A Comedy in Front of the Station: Onsen

In Japan, a pink film (Japanese: ピンク映画, Hepburn: pinku eiga) is a movie produced by independent studios that includes nudity (hence "pink") or deals with sexual content. This encompasses everything from dramas to action thrillers and exploitation film features. Many pink films would be analogous to erotic thrillers such as Fatal Attraction or Basic Instinct. Independent studios that release pink films include OP Eiga, Shintōhō Eiga, Kokuei, and Xces. The phrase 'pink film' came into use after the major studio Toei began advertising some of its movies as 'porno' in 1971 and another major studio, Nikkatsu, switched to producing only Roman Porno films later that year. Until the early 2000s, they were almost exclusively shot on 35 mm film. Recently, filmmakers have increasingly used video (while retaining their emphasis on soft-core narrative). Many theaters swapped 35 mm for video projectors and began relying on old videos to meet the demand of triple-feature showings. Films that are now regarded as pink films became wildly popular in the mid-1960s, and made up a large part of the Japanese domestic market through the mid-1980s. In the 1960s, the pink films were largely the product of small, independent studios. Around 1970, major studio Nikkatsu started focusing almost exclusively on erotic content, but Toei, another major film production company, started producing a line of what came to be known as Pinky Violence films. With their access to higher production values and talent, some of these films became critical and popular successes. Though the appearance of the adult video led viewers to move away from pink film in the 1980s, films in this genre are still being produced.