^[17] Tanaka was proud of his ability to produce a high-quality film on a minimal budget. Nikkatsu allotted 7,500,000 yen (approximately US$65,000) for their Roman porno films, but Tanaka used only about 6,600,000 yen to make A Woman Called Sada Abe. Tanaka later explained, "I managed to make it for about 900,000 yen under budget. I believe it depends on the initial concept. I was confident that as long as the concept was good, it would become a great film and beat any of those films made for 10,000,000 yen. I think that's the most interesting thing about film-making: it's so unpredictable. 'Abe Sada's' simple lip movement could say more and be more appealing to an audience than thousands of horses running around a field. It's possible that lip movement could be more effective than thousands of horses and that's why film-making is very creative and incredibly interesting."^[18]

The second entry Tanaka's Showa Trilogy, The Stroller in the Attic (1976) was a minor breakthrough for Tanaka. Called "a frenzied fantasy treat,"^[17] this adaptation of a Rampo Edogawa 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."^[19] The third film in the series, Beauty's Exotic Dance - Torture! (1977) while still a box-office hit,^[20] perhaps because of its more extreme, sado-masochistic theme, was not as well-received by the critics of the time as the two preceding entries.^[21]

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. Kinema Jumpo gave the film their "Best Film" award for 1979,^[22] and Tanaka was nominated for Best Director at the second Japanese Academy of Films and Motion Pictures ceremony for this film and Pink Salon: Five Lewd Women (also 1978).^[23][24] Pink Salon: Five Lewd Women was praised for its sympathetic view to the women characters, somewhat unusual for a Roman porno. Some critics have commented on the story's similarity to Ridley Scott's 1991 Thelma & Louise.^[25]

[edit] Later years

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).^[26] About his film in this series, based on a popular adult manga by Takashi Ishii, Tanaka recalled, "I was determined to make a film which was much more impressive than the comic. One image of a film has to be much more impressive than one frame of the comic. That's what film is all about. For the scene in which we see Nami's eye in close-up on the screen, I shot about 3,000 feet of film just to show the details of her eye and [its] movement, including the pulsing of a blood vessel."^[27]

Tanaka then left Nikkatsu to try his hand at directing mainstream films for other studios. He directed several hits including the 1983 Shochiku film, Village of Doom.^[28] He returned to Nikkatsu to direct Monster Woman '88 (1988) and then retired from the film industry.^[29] A director of films "so adventurous and bizarre that he soon became one of Japan's most celebrated directors,"^[2] just as international recognition was beginning to come to Tanaka, he died on October 4, 2006.^[30]

[edit] Filmography

[edit] Notes

[edit] Sources

• Crow, Jonathan. Noboru Tanaka (Biography) (English). at All Movie Guide. Retrieved on 2007-03-14.
• 性と愛のフーガ　田中登の世界 (A Fugue of Sex and Love: Noboru Tanaka's World) (Japanese). The Seventh Art Teather (2007). Retrieved on 2007-10-03. (Retrospective program of Tanaka's work)
• NOBORU TANAKA (English). at The Complete Index to World Film. Retrieved on 2007-03-14.
• Noboru Tanaka at the Internet Movie Database
• "Noboru Tanaka -Director". 2005. in Angel Guts - The Nikkatsu Series - 5 Disc Collector's Edition. www.artsmagicdvd.com ATU 017. Disc three: Angel Guts: Nami. Biographies.
• Sharp, Jasper (interviewer); Sharon Hayashi (interpreter). (2005). Noboru Tanaka Interview (included with Angel Guts - The Nikkatsu Series - 5 Disc Collector's Edition; Disc Three: Angel Guts: Nami) [Motion Picture/DVD]. Nikkatsu / artsmagicdvd.com ATU 017.
• 田中登 (Tanaka Noboru) (Japanese). Japanese Movie Database. Retrieved on 2007-03-14.
• 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, pp.1568-1573. ISBN 0-89356-247-5.