Dan Oniroku: Nawa-geshô

Astonishing, top notch Nikkatsu 'roman porno' production. High quality widescreen photography and non-stop sex action. And what action! I take issue here with Mr Weisser and his plot outline in 'Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia' but never mind I have to assume it is the same film he calls, 'Rope Cosmetology', even without the benefit of subtitles! This starts pretty fast and barely pauses as two ladies, including Naomi Tani, nude and near nude, walk around on all fours on dog leads, have themselves bound and tickled and worse. Or better, but eating dog food from a bowl, made to pee in a bucket not to mention the activity with a real Alsatian dog! How all this erotic, disturbing and provocative activity can be presented realistically is simply amazing. I have many times sat open mouthed before Japanese cinema product but this one surely beats them all.

Japanese erotic cinema was the best in the world in the 1970s. In Europe only Borowczyk and Tinto Brass made films comparable to Japanese erotic works in terms of cinematographic quality. And among Japanese erotic filmmakers, Koji Wakamatsu, Shôgorô Nishimura, Teruo Ishii, Masaru Konuma and Norifumi Suzuki were the best.

Few films analyzed and portrayed female masochism in as much depth as this Rope Cosmetology. Here, the protagonist Kanako (a magnificent and very beautiful Naomi Tani) yearns to be treated like a dog by her husband, in the literal sense of the word. Her relationship with him was cold, without communication and without satisfaction, as the opening scene shows. But after visiting a former lover who is training to be a Female dog (with dog collar and all), everything changes in her life. Kanako even gets to copulate with a German shepherd in one of the most daring and beautiful scenes in Japanese erotic cinema.

That film has very good photography, with sophisticated camera movements. An authentic masterpiece of erotic cinema.