Anyone even moderately familiar with the Nikkatsu Roman porno series and pinku-eiga genre have surely come across something containing the distinguished Naomi Tani, aka. "The Queen of Pink". This Japanese icon's prolific career in S&M-themed softcore 'Jap-sploitation' throughout the 60s and 70s makes her one of the top most recognizable names in this category of sleazy, degenerate cinema...
Tani started off at 18 - like most good, smut-destined chicks do - and moved to Tokyo to do some miscellaneous modeling which opened the door to the booming violent Japanese sex film market that was getting big around the mid-60s (I like to credit the great Kōji Wakamatsu for that). She had an exceptionally fruitful stint in the indie circuit of 'violent pink' and S&M flicks - pumping out around 200 films between '67 and '74 before she reluctantly joined on with Nikkatsu studio's growing involvement in the genre that was intent of taking the 'pink film' into bigger budget territory. Tani was against Nikkatsu at the start cuz they only threw her in tiny little roles while the poor girl just wanted that heavy involvement in bondage, beatings and rape. Can't blame a girl for that.
Then, the day finally came when she starred in the 1974 Roman porno classic "Flower & Snake" - based on the SM novel by fetish writer, Oniroku Dan. So, now that Nikkatsu had her aboard and they were really into adapting Dan's sleazy novels into softcore sleaze-films, Tani once again starting turning out a plethora of female-debasing, rape and bondage-fueled erotica, better than ever. This was when the most notable of Tani's involvement in the Roman porno series started making Nikkatsu a shit-ton of a money and the violent porn-craving Japanese public couldn't get enough. Films like "Cruelty: Black Rose Torture" (1975), "Wife to Be Sacrificed" (1974), "Fairy in a Cage" (1977) and her classic, final film, "Rope & Skin" (1978), are a few examples of some of her more well-known pinku roles. Some were more 'plot heavy' than others, some were "rougher" than others, but they all feature the weeping, large-breasted "Queen of Pink" doing what she did best: being ruthlessly dominated and sexually brutalized.
So after "Rope & Skin", Tani suddenly dropped out of the Roman porno limelight with a surprisingly abrupt retirement. Apparently, quitting the pinku 'scene' was her way of preserving her tenuous beauty and avoiding "jumping the shark", as they say. You gotta respect that kind of piety toward her fans and her unwillingness to 'disappoint' them, I guess, by growing old and haggard on screen. Also, you have to love Tani's dedication to S&M and the way she really threw herself into her work; taking all different kinds of abuse and clearly loving it, rarely doing anything "light" even when she had the option. Getting whipped all over her naked body and tied up so tight and frequently that it's almost inconceivable that a pair of tits could turn any more purple! But they DID, which just goes to show that Naomi Tani was a real trooper when it comes to the bountiful pinku-eiga/Nikkatsu Roman porno genre. Definitely one of the elite when it comes to whips 'n' chains - so much so that she was even featured in a 1968 issue of Playboy magazine.
Noami Tani is certainly a figure of high significance in the realm of the "extreme" underground-exploitation cinema - in the way Christina Lindberg, Laura Cannon, and Camille Keaton also stand out when the topic of prominent 'exploit' actresses of that era of sleaze comes up. At least, when I'm around. So if the 'rough' side of Jap-sleaze suits your tastes, hunt down a few of her titles and enjoy an acting career based on delightful depictions of rape and torture.
-Gorepump
