is Japanese

pink film in its broadest sense includes almost any Japanese theatrical film that includes nudity (hence 'pink') or deals with sexual content. This encompasses everything from dramas to action thrillers and exploitation film features. The Western equi ...

. This erotic film was directed by

Ryū Murakami is a Japanese novelist, short story writer, essayist, and filmmaker. His novels explore human nature through themes of disillusionment, drug use, surrealism, murder, and war, set against the dark backdrop of Japan. His best known novels are '' A ...

(村上龍 Murakami Ryū) with music by

Ryuichi Sakamoto is a Japanese composer, pianist, singer, record producer and actor who has pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto i ...

(坂本龍一 Sakamoto Ryūichi). The film was shot and completed during 1991 and released in the start of 1992. It stars

Miho Nikaido is a feminine Japanese given name and a masculine Croatian name. It can have many different meanings in Japanese depending on the kanji used. Possible Japanese writings Miho can be written using different kanji characters and can mean: *実穂 ...

(二階堂美穂 Nikaidō Miho) and is known by two alternate titles, ''Topaz'' and ''Sex Dreams of Topaz''.. Because of the cruel and graphic nature of this film, it has been banned in several countries such as Australia and

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

.South Korea damns Breillat's Hell
11 May 2004

ScreenDaily.com ''Screen International'' is a British film magazine covering the international film business. It is published by Media Business Insight, a British B2B media company. The magazine is primarily aimed at those involved in the global film business. ...

Shimada Masahiko is a Japanese writer. He has won the Noma Literary New Face Prize, the Izumi Kyōka Prize for Literature, the Itō Sei Literature Prize, and the Mainichi Publishing Culture Award. His work has been translated into English. Biography While stud ...

(島田雅彦 Shimada Masahiko) also makes an appearance in this film. The story follows , the submissive and lovesick prostitute who goes about her trade with misery and is being abused by hedonists and criminals while trying to find some sort of appeasement away from the fact that her lover is currently married.

Plot

Ai, a timid 22-year-old college student in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

, works as a prostitute for an exclusive

escort agency An escort agency is a company that provides escorts for clients, usually for sexual services. The agency typically arranges a meeting between one of its escorts and the client at the customer's house or hotel room (outcall), or at the escort' ...

that caters to wealthy, perverted men. To please her clients, Ai has to play out elaborate fantasy scenarios involving sexual humiliation and light

sadomasochism Sadomasochism ( ) is the giving and receiving of pleasure from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation. Practitioners of sadomasochism may seek sexual pleasure from their acts. While the terms sadist and masochist refer ...

bondage Bondage may refer to: Restraints *Physical restraints **Bondage (BDSM), use of restraint for erotic stimulation ***Self-bondage, use of restraints on oneself for erotic pleasure Social and economic practices *Serfdom, feudal enslavement of peasan ...

. The first two-thirds of the film consists in large part of four erotic sequences involving

sodomy Sodomy () or buggery (British English) is generally anal or oral sex between people, or sexual activity between a person and a non-human animal ( bestiality), but it may also mean any non-procreative sexual activity. Originally, the term ''so ...

, sadomasochism, submission and bondage. Including

dildo A dildo is a sex toy, often explicitly phallic in appearance, intended for sexual penetration or other sexual activity during masturbation or with sex partners. Dildos can be made from a number of materials and shaped like an erect huma ...

s and mirrors—one with a perverted male

dominant Domination or dominant may refer to: Society * World domination, which is mainly a conspiracy theory * Colonialism in which one group (usually a nation) invades another region for material gain or to eliminate competition * Chauvinism in which a ...

, one with a promiscuous female dominant. The other two involve erotic

asphyxiation Asphyxia or asphyxiation is a condition of deficient supply of oxygen to the body which arises from abnormal breathing. Asphyxia causes generalized hypoxia, which affects primarily the tissues and organs. There are many circumstances that can ...

with, again, one episode in which a necrophiliac attempts to partially asphyxiate the female protagonist and the other in which a drug addicted man is the recipient to the female protagonist. Other acts of fetishes and paraphilias are involved in some of the scenarios. The last third of the film consists of Ai's attempt to find her ex-lover, a famous Gallery artist. The actual story however, revolves around Ai's attempt to place herself in the world and understand her life in an attempt to make her own way forward. This is played out through the juxtaposition of the false closeness of the paid relationships with her decadent clients against her unrequited love for the gallery artist who has ended his relationship with her. The viewer can see that Ai is desperately grasping at this relationship as real in contrast to the simulated fetish relationships of her clients and we learn that she wishes to tell him of her continued love even though he has moved on and been married. Ai shows an emotional connection to one of her clients, another sex worker who is a female dominant and who Ai clearly admires. Throughout the movie this person is the only person with whom Ai has a free open conversation. This woman delivers a monologue which defines her view of the sex trade as empowering and which is a sentinel defining concept to place the movie itself in a social context. This speech comes at a time when Ai appears to be having difficulties accepting her role as an escort and Ai is shown listening with rapt attention. Ai confides to this client that she has unrequited love for the gallery artist and Ai's client tells her that she must live life to the fullest otherwise she will be filled with regrets. She tells Ai that she must confront this part of her life then she can move forward as her future will be hers. At the beginning of the movie we are introduced to Ai's quest to find herself and her direction, She visits a fortune-teller, played by artist Yayoi Kusama, who advises her to find a "pink stone", and then fashion it into a ring. The fortune teller also advises Ai to put a telephone directory under her television and to avoid a gallery in the east. Ai's view of the ring is important enough that when she later loses the ring she risks her life to recover it. Throughout the movie Ai looks at a photo of what appears to be her as a child with her mother and which in context represents innocence before life became complicated. Ai appears to refer to it to ground herself perhaps pondering how the happy child has transformed in to what she has become. Taking the advice of her female client, and an unidentified drug which her client gave her to provide her with the courage of lions, she becomes dangerously inebriated and fails in an attempt to meet her ex lover, She is rescued from the police by one of the artist's neighbors who is said to have once been a great singer but is now crazy. This woman met Ai only a few minutes earlier and told her that she used to be friends with the Gallery artist but it is over and that she considers Ai to be her "best friend". Ai who is now sitting dirty and battered, looks at the photo of herself and her mother and destroys it signifying her move away from innocence and her past. In the next scene now clean, she studies the pink stone on her hand and has the faintest trace of a smile twitch across the corner of her mouth. She pulls her hair back as she looks at herself in the mirror and goes off to her usual routine which is also now her new life, externally the same as her old life but internally different as she has taken control, found herself with the future now belonging to her. Throughout the film, Ai's movements have been timid and stiff and her posture demure. After the credits there is a sequence of her dancing on stage boldly and fluidly thus finalizing her growth in to her new future. There are at least two versions of ''Tokyo Decadence'', with the shorter one edited more for pacing than for

censorship Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...

References

External links

* {{Authority control 1991 films 1990s pornographic films BDSM in films Censored films Films directed by Ryū Murakami Pink films 1990s Japanese films

Plot

See also

References

External links