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extra=10 December 1912 – 26 July 1988 was a Japanese theatrical and film director, critic, and author. First coming to prominence for his theatrical criticism, in the 1940s and 1950s he produced influential and popular experimental kabuki plays. Beginning in the mid-1950s, he continued his innovative theatrical work in noh, kyōgen and modern theater. In late 1956 and early 1957 he hosted a popular TV program, The Tetsuji Takechi Hour, which featured his reinterpretations of Japanese stage classics.
In the 1960s, Takechi entered the film industry by producing controversial soft-core theatrical pornography. His 1964 film Daydream was the first big-budget, mainstream pink film released in Japan. After the release of his 1965 film Black Snow, the government arrested him on indecency charges. The trial became a public battle over censorship between Japan's intellectuals and the government. Takechi won the lawsuit, enabling the wave of softcore pink films which dominated Japan's domestic cinema during the 1960s and 1970s. In the later 1960s, Takechi produced three more pink films.
Takechi did not work in film during most of the 1970s. In the 1980s, he remade Daydream twice, starring actress Kyōko Aizome in both films. The first Daydream remake (1981) is considered the first theatrical hardcore pornographic film in Japan. Though Takechi is largely unknown in Japan Today, he was influential in both the cinema and the theater during his lifetime, and his innovations in kabuki were felt for decades. He also helped shape the future of the pink film in Japan through his battles against governmental censorship, earning him the titles, "The Father of Pink" and "The Father of Japanese Porn."Thomas Weisser (1998). 9781889288529, Vital Books : Asian Cult Cinema Publications. . ISBN 9781889288529
In 1954, Takechi followed Susugigawa with a noh- kyōgen version of Junji Kinoshita's Yūzuru. Yūzuru is one of the most successful Japanese post-World War II plays, having received over a thousand performances at schools and theaters both within Japan and internationally since its debut in 1949.Salz, p.138. Composer Ikuma Dan wrote an opera version of the play in 1952. Since its premiere, Dan's opera has been performed more than 550 times, making it possibly the most popular opera written in Japanese. Dan was recruited to write the original music for Takechi's production of the play. Dan combined the noh-style solo vocal lines with a Western orchestra and chorus.Salz, p.137–140. On the same program as Yūzuru was another Takechi-directed kyōgen, Higashi wa Higashi ( East is East), a parody of the kyōgen style. Among the innovations Takechi made in this play was the inclusion of a former Takarazuka Revue actress in the usually all-male kyōgen cast. In the ultra-conservative noh and kyōgen communities, simply appearing in a rival school's production could result in an actor's excommunication from the profession. Because of the public attention drawn through Takechi's relentless publicity work and communication with the media, punitive actions against actors who worked with Takechi were avoided.Salz, p.143. "Mansaku feels if it were not for Takechi's stirring up of journalists, those involved with the production risked excommunication by the reactionary forces of the no association."
Besides his work as a theatrical theorist and director, Takechi occasionally appeared in acting roles on the stage and screen. In his series of , Chronicles of My Life in the 20th Century, American author and translator of Japanese literature, Donald Keene mentions his own study of kyōgen at this time. In 1956, Keene appeared in a performance of the kyōgen play Chidori with Takechi in the role of the sake shop owner, before an audience including such prominent authors as Tanizaki, Yasunari Kawabata and Yukio Mishima.
Writing that "every form of art" should be popular with the public, Takechi next sought to rejuvenate noh in a similar manner with which he had kabuki and kyōgen. He worked with the avant-garde group Jikken Kobo (Experimental Workshop), which had been founded by composers Tōru Takemitsu, Jōji Yuasa and other artists in 1951. One of Takechi's more notable productions with the group was a 1955 noh version of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire (1912).
In October 1955 he directed Mishima's modern noh play, The Damask Drum in a theater-in-the-round production at Osaka's Sankei Hall. Mishima, dubious of Takechi's experimental approach to classical theater, later commented that he felt like a father allowing a disreputable plastic surgeon to operate on his child. Also at Sankei Hall, Takechi directed Mishima's Sotoba Komachi, set as an opera by composer Mareo Ishiketa, in 1956.
The controversy created by Takechi's experiments with noh made international headlines in 1956. The International News Service reported that Takechi had introduced elements of burlesque and striptease into the slow, stylised artform. Confirming that Takechi's methods did make the artform popular, his "Burlesque Noh" productions at Tokyo's Nichigeki Music Hall played to a consistently full house. Again, however, the leaders of the conservative Noh Society of Tokyo threatened any performer who participated in Takechi's productions with excommunication.
From 4 December 1956 to 26 February 1957, Takechi served as the host of the Nippon Television program, The Tetsuji Takechi Hour. The show featured the Takechi Kabuki's interpretations of such Japanese stage classics as Chūshingura, and was also known for pushing the limits of the coverage of sexual subjects on television for its time. Takechi directed two more kabuki performances for the Nissei Theater in Tokyo, not long after it was opened in 1963. Though these would be his last kabuki productions, Takechi's influence on the art form continued to be felt for decades after his departure for the cinema.
Takechi ran afoul of the government throughout his film career. The Weissers, in their Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films, even characterize Takechi's entire film career as "a personal war with Eirin" (the Japanese film-rating board).Weisser, p.445. Turning from the Edo period art form of kabuki to another popular Edo period form of expression, pornography, Takechi decided to enter the film industry through the new genre of low-budget, independent softcore sex-films that were becoming popular in Japan. These films were called eroductions at this time, but are now more commonly referred to as .
Takechi's first film was ( Nihon no yoru: Onna onna onna monogatari, 1963), a sex-documentary in the Mondo film style popular at the time. The film focused on the women of Japan's night life and included scenes of a nude noh performance, , and geisha. Produced independently, Shochiku studios distributed the film, allowing it an international audience. It was released in West Germany on 6 March 1964 as Frauen unter nackter Sonne (alle Frauen Japans).Sharp, p. 177. In the U.S., it opened in Los Angeles under the title Women... Oh, Women! on 18 September 1964. Later that year, Takechi appeared in an acting role in director Kaneto Shindō's Mother (1963).
Though modest in comparison with pink films which would come soon after, Daydream did contain female nudity. The government refused to allow one controversial shot, which gave a brief glimpse of pubic hair.Weisser, p.102. Takechi fought the government's censorship of this shot, but lost. When the censors obscured the offending hair with a fuzzy white dot, Daydream became the first film in Japanese cinema to undergo "fogging", a common element in Japanese erotic cinema for decades to come.
Despite the governmental tampering, Daydream became a major success in Japan, and was screened at the Venice Film Festival in September 1964. The film was released in the U.S. later the same year, and in 1966 Joseph Green, director of the cult film The Brain that Wouldn't Die (1962), re-released Daydream in the U.S. with new American footage.
Takechi's third film, The Dream of the Red Chamber or Crimson Dream ( Kokeimu（紅閨夢）, 1964), was released less than two months after Daydream. Based on two short stories, "Kasanka Mangansui no Yume" and "Yanagiyu no Jiken" by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, the film depicts the lurid and violently erotic dreams of a writer, his wife and his sister, after having spent a night out drinking and visiting sex shows.Weisser, p.94. The Dream of the Red Chamber underwent extensive censorship before the government would allow it to be released. About 20% of the film's original content was cut by Eirin, rendering the film virtually incoherent, and this footage is now considered lost.
The story of Black Snow concerns a young man whose mother serves the U.S. military at Yokota Air Base as a prostitute. Impotent unless making love with a loaded gun, the young man shoots an American G.I., and is then shot down by U.S. soldiers. The film contained multiple scenes of sexual intercourse, and a lengthy scene of a nude woman running outside Yokota Air Base. However, more than the sex and nudity, it was the political nature of the film which attracted governmental action. Released at a time of widespread demonstration against the renewal of the U.S. Security Treaty, Black Snow had a clear anti-American theme. Film critic Tadao Sato says that the film uses sex to make a political statement. "In Black Snow... the powerless position of Japan vis-a-vis America, and of the Japanese populace in relation to its rulers is represented by the outraged Japanese women and the G.I. rapists."Sato, p.232. (1992). 9780262150408, The MIT Press. ISBN 9780262150408
Other critics accused the film of racism and ultra-nationalism. Jasper Sharp writes that though Takechi's films did criticize Japanese society, a theme they share with pink films, Takechi identified the problem as coming from foreign influences, rather than from within. This marks him as a reactionary rather than a revolutionary, as were many pink film directors.Sharp, p. 75. Takechi himself claimed to be a minzoku shugisha, or "ethnic nationalist", throughout his life. Buruma points out that this ideological affiliation contains a strong racial aspect, and notes that the G.I. the main character murders in Black Snow is African American. Buruma comments further, "This, incidentally, has become a standard cliche: whenever G.I.s are shown in Japanese porno films, invariably in the act of outrageously raping Japanese maidens, they are very often blacks to make the outrage seem even worse."Buruma, p.57.
Though the government had accused earlier films of obscenity, Black Snow became the first film after World War II to be prosecuted by the government on obscenity charges. All copies of the film were confiscated from Nikkatsu and from Takechi's own home, and Takechi was arrested. The controversy gained international attention with The New York Times reporting that even the two censors who had passed the film were considered for prosecution, and that the government had announced plans to strictly censor the pink film movement. Japan's intellectual and artistic community came to Takechi's defense. Film directors Nagisa Oshima and Seijun Suzuki and authors Yukio Mishima and Kōbō Abe testified in Takechi's defense at the trial.Weisser, p.68. Takechi took advantage of every opportunity to publicly speak out against censorship, and one Eirin official later admitted to being "terrified by the man".
Explicitly linking his interests in kabuki and pornography as forms of expression, in the July 1965 issue of the film journal Eiga Geijutsu, Takechi wrote:
By shutting down Black Snow and prosecuting Takechi, Eirin had intended to suppress the new pink film genre, but the trial had the exact opposite outcome. The publicity surrounding the trial brought the pink film genre to the attention of the general public, and helped inspire the wave of pink films which dominated Japan's domestic cinema for the next two decades.Domenig. "The controversy surrounding... Black Snows' court case (eventually won by Takechi) brought pink eiga to the attention of the general public, and triggered a boom in production."Domenig. "Since the mid-1960s, pink eiga have been the biggest Japanese film genre... By the late 1970s the production of pink eiga together with Roman Porno amounted to more than 70% of annual Japanese film production."
Takechi's next film after the trial was Ukiyo-e Cruel Story (1968), starring the current "Queen" of Pink films, Noriko Tatsumi. The Weissers call this film, about a painter of erotic pictures who is persecuted by the government, "Takechi's personal message to Eirin." Though still containing significant erotic content, this is one of Takechi's few films to pass the censor relatively un-edited, perhaps because Eirin saw the obvious anti-governmental censorship message in the film, and did not wish to be provoked into another embarrassing public confrontation with the outspoken director.
Though he had won his court case, Takechi had become known as a risky and dangerous entity in the film world. Newspapers refused to advertise his films, and Takechi spent the next decade concentrating on writing projects. After his friend, the writer Yukio Mishima, committed Seppuku in 1970, Takechi wrote The Head of Yukio Mishima, a best-selling, fictionalized version of the incident.Weisser, p.91. In 1972, he again appeared in an acting role for director Kaneto Shindō in his Art Theatre Guild film based on a Tanizaki novel, Sanka.
Takechi's next film, Courtesan ( Oiran, 1983), like his Daydream films, was based on a Tanizaki novel. Three studios were involved in the production: Fujii Movies, Ogawa Productions, and Takechi Film. The film is set at the end of the 19th century, and tells the story of a Yokohama prostitute who services American sailors. The woman is possessed by the spirit of her dead lover, who, in erotic scenes echoing The Exorcist (1973), makes his presence known whenever she is sexually aroused. Because of the large budget involved in the production, the distributing studio submitted Courtesan to Eirin repeatedly, and agreed to every cut the reviewing board recommended. The heavy cutting the film received reduced it from near-hardcore to a very softcore historical drama.Weisser, p.27. Takechi again took advantage of the situation to fight Eirin, and complained publicly about the censorship. When he noticed that the censors had painted over a penis with colors, he ridiculed them by promoting his film with the line, "See the first multicolored penis in Japanese Cinema!"
After this bout with the censors, Takechi vowed to produce a true, hardcore film for Japanese audiences. The result was Sacred Koya ( Koya Hijiri), based on a work by Kyōka Izumi.Sharp, p. 197. He refused to allow the film to be censored in any way, either through cutting or fogging. Refusing to release the film in Japan, he did not submit it for Eirin's approval. Instead, he released it in Guam, where it played primarily to Japanese tourist audiences for several years under the U.S.'s more liberal pornography laws. Takechi's last film was another remake of Daydream in 1987, again starring Kyōko Aizome. Though it was a low-budget, independent production which again underwent censorship in Japan, it became very popular in its uncensored form in France.
Takechi's come-back films of the 1980s were all in a theatrical hardcore style. Released during the dawn of the AV, or adult video, and the height of Nikkatsu's softcore Roman porno films, his films fit into neither style. Jasper Sharp writes, "His big-budget pornos came from a different world to that of the pink and Roman Porno films. There was nothing else like them at the time, and consequently they had little influence on domestically produced sex films.Sharp, pp. 217-218. Takechi died of pancreatic cancer the following year, on 26 July 1988. Without a major studio's backing or interest from the general pink film community, Takechi's name and films faded into obscurity in Japan. In 2006 his career was the subject of a full retrospective showing in Tokyo's Image Forum in 2006.Sharp, p.72.
During his lifetime, Takechi's innovations and contributions to Japanese theater in general and to kabuki specifically were influential for decades. His theoretical work, as well as his mentoring of several important stars, helped bring about a rebirth in kabuki after World War II. His contributions to cinema were much more controversial. Considered a dilettante outsider by much of the film industry, and suspected of racism and nationalism by others, his work was nevertheless defended by the younger generation of filmmakers such as Seijun Suzuki and Nagisa Oshima. Though his films are today unknown to most Japanese filmgoers, through his career-long fight against censorship, the taboos which his films helped break, and the creative freedom which he helped enable, he remains an important figure in Japanese cinema.
| Women... Oh, Women! 日本の夜 女・女・女物語 Nihon no yoru: Onna onna onna monogatari | 15 May 1963 | |
| Daydream 白日夢 Hakujitsumu | Kanako Michi Akira Ishihama | 21 June 1964 |
| The Dream of the Red Chamber aka Crimson Dream 紅閨夢 Kōkeimu | Yōkichi Goto Mina Yanagi Chiyo Aoi | 12 August 1964 |
| Black Snow 黒い雪 Kuroi yuki | Akira Ishihama Chitose Kurenai Kotobuki Hananomoto Chōjirō Hanagawa Yōichirō Mikawa | 9 June 1965 |
| The Tale of Genji 源氏物語 Genji monogatari | Kotobuki Hananomoto Ruriko Asaoka Izumi Ashikawa | 14 January 1966 |
| Genjitsu 幻日 Genjitsu | 1966 | |
| Postwar Cruel Story 戦後残酷物語 Sengo zankoku monogatari | Chitose Kurenai Kanako Michi Masako Arisawa | 10 February 1968 |
| Ukiyo-e Cruel Story 浮世絵残酷物語 Ukiyo-e zankoku monogatari | Tamawa Karina Noriko Tatsumi Ryuji Inazuma | 9 September 1968 |
| Madam Scandal スキャンダル夫人 Scandal fujin | Junko Nishitani Michiko Sakyō Toyozo Yamamoto | 28 February 1973 |
| Daydream 白日夢 Hakujitsumu | Kei Satō Kyōko Aizome Takemi Katsushika | 12 September 1981 |
| Courtesan 華魁 Oiran | Takako Shinozuka Satoshi Mashiba Midori Yuzaki Kozue Azusa | 19 February 1983 |
| Sacred Koya 高野聖 Koya Hijiri | 1984 | |
| Daydream 2 aka Captured For Sex 白昼夢2 Hakujitsumu zoku | Kei Satō Kyōko Aizome Kenji Hayami | 7 February 1987 |
| The Dawn of the Kabuki 歌舞伎の黎明 Kabuki no reimei | 1955 |
| Eros Accused 裁かれるエロス Sabakareru Eros | 1967 |
| Tradition and Disruption 伝統と断絶 Dentō to danzetsu | 1969 |
| Yukio Mishima: His Death and His View of the Kabuki 三島由紀夫・死とその歌舞伎観 Mishima Yukio: Shi to sono kabukikan | 1971 |
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