Misplaced Pages

Hisayasu Satō
Born	(1959-08-15) 15 August 1959 (age 65) Shizuoka City, Japan
Occupation(s)	Film director Screenwriter
Years active	1985–present

Hisayasu Satō (佐藤 寿保, Satō Hisayasu, born 15 August 1959 in Shizuoka City, Japan) is a Japanese exploitation film director. He has worked prolifically in the genre of pinku eiga films, which refers to Japanese films that prominently feature nudity or sexual content. His best-known works are the 1992 pink film The Bedroom and the 1996 V-Cinema splatter film Splatter: Naked Blood. He is known for his "sledgehammer" filmmaking style, and using his exploitation career to tackle serious subjects like obsession, alienation, perversion and voyeurism.

He has been likened to Canadian director David Cronenberg due to his penchant for body horror as well as dark eroticism. Along with fellow directors Kazuhiro Sano, Toshiki Satō and Takahisa Zeze, he is known as one of the "Four Heavenly Kings of Pink" (ピンク四天王, pinku shitenno).

Life and career

Satō is a very prolific director, having directed about two dozen films in 1988 and 1989. To date, he has directed more than fifty films dealing with eroticism, sadism, and horror among the lower classes of Japan. He is famous for his "guerilla shooting technique" in which his actors appear on location in public and incorporate unknowing bystanders into the film. One notorious example of this technique can be seen in Widow's Perverted Hell (1991) in which the lead actress, nude and bound in S&M gear, appears in a busy downtown location and begs confused passers-by to help her masturbate. Allmovie comments, "Like Divine's memorable strut through the streets of Baltimore in Pink Flamingos, this scene was shot guerrilla-style, with no planning, and some of the reactions from unsuspecting pedestrians are priceless. Intended as a dark meditation on the unhinging effects of grief, the mondo aspects of its climactic scene makes the rather lackluster Mibojin Hentai Jigoku worth seeing."

Satō's 1987 film Temptation of the Mask was important for several reasons. One of the first gay films produced by a major pink film director, the film also brought together three members of the shitenno for the first time. Takahisa Zeze worked as Satō's assistant director for the film, and through him began hiring future-director Kazuhiro Sano as an actor in his films. Zeze later recalled, "I remember once there was a gay pink film, and Satō wanted to use Sano, so I was the go-between and negotiated with him to appear in it. That's how we all started working together."

Satō's second gay-themed film was Muscle, also known as Mad Ballroom Gala (1988), a tribute to Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini. For this film, Satō was awarded the grand prize at the Berlin Gay and Lesbian Festival in 1993. From this and later films like Hunters' Sense of Touch (1995), Satō has gained a reputation as one of the few directors who can competently alternate between gay and heterosexual-themed pink films.

Satō's 1990 film, Horse and Woman and Dog, another film featuring Kazuhiro Sano, became a success due to its scandalous scenes involving bestiality between the three characters in the film's title. Another controversial, but highly regarded film from Satō is Promiscuous Wife: Disgraceful Torture (1992), for which the director hired the Paris cannibal, Issei Sagawa (aka Kazumasa Sagawa) to appear in a cameo role.

Famed for the offensiveness of his films, Lolita: Vibrator Torture (1987), dealing with a homeless man who rapes and murders women, is often singled out as Satō's most repulsive film. In his later works, Satō has collaborated with the female pink film writer, Kyoko Godai. While the violence in his films has sometimes been less extreme since this collaboration, the Weissers, in their Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films call Godai and Satō's work on Uniform Punishment: Square Peg in Round Hole! (1991) "Perhaps the most mean-spirited satire on film.". The film deals with a religious cult who worships a maniacal young woman who spends her nights hunting the city for people to rape and kill with the help of a male slave. Allmovie judges the film a "perversely entertaining jet-black satire" and a "dark but highly watchable softcore effort".

Yoshiyuki Hayashida, editor of P*G magazine—currently the leading journal on pink film—and founder of the Pink Grand Prix, became a fan of Satō's work and wrote a script using many of Satō's major themes. Satō filmed the script as Uniform Masturbation: Virgin's Underpanties (1992). Though Satō's style seems to have softened somewhat as the 1990s progressed, he was still capable of producing such works as Splatter: Naked Blood (1996), which, Allmovie warns, "contains one of the most appalling scenes in Japanese horror, with a young woman mutilating and eating her own body."

Partial filmography

Notes

1. ^ Weisser, Thomas; Yuko Mihara Weisser (1998). "Spotlight: Four Kings of Pink (Hisayasu Sato)". Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films. Miami: Vital Books : Asian Cult Cinema Publications. p. 463. ISBN 1-889288-52-7.
2. Sharp, Jasper (2008). Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema. Guildford: FAB Press. pp. 265–266. ISBN 978-1-903254-54-7.
3. Domenig, Roland (2002). "Vital flesh: the mysterious world of Pink Eiga". Archived from the original on 18 November 2004. Retrieved 6 October 2007.
4. Firsching, Robert. "Tejo Boko-ma: Itaburu!". Allmovie. Retrieved 7 October 2007.
5. Firsching, Robert. "Gekiai! Lolita Mitsuro". Allmovie. Retrieved 7 October 2007.
6. ^ Weisser, p.471.
7. Firsching, Robert. "Mibojin Hentai Jigoku". Allmovie. Retrieved 7 October 2007.
8. "Takahisa Zeze interview". midnighteye.com. Retrieved 4 October 2007.
9. ^ McRoy, Jay (2008). Nightmare Japan: contemporary Japanese horror cinema. Contemporary cinema. Vol. 4. Rodopi. pp. 49–59. ISBN 978-90-420-2331-4.
10. Firsching, Robert. "Muscle". Allmovie. Retrieved 7 October 2007.
11. Weisser, p.467.
12. Firsching, Robert. "Hunters' Sense of Touch". Allmovie. Retrieved 7 October 2007.
13. Firsching, Robert. "Uma To Onna To Inu". Allmovie. Retrieved 7 October 2007.
14. Weisser, p.473.
15. Firsching, Robert. "Apartment Wife: Promiscuous Wife: Disgraceful Torture". Allmovie. Retrieved 7 October 2007.
16. Weisser, p.465.
17. Firsching, Robert. "Lolita: Vibrator Torture". Allmovie. Retrieved 7 October 2007.
18. Firsching, Robert. "Seifuku Lynch: Nejirikome!". Allmovie. Retrieved 7 October 2007.
19. Firsching, Robert. "Seifuku Onanie: Shojo No Shitagi". Allmovie. Retrieved 7 October 2007.
20. Firsching, Robert. "Megyaku: Naked Blood". Allmovie. Retrieved 7 October 2007.
21. Filmography from Weisser, Thomas; Yuko Mihara Weisser (1998). "Spotlight: Four Kings of Pink (Hisayasu Sato)". Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films. Miami: Vital Books : Asian Cult Cinema Publications. pp. 463–479. ISBN 1-889288-52-7.; Hisayasu Sato at IMDb and "佐藤寿保 (Satō Hisayasu)". Japanese Movie Database (in Japanese). Retrieved 6 October 2007.

Bibliography

• Hunter, Jack. "Abnormal Ward: The Forbidden Visions of Hisayasu Sato" in Andy Black (ed), Necronomicon: The Journal of Horror and Erotic Cinema: Book Two, London: Creation Books, 1999, pp. 30–39.
• Koyama, Akirashi (24 February 2003). "Hisayasu Satō Interview" (in Japanese). channel.slowtrain.org. Archived from the original on 6 November 2003. Retrieved 23 July 2009.
• Seveon, Julien. Le cinema enrage au Japon. France : 1st edition : Sulliver 2006 / 2nd edition : Rouge Profond 2009. ISBN 978-2-911199-85-1 (in French)
• Seveon, Julien. USA : "Interview with Hisayasu Sato" in Asian Cult Cinema #34, 1st quarter 2002.
• Weisser, Thomas; Yuko Mihara Weisser (1998). "Spotlight: Four Kings of Pink (Hisayasu Sato)". Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films. Miami: Vital Books : Asian Cult Cinema Publications. pp. 463–479. ISBN 1-889288-52-7.

External links

• Hisayasu Sato at IMDb
• "佐藤寿保 (Sato Hisayasu)". Japanese Movie Database (in Japanese). Retrieved 6 October 2007.

• 1959 births
• Japanese film directors
• Pink film directors
• Living people
• People from Shizuoka (city)