The General And His Empire Of Joy

This smutty softcore film from Toei Studios and director Ikuo Sekimoto was one of the growing number of mainstream films to incorporate elements of the low-budget “pink films” which accounted for more than half of Japanese film production at the time. Masaru Shinga stars as Ryuken, a samurai who falls in love with a young virgin named Okoyo (Eiko Matsuda), but she is already marked for addition to the shogun’s harem. Not to be deterred, Ryuken blackmails a pedophilic monk and gets into the palace through a secret passage. The plot, however, is essentially secondary to Sekimoto’s panorama of imperial decadence. Like the even more vulgar epics about ancient Rome being cranked out in Italy around the same time, any character development is only an excuse for voyeuristic viewers to wallow in the hedonism of days gone by.