Japanese Pinku Eiga movies: soft and beautifully shot artworks

Japan has very strict laws about nudity and anything that’s connected to the reflection of intercourse of adult human beings of any gender. Teenage and children obscenity is completely illegal and leads to incarceration. Still, the Japanese market of “adult content” has been actively developing and blossoming since the 1960s. How is that possible? Let’s figure it out, taking “Pinku Eiga movies with English subtitles” Pinku Eiga movies  as a bright example.

What are Pinku Eiga films

Japanese Pink movies, also known as Pinku Eiga (or Pink Eiga, in Japanese ピンク映画) received their name thanks to a combination of two words: ‘pinku’, which is the stylized English word, meaning ‘pink’ and ‘eigu’, which is translated from Japanese as ‘film’ or ‘movie’ (in American legal language, they are commonly called as ‘motion pictures’).

The popularity of Japanese Grindhouse movies in ‘pink’ style started in the 1960s (with some preliminary sprouts that began as early as the 1940s) and gained their biggest popularity in the 1980s. They declined significantly in the 1990s and the 2000s because of the advent of the Internet (especially when it became widespread). But a lot of Asian erotic movies with subtitles Asian erotic movies in the Pinku Eiga genre are still shot today.

Pinku Eiga could be defined as closest to reality as possible with such characteristics:

• these are the Japanese erotic films that are shot by independent production companies
• they are being shot from start to finish and to the release on tape or in cinemas within one or several weeks (including the entire pre-production and post-production)
• have small budgets (which in the period between the late 1960 and late 1980 were as small as 3 million yen per film, which in today’s yen cost would be approximately $21,500)
• include many copulation scenes and graphical nudity, which make such Japanese Pink films adult-rated
• have a significant variety of storylines, twists, and allow endless directorial freedom as soon as everything they do meets the strict guidelines of what is acceptable to show according to the current Japanese censorship legislation. 

A broader definition of pink Japanese Grindhouse films would also include larger production companies, which entered the market in the early 1970s and stayed there until modern days. These companies are today one of the biggest makers of Pinku Eiga movies with English subtitles, they can allocate bigger budgets to production, conceive better plots, and might (but not specifically obliged to) own cinemas, where they show these movies.

Censorship legislation applied to Pinku Eiga films with English subtitles in Japan

We shall specifically explain this point to our readers outside Japan to make it clear to them why Japanese Grindhouse movies with English subtitles are so unique as pieces of the oeuvre.

Legislation in Japan in the 20th century concerning the public display of nudity was harsh. Although the Constitution of this country allows freedom of self-expression and denies formal censorship, it is also supplemented by Article 175 of the Criminal Code of the country, which specifically imposes fines and imprisonment for public display, distribution, and sale of obscene documents and objects (video, online, and drawn). 

Due to vague definitions in this Article, there were (and still are) many controversies in society, and there were also many cases when filmmakers, comic book painters, and even textual translators and editors were accused of breach of the Article and some of them were sentenced to fines and jail (the latter can be up to 2 years of imprisonment).

How makers of Japanese erotic movies with English subtitles deal with the law

Because of the legal limits, the makers of all graphic materials in Japan, including directors and editors of Japanese Pink movies with English subtitles had to figure out and implement many techniques of showing the would-be explicit content in their artworks to avoid being fined and/or incarcerated. They would include:

• blurring
• fogging
• pixelization
• posterization
• camouflaging
• application of censor bars
• covering the naked ‘private parts’ of actors with items
• showing nudity through blurriness-giving items, which could be semitransparent or translucent, so they somewhat (and legally enough) distort the final image (fog, clothes, cellophane, wrapping paper, light bulbs, water, ice, wax paper, oil, sunglasses and other versions of tinted glass, bottles, bowls, and other kitchenware with partially transparent walls)
• usage of angles of shooting in Japanese Pink films with English subtitles, which would not directly show the explicit content, and other methods.

The creativity of makers of Japanese Grindhouse films with English subtitles

Today, the genre of Japanese erotic films with English subtitles might not be that popular in specific audiences if not the inventive approach of directors, which should specifically hide from the direct display the most intimate parts of the bodies of naked actors. We shall recognise that it was a hard task if you think of one of the essential characteristics of Pinku Eiga films, which says that one intercourse scene should be roughly every 5 minutes of the film screen time. 

And that’s why they’re so different from the American ‘see-all’ adult movies. We’re proud to offer our viewers many exciting Pinku Eiga movies in our catalog.