Netflix ‘Naked Director’ Explores Early Era Of Japanese Porn Biz

With HBO announcing that its series The Deuce, which was set against the early days of the porn industry in New York City, will come to an end after one final season, as AVN.com reported, Netflix will now take its own look into the origins of porn—but this time in Japan. Next month, the streaming service debuts the 10-episode, Japanese-language (with English subtitles) series, The Naked Director, a biographical drama following the life and career of Toru Muranishi, dubbed Japan’s “Emperor of Porn,” who is credited with creating about 3,000 AV films (as porn is called in Japan), along the way having sex, he claims, with 7,000 porn actresses, according to Tokyo Reporter.   The now 71-year-old Muranishi, whose porn career peaked in Japan’s economic “bubble” era of the go-go 1980s, has also been arrested on seven occasions, and ran up debts of a reported 5 billion yen—about $50 million in today’s U.S. currency—when he attempted to start a satellite broadcasting service in the 1990s, that quickly went belly-up. In other words, Muranishi’s career—which he describes as “like bungee jumping without a rope”—should provide plenty of material for a 10-hour series.  Prolific Japanese actor Takayuki Yamada, known in Japan as star of the popular series Ushijima the Loan Shark and Socrates in Love among many others, portrays Muranishi in the The Naked Director, according to Variety. Portraying the innovations that Muranishi brought to the “AV” industry should pose a challenge. Muranishi is known for pioneering the quasi-documentary style that remains popular in Japanese porn today. His films are also credited with popularizing a sexual position known in Japan as “ekiben,” which translates as “train station lunch,” which supposedly consists of the male performer holding his female scene partner in a position similar to that of a Japanese “salaryman” eating his boxed lunch  while standing on a station platform waiting for a train to arrive. Watch a trailer for The Naked Director, which becomes available for streaming on Netflix August 8, at this link.  Photo by Netflix Publicity