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Consuming the Female Body: Pinku Eiga and the case of Sagawa Issei
By Pia D. Harritz
 
Introduction
Gazing at the Orient: Some reflections on theories and methods
Pornography or art? Pinku Eiga as movement and industry  
The Renaissance-cannibal: Fatal transgressions of fiction and reality in the case of Sagawa
Issei
Camera, consumerism & cannibalism: The abject gaze and the female body(x) in The Bed
room
Conclusion
Introduction
We all have an appetite for seeing or, as Jacques Lacan puts it: ‘appétit de l’oeil’. It is thr
ough the eyes that we ingest and digest ‘the other’; the world, other human beings and t
he opposite sex. This is in a way what this paper is about - even though I will dare to pu
sh the full notion of ‘appétit’ a bit further.
 
My attempt in this paper is to draw attention to the more extreme representations of thi
s visual appetite as it unfolds itself in the crossing-point between fiction and reality. It is
also an attempt to call attention to some unexplored issues in the discussion of pornogr
0
aphy and the representation of the male gaze and the female body in Japanese Pink Cin
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I will introduce two separated but related notions; ‘the abject gaze’ and ‘the male cannib
alistic gaze’ as operating tools in an analysis of the pink movie The Bedroom (Shisenjiyou
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no Aria) directed by Hisayasu Sato (1992), starring the real cannibal murder Sagawi Issei.
 
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Gazing at the Orient: Some reflections on theories and methods
“The women of Thailand are so beautiful that they have become the hostesses of the We
stern World, sought after and desired everywhere for their grace, which is that of a subm
issive and affectionate femininity of nubile slaves – now dressed by Dior – an astounding
sexual come on in a gaze which looks you straight in the eye and a potential acquiescen
ce to your every whim. In short, the fulfillment of Western man’s dreams.
 
Thai women seem spontaneously to embody the sexuality of the Arabian Nights, like the
Nubian slaves in the ancient Rome. Thai men, on the other hand, seem sad and forlorn; t
heir physiques are not in tune with world chic, while their women’s are privileged to be c
urrently fashionable form of ethnic beauty. What is left for these men but to assist in the
universal promotion of their women for high-class prostitution”[1] Jean Baudrillard
 
When addressing a culture different from one’s own, one has to take a variety of issues i
nto consideration. ‘The Other’ can be ingested and digested in very different ways. ‘Orien
talism’ might be an old and political confusing notion, but it still exists.
 
As Maureen Turim sarcastic puts it, “orientalism survives all pretence at the postmodern”[
2], as Jean Baudrillard’s ironic discourse is a brilliant example of.
 
Even though Baudrillard seemingly forgets all the non-glamorous facts about prostitution
and pornography as the brutal exploitation of women and children (mostly girls), AIDS, p
overty and Western exploitation, his thoughts gives rise to an interesting coincidence; tha
t ‘postmodern orientalism’ in all its ‘incorrect political’ irony can be just as seductive and
superficial as some of the views on pornography and that both often co-exists.
 
This reveals itself especially when western film-theorists in the ‘name of tolerance’ fail to
deliver a critical and reflexive analysis. Take for example Nöel Burch’s enthusiastic celebra
tion of one of the first Japanese pink movies; Wakamatsu’s work The Embryo Hunts in Se 0
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eur.
 
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This unfortunate combination of an overbearing eagerness to celebrate another cultures
aesthetics and at the same time to show of sexual tolerance has a tendency to end in ori
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entalism and misogyny. On the other hand it would be a great failure to dismiss pink cin
ema as being overall misogynistic or all western film-analytic approaches as being misgui
ded orientalism.[4]
 
There is something to be said about the absurdity and hysteria of some of the many so-
called ‘politically correct’ readings of especially the 70’s and the 80’s. My own ethnograp
hic critical position will be related to my feministic point of view on pornography, which i
s not a place of political readings and positions. It’s a non-place. A place of (intended) p
ure observations that I sincerely hope will serve my controversial subject.
 
Generally speaking there seem to be at least three different critical positions towards por
nography in western culture: The liberal tolerant position where pornography is viewed u
pon as a harmless bi-product of democracy and the right to free speech, the morally righ
teous position that sees pornography as harmful to family values and common human m
orality, and finally the feminist point of view, where the main concern is how women are
represented and by what degree, the performing women are exploited.
 
Obviously, the feminist position is not one-sided. Different voices have colored the femini
st filmtheories since the early 70’s. Most radical seems the position represented in writing
s by Robin Morgan and Susan Brownmiller in the mid70’s and the later works by Cathari
ne MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin in the 80’s and 90’s.
 
The main argument here is, that there is an undeniable connection between pornography
and crimes against women such as rape, violence and even murder. Other feminists, mor
e cautious perhaps, have tried not to make the connection between the consumption of
pornographic fiction and the practice in reality, between the pornographic fantasies and r
eal life occurrences.
 
The studies that fall under the latter group have been more curious and sensitive toward 0
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scenario, but to re-think an alternative, that leaves female desire, room for representation
.  
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My approach here will be both to respect the ethnographic and feministic issues dealing
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with this subject can rise, and even though I don’t think of my subject as particular ‘Japa
nese’ or ‘pornographic’, I will not ignore the fact, it has been produced and perceived in
that context.
 
The subject in it self gives rise to many political traps and straps. First of all, even if it is n
ot possible to scientifically prove a connection between fiction and reality, pornography a
nd exploitation of women, it’s striking, that the real life cannibal murderer and rapist Sag
awi Issei is starring in a Japanese pink movie that explores rape-, S/M- and fetish-fantasie
s.
 
This, after his status as a convicted but unpunished murderer followed by a glorified care
er as a celebrated writer on cannibalism and a popular television- and movie-star with hi
s own fan-club. Secondly, it is not possible to ignore the genre’s extreme tendencies tow
ards pure misogyny – ethnocentricity or not.
 
And thirdly, one has to consider the economic, political and historical context that surrou
nds Pink Cinema in particular and Asian pornography in general. Before examining the p
henomenon Sagawa Issei and his role in The Bedroom, I will therefore briefly try to outlin
e the story behind pinku eiga.   
 
Pornography or art? Pinku Eiga as movement and industry
“…To make a film that has the influence to drive its audience mad, to make them commit
murder.”[6]  Hisayasu Sato
 
Since the mid60’s various Asian popular culture have embraced erotic imagery and incor
porated different forms of pornography in film, animated film and cartoon production.[7]
A large part of this production focus on extreme sex and display violent criminal behavio
r towards women and young (very young) girls.
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d there is definitely a connection between a male dominated western ‘orientalism’ (here

both imperialism, male-chauvinism and sex-tourism) and a old male dominated Asian cul
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ture with severe cultural inferiority complexes and economical problems, but one has to
differentiate between the different groups of population, different levels of discrimination
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and sexual abuse towards women and (mostly female) children according to different Asi
an countries.
 
 With these facts in regard it is difficult, not to say impossible, to chose a position that d
oes not respect the historical, economic, political and feministic aspects of this matter.    
 
I will not be able to present all the different opinions in this short paper, but I will menti
on a few that are relevant due to the type of cinema that The Bedroom and Sagawa Issei
deal with.
Pinku eiga or Pink Cinema dates back to the 60’s and is not entirely a product – as the p
orno-industry in Denmark – of political intentions to ‘liberate’ sex and promote women ri
ghts. The main reason often given for the appearance of pinku eiga is economic.
 
Even though the 60’s started out well for the Japanese film industry, reaching a record of
545 films, the cinema attendance was falling, probably as a result of the global and rapid
spread of television and the development of the leisure industry. By 1962 attendance had
dropped to the half of that of 1958 with one billion visits and soon this plunged the maj
or film studios into a crisis and a great deal of studios faced bankruptcy. The industry res
ponded by turning to the mass production of sex movies or what we in the west would c
all a mixture of ‘soft porn’ and sexploitation, even though words like these do not compl
etely grasp the full notion of the pinku eiga. [8] 
 
The movies were shown in small cinemas, which could no longer afford the high rental fe
es of the studio films. Instead, they turned to the independent production companies, wh
ich bloomed during the 1960s. The number of independently produced erotic films rose f
rom 4 in 1962, to 58 in 1964, to 250 in 1969.
 
The first major pink movie is generally considered to be Hakujit sumu (Daydream, 1964),
directed by Tetsuji Takechi, produced by Shochiku Studios. Nikutai no ichiba (Market of F 0
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ges of obscenity, but when the film resumed after cuts had been made it became a majo
r box office success - probably because of its sensational pre-history and the media atten
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tion.
 
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The formula of pinku eiga was gradually decided by the industry: The director had full co
ntrol over the movie, as long as he maintained the following requirements; that the movi
e 1) had to feature an abundance of sex scenes, 2) had to have an average length of abo
ut 60 minutes, 3) had to be shot in 4-6 days on 16 mm or 35 mm and, most importantly,
had to be made on a budget of approximately 35.000 $. 
 
These are not in themselves unusual conditions, if one were to compare these conditions
with the production of adult movies around the world, but they become interesting if on
e takes the quality of the movies into consideration. By quality I mean both the originalit
y of style and aesthetics, the technological superiority, the mixing of genres, and the idea
of incorporating elements of surrealistic avant-garde, sci-fi, techno, the art movies, and p
op-culture into the adult movie industry. To stress the point even further, the budgets of
these movies are in general significantly lower than those of the porno-industry of the w
est.   
 
What really stands out is the ability of pinku eiga to engage the spectator in more than j
ust scenes with close-ups of genitals[9] and finally the complexity in the representation o
f gender and the human mind. It is a common fact that the pink movies are, generally sp
eaking, more intellectual, sinister and sadomasochistic in their display of and exploration
of the female body.
 
 The female body is not so “willing” and “open” as in so many of the western adult movi
es (the ‘Pornotopian’ type) where it is always “bedroom-time” and where the woman is al
most always a “lusty/busty” and playfull blonde. In pink movies it is generally a more rep
ressed, raped, violated, and mutilated female body that is being displayed.
 
The pink movies tell stories not only about sex, revenge and violence. They also occasion
ally comment on politics and social injustice. Especially directors as Yoshida Yoshishige, I
mamura Shohei, Oshima Nagisa and Wakamatsu Koji made their distinct mark by questio 0
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Not all pink directors were as radical, though most directors of the 1960s shared the soci
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al and political convictions that gave their films such a strong anti-establishment appeal.
The main subject of pinku eiga was not politics but sexuality, a sexuality depicted throug
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h male desire. Though the depiction of sexuality became more extreme and violent with
time, pinku eiga never crossed the border to what in the west is called ‘hardcore pornogr
aphy’ (which means a display of genital intercourse).
 
 This resulted in developing an interesting and original cinematic erotic vocabulary, wher
e the filmmakers resorted to indirect depiction with inventive allusions (such as extreme c
lose-ups of armpits shot to look like pubic hair) and omissions (e.g. incriminating areas di
sguised by a clever use of camera angles and hiding objects).
 
Eventually this particular aspect of pinku eiga made it less competitive with ‘hard core’ vi
deo-pornography coming from the west, eastern Europe and other parts of Asia during t
he late 80’s and the 90’s, and the industry to day only counts a couple of production co
mpanies.  
 
The uniqueness of pink cinema is, however, from a strictly historical point of view that th
e industry indirectly supported avant-garde, filmmaking and cinema in general, and helpe
d internationally renowned directors as Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Suo Masayuki, Sono Sion and
Oki Hiroyuki to grow and develop their cinematic skills. There is probably no other count
ry in the world where sexploitation film can claim the same years of cultural and artistic i
nfluence on film and filmmaking.[10]
 
This particular circumstance combined with the gradually economic fatigue of the market
surrounding pink cinema in the late 80’s might be some useful tools to understand why
Sagawa Issei is performing in The Bedroom.
 
My analysis will also consider issues related to the work itself. These issues touch upon a
core of a postmodern condition of consumerism and media-awareness and a related dist
ortion of the ‘mimetic illusion’, defining fiction as separate from reality. But before reveali
ng the logic of this argument, I will take a closer look on the biographical data surroundi 0
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The Renaissance-cannibal: Fatal transgressions of fiction and reality in the case of Sagawa
Issei
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“I am amazed. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Tall, blonde, with pure whi
te skin, she astonishes me with her grace. I invited her to my home for a Japanese dinner
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. She accepts. After the meal I asked her to read my favorite German expressionist poem.
As she reads I can’t keep my eyes off her. After she leaves I can still smell her body on th
e bed sheet where she sat reading the poem. I lick the chopsticks and dishes she used. I
can taste her lips. My passion is so great. I want to eat her. If I do she will be mine forev
er. There is no escape from this desire.“[11] Sagawa Issei
 
The life of Sagawi Issei is indeed an extreme and unbelievable story. Sagawa went to Pari
s in 1981 to study language and literature at the Sorbonne Academy, Cencier Institute. H
ere he met the young promising blonde student Renee Hartevelt, whom he got obsessed
with. She did not return his romantic feelings but they read poetry together and formed
some kind of friendship. One evening while Hartevelt read poetry out load, Sagawa fetch
ed a gun and shot her in her back. He then raped the body and started eating it, beginni
ng with her behind and then her lips. I will soon explain the reason for my focus on thes
e details in relation to Sagawa’s performance in The Bedroom.
 
After a couple of days the remains of the body naturally began to decompose and Saga
wa   realized that he had to get rid of it. Few days after the murder witnesses saw an Asi
an man fitting the description of Sagawa dump two suitcases with body-parts in a park i
n Paris. The police soon traced the scenario back to Sagawa and he was charged with m
urder and rape. He was placed at Henri Collin psych-ward in Villejuif, but to avoid the co
sts of maintaining Sagawa under French authorities, he was deported back to Japan in 19
85.
 
At this point the story takes a strange and unexpected turn. His father Sagawa Akira, pre
sident of Kurita Water Industries, worked out a deal with the Japanese authorities and in
1986 his son was released as a free man. Sagawa Issei was now well-known in Japan as t
he man who killed and ate another human being and somehow got away with it. As mos
t extreme cases the whole affair caught the eye of the media and Sagawa Issei quickly be
came a celebrity.[12] 0
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erican example, the cannibalistic killer and raptist Jeffrey Dahmer, who also achieved a ki
nd of bizarre fame. What is truly striking is the fundamentally different ways in which the
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y were perceived and treated by their surroundings and the media. Where Dahmer was tr
eated with disgust and rejection (he was killed by inmates in prison), Sagawa, besides fro
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m avoiding prison time, was treated with respect and curiosity.
 
He managed to participate in various kinds of television shows, on the covers of gourmet
cooking magazines and gathered a group of artist-intellectuals who supported his ‘artisti
c insanity’ and claimed Sagawa’s ‘crime’ had to be committed, otherwise his ‘art’ would h
ave suffered.
 
Besides from his performance as an actor in The Bedroom, he wrote several best-selling
books about the subject and illustrated an autobiographical manga (graphic novel) and d
irected the also autobiographical movie “The Desire to be Eaten”. Today he paints picture
s of nude female bodies and has his own website and seemingly also a ‘fan-club’.[13]
 
 

Picture 1: Sagawa Issei often posed eating sushi (talk-show) 

 
 

Picture 2: One of Sagawa Issei’s several paintings 

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s speculation relevant? If he had already been a celebrated artist before his crime, the m
edia-attention would probably not have been less intense but it might have been influen
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tial on how the world perceived him and how he would have been portrayed.
 
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One might take as comparative examples the cases of O. J. Simpson and, more recently, t
he trial of Michael Jackson. How come the careers of the two Americans stopped when t
hey were charged with murder and child molesting respectively, and why did the career
of Sagawa only then begin? Could it be differences between USA and Japan, the West an
d the East? Could it be that Sagawa more than willingly committed to his crimes whereas
the others did not?
 
There is no simple answer to this, but I do think is has to do with the different types of c
elebrities they constitute. When Andy Warhol said we all could achieve fifteen minutes of
fame, he did not just predict the potential fame that reality-tv could offer the common p
eople. He also indicated that we do not have unlimited resources for getting fame. Some
how you have to stick at one type of fame.
 
 As Sagawa Issei, despite the fact that he tries to become famous in all areas of artistic e
xpression like a true Renaissance-man, the only fame he will ever get is the one that is c
onnected to his crime. It is also crucial to point out that his crime and his status as a can
nibal murderer and rapist is the sole reason for his appearance in The Bedroom.
 
Camera, consumerism and cannibalism: The abject gaze and the female body(x) in The B
edroom
“The public has made me the godfather of cannibalism, and I am happy about that. I will
always look through the eyes of a cannibal.”[14] Sagawa Issei
 
Sagawa Issei’s cannibalism is not only significant for his appearance on the screen, it is al
so crucial for his performance. The reason for me - earlier on in this essay - to indulge in
the details concerning the act of his crime is related to his performance.
 
In the short time, which Sagawa appears, he acts out some interesting and illustrating be
havior. He appears in less than one minute, but due to the movies montage-like editing, 0
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What is so unique to The Bedroom is the way in which the meaning is hidden in the ‘plo
t-segments’.[15]
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The main character, the woman Kyôko, is a member of an exclusive sex-club called The B
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edroom where all the girls use a drug with the associative name ‘Halcion’. The drug is hi
ghly hallucinatory and numbs the brain and the senses so that the women are unconscio
us when they are together with the men. As the story unfolds with the daily scenes of Ky
ôko shifting from her talking with her husband, her girlfriend, her lover and the nightly sc
enes from the sex-club, the women in the club are being killed and mutilated – one by o
ne.
 
Soon, Kyôko begins to suspect first her emotionally detached and moody lover, Kei, and
then her introvert and cranky husband of being the murderer. But the end reveals Kyôko
to be the murderess with a strange mistaken identity-twist, where Kyôko is in fact her ow
n younger sister Maya that (maybe) killed Kyôko and took over her life. Actually Maya/Ky
ôko not only kills all the women in the film, she also in the final scene kills her lover and
stuffs him in the refrigerator (!).
 
The refrigerator plays an important part in the movie in the form of a ‘plot-segment.’ Eve
ry time the story shifts from Kyôko’s life during the day to the scenes at ‘The Bedroom,’ t
he scene dissolves with a shot of Kyôko looking into an empty refrigerator. Every time th
e shot ends with the camera being inside the refrigerator, Kyôko is looking directly at the
camera and slams the door in ‘our’ face (it happens of a total of four times).
 
These returned gazes at the camera in the refrigerator scenes is not the only ones in The
Bedroom. Two other persons are allowed to glance at the camera: the dead sister and Sa
gawa Issei. The scene with the dead sister glancing at the camera appears towards the e
nd and is the last still in the movie (actually after the movie is ended). Apparently we are
witnessing her suicide where she approaches a handheld video camera and mutter the e
nigmatic words ‘I am back!’ and then roll herself in a sort of wrap that causes her death
by choking. The whole scene is played backwards which makes her salute to the camera
the last thing that meets the eye of the spectator.
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dialogue as an autonomous element. The handheld subjective video camera often overla
ps with both the surveillance-camera (from the locations of the ‘Bedroom’) and most sign
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ificantly the cinematic objective camera, which makes it difficult (though not impossible) t
o separate the three. Even though this metafictive status of the camera is not unique in t
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he works of director Hisayasu Sato and in later postmodern productions of pinku eiga in
general, it is used here to an extreme extent.[16]
 
 The camera plays a role – just as the refrigerator and the returned gazes of the three ac
tors in the film. I mentioned the returned gazes of Kyôko/Maya and her dead sister (the r
eal Kyôko) but what makes them different from the last returned gaze, that of Sagawa Iss
ei, is not only that they are from a ‘female’ place, but also that they are not really directe
d towards the cinematic objective camera.
 
This marks a significant difference in reading the relationship between gender, camera an
d spectator. In the case of Kyôko/Maya, she is gazing directly into the objective cinemati
c camera, but the camera appears to be where nobody is expected to be (the refrigerato
r) and in the case of the real Kyôko, she is gazing into a handheld subjective video came
ra. None of the gazes are ‘directly’ aimed towards the spectator. They seem instead medi
ated by ‘another’ (themselves maybe as the ‘I’ of a video diary, maybe the potential vide
o-viewer but not the cinematic spectator). They are ‘abject’ in the sense of the word defi
ned by Julia Kristeva[17]: they do not seem to aim at any personalized ‘other’.
 
 They can only be interpreted as a last minute realization of despair (the ‘real’ Kyôko) an
d existential emptiness (the empty gazes into the empty refrigerator by Kyôko/Maya). No
thing in their gazes constitutes them as ‘whole’ subjects exchanging gazes with the spect
ator. They intertwine in their ambiguous identities and lack of substance and aim. This cir
cumstance beautifully underlines the director’s critical representation of the emptiness of
the refrigerator as a metaphor of consumerism and woman as ‘the non-subject’ in a post
modern pornographic world of a voyeuristic/exhibitionistic masquerading behavior with n
o ‘real’ object of desire.
Everything has gone from ‘sexual’ to ‘pornographic’, as Jean Baudrillard has noted, in a di
scourse that before was the discourse of the subject, but now is the discourse of the obj
ect. The returned ‘abject’ gazes of the two women point this out – also in a comment on 0
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from the acting women (Paul Willemen calls them ‘fourth looks’), that insures the male vi
ewers that they (the women) really are ‘in’ to the action. This constitutes a certain imagin
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ary ‘present’ participation from the (passive and absent) male viewers in front of the vide
o-screen.    
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The returned gaze of Sagawa Issei is, however, very differently structured and directly ai
med towards the objective cinematic camera and therefore also the cinematic spectator.
In the beginning of his one minutes performance, he enters the scene of the ‘Bedroom’
with a camera taking pictures of a partly dressed and undressed ‘Kyôko’/Maya who is lyi
ng drugged on the bed (almost in the shape of a podium). He ends his performance by
crawling up on the bed, licking first her behind and then her lips. It is before this ‘licking’
that he addresses the camera by looking directly into it. Even so, the eyes of the spectat
or do not meet the eyes of Sagawa or ‘the eyes of the cannibal’ (as he himself has phras
ed it). For some reason he wears some heavy black sunglasses. Why? Maybe to stress his
status of being the ‘none-being’, the monster that everybody (at least in Japan) knows to
be looking at the world with the ‘eyes of a cannibal’. His look has to be ‘abject’ – but in
another sense of the word than the gazes of Kyôko and Maya. Their gazes are only abjec
t in the sense that they appear in a movie and are not real subjects, only ‘fictionalized su
bjects’ representing ‘fictional horror’.
 
Sagawa’s is always ‘abject’ in the sense that he is ‘real’ and that his gaze is always that of
a cannibal (where the borderline between object and subject are always disturbed and u
ndistinct). He is the ‘real’ monster, the ‘real horror’. Here the movie – or director Hisayasu
Sato – marks something different from the postmodern discussion of the border betwee
n fiction and reality.
 
Here the movie does something different than just filling this postmodern storytelling wit
h clever metafictive and intertexual references, suggesting that the days of ‘mimetic illusi
on’ and ‘naïve’ storytelling is over. It exceeds them in a fatal transgression, because this
marker of ‘the discourse’/ the utterance, is not just another mise-en-abyme (a fiction in t
he fiction). He is the 'real thing' and more powerful and horrifying than the fictional horr
or that we have become so used to. He is also more horrifying than the non-fictional sto
ries news-television tells every night, because he comes in the provocative disguise of ‘fic 0
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Conclusion
The shock Hisayasu Sato tries to impose on the spectator with this particular marker of u
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tterance might be intertexual and traditionally postmodern because the spectator knows
who Sagawa is and how he looks, but it exceeds the limits of expectations for what trans
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gressions can be in a fictional story. The ‘uncanny’ is always more horrifying if it pretends
to be ‘heimlich’ before it shows itself to be ‘unheimlich’.
 
In that way, this comment on consumerism, camera and cannibalism transgresses itself in
a fatal way, leaving only one to point in the direction of what Jean Baudrillard would call
a fatal strategy, in which the postmodern subject’s relation to him or herself as a subject
and as ‘real’ is no longer an existential or existing condition.
 
 

Picture 3: Still from The Bedroom, an ‘uncanny’ kiss

 
 

Picture 4: Still from The Bedroom, the refrigerator-look

 
Notes
[1]Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories London/New York: Verso, 1990: p. 168
[2] P. 82 in “The Erotic in Asian Cinema” by Maureen Turim, in Dirty Looks ed. Pamela Ch
urch Gibson and Roma Gibson, British Film Institute, 1993.
[3] To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema, by Nöel Burch, 0
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[4] See for example David Desser’s moral comments in Eros plus Massacre: An Introducti
on the Japhanese New Wave Cinema, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. He de
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finitely has a point, when he criticize Wakamatsu Koji’s The Embryo Hunts in Secret (1966
) for being an archetypically misogynistic pink film, but the critique would probably have
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served better without the tendency to associate moral stands with a western viewer.
 
[5] See here the studies of Linda Williams, Carol Clover and Gertrud Koch.
[6] From an interview with Hisayasu Sato by Julien Saveon in Asian Cult magazine no. 34,
2002.
 
[7] Besides cinema, various kinds of manga (cartoons and graphic novels) and anima (ani
mated films) have influenced the market for pornography. The notion manga covers both
cartoons and graphic novels with a strong cinematic inspiration in the choices of perspec
tive and aestetics.
 
[8] The term pink eiga was first coined in 1963 by journalist Murai Minoru. But it did not
come into general use until the late 1960s. In the early years the films were known as ”er
oduction films” (erodakushon eiga) or ”three-million-yen-films” (sanbyakuman eiga). Beca
use of their erotic nature the films were rated as adult films (seijin eiga) by the Motion Pi
cture Code of Ethics Committee (Eirin), the self-censorship organ of the Japanese film ind
ustry. The films played to a target audience of young men, who could still be lured into t
he cinemas. The audience for family and women’s films had deserted cinema for televisio
n long time ago. Action movies and the new yakuza genre fulfilled young male viewers’
desire for on-screen violence, while the desire for sex was satisfied by pinku eiga.
 
[9] The reason for this is actually not that remarkably since an explicit depiction of genita
ls and sexual intercourse is prohibited by the Japanese Criminal Code and the Eirin regul
ations (The Motion Picture Code of Ethics Committee).
 
[10]In the 1990’s the Japanese film industry underwent major changes. The studio system
ended, enabling the rise of independent producers; the direct-to-video market appearae
d; cable and satellite television proliferated; the distribution sector was restructured, and
a producer system was established. These developments also left their mark on the pinku 0
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n, production, distribution and marketing. Until a decade ago, all the profit was made at
the box office. Today, the box office returns are merely one source of income. Most reve
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nues come from selling video and broadcasting rights, especially to satellite stations, and
- recently - from the burgeoning DVD market. The marketing of pinku eiga is now more
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complicated than when the films were shown only in specialized cinemas. So the professi
onal skills of a producer are indispensable.
 
[11] In the Fog, Tokyo: Hanashi No Tokusyu, 1983.
[12] Moira Martingale has examined Sagawa Issei’s extraordinary fame in Japan in details
in Cannibal Killers, The History of Impossible Murderers, New York, NY, U.S.A.: Saint Marti
n's Press, LLC, 1995. 
[13] See Sagawa Issei’s personal website: perso.club-internet.fr/praha/index.html/sagawa
main.htm.
[14] From Sagawa Issei’s personal website: perso.club-internet.fr/praha/index.html/sagawa
main.htm.
[15] By plot and story I am here referring to the definitions of the two notions given by
David Bordwell and Kirstin Thomson.  
[16] I have here chosen not to go further into the large discussions on the ‘postmodern s
torytelling’ and the use of metafictive and intertexual  references (or ‘metalepses’ as Géra
rd Genette recently called them).  
 
[17] In my last article in ‘In Medias Res’, I discuss the notion ‘abject’ to a greater extent w
ith some of its  theoretical implications. Here, I will only refer to the notion as a working
tool for my analysis. For the full notion of what an ‘abject gaze’ is, see Pia D. Harritz, Ph.
D.-dissertation, The Returned Gazes of Cinema: Filmlanguage, gender and the encounter
with the keyhole-regime, University of Copenhagen, 2004.   
 
출처] http://h3.c-team.dk/index.php?id=57
 
 
 
 
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Graphic of media reports of Issei Sagawa

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Presented by Liz Jackson
According to 60 Minutes the risks of Northern Iraq are nothing compared to the streets
of Tokyo.
You have to ask how on earth could this happen? Every year, hundreds and hundred’s of
bright eyed young Australian girls head for the bright lights of Tokyo, every one of them
is in grave danger.

— 60 Minutes, 27 February, 2005

Be afraid, very afraid .. but just how much danger the girls are actually in depends on wh
at Liz Hayes and 60 Minutes did to get this story.

Liz retold the tragic accounts of British girl Lucie Blackman and Australian Carita Ridgewa
y, who'd both worked as bar hostesses in Tokyo's red light district. A Japanese businessm
an, Joji Obara now faces charges arising from the abduction, rape and deaths of Carita, 1
3 years ago and Lucie back in 2000.

60 minutes wanted to present the threat as a real and present danger. Joji Obara is in jail
but:

..the frightening thing is, he’s not alone. In Tokyo tonight, the predators will be on the pr
owl looking for young Australians.

Enter, a predator - Issei Sagawa.

LIZ HAYES: This is Tokyo's red-light district, Roppongi. It's a Saturday night and, like milli 0
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ISSEI SAGAWA: They're beautiful, especially white young girls.

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LIZ HAYES: You just love young white girls?

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ISSEI SAGAWA: Yeah, blonde hair and, uh, blue eyes and white skin.

But as 60 minutes knew, Issei Sagwa is not like millions of other Japanese men. In fact he
's unique. Back in 1981, when Sagawa was in Paris he killed, and then ate portions of a fe
llow student, a young woman. A French court found him insane, and deported him back
to Japan.

Since then Sagawa has become in his own gruesome way a bit of an international media
star. He's posed on female bodies, featured on chat shows, and even on the cover of a g
ourmet magazine … Issei Sagawa told Media Watch the media pay him.

I search every job but no Japanese company wanted me to work there. I am very ashame
d to deal with white journalists but I have to live. Japanese journalists use me as well.

— Issei Sagawa's statement to Media Watch

Sagawa told Media Watch that 60 minutes paid him $800 US dollars to appear in their st
ory, but 60 Minutes deny this. Sagawa also says they took him to the red light district.

They insisted I go to Roppongi as they wanted to film me in the streets of Roppongi. Th

ey hadn’t paid me the money as yet, so I had to go as I needed the money as I have to
eat.

…The producer told me just before entering the club … pretend you are James Bond.

And the risk for Australian girls still remains. In the seedy hostess clubs of Roppongi, it is
business as usual, as we discovered when we followed Issei Sagawa on a night out. Here
Japan's most notorious criminal quickly found just what he was looking for — three youn 0
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— Issei Sagawa's statement to Media Watch

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ISSEI SAGAWA: My name is James Bond, okay.

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LIZ HAYES: …and chatted happily to the unsuspecting girls.

WOMAN: Moths? Yes, in summer.

ISSEI SAGAWA: I am very scared of them, yeah, yeah.

WOMAN: Oh, they're nothing to be scared of. They're cute.

ISSEI: Yeah.

It's no wonder the girls were unsuspecting, 60 minutes didn't tell them they were filming.
And they didn't tell them that the man they were chatting to was a cannibal - a man 60
Minutes regards as a dangerous predator. By the time he left all three of these trusting y
oung Australians had handed him their private phone numbers. Outside we politely took
the girl’s numbers back from him.

Samantha, the girl behind the bar, only found out about all this months later, when the s
tory went to air. She quit her job and wrote to 60 Minutes.

I am writing to you outraged, disgusted and horrified ….

Unbeknownst to me, without disclosure or consent, 60 minutes brought the psychopath,

killer Isse Sagawa … into my place of work and introduced me to this monster as if he w
ere an ordinary man….

…for the sake of a story a murderer was brought... into the nightclub in I which I work, d
estroying the previously safe environment and endangering peoples lives…
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— Samantha Hoogenboom's letter to 60 Minutes

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60 Minutes managing editor Mark Lllewellyn replied:

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I’m afraid your complaint is based on a number of false premises… Mr Sagawa was not b
rought into your place of work nor did this destroy the previously safe environment and
endanger peoples lives.

As we revealed in our story Mr Sagawa – who is indeed a cannibal, and quite possibly da
ngerous - has a particular taste for young white women. He regularly trawls the Roppong
i area in which you work, and the type of hostess bar in which you work. We did not tak
e Mr Sagawa to your club, he took us.

You handed him your card with your number on it without any encouragement from us.
We immediately retrieved the card ..outside the club.

— 60 Minutes Managing Editor, Mark Llewellyn's reply to Samantha Hoogenboom

The night club owner's wife has also written to 60 Minutes mail bag, but we doubt they'll
be reading out her letter:

…What if he’d taken a liking to our establishment. How can you have shouldered that res
ponsibility? …

That your programme would knowingly add to the celebrity status of freak like Sagawa t
urns my stomach…

At best this is sensationalism in its lowest form. At worst it’s racist fear mongering.

— Erika Gondo's email to 60 Minutes

We'll give the last word to 60 minutes, who told Media Watch that rather than putting a
ny-one in danger: 0
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— 60 Minutes Managing Editor, Mark Llewellyn's response to Media Watch

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So who should we believe? A nightclub, a bar hostess and a sad mad cannibal .. or a tele
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vision current affairs show?

One fact is not in dispute: for 2 months 60 Minutes didn't tell the women that they'd be
en introduced to a notorious killer.
 
출처] http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s1327904.htm

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