Tetsuji Takechi

Infobox actor
name = Tetsuji Takechi

imagesize = 150px
caption = Tetsuji Takechi at a "Takechi Kabuki" performance (between 1945 and 1955)cite web |url=http://art-random.main.jp/samescale/075-2.html|title=Age 75: 武智鉄二 / Tetsuji Takechi|date=2005-12-06|accessdate=2008-12-03|publisher= [http://art-random.main.jp/top.html Art Random] |language=Japanese|quote=本名川口鐵二。]
birthname = Tetsuji Kawaguchi
birthdate = December 10, 1912
birthplace = Osaka, Japan
deathdate = death date and age|mf=yes|1988|7|26|1912|12|10
deathplace =
restingplace =
restingplacecoordinates =
othername =
occupation = Kabuki director, theorist and critic, Theatre director, Film director, Author, Actor
yearsactive = 1945–1987
influences =
influenced =
website =
awards =

nihongo|Tetsuji Takechi|武智鉄二|Takechi Tetsuji|extra=December 10, 1912 – July 26, 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 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.cite web |url=http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:249642|title="Kuroi Yuki"
accessdate=2007-10-29|last=Firsching|first=Robert|publisher=Allmovie|language=English|quote= The resultant obscenity trial... ended with a landmark decision which allowed complete narrative freedom in Japanese films. This development paved the way for the thousands of softcore pinku eiga and S & M films which would define Japanese exploitation cinema until... the late '80s...] In the later 1960s, Takechi produced three more "pink films".

Takechi did not work in film during most of the 1970s, instead serving as the host of a popular TV program, "The Tetsuji Takechi Hour". 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. Influential in both the cinema and the theater, Takechi's innovations in kabuki were felt for decades, and his films and battles against censorship in Japan earned him the titles, "The Father of Pink" and "The Father of Japanese Porn." [cite book |last=Weisser|first=Thomas|coauthors=Yuko Mihara Weisser|title=Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films|year=1998|publisher=Vital Books : Asian Cult Cinema Publications|location=Miami|isbn=1-88928-852-7|pages=pp.67, 102] [cite book |last=Salz|first=Jonah|editor=Hiroshi Nara|title=Inexorable Modernity: Japan's Grappling with Modernity in the Arts|year=2007|publisher=Lexington Books|location=Lanham, Maryland|language=English|isbn=0-7391-1842-0|pages=p.132|chapter=Contesting Authority through Comic Disruption: Mixed Marriages as Metaphor in Postwar Kyogen Experiments]

Life and career

Early life

Takechi Kabuki

The immediate post-World War II era was a difficult time for kabuki. Besides the devastation caused to major Japanese cities as a result of the war, the popular trend was to reject the styles and thoughts of the past, kabuki among them. Also, during the early years of the Allied Occupation of Japan, the occupying authorities banned kabuki as feudalistic and detrimental to the public morals, though by 1947 this ban was lifted. Other traditional forms of theater, such as noh and "bunraku", seen as less flamboyant and violent than kabuki, received less attention from Occupation censors. [cite book |last=Takemae|first=Eiji|title=The Allied Occupation of Japan|coauthors=Robert Ricketts and Sebastian Swann (translators and adapters)|origyear=1983|year=2002|publisher=Continuum|location=New York & London|language=English|isbn=0-8264-6247-2|pages=pp.390-391] Kabuki scholars credit Takechi's innovative productions of the kabuki classics with bringing about a rebirth of interest in the kabuki in the Kansai region after this low point in kabuki history. Takechi revitalized kabuki by reaching out to the other theatrical forms—noh, "kyōgen", and the modern theater and dance—for new ideas and collaboration. He broke through long-established barriers which existed between these theatrical forms, and even between kabuki schools, to create an energetic new form of kabuki. Despite his maverick nature, Takechi gave great attention to the classic kabuki texts, and emphasized to his actors the need to inhabit the roles they played. His approach to a new interpretation of the old texts was to "psychologize" them. [cite book |last=Leiter|first=Samuel L.|title=The Art of Kabuki: Five Famous Plays|origyear=1979|year=1999|publisher=Dover Publications|location=Mineola, New York, London|language=English|isbn=0-486-40872-8|pages=p.71] By bringing out the psychology already present in the classic texts, Takechi felt that actors could interpret their roles with vitality and energy which he felt was lacking in contemporary performances. [Kominz, p.233.] Of the many popular young stars of the kabuki who performed under Takechi, Nakamura Ganjiro III (born 1931) was the leading figure. At first known as Nakamura Senjaku, this period in Osaka kabuki became known as the "Age of Senjaku" in his honor.

Theater work after Takechi Kabuki

Takechi's innovations in kabuki brought him to the attention of the Shigeyama family, a longtime major force in comic "kyōgen" plays. With the Shigeyamas, Takechi created and directed the "kyōgen", "Susugigawa" ("The Washing River"), in 1953. Based on a medieval French farce, this play became the first new "kyōgen" to enter the traditional repertoire in a century. [Salz, p.131–136.] Takechi saw in "kyōgen" a more direct link to a native Japanese folk theatrical tradition, and through the "kyōgen" wanted to link these folk traditions with the modern theater. As a Western analogy of his intentions, Takechi pointed to the works of Ibsen and Tennessee Williams which had their roots in the classical theater of Racine, Molière and Shakespeare. [Salz, p.140–141.]

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. [cite book |first=Masakata|last=Kanazawa|editor=L. Macy (editor)|title=New Grove Dictionary of Opera; vol. 4 Roe-Z|year=1992|publisher=Macmillan Press Ltd.|location=London|language=English|isbn=0-333-48552-1|pages=p.1198|chapter=Yūzuru ('The Twilight Heron')] 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 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 essays, "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. [cite news |last=Keene|first=Donald|authorlink=Donald Keene|title=25. Triumph as Tarokaja|url=http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/essay/20060708dy02.htm|archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20060720051850/http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/essay/20060708dy02.htm|publisher=Yomiuri Shimbun|date=July 8, 2006|archivedate=2006-07-20|accessdate=2008-01-04|language=English]

Seeking to rejuvenate noh in a similar manner in which he had kabuki and "kyōgen", Takechi worked with the avant-garde group Jikken Kobo (Experimental Workshop), which had been co-founded by composer Tōru Takemitsu in 1951. One of Takechi's more notable productions with the group was a 1955 noh version of Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire" (1912). [cite web |first=Miwako|last=Tezuka|url=http://www.aasianst.org/absts/2005abst/Japan/j-10.htm|title=From Confrontation to Pluralism: Takechi Tetsuji and the Contemporary Nô Theater (abstract) in Japan Session 10|year=2005|accessdate=2007-11-02|publisher=Association for Asian Studies|language=English] 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.cite web |url=http://www.vill.yamanakako.yamanashi.jp/bungaku/mishima/nenpu/his52_57.html|title=Yukio Mishima: A Chronological History|last=Yamaguchi|first=Motoi|coauthors=Stephen Comee (translator)|accessdate=2007-11-11|work= [http://www.vill.yamanakako.yamanashi.jp/bungaku/mishima/nenpu/nenpu_e.html www.vill.yamanakako.yamanashi.jp] |language=English] 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. [cite book |last=Kominz|first=Laurence|editor=David Jorner, Keiko McDonald, Kevin J. Wetmore Jr.|title=Modern Japanese Theatre and Performance|year=2006|publisher=Lexington Books|location=Lanham, Maryland|language=English|isbn=0-7391-1152-3|pages=p.205|chapter="Steeplechase": Mishima Yukio's Only Original Modern "Nō" Play] Also at Sankei Hall, Takechi directed Mishima's "Sotoba Komachi", set as an opera by composer Mareo Ishiketa, in 1956. 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.

Entrance into the cinema

In the early 1960s, Takechi turned from the stage to the cinema. Though the mainstream film industry considered Takechi an amateur and an outsider, he would continue to produce ground-breaking films sporadically for the rest of his life. [Sharp. "Tetsuji Takechi: Erotic Nightmares". "…as far as his relationship with the actual film industry went, he was very much an outsider whose radical excursions into celluloid often courted ridicule from those working full-time in the field. Many 'serious' filmmakers regarded his films as hobby work and criticised his lack of stylistic finesse as being amateurish."] Some of the innovations and trends in Japanese erotic cinema which Takechi's films pioneered include big-budgets and releases, literary and artistic aspirations,Weisser, p.67.] fogging,Weisser, p.90.] political themes,cite book |last=Desser|first=David|title=Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema|year=1988|publisher=Indiana University Press|location=Bloomington and Indianapolis|language=English|isbn=0-253-31961-7|pages=p.98-99] and theatrical hardcore.cite web |url=http://www.asahi.com/english/weekend/K2001120100409.html|title=Porn-star label now a badge of honor for actress|accessdate=2007-02-18|last=Koizumi|first=Shinichi|date=2001-12-01|work=Asahi Shimbun|language=English|archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20011203120520/http://www.asahi.com/english/weekend/K2001120100409.html|archivedate=2001-12-03]

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 "pink films". [cite web |url=http://194.21.179.166/cecudine/fe_2002/eng/PinkEiga2002.htm|title=Vital flesh: the mysterious world of Pink Eiga|accessdate=2007-02-19|last=Domenig|first=Roland|year=2002|quote=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 'eroduction films' (erodakushon eiga) or 'three-million-yen-films' (sanbyakuman eiga).|archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20041118094603/http://194.21.179.166/cecudine/fe_2002/eng/PinkEiga2002.htm|archivedate=2004-11-18]

Takechi's first film was "" ("Nihon no yoru: Onna onna onna monogatari", 1963), a sex-documentary. The film focused on the women of Japan's night life and included scenes of a nude noh performance, strippers, and geisha. Produced independently, Shochiku studios distributed the film, and it was released in the U.S. under the title "Women... Oh, Women!", and opened in Los Angeles on September 18, 1964. [cite book |last=Krafsur|first=Richard P.|title=American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures, The; Feature Films 1961-70|year=1976|publisher=R.R. Bowker Company|location=New York & London|isbn=0-8352-0440-5|chapter=WOMEN ... OH, WOMEN! (Japan) F6.5660|page=p.1241] Later that year, Takechi appeared in an acting role in director Kaneto Shindō's "Mother" (1963). [imdb title|id= 0056050|title=Haha]

"Daydream" (1964)

The first Japanese mainstream film with nudity was Seijun Suzuki's "Gate of Flesh", (1964), [Weisser, p.21] and Takechi made the first big-budget, mainstream "pink film", "Daydream", the same year. Like "Women... Oh, Women!", "Daydream" was produced independently but Shochiku studios distributed the film. This time, the studio gave Takechi's film a major publicity campaign. Based on a 1926 short story by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, the film was a black comedy involving a series of sex scenes imagined by an artist under anesthesia in a dentist's office. After being drugged, the artist watches helplessly from the other side of a window as the dentist tortures and performs a series of sexual acts on a female patient. [cite web |url=http://wc03.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:173158|title=Hakujitsumu|accessdate=2007-11-10|last=Pavlides|first=Dan|publisher=Allmovie|language=English]

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.Citation |last=Mosk.|title=Hakujitsumu (Day Dream)|newspaper=Variety|date=1964-09-09] The film was released in the U.S. later the same year,cite book |last=Krafsur|first=Richard P.|title=American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures, The; Feature Films 1961-70|year=1976|publisher=R.R. Bowker Company|location=New York & London|isbn=0-8352-0440-5|chapter=DAY-DREAM (Japan) F6.1040|page=p.232] 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", 1964), was released less than two months after "Daydream". [cite web |url=http://www.jmdb.ne.jp/person/p0335840.htm|title=武智鉄二 (Takechi Tetsuji)|language=Japanese|accessdate=2007-03-15|publisher=Japanese Movie Database] 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.

"Black Snow" (1965)

Takechi's "Daydream" had been considered a national embarrassment by the Japanese government because of its highly-publicized release while the world was focused on the country for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Takechi's third film had suffered heavily from the governmental censorship, yet no legal action had been taken. Takechi's fourth film, the Nikkatsu-produced "Black Snow" (1965), was even more controversial than his previous work. David Desser credits "Black Snow" with bringing a political theme to the "pink film". Politics would be featured in many later films in the "pink" genre, most notably those of Koji Wakamatsu.

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. [cite web |url=http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/blacksnow.shtml|first=Jasper|last=Sharp|title=Black Snow review|accessdate=2007-03-27|work=www.midnighteye.com|language=English] 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.] [cite book |last=Michelson|first=Annette (editor)|title=Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima, 1956-1978|year=1992|publisher=The MIT Press|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|language=English|isbn=0-262-15040-9|pages=p.256|chapter=On Trial for Obscenity|quote=It was his fourth film, "Black Snow" ("Kuroi Yuki", 1964), with its repetitive scenes of sexual intercourse and of a girl's nudity outside the U.S. Yokota Air Base and its appeals to anti-Americanism, that attracted wide-spread attention and generated debate.]

Other critics accused the film of racism and ultra-nationalism.cite web |url=http://es.geocities.com/eiga9/articulos/obscenity.html|title=Obscenity and Article 175 of the Japanese Penal Code: A Short Introduction to Japanese Censorship|accessdate=2007-02-18 |last=da Silva|first=Joaquin|date=2006-10-24|language=English|quote=With a clear anti-American subject matter, KUROI YUKI was accused of racism and ultra-nationalism by several film critics.] 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.cite journal |date=August 29, 1965|title=Japan to Censor Movie Ad Posters|journal=The New York Times] 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.] [cite web |url=http://www.vill.yamanakako.yamanashi.jp/bungaku/mishima/nenpu/his65_70.html|title=1965-70 At the Time of The Sea of Fertility|last=Yamaguchi|first=Motoi|coauthors=Stephen Comee (translator)|accessdate=2007-10-23|work= [http://www.vill.yamanakako.yamanashi.jp/bungaku/mishima/nenpu/nenpu_e.html Mishima Yukio: A Chronological History] |language=English] 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: cquote|The censors are getting tough about "Black Snow". I admit there are many nude scenes in the film, but they are psychological nude scenes symbolizing the defencelessness of the Japanese people in the face of the American invasion. Prompted by the CIA and the U.S. Army they say my film is immoral. This is of course an old story that has been going on for centuries. When they suppressed Kabuki plays during the Edo period, forbidding women to act, because of prostitution, and young actors, because of homosexuality, they said it was to preserve public morals. In fact it was a matter of rank political suppression."

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."]

After "Black Snow"

During the legal battles of the trial, Takechi filmed a "pink film" re-telling of "The Tale of Genji", which, like Tanizaki's work, contains eroticism in the original, though not of a sexually-explicit nature. [Desser, p.98.] On September 17, 1967, Takechi won the "Black Snow" case. He also successfully countersued the government claiming that the accusation of indecency was politically motivated, due to the film's anti-American and anti-capitalist themes. [cite book |last=Tucker|first=Richard|title=Japan: Film Image|pages=p.127|year=1973|publisher=Studio Vista|location=London|isbn=0-28970-308-5]

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. [Weisser, p.445.]

Takechi spent the next decade concentrating on television and writing projects. After his friend, the writer Yukio Mishima committed "hara-kiri" in 1970, Takechi wrote "The Head Of Yukio Mishima", a best-selling, fictionalized version of the incident.Weisser, p.91.] On television, he hosted "The Tetsuji Takechi Hour", which became known for covering sexual subjects. 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". [imdb title|id=0408161|title=Sanka]

Return to film

In 1981, the then 68-year old Takechi decided to return to film with a hardcore remake of his 1964 "Daydream", also titled "Daydream". Noticing actress Kyōko Aizome in one of her nude photo magazine appearances, Takechi chose her to star in the film. Japan's first theatrically released film featuring hardcore sex, Aizome added to the controversy surrounding the film by admitting to having performed actual sexual intercourse on camera. Though, as Japanese law required, sexual organs and pubic hair were fogged on screen, the Asahi Shimbun called it a breakthrough film, and Japan's first hardcore pornographic movie. Unlike Takechi's earlier "Dream of the Red Chamber", the full, uncensored version of "Daydream 1981" did survive, and circulated underground in Japan.Weisser, p.90-91.] This uncensored version of the film was released on video at one time in the Netherlands. [cite web |url=http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/daydream.shtml|first=Jasper|last=Sharp|title=Daydream (1981) review|accessdate=2007-03-27|work=www.midnighteye.com|language=English]

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. [cite web |url=http://wc03.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:249692|title=Courtesan|accessdate=2007-11-10|last=Firsching|first=Robert|publisher=Allmovie|language=English] 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. [cite web |url=http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/oiran.shtml|first=Jasper|last=Sharp|title=Oiran (review)|accessdate=2007-03-28|work=www.midnighteye.com|language=English] 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") which he refused to allow 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 died of pancreatic cancer the following year, on July 26, 1988. [cite web |url=http://art-random.main.jp/samescale/075-2.html|title=Age 75: 武智鉄二 / Tetsuji Takechi|date=2005-12-06|accessdate=2007-11-19|publisher= [http://art-random.main.jp/top.html Art Random] |language=Japanese|quote=(1912.12.10～1988.07.26)... 膵臓ガン...]

Legacy

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.

Filmography

elected writings

Notes

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External links

* [http://www.takechitetsuji.com/top.html Official(?) site on work of Tetsuji Takechi (in Japanese)]

Persondata
NAME=Takechi, Tetsuji
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Kawaguchi, Tetsuji
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Japanese Film director, Theatre director and Author
DATE OF BIRTH=December 10, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH=Osaka, Japan
DATE OF DEATH=July 26, 1988
PLACE OF DEATH=

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