| --Friday, August 22, 2008--
Japanese porn exporters put their money where the mosaic is
 While stateside audiences are familiar with Asian-American porn, their experience with porn shot in Japan might be limited to tentacles, underpants, and frogs.
And with all those slimy distractions, viewers might not notice the mosaic pixelation of the performers' parts.
"You can't show penetration of female genitalia in Japan," said Steve Scott, owner of Third World Media, a company that sells porn shot in Japan (and countries like Thailand and Brazil) to United Staes customers, mosaic-free.
"The mosaic is like a psychological barrier," Scott said. Scott's company is based in Chatsworth but the New York native is fluent in Japanese and shot movies in Japan for several years. "Even if we are shooting without anything covering that area, the performer knows that her genitalia will be obscured for Japanese audiences."
 Because most movies shot in Japan are filmed with the expectation of a mosaic, the cinematic style is also different, Scott said.
"They shoot softer shots from a greater distance," he said, "because a close-up would not make sense if the image was just going to be mosaiced anyway."
Do non-mosaiced movies ever get back to Japan to shame the performers?
"Yes," Scott said, "and the blacklist is pretty fast. If word gets back to performers and agents that a filmmaker is selling non-mosaiced masters over the Internet, for example, people tend not to work with him again."
 So the Japanese taboo is penetration, and for the privilege of showing it close-up, American-style, without pixelation requires a rate increase. It just can't be sold in Japan. In fact, Japanese performers tend to make a great deal more money than their American counterparts.
"For a top-tier performer," Scott said, "they can make up to $400,000 for an 8-picture deal." Scott said that Japan's big stars tend to appear in "single girl" pictures, in which she appears in every scene. "The bigger stars can make between $20,000 and $50,000 per movie."
But it's more expensive to live in Japan, what with the overhead involved in making watermelons square.
Could American porn stars go to Japan and cash in, like aging NBA players go to Italy?
"Japanese audiences tend to like Japanese performers," Scott said.
 Third World Media does not use the top tier stars, especially since the lack of mosaic is a detractor.
"It's not as if [the top-tier stars] don't think they're doing porn since the mosaic is there," he said, "but it is an image thing."
I find this fascinating, but only because there would be no porn if there weren't any taboos, and every culture has its own.
The company also shoots bar girls in Thailand and trannies in Brazil.
"Do Brazilian trannies have any mosaic restrictions?" I asked.
"No, they want to be superstars, so they show everything," Scott said.
 Nebulous laws about what we can and cannot show on the front page of websites have driven me to cover what the Empire of Japan might obscure with a mosaic with a yellow Hummer 2. I feel it is more patriotic.
 The images above are from (wait for it) Hello Titty 3
Previously: Stephen King's The Soaping; Do they know it's Christmas?
See also: Third World MediaLabels: asian, interviews, japan, third world media
posted by Gram the Man
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--Tuesday, August 19, 2008--
Daikichi Amano: One Froggy Evening
 or: Froggy Went a' Courtin' in Your Vagina
Here in George W. Bush's Judaeo-Christian America, we think of frogs as the stars of Number Two of the ten plagues that befell Pharaoh, the subject of a Mark Twain story, and the best shorthand imaginable for the feeling one is losing one's mind.
But Japanese pornographer Daikichi Amano uses them as low-cost scene partners in his new flick, The Frog Crawling on the Stomach Is Torn And Smiles.
Amano is not the first pornographer to use images of performers interacting with non-human carbon-based life forms; he has just made it very popular. His monthly column in Bizarre Magazine is as articulate and humorous as it is unapologetically ghastly. This is what Edward Gorey would be doing if he liked girls.
"Do you have a problem touching frogs?" Amano asked prospective actresses for the movie, produced by the company Genki-Genki. "Could you squeeze and crush one with your bare hands? Would you be prepared to insert one inside your body? How about biting into a frog while it’s still alive?"
After working as a graphic designer in San Diego, Amano only started making porn upon his return to Japan. He had answered a job posting while still in the states and was surprised on his arrival to find that the job was with an adult company. When he began making his own films, he was fond of casting eels, snakes, and the loach opposite quivering hentai actresses.
Amano, whose sense of humor some may describe as, oh, evil, has recently begun working with frogs.
 "I’m going to tell you something you probably didn’t know about frogs," he said. "When they cry they sound like cats. It’s absolutely true. As soon as Ms Haruhi arrived on set, she heard the frogs crying. 'Do you have a cat in here?' she asked. 'Yes,' I said, 'several.' I didn't want to startle her."
And, though Playboy Bunnies don't insert peacocks into themselves, I was interested to note during a recent trip to the Playboy Mansion that peacocks sound like cats, too.
Amano doesn't believe that Japanese performers are the only ones capable of realizing his vision. But it is generally the case that Japanese audiences prefer to see Japanese performers, Amano's producer told me.
Amano's latest project is spare in that, instead of using several species of reptile and amphibian, he is restricting on-camera parts to humans and cow frogs. But there will be elaborate costumes.
"Although the costumes I had designed for my actors were inspired by the Cirque Du Soleil," Amano said, "the idea for the film itself came from 'Alice In Wonderland'. In my version of the story Alice gets lost in a supernatural world and, instead of a toadstool, consumes a feast of frog flesh fed to her by two mysterious guards who look a bit like Tweedledum and Tweedledee."
And don't tell me Lewis Carroll wasn't a porn fan.
But why food? Could it be that Japan's food culture makes Japanese performers more comfortable putting raw food in their mouths or other places? This was suggested to me by Amano's producer. I'm not sure about this, because I can count on one hand the times I've inserted steak, potato salad, and Jagermeister bottles into anything other than my mouth, and I love all those things.
 A porn set anywhere else in the world might be awash in several stripes of bodily fluid, Diet Coke, and crystal meth when the cameras stop rolling, but Amano has to deal with frog remains.
"As you can imagine, every inch of the studio was covered in amphibian blood and guts," he said. "Quite a few of the frogs were still alive but in order to dispose of the bodies they needed to be dead. I split the crew up into pairs and we systematically exterminated them. It was like a production line. One person held the limbs of a frog, the other smashed it between the eyes with a hammer. There was no joy in it."
Describing the appeal of this material is tricky. Anyone who watches any kind of porn knows that it often defies description. "Well of course I like it," they'll say. "It's porn." And when faced with the pornography of another country, like the Germans' love of poo, the Swedes' love of Abba, or the Brazilian tranny-industrial complex, people wag their fingers.
But Daikichi's style might have something to do with cruelty which, if you've ever watched a Japanese game show, you'll know is as popular there as shows about angels and police are here.
"I loathe frogs," Amano said. "I can’t even look at them, let alone touch them. (But) I hired an all-female crew for this shoot. And as they were engaged in killing the frogs, they shrieked in horror. Just the look on their faces told me they were clearly not enjoying themselves. But, of course, I was having a ball."
See a gallery here (and, for some reason I feel compelled to tell you, aside from every other thing on this site, that it is NSFW).
Previously: What I learned from hentai; Naked nurse with statue of pig; Mandy Morbid: Cthulhu is my co-pilot; What, no tentacles?
See also: Send In the Eels: A Genki Diary (fleshbot), Genki-GenkiLabels: animals, art, daikichi amano, directors, genki, hentai, japan, tentacles
posted by Gram the Man
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--Tuesday, May 20, 2008--
Sabrina Deep to (be a bukkake) surface in 12 cities
 "Sex should be free," said Sabrina Deep, who last year hosted, both in her home and in her vagina, a 77-man gangbang.
This summer Deep will take her philosophy around the world, stopping in 12 cities to be the focal point of bukkakes from London to Berlin to Rome to Vancouver, culminating in a 110-man Tokyo bukkake on September 11, her 30th birthday.
Japan was the country that invented the bukkake, so September 11 will be a Canterbury pilgrimage of sorts with Deep as the Wife of Cum Bath.
"I take it like I'm going on little holidays," Deep said. "Sexually there is probably more
roughness in cities like Berlin and London, more
"Can-I-date-you-after-we've-finished-with-this" in Italy, more I'm-glad-I-have-unloaded-my-balls" in cities like Toronto and Vancouver. I'm not sure about the United States and Japan. I'll let you know."
"I already know what it's like in the United States," I said. "I own this place. At my house it's like Bukkakalypse Now."
Deep says that the events have all been set up by fans who live in those cities, but Tokyo's bukkake session will be more regimented, adhering to that country's sacred bukkake traditions.
 "I'll have to stick to the rigid rules of classic Japanese bukkake," she said. "No fucking, collected come, final drinking. I believe that a Japanese lady will be the official collector during the process."
Bukkakador attendance is often limited, and several cities are already booked. Participation is free to healthy men who can prove they are over 18.
Deep's World Bukkake Tour begins Monday in Toronto. The first currently available day is June 12 in Rome. The two US dates, in New York and Columbus, OH, are in August, in case you're interested. I'd say, "What are you waiting for? Sign up now!" but that would be pandering.
Previously: Sabrina Deep: Gangbang across the water
See also: World Bukkake TourLabels: bukkake, canada, england, events, germany, japan, sabrina deep, WGL
posted by Gram the Man
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--Tuesday, February 19, 2008--
A certain kind of evil
 The best superheroes drop clues about their abilities with their outfits. Spider-Man looks like a spider, Batman emits little screams to navigate in the dark, and Apache Chief cries when you litter. But what does this woman do?
It seems her ensemble is tailored to combat a specific kind of foe, but what is it?
This image comes from a site called Bizarre Japan, which is redundant.
Benny Profane writes:
That is Kekko Kamen, created by the famous manga artist Go Nagai (Creator of DevilMan and pretty much every giant robot from the 70's.) Kekko Kamen's main superpower is grinding her crotch into her enemy's faces until they are subdued.
Previously: Japanese boob size and the economy; What I learned from hentai
See also: Bizarre JapanLabels: asian, geekery, japan, websites
posted by Gram the Man
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--Wednesday, January 23, 2008--
What I learned from hentai (first in a series)
 - Rape is OK if the rapist is a goblin.
- Note to self: Get more tentacles.
- When tentacles are unavailable, use snakes.
- Explain everything as it is happening, then explain it again. ("You are fucking my holes. That went in my holes.")
Read a mini-review of The Night When Evil Falls (volume 1) here.
Previously: Meet Maria Ozawa
See also: Adult Source MediaLabels: hentai, japan, minireview, tentacles
posted by Gram the Man
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While GramPonante.com is written for a tenth-grade reading level (in some countries), you must be 18 years or older to visit this site. Sorry.
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