Rokurō Mochizuki

is a Japanese film director who has worked in pink film, adult videos and mainstream cinema. He won the award for Best Director at the 19th Yokohama Film Festival for Onibi and A Yakuza in Love.

Life and career Early career - Pink film Mochizuki was born in 1957 in the Shinjuku area of Tokyo. He attended Keio University in Tokyo but dropped out in his freshman year. After a round of bad-paying jobs, he eventually enrolled to study film at Tokyo's Image Forum. After graduating in the early 1980s, Mochizuki briefly worked at the Nikkatsu studio which was exclusively producing its Roman porno line of films at that time. Nikkatsu's fortunes were in decline, however, and Mochizuki was soon out of work. Mochizuki had been encouraged to write scripts by one of his teachers at Image Forum and in 1983, one of his screenplays was made into the pink film Virgin Rope Doll by Genji Nakamura for his Yū Pro company.

He continued working with Nakamura as a screenwriter and assistant director, including writing two gay-themed pink films, Beautiful Mystery (a parody of Yukio Mishima's right-wing activities ) and Our Season (a.k.a. Male Season) starring Tōru Nakane. He made his debut as a director in 1985 with two pink films for Million Film, Real Performance Video: To Strip and Miss Masturbation: My Steamy Private Life. He also directed his first film for Nikkatsu in 1986, the melodramatic pink film Love Slave Doll: Make Me Come.

Adult videos (AV) However, the pink film industry was in decline due to the rise of the adult video (AV) and Mochizuki decided to join the AV market, starting up his own production company, E-Staff Union . a company founded in 1986 as the adult video arm of Japan Home Video. He started the "Flashback" series for Alice Japan in August 1987 and had produced Volume 30 in the series by December 1990 including one with the 1980s AV Idol Nao Saejima. In April 1990, he directed another early AV Idol, Yumika Hayashi, in the Alice Japan video The Contrary Soap Heaven 5 and he remained very active with Alice Japan through 1991.

Mainstream film Mochizuki made his mainstream directorial debut in 1991 with the autobiographical Skinless Night produced by his own company E-Staff Union. The work revolves about a filmmaker from a background in pink film and now making AVs who is inspired by the discovery of an early student film of his to try to make an independent movie. The film, which showed more of the tedium of making adult videos than the glamor, was well received at festivals and the video distribution rights were picked up by Japan Home Video, the parent company of Alice Japan. With a new reputation as a mainstream director, Mochizuki filmed The Wicked Reporter for the Daiei studio in 1993. The commercial success of the film about a middle-aged boozing and gambling newspaperman (played by Eiji Okuda) led to two sequels in 1994 and 1996.

Yakuza films In the last half of the 1990s, Mochizuki directed a series of yakuza movies that are considered his best work. What critics consider his best film appeared in 1997, Onibi or The Fire Within, another study of an aging yakuza trying to go straight. He also returned to his erotic film roots with his 2000 movie, Currency and Blonde, about a Japanese university lecturer and his sadomasochistic affair with his American lover. A more ambitious project was the 2004 mainstream film Kamachi, about a young poet and painter who died accidentally at the age of seventeen. His treatment, with hip-hop singer Shinya Taniuchi, who played the titular character, and actress Jun Fubuki, has been criticized as being superficial and romanticized.

Later career Mochizuki's 2005 film for the Toei Company studio, Wet Red Thread concerned two former prostitutes played by Saki Takaoka and Rei Yoshii looking to start a new life.

Filmography - Director Based on: (Jan. 1985) - pink film (Aug. 1985) - pink film (June 1986) - pink film (Apr. 1991) (July 1993) (Nov. 1994) (July 1995) (August 1995) (February 1996) (June 1996) (Apr. 1997) (Sept. 1997) (Feb. 1998) (Oct. 1999) (Jan. 2000) (Aug. 2000) - pink film (Mar. 2004) (Aug. 2005) (May 2008)