*PLEASE SHARE AND REPOST EVERYWHERE!*


The Kinema Club editorial collective presents *The Pink Book*, the second
edited collection published by Kinema Club. Please share with your
librarians, who can put the ebook in their collections at no cost.


A paper version is available through print on demand. We are distributing
it through a variation of the system devised by anime fans in the VHS era:
send in a self-addressed priority mail label and a check and we will send
you a book. Details at:


http://kinemaclub.org/pink-book-japanese-eroduction-and-its-contexts


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*The Pink BookThe Japanese Eroduction and Its Contexts*

*Edited by Abé Mark Nornes*

*With essays by Roland Domenig, Kimata Kimihiko, Kirsten Cather, Yuriko
Furuhata, Julian Stringer, Andrew Grossman, Sharon Hayashi, Miryam Sas,
Michael Arnold, Peter Alilunas and Donald Richie. Also features a
fascinating collection of photographs from Tsuda Ichiro’s The Location.*

*Free Electronic Versions (PDF and ePub):*

http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/107423

*Paper Version:*

A print-to-order paper version is available for purchase. Send a $25 check
and a USPS self-addressed Priority Mail label to Irhe Sohn, Department of
Screen Arts and Cultures, University of Michigan, 6348 North Quad, 105 S.
State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285.

The Japanese eroduction, known locally as the Pink Film (pinku eiga),
stands out among its soft-core cousins in other parts of the world for its
scale, intimate relationship to the mainstream industry, and its occasional
ambition.Pink films are ultra-low budget, soft-core, 35mm narrative feature
films. They emerged in the early 1960s and quickly became a significant
portion ofJapan’s annual output (between 100 and 700 films a year), showing
triple bills in their own network of national theater chains. Their success
was accomplished in the vacuum left by the crumbling studio system. Today,
the industry is itself in its death throes, unable to compete with the more
explicit home video market known as AV. Triple bills in air conditioned
comfort can no longer compete with the privacy of home. Now is an opportune
time to examine the history of the Pink Film, now on the cusp of its
disappearance.

*Words of praise for The Pink Book:*

Just as Pink Film was a challenge to fixed ideas about Japanese cinema,
being so central to the development of contemporary Japanese film yet
existing on the denigrated margins of the movie world, The Pink Book, while
containing work by top scholars, is a challenge to academic Japanese cinema
studies. It dares scholarship to explore ways to understand the
intersections between sex, gender, politics, industry, and history without
resorting to safe categories like “art film” or “pop culture”. An
independent production like its subject matter, it breaks boundaries with
its breadth and diversity, and offers models for where film studies can go.

—Aaron Gerow, Yale University

This strange collection of brains has drawn an untouchable picture of the
PinkCinema. It is not simply a record of their wanderings around the utter
darkness of the Japanese soft core sex film world. It is a story—for any
reader—more pleasurable than a child’s secret treasure box!

—Adachi Masao, director

Japanese cinema has an unusual history of sexual representation. Where
standard Hollywood style kisses were long forbidden in Japanese cinema
until the U.S. Occupation, in the 60’s and 70’s a particular type of sex
film flourished. Analogous to, but much more stylistically adventurous and
widespread than, the American genre of “sexploitation”, Pink Films were
differentiated from “Blue” movies by the absence of hard-core sexual
action. But beyond that limitation, almost anything was possible in these
widescreen, feature length, 35mm treasures where many a Japanese director
learned his or her craft.  The fascinating The Pink Book is for anyone who
has pondered the odd prohibitions and permissions of Japanese cinema.

—Linda Williams, UC Berkeley

-- 
*Markus Nornes*
Chair, Department of Screen Arts and Cultures
Professor of Asian Cinema, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
Professor, School of Art & Design

*Department of Screen Arts and Cultures*
*6348 North Quad*
*105 S. State Street*
*Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285*

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