I heard more than once that the promoters of the Nawaya Toubaku winter bondage event in Tokyo on Jan. 29-30 were concerned that the event hadn't had enough advance PR. Apparently, the idea of turning it into an international event had come relatively late in the process. They needn't have worried. The club in Shibuya was packed. In fact, I'd hate to see the place any more crowded than it was.
Full disclosure: I was out of town on the first day of the event but was there on the second day.
There were photographers and video crews all over. Video people came from London and France (I believe). I pretty much gave up trying to get a better location for snapping pics. Fortunately, thanks to Rida, I have been able to secure a lot of photos so I'm putting up three galleries; one featuring Hajime Kinoko performing his trademarked neo kinbaku, Naka Akira performing traditional kinbaku, and Shishiwaka doing something in between.
For more detailed reports, I recommend visiting these blogs:
Komukai Minako (小向美奈子), star of Flower and Snake 3 (花と蛇3), is suspected of purchasing stimulant drugs and Tokyo police have obtained a warrant for her arrest.
This isn't the first time the 25-year-old entertainer has run afoul of Japanese drug laws. She received an 18-month prison sentence in 2009 for the same offense but her sentence was suspended for three years. As such, Ms. Komukai was on probation at the time the new charges were filed.
I am reliably informed that the morning news shows were all over the story and that Dan Oniroku even appeared in an interview opining on the matter.
I've looked around but there doesn't appear to be any new footage available on the interwebz, just warmed-over stuff from Ms. Komukai's previous run-in with the law.
Ms. Komukai appears to be currently incomunicado. Reports say her whereabouts are unknown.
In this report it says that Ms. Komukai stands accused of purchasing the drugs from a group of Iranians in the summer of 2010 and that her name was on a "customer list" confiscated from the alleged drug dealers. How in the world her name would appear on such a list is beyond me. We'll just have to wait to find out the details. But first the cops have to find her.
Komukai Minako began her career as a gravure/bikini model and then moved on to the strip theater circuit and was eventually chosen for the lead role in Flower and Snake 3, the most recent film inspired by the Dan Oniroku novel. The movie was recently released on DVD and Blu-ray in Japan. She has also made television appearances and is supposed to have a new book coming out.
I don't know about the book but it now seems that her next television appearance will be of the variety where they mosaic out the prisoner's handcuffs.
Say it isn't so!
UPDATES:
02/26 Well, she's back. Komukai Minako returned to Tokyo Friday on a Japan Airlines flight from Manila and was promptly arrested and taken into custody by Japanese police at Narita Airport. Talk about a perp walk! The media were out in force, even grabbing lipstick-cam footage of Komukai during the flight back as well as her arrival at the airport in Manila. Media are reporting that Komukai is denying the charges. As far as I know right now, the evidence against her consists of her name on some Iranian alleged drug dealer's cell phone and perhaps the testimony of an Iranian sleazeball. Here's a report in English.
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02/12 Komukai has been tracked down by a TV news crew in the Makati district of Manila. She was accompanied by an unidentified man who appeared to be in his late twenties. She did not answer questions and eventually got into a cab and took off. Some media are describing Komukai as a "fugitive". The Philippine Immigration Bureau has said that Komukai extended her stay in the country on Feb. 8 and that the extension is valid until March 21.
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02/13 Media are reporting that Komukai canceled her return flight to Japan. She has been spotted at an ATM in an area of luxury hotels in Manila.
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02/11 Still believed to be in the Philippines. Entered January 21. No record of leaving. Apparently, a Japanese national can enter the Philippines without a visa and stay for 21 days. However, the visa can be extended relatively easily. Japanese media are canvassing Manila -- places such as Japanese restaurants. Media report that Komukai has been spotted with a group of men presumed to be Japanese.
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The news is reporting that Komukai traveled to the Philippines in January. Her manager said the trip had been scheduled prior to any knowledge of the most recent revelations. He also said that Komukai had gained a lot of weight in 2010 and he had warned her that it could adversely affect her career.
As far as is known right now, Komukai is still somewhere in the Philippines.
Commentators and legal experts are speculating concerning the punishment Komukai might face if found guilty of the new charges. If found guilty, sentencing might be harsher due to the fact she was on probation for the earlier drugs offense. In addition, she might have to serve the full 18-month suspended sentence from 2009.
Another report said that one of the arrested Iranians had fingered Komukai as a customer.
The Nawaya Toubaku international bondage event will be held in Shibuya, Tokyo on January 29-30 followed by a week-long kinbaku workshop from February 1-7.
The event is being organized by young rope artist Hajime Kinoko. Rida and I had the opportunity to conduct a video interview with Kinoko-san awhile ago to get the low-down on the event. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Rida, the video has complete English subtitles. You might want to take a trip over to her blog to thank her for this. Believe me, this is a lot of work!
On January 30th, after the event, there will be an all-night party at the club Sleeping Beauty also in Shibuya.
I just found out that this isn't the first Toubaku. My previous report can be found here. The difference this time is that this will be an international event. I can't believe that was almost a year ago.
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A shorter YouTube version of the video has been posted here.
Mabuki Junko's Lady Teacher Rope Hell is a frustrating mixed bag of missed opportunities, with as much innovation as tedium stirred into the usual captured-for-sex, damsel-in-distress tale.
By 1981, Junko was, by all accounts, suffering from health problems maybe or maybe not related to the physical and other stresses she was placed under by the relentless wheel of the SM grindhouse. Shortly afterwards, she retired from the Roman-Porno world for good, although she would make infrequent appearances in indie pink films and even mainstream TV drama. Watching carefully, it's quite apparent what pain and real stress Miss Mabuki is under during the making of this film; there's a genuine sense of pathos and suffering that goes just a little beyond acting.
In 1985 a company called U-Production put out a series of videos titled The Sekkan (ザ折檻). Sekkan can be translated as torture or chastisement.
As in English, there are several words with similar meanings to torture in Japanese, with the same subtle differences. Goumon and seme, for example: torture and torment.
It is fitting that the first in this series featured "the king of sm" himself, Shima Shikou. Although it was quite early, this wasn't the first video Shima appeared in and he is still active today. Shima Shikou has been around for a very long time.
The videos were distributed by film studio Nikkatsu as part of their SM Best Collection series.
It is generally regarded that 1980 was the beginning of the end for Nikkatsu and the Roman-Porno series. The proliferation of VHS video, and some staggeringly stupid management decisions would lead to the studio's closure some eight years later.
Closer to home, there was the retirement of Tani Naomi. Now Naomi was the symbol, the icon of Nikkatsu SM porn; what the Bell UH-1 was to the Vietnam War or the Saturn-5 to the Space Age, or the AK-47 to Revolutionary Communism. This was an age when exploitation cinema had the most astonishing, exotically beautiful women: Soledad Miranda, Edwige Fenech -- and Naomi was Queen of them all. How do you replace an icon like that?
Just in time for Christmas, Flower and Snake 3 (Hana to Hebi 花と蛇3) will be hitting the video stores on December 3. The movie starring bikini model turned stripper Komukai Minako will be released on DVD and Blu-ray and there also appears to be some sort of special edition.
Blogging has been light lately here at the detective's ramshackle office. Your patience is appreciated.
I'm involved in a number of projects one of which is co-writing a script for a feature film. Now, this is not my original script idea. That will be written after this one. I've never co-written anything before and this is in the early stages but so far it's going along pretty well. I've got a talented and imaginative co-writer so it will be interesting to see where this goes.
In addition, I've set up a website and have a few products I'm interested in flogging. The one that interests me the most is noren. I just love these things. But it dawned on me that I've never once seen a friggin' kinbaku noren. So I made my own.
Now, this one is kind of cool but I've got some better ideas. Also, the problem is, unless you really get into mass production, the price of one of these things is a bitch. The problem is the set-up costs for printing. Plus, the more middlemen you deal with, the higher the price goes. To buy this noren, for example, would cost 25,000 yen. Ouch.
I have an idea how to get the price down and keep the quality high and make it possible to have custom-made noren. Basically, I'm planning on keeping around a few generic noren but I also want to make available noren that you can have made to your specifications. If my plan works, great. If not, it's back to the drawing board.
The Sekkan post will be coming soon. Thing is, this consists of four movies in all and it's a bit daunting. But I'm working on it.
After The Sekkan, I've got a post planned all about Dan Oniroku. Speaking of Dan, quite awhile ago I put out a call to the gaijin community for well wishes to Dan-sensei due to the fact that he is experiencing formidable health issues. The response was gratifying and I got a lot of really nice wishes from people all over the world.
Giving credit where credit is due, I got a lot of responses from folks at Esinem and Harper's ForumBondage. After that, quite a few people came through as a result of a post on the Kinbaku Group on FetLife. Thanks to all those who sent their well wishes to Dan-sensei.
Thanks to rida and another individual who values his anonymity, everything was translated to Japanese. Thanks rida and Anonymous Person!
I never did get the artwork I had originally planned so I put it together a little differently and I think it looks nice. I should be getting it to Dan-sensei shortly and after I do I'll post a picture of it here and probably on ForumBondage as well.
Before comic books, there were the salacious so-called detective magazines and men's adventure magazines. These were the original, the true pulp fiction masterpieces, before Tarantino came along. On the outside they flashed slick, provocative covers. On the inside, lurid stories, some by now-famous authors, were cranked out on cheap paper.
The pulp phenomenon in the US spanned the 1920s to the 1950s. The ascension of television is believed to have caused the decline in the popularity of the pulps.
I'm not exactly sure why, but I'd always just assumed that finding Japanese SM magazines from the Golden Age would be a difficult, if not impossible, undertaking. So I never bothered.
Then I found out that Zetsu had got his hands on several of these collector's items during his recent trip to Tokyo. He and Master "K" had been taken to some shops by Urato Hiroshi, the fellow who used to rig actresses for Nikkatsu bondage flicks.
Suddenly, I realized it was time for another SM Safari.
