Tōru Muranishi

is an innovative and controversial director of Japanese adult videos (AV). Known in Japan as the "Emperor of Porn", He was called "the dirtiest of the industry’s dirty old men" in a 1992 Tokyo Journal article by Kjell Fornander.

Life and career Toru Muranishi was born in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. After graduating high school, Muranishi moved to Tokyo where he sold encyclopedias. He subsequently became involved in book publishing and the entertainment industry.

Crystal-Eizou Muranishi joined the newly formed AV studio Crystal-Eizou in late 1984 and began directing films with them soon afterwards. Muranishi is given credit for launching the career of one of the first AV superstars, Kaoru Kuroki, Among Muranishi's pioneering developments at Crystal-Eizou were his series which culminated in a facial, the series where the actor would carry the actress around like a train-station food vendor, and the videos where the actress would blow into a conch shell (as in some Buddhist rituals) to signify that she had reached an orgasm.

Muranishi has had numerous problems with the law in his career, having been convicted seven times of criminal violations.

Diamond Visual In September 1988 Muranishi left Crystal-Eizou to form his own company. and in February 1989, a new star, Kimiko Matsuzaka, debuted with the company. Matsuzaka and her large bust led to a "Big Bust" boom in Japanese AV and helped assure the success of Diamond Visual. In the early 1990s Diamond Visual was "AV’s largest production company" The next year, he wrote the screenplay for another Matsuzaka vehicle, Daikyonyuu: Kaikan Shibori , released in March 1991 by Xces. Despite its popularity, Diamond Visual went bankrupt in 1992 with debts of 5 billion yen (about $40 million) and Muranishi had to greatly alter his style of living, going from a luxury home and Rolls-Royce to barely being able to afford an apartment. That enterprise also collapsed and Muranishi once again ended up in debt. The program was later released (in 1997) in VHS format with another program as Red Light Zone.

As an actor, Muranishi appeared in the 2000 Soft On Demand (SOD) produced V-Cinema Renshin Joshikousei Patty (} which starred SOD's leading actress Kurumi Morishita.

Muranishi is also a prolific writer both online and in print. He has contributed to a blog on Japanese AV supplier DMM's website, another blog on his own website, and a series of articles going back to 2005. He has also published a number of books including Toru Muranishi's Grade Book (村西とおるの閻魔帳), a 400-page collection of material from his blogs published by Cosmos Books (コスモの本) in March 2010 .

Muranishi was the subject of a documentary film Toru Muranishi: It Is Nice by Akira Takatsuki which was screened at the New Directors Film Festival in Tokyo in November 2014. The film, which took its name from one of Muranishi's early videos for Crystal-Eizou, won a special award at the festival.

Muranishi also was the basis for the semi-biographical series The Naked Director which premiered on Netflix on 8 August 2019. Muranishi was played by actor Takayuki Yamada. On 15 August 2019, Netflix renewed the series for a second season. On 24 June 2021 Netflix released the second season of The Naked Director, with no plans for a third season in the foreseeable future.