The Naked Director
全裸監督
Discussed in the Journal
JournalWhy Japan Counts Sexlessness, and What the Count HidesStoryline
The whole story, ending included.
The rise of AV director Toru Muranishi in 1980s Japan — an exuberant, uneasy portrait of an industry built on women's bodies.
The series is a semi-fictional account of the adult-video director Toru Muranishi, mixing fact and invention. Sapporo, 1980. Muranishi is failing as a door-to-door salesman of English-language encyclopedias until a senior colleague shows him how to sell. He becomes the company's best salesman just as it collapses, and comes home to find his wife with another man; she tells him he never satisfied her and leaves with the children. In a bar he helps a small-time hustler, Toshi Arai, who sells secret recordings of couples in love hotels. Muranishi turns his salesmanship to pornographic magazines, builds a chain of bookshops across Hokkaido and, with a publisher, Kenji Kawada, starts printing uncensored magazines of his own. Bribes keep the local police quiet until a Tokyo detective, Takei, arrests him.
When he comes out, video recorders are everywhere. Muranishi, Toshi and Kawada found Sapphire Pictures in Shinjuku. Ikezawa, head of the biggest studio, has them blacklisted and forms an industry ethics body to shut them out. Then Megumi Sahara, a student raised by a strict mother, comes to them wanting to perform. Muranishi casts himself opposite her and names her Kaoru Kuroki. Her mother fights the release, and a shoot in Hawaii ends with Muranishi in an American jail. At home Kuroki goes on television and talks frankly about sex, and her videos become hits. Toshi, raising bail, secretly gives the master of their first film to the yakuza boss Furuya; the uncensored copies cost the actress Naoko her new job, and Toshi, now using drugs, is cast out. In the crackdown at the end of the Showa era, Ikezawa and Toshi are arrested, and Ikezawa kills himself in custody. The first season ends with Sapphire on top.
The second season opens in 1990. Muranishi breaks with Kawada, founds Diamond Visual and pours money into a satellite channel, turning from Kuroki to a shy newcomer, Miyuki Chiba, whom he renames Mariko Nogi. When the bubble bursts he borrows from Furuya, secretly makes uncensored tapes and calls his staff mere product, and everyone walks out. Kuroki, unable to reach him, tries to take her own life and survives. Toshi kills Furuya and is killed by one of Furuya's men; Takei is arrested for taking bribes. Years later Kuroki is studying art in Italy, Kawada is making videos again with the old crew, and Muranishi, deep in debt, lives with Nogi and their child. Held down by police during an unlicensed shoot in Shibuya, he shouts at the camera that anyone who wants to die should look down, because he is there.
Starring
Takayuki Yamadaas Toru Muranishi
A salesman ruined at home and at work who becomes the most notorious director of Japan's adult-video boom, and then loses everything.
Toru Muranishi’s story
Muranishi is a failing encyclopedia salesman in Sapporo who learns to sell just as his company folds and his wife leaves him. He turns his pitch to pornography, from magazines and bookshops to prison and on to videos made in defiance of Ikezawa's cartel, casts himself opposite Kaoru Kuroki and ends the first season on top. Then he pours money into a satellite channel and turns from Kuroki to Nogi. When the bubble bursts he borrows from Furuya, secretly makes uncensored tapes and calls his people mere product; they walk out, and Kawada and Toshi cut him off. Years later, in debt and living with Nogi and their child, he is held down by police at an unlicensed shoot in Shibuya, shouting at the camera that anyone who wants to die should look down, because he is there.
Misato Moritaas Megumi Sahara / Kaoru Kuroki
A student raised by a strict mother who defies her to perform for Muranishi and becomes a star who speaks openly about sex on television.
Megumi Sahara / Kaoru Kuroki’s story
Megumi grows up under a strict mother and learns that she was born of her mother's affair with a married man. She comes to Sapphire, where Muranishi casts himself opposite her and names her Kaoru Kuroki. After her mother gets the video pulled, she hands back her fee to fund the Hawaii shoot, then, with Muranishi jailed there, goes on television as a working actress, breaks with her mother and helps raise his bail. Reading his script for the satellite channel's first film, she feels he has moved on from her and refuses the part, which goes to Nogi. Once everyone else has left him she comes back to urge him on; he does not respond, and she tries to take her own life. She survives, goes home to her mother, and years later is studying art in Italy.
Shinnosuke Mitsushimaas Toshi Arai
The small-time hustler who draws Muranishi into porn and stays his partner until a deal with the yakuza takes him under.
Toshi Arai’s story
Toshi is selling secret recordings of couples in love hotels when Muranishi helps him out in a Sapporo bar, and the two stay partners from the magazines to Sapphire Pictures. With Muranishi jailed in Hawaii, Toshi secretly hands the master of their first film to the yakuza boss Furuya and passes the money off as a loan for the bail. When the uncensored copies cost Naoko her job, he begs Furuya to stop, turns to drugs and is thrown out, and after the Showa-era crackdown he comes out of prison into Furuya's gang. In the second season he flees an attack on Furuya with a hostess, Sayaka, and has to buy his life back. Ruined again, he lures Muranishi out to take revenge, relents when Muranishi pleads, and kills Furuya himself. Moments later one of Furuya's men kills him.
Tetsuji Tamayamaas Kenji Kawada
A publisher who joins Muranishi in the magazine years and becomes the producer who keeps the company running, until he can follow him no further.
Yuri Tsunematsuas Miyuki Chiba / Mariko Nogi
A former cosmetics saleswoman drawn into the business in the second season, renamed by Muranishi and still with him at the end.
Ryo Ishibashias Eigo Ikezawa
Head of the largest adult-video company, who uses the police and self-regulation to keep Muranishi out of the market.
Why it matters
The Naked Director is a comic, propulsive story about a man who treats every rule as an insult, set in an industry built on women's bodies, and that tension is the issue it raises. It shows the censorship regime as hypocritical, the police as bought and the big studios as a cartel, and it lets Muranishi's rebellion feel like liberation. It also shows women paying for his films with their jobs, their families and very nearly their lives. Critics in Japan objected that it made a hero of him, and that it portrayed Kaoru Kuroki under her real stage name without contacting her, long after she had left public life. Watching it means holding two things at once: the energy of a man breaking open a closed world, and the question of who was left to live with what he broke.