A geeky, bespectacled student radical (Ichiro Araki) working as a cab driver spends his free time making homemade bombs that do little to ease his angst as a sexually frustrated virgin. No matter how hard he tries, he just can’t get laid. He gets tongue-tied around women. Listening to boastful colleagues telling bawdy anecdotes puts racy ideas in his head. One day Swedish sex-bomb Ingrid Jacobsen (Christina Lindberg) flies into Tokyo and gets into our hero’s cab by mistake. Hopelessly horny, he drives her home and promptly beats and rapes the sobbing Swede. Imprisoning Ingrid in his grimy shack, he binds her in chains, snaps some dirty photos and hones his skills with the aid of a sex manual before repeatedly raping her. In case you were wondering, this is a comedy.
Japan has admirably low rates of violent crime and sexual assault. Not that you would guess judging from the so-called Pink movie sexploitation genre where consensual sex seems an alien concept and every man is a raging rape maniac. Why exactly rape figures so prominently in Japanese sex films is the source of much debate: traumatic fall-out from the Second World War? Trite sociopolitical critique of the emasculation of Japanese males? Or simple misogynistic titillation? In making its slapstick rapist hero (there’s a phrase, I never thought I’d use) a bomb-building student radical, Journey to Japan undoubtedly plays up the sociopolitical angle. In the early-to-mid-Seventies economic problems coupled with the collapse of the student movement and liberal activism resulted in hundreds of unemployed young men pouring their frustrations into small-scale acts of guerilla terrorism or else going to the local cinema to check out the latest sex flick. Many sex films from around that time, particularly those produced at Toei studios, equated sexual frustration with political frustration and Journey to Japan does much the same.
It was also around this time that Toei began importing foreign sex stars to perform in their films. French sex goddess Sandra Julien headlined Tokugawa Sex Ban (1972), American porn star Sharon Kelley got it on with Japanese heartthrob Tatsuo Umemiya in Lustful Turkish Bath Diary (1974) and last but not least, Swedish sexploitation icon Christina Lindberg appeared in both this movie and the superior naked swordswoman actioner Sex & Fury (1973). The underlining message of some of these movies seems to be that Japanese men can reassert their masculinity by conquering foreign women. There is an element of xenophobia to Journey to Japan as when our hero first learns Ingrid hails from Sweden, images of Swedish porn flash into his mind. “Porno is good”, he says. “But I don’t like foreigners.” On the other hand, perhaps this notion of Japan asserting its virility over foreigners was intended allegorically. After all that is more or less what happened in the Eighties when the economic boom led them to infiltrate American big business which in turn spawned similarly xenophobic sexploitation allegories such as the Michael Crichton adaptation Rising Sun (1993).
Something of a precursor to Pedro Almodóvar’s similarly controversial Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1991), this film depicts an abusive relationship softening into love. After Ingrid tricks her captor into removing her chains she escapes into the city only to be raped again at a karaoke bar (?!) by a group of Swedish-fluent hippies. Prior to this harrowing sequence they share a mildly intriguing discussion contrasting Ingrid’s swinging European attitude to sex as freedom with their more nihilistic perception of sex as guerilla warfare, inextricably bound with violence. A shell-shocked Ingrid eventually rejoins the hero who shows a little more compassion this time. Or at least tries to. The goofy idiot tries to help her recover from the traumatic after-effects of gang rape by painting funny faces on his bare belly and dancing like a loon. Ingrid finds this about as funny as the viewer is likely to do. Nevertheless, Journey to Japan is lighter in tone than most pinku eiga though that doesn’t make those scenes with Ingrid screaming whilst being brutalised on the floor any more palatable. However, both leads give good performances, the direction by Sadao Nakajima, a filmmaker more comfortable with yakuza fare (he went on to make the ambitious The Don of Japan (1977-78) trilogy starring Toshirô Mifune) is of a high standard and the climactic scene of consensual sex is undeniably steamy, before the film ends on a note somehow simultaneously dour and zany. Only in Japan and only in the Seventies.
Poor old Christina, her characters never seemed to catch a break. Was she the saddest softcore icon? Hardly a movie of hers went by without her crying for some reason.
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