Failed Youth

Tatsumi Kumashiro (神代 辰巳, Kumashiro Tatsumi?) was a Japanese film director best known known for his critically acclaimed, award-winning Roman Porno films, such as Ichijo’s Wet Lust (1972) and The Woman with Red Hair (1979). He was the most highly-acclaimed director of the early Nikkatsu Roman Porno era, with many box-office successes, and films regularly appearing on the yearly Best Ten lists of the mainstream Kinema Junpo and Eiga Geijutsu film journals. Kumashiro has been called, “the most consistently successful director in Japan’s cinematic history,” and Allmovie calls him, "arguably the most important Japanese director to emerge during the 1970s.

In 1971, facing bankruptcy due to a loss of their audience to television, Nikkatsu decided to devote its facilities almost exclusively to theatrical soft-core pornography. Several directors, not wishing to work in pornography, left the studio, opening up vacant positions.

Nikkatsu gave its Roman porno directors a great deal of artistic freedom in their films, as long as they met the official minimum quota of four nude or sex scenes per hour. In this environment, at the age of 44, Kumashiro was given his second chance to direct. Though his later films took full advantage of Nikkatsu’s lenient policies by experimenting with cinematic time and space in an almost surreal manner, his first Roman porno, Wet Lips (Nureta Kuchibiru) (1972), was fairly simplistic. However, this story of a prostitute and her lover on the run after killing her pimp proved to be a major critical and box-office success, and established Kumashiro’s directorial career. Wet Lips was also the first of Kumashiro’s many films to use the word “Wet” (nureta) in the title.

His next film, Ichijo’s Wet Lust (1972) was another hit with the critics and the public. Japan’s most famous sex performer of the time, Sayuri Ichijō, played the title role for which she won the important Kinema Jumpo prize for best actress.