The State of JAV Industry: Analysing The Naked Director Drama [Editorial]

Disclaimer: Although the article discusses a NSFW show, it does not contain any kind of NSFW images or videos. It is not the author’s intention to glorify or criticise the Japanese Adult Video industry. If adult themes are something that puts you off, then feel free to skip this text.

 
     JAV has a very different atmosphere. It’s not very sophisticated, in fact it’s primitive. It’s a bit like eating and menus in restaurants: you’re hungry and you have a sudden craving for noodles, so you go and eat noodles. Your appetite is towards porno videos, so you go and rent whatever turns you on. And as with food, viewers can use basic ingredients to ‘cook’ the desired stimulation from the video themselves. ~ Kaoru Kuroki

 
I realise that I have already shared my thoughts on The Naked Director drama a couple of months ago, but after rewatching the first episode recently, I realised that there is more ground to cover with regard to this show. Specifically, how it intertextually references the idiosyncratic nature of JAV videos and comments on the industry in general.

     For the readers who have not read my old review, here is how the story in the drama goes: Hokkaido, 1980. Toru Muranishi (Takayuki Yamada) is a typical salaryman who lives in an ordinary home together with his mother, wife, and two children. In order to avoid being fired by his company, he learns from the best co-worker the art of salesmanship. When things finally start going in the right direction for Toru, he discovers that his wife is cheating on him. On top of that, his company went bust. Frustrated and depressed, Toru accidentally gets himself entangled in the adult industry. From illegal audio tapes through uncensored magazines to feature-length movies, Toru embarks on a journey to break the conservative boundaries and become the Showa era’s “King of Porn”.
     The first episode presents us with Muranishi working as a salaryman on the services of a company that sells English encyclopedias. In the very first scene, we see him pleasuring himself in a shabby toilet and then proceeding to play a video game in a restaurant. He is a quiet, withdrawn man who only pretends that he is working. Only when he is given an ultimatum by his boss do we see Toru on the path to become a true businessman with trading shtick. The parallel that his mentor draws between closing a deal and trying to charm a beautiful woman is not without importance. When Toru finally produces results for the company, we see his performance chart (presented as a red line in a vertical position) going up to a ceiling and beyond. Together with professional confidence, our protagonist also acquires masculinity and libido.

     However, the blissful period does not last forever. His former mentor figure robbed the company from its savings. Little did Toru know back then that he would commit a similar misdeed years later. That is to say, he will use the payments of his actresses to cover the fees for his satellite channel. The sequence at the publishing office serves as a foreshadowing of who Muranishi will eventually become.
     Directly after this sequence, we come back with Toru to his household where he discovers that his wife is cheating on him with a postman. The way this scene (and a similar one at a love hotel towards the end of the episode) is presented emphasises the factor that differentiates JAV productions from its Western counterparts.

     Former JAV actress Shibuya Kaho, in an extremely detailed and comprehensive YouTube interview from 2021, explained that the difference between Japanese kinky videos and Western ones lies in the fact that JAV flicks always strive to ground the NSFW stuff within a certain narrative framework (source). In other words, they try to tell a story, whereas this is not the case with American and European productions which often throw a screenplay out the window and cut to the hanky panky visuals.
     Indeed, Kaho is right with her reasoning. Japanese pornographic videos, even though they are not technically high art or pinku movies, actually contain storytelling elements. For instance, a young girl engages in a passionate relationship with her homeroom teacher (who is a female) because she can’t bear the fact that her education is reaching an end and the two will soon be apart, or an exemplary husband falls for the charms of his mother-in-law but the wife/daughter figure catches them in the act, shocked and mortified. The examples are numerous.

      The betrayal scene from The Naked Director plays out in the same style. It is not a NSFW moment just for the shock value, but it furthers Muranishi’s character development. His own wife regards him as unfit to be a husband. Jobless and wifeless at the same time, Muranishi seeks to reaffirm his masculinity which pushes him into the whirlwind of the porn industry. In the final scene at a hotel, he and Toshi record an audio of a random couple in the midst of an intercourse. Muranishi, driven by his horrible experience, entitles the tape “Encyclopedia Salesman’s Wife and Unknown Man,” which again reaffirms the nature of JAV industry. He is selling not just a kinky audio filled with moans, but a conceptual story as well which the listeners imagine while reading the tape’s title.
     With a doubt, Toru Muranishi became one of the key filmmakers in the JAV showbiz in the 1980s. His company Diamond Image was raking in one trillion yen in annual revenue (Wong & Yau 2018: 62). This was caused mostly due to the fact that he initiated the trend of the so-called honban AV; that is, movies which had real sex scenes (Wong & Yau 2018: 61). Still, he continued to push the storytelling angle in his productions as reflected in the drama: a film about a trip guide, a film about female spies in Hawaii, etc.

     Nevertheless, the most profitable picture for Diamond Image turned out to be Kaoru Kuroki’s debut called “I Like It SM-ish” (SM Poi no suki). Researchers claim that this feature has documentary style, but it gained popularity because of Kuroki’s onscreen rebellious attitude. She did not assume an image of an innocent girl, but she displayed extreme assertiveness or even downright lunacy in front of a camera, which was a new experience for JAV audience at that time (Wong & Yau 2018: 61). This led Muranishi to state the following years later: “I had to do unprecedented things to succeed. But reality verified this. Whether it’s in a French palace or the beautiful sea of Tahiti. The viewers are not impressed. The most liked setting is still the uneventful apartment bed” (source: mini-documentary).
     Indeed, The Naked Director goes at lengths to faithfully portray the life of Toru Muranishi but truth still remains stranger than fiction. In fact, during his stay in Hawaii, Muranishi shot not one but 30 different movies with approximately 15 actresses who were flown out from Tokyo in turns. In addition, he and the whole crew were arrested which resulted in Toru paying the bail money for 17 people in total (source).

     Creative liberties with regard to the character of Kaoru Kuroki are also questionable. There is no evidence that Kaoru had a messed-up childhood as presented in the drama. Actually, she had a steady and supportive family, which stands in even greater contrast with her decision to go into the JAV business. It is said that she wanted money to study in Italy, but Kaoru herself stated that she treated appearances in these videos purely as performance art because she admired such great filmmakers as Nagisa Oshima, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Ingmar Bergman (source). It was later when she started viewing her JAV status as a social mission. Muranishi said about Kaoru: “Kuroki Kaoru’s films were the best ones I have ever made. In view of female liberation and feminism, she was mostly criticized by women, but she laughed at it, still showing her armpit hair and asking them what they think.” (source: mini-documentary).

     So these were my brief thoughts on The Naked Director drama and the real story of the JAV industry behind it. I hope that the text was not too boring. I only wish we could get an official English release of the Zenra Kantoku Muranishi Toru Den novel someday. Please refer to the list of sources if you want to seek out more information about Muranishi and the JAV history. Allow me to end the article with a quote from the director himself: “What is the most important thing in life? It’s not yourself at your best, but yourself when you lose everything. Despair will accompany you most of the time, and then I want you to think about me. When you feel like quitting, please think of me. ‘Compared to that Japanese guy, I’m doing just fine!’ This may give you strength to carry on. Nice desu ne!”

Sources: The Japanese Adult Video Industry (2018) by Heung-wah Wong and Hoi-yan Yau * Pornography, Ideology, and the Internet: A Japanese Adult Video Actress in Mainland China (2019) by Mei Zhang * Shibuya Kaho Interview * Wikipedia * Web Archive * Japan Times * Tokyo Reporter * The Life of the Japanese King of Adult Video (mini-documentary no longer available on YouTube, thanks for nothing PRC).

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