Japan's sex industry is huge, diverse and different. One oddity, at least to Western eyes, is the pinku eiga (pink film), a genre of soft porn made according to certain rules (the most important being the inclusion of a simulated sex scene every 10 minutes or so) and shown in specialized theaters. Pink films, which range from black comedies to serious (if porny) dramas, have gained a small but enthusiastic foreign following. One of the most enthusiastic — British critic, programmer and occasional Japan Times contributor Jasper Sharp — in 2008 published "Behind the Pink Curtain," a wide-ranging history of not only pink films but sex cinema in Japan.
Absent from Sharp's book, as well as from much foreign fan discussion, however, is the career of Tadashi Yoyogi, better known as Yoyochu, a pioneering, influential maker of adult videos (AVs) and the subject of Masato Ishioka's fascinating, highly instructive documentary "Yoyochu: Sex to Yoyogi Tadashi no Sekai (Yoyochu in the Land of the Rising Sex)."
This is not surprising, since AVs are often thought of less as cinema than sex aids, while their makers get little respect from many in the mainstream film world. Some such straigh filmmakers, however, such as yakuza-movie maestro Rokuro Mochizuki and Ishioka himself, have AV experience.