Satoru Kobayashi

(August 1, 1930 – November 15, 2001) was a Japanese film director most famous for directing the first pink film, the type of softcore pornographic films that became the most prolific film genre in Japan during the 1960s and 1970s. Japanese sources claim that Kobayashi directed over 400 pink films between 1960 and 1990, making him possibly the most prolific Japanese film director.

Life and career

Early life Satoru Kobayashi was born in Nagano Prefecture on August 1, 1930. In an interview with the Director's Guild, Kobayashi claimed that it was this first-hand experience with torture that gave him his interest and adeptness with the sado-masochistic genre of pink film in which he often worked.

Kobayashi left Nagano for Tokyo, where he studied theater. He became involved with butoh, worked as a set designer, and wrote theatrical criticism while in university. For Shintoho Kobayashi made ten more films with such exploitable titles as Dangerous Temptation, Three Women Burglars and Phantom Detective: Terrifying Alien (all 1960). After a year out of the director's chair, Kobayashi wrote and directed the independent sex-film Flesh Market (1962). When the film was cleared for release the next year, seven scenes had been cut. Flesh Market was an independent and underground film, and played only in "Adult" theaters. Nevertheless, perhaps because of the controversy surrounding the release of the film, Flesh Market was a box-office success. – and (1963). For Ōkura Eiga (later OP Eiga), the new company of Mitsugu Ōkura, the former president of Shintoho, Kobayashi filmed The Mysterious Pearl of the Ama, a revival of the Michiko Maeda-era pearl-diver films.

Kobayashi made a major miscalculation by attempting to deal with a socially significant theme in (1966). According to advertising, the film purported to be "The first film dealing with the modern illness!" However, as the Weissers point out in their Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films, the subject of impotence was a poor choice for a pink film. After this box-office failure, Kobayashi quickly moved back to more standard pink film subject-matter.

Later career Kobayashi's output did not slow in later years. He directed Roman Porno Queen Junko Miyashita in her film debut in I Lost Control of Myself Like This (1971). From 1972 until 1983 he made pink films for the Shochiku subsidiary, Tōkatsu. L'ambition dans le miroir (1972), his first film for the studio, was one of Kobayashi's largest productions. Kobayashi also directed prominent post-Kimiko Matsuzaka era big-bust performer Shinobu Hosokawa in two films, (1996) and (1997). He produced and directed prominent AV idol Nao Saejima in her theatrical release, (1995).

When Kobayashi's mentor, Teruo Ishii, planned his 1999 remake of Nobuo Nakagawa's Jigoku (1960), Kobayashi served as producer. Together with Ishii, Kobayashi was able to persuade Michiko Maeda, who had been banned from Japanese cinema 42 years before, to make her come-back appearance in the film. In 2000, Kobayashi formed his own production company, and continued directing films until the year of his death.

Besides having a major impact on Japanese domestic cinema by introducing the pink film genre, the number of Kobayashi's feature films– over 400– makes him possibly the most prolific film director in Japan's cinematic history.