Library

Nikkatsu Corporation is the first film company established in Japan, and has thrown up many of the great world-class directors. The company still possesses many of the best titles produced by them.

Back in the 1970s, urged by the stagnancy the Japanese film industry was suffering from, many of the best film-making staffs in Japan gathered together to create the erotic film series that deeply featured “sexuality”, which had been considered as taboo up until then, the Nikkatsu Roman (Romantic) Porn series. A geisha with a ruined atmosphere who pours her body and soul into a certain man, a virtuous wife who all of a sudden gets indulged with the abnormal joy of bondages one day, a female teacher who is raped by her students finding out the thrilling pleasure of sexual acts…. The only common theme among the Nikkatsu Roman Porn series was “to have sexual scenes as the main feature of the story”, and the directors were allowed to freely extend their imagination and creativity which resulted to a wide variety of film style, producing as much as more than 1100 titles. Nikkatsu Roman Porn series created a sensation among the Japanese film industry with its superb script, camera works, and its art direction together with its realistic sexual scenes, attracting many old and young fans of both sex as films with a certain “artistry” which couldn’t have been defined within the range of the conventional porn films at the time. Having encouraged the directors to produce films with their free and bold ideas, the Roman Porn series had thrown up many of the best film directors in Japan such as Tatsumi Kumashiro, Masaru Konuma, Noboru Tanaka, Chusei Sone, Toshiya Fujita, and Shusuke Kaneko.

In the 1950s, when Japan had a shadow cast on the entire nation from the lost war, Nikkatsu Corporation started producing energetic, adventurous action films based on its slogan of “we produce fun films”, and created a boom of hardboiled films. An outlaw detective chasing after a criminal, a ruthless killer, and a maverick Japanese mafia who lives in the world of their own rules and righteousness…. Various action heroes had made spectacular performances with a gun in his hand with their characteristic cool atmosphere about them, sometimes with a glimpse of their comically humorous side. The action film series produced at Nikkatsu were called as to be “films with no nationality”, with aspects somewhat similar to western cowboy films and Hong Kong action films, whose stories were fully entertaining with their clear, witty, and exhilarating scripts. Nikkatsu Corporation produced more than 1,000 titles of action films during an 18-year period, captivating many enthusiastic fans for their characteristic heroes and animated action scenes, establishing a brand called “Nikkatsu Actions”. Their classical yet stylish film images are still attracting the modern generation, and are being so highly acclaimed that the films are being released, and merchandizes such as T-shirts and remake films are being produced.