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Pink film (ピンク映画, Pinku eiga^?) is a style of Japanese softcore pornographic theatrical film. Films of this genre first appeared in the early 1960s, and dominated the Japanese domestic cinema from the mid-1960s through the mid-1980s.

In the 1960s, the pink films were largely the the product of small, independent studios. In the 1970s, some of Japan's major studios, facing the loss of their theatrical audience, took over the pink film. With their access to higher production-values and talent, some of these films became critical and popular successes. Though the appearance of the AV (adult video) took away most of the pink film audience in the 1980s, films in this genre are still being produced.

The pink film, or "eroduction" as it was first called, is a cinematic genre without exact equivalent in the West. Though called pornography, the terms "erotica," "soft porn" and "sexploitation" have been suggested as more appropriate, although none of these precisely matches the pink film genre. Due to the nature of Japanese censorship laws, the display of genitals, and even pubic hair, were long-held taboos in the genre. This restriction forced Japanese filmmakers to develop sometimes elaborate means of avoiding showing the "working parts", as Richie puts it.

Some have claimed that it is this censorship which gives the Japanese erotic cinema its particular style. Donald Richie says, "American pornography is kept forever on its elemental level because, showing all, it need do nothing else; Japanese eroductions have to do something else since they cannot show all. The stultified impulse has created some extraordinary works of art, a few films among them." Writing in 1972, at the commencement of the Second Wave of pink film, he qualifies his statement with, "None of these, however, are found among eroductions." Contrasting the pink film with Western pornographic films, Pia Harritz says, "What really stands out is the ability of pinku eiga to engage the spectator in more than just scenes with close-ups of genitals and finally the complexity in the representation of gender and the human mind." (read more . . . )