True Story of a Woman in Soapland: Tear! (1987)

True Story of a Woman in Soapland: Tear! is a 1987 Nikkatsu roman porno movie about a woman who works in one of Japan’s soaplands. Both the terms roman porno and soaplands are going to require some explanation.

By the beginning of the 70s the Japanese film industry was in desperate trouble, with television causing a collapse in cinema attendances. Studios realised that there were two things that would lure customers back to movie theatres - sex and violence. One result of this was the emergence of the pinky violence genre which offered both at the same time. Japan’s oldest film studio, Nikkatsu, took a slightly different approach. They came up with a genre which they called roman porno. This had nothing to do with the Roman Empire. The French term for an erotic novel is roman pornographique. Nikkatsu thought this would be a cool descriptive term for its new series of movies, but they shortened it to roman porno.

Nikkatsu went further. They cancelled all other film production and from 1971 to 1988 they made nothing but roman porno movies. It was a spectacularly successful strategy and it saved the studio, which is still going strong today. They made hundreds of these films.

Many of these films are lighthearted goofy sex comedies. Others offer extraordinary levels of violence and kink. This one offers melodrama.

Now for that other term, soaplands. Prostitution was outlawed in Japan in 1958. Soaplands sprang up to fill the void. These were bathhouses. The customer paid to be bathed by a soap girl. This was quite legal. Technically this was the only service offered by the soaplands, so these businesses remained technically quite legal. Of course if, after the bath, the customer and the soap girl were overcome by tender passions and had sex that was no concern of the soapland. Of course in every single case the customer and the soap girl ended up having sex (and money managed to change hands) but it was done in a way that always managed to remain technically legal. The soap girls were in practice prostitutes and were very high-class and well-paid.

So, back to the movie. Kikuta is a schoolteacher and a happily married man and he has a mistress, a nurse named Mizue. She mentions that she saw an old friend of theirs from their schooldays, a woman named Hasekura, leaving a soapland. She was obviously working there. Mizue was a little shocked and a little amused. Kikuta had had an affair with Hasekura at school.

Kikuta decides to re-introduce himself to Hasekura. Their old passion immediately re-ignites.

The nurse girlfriend finds out and she’s outraged, even though she has a fiancé on whom she’s cheating.

Kikuta’s wife finds out about her husband’s little nurse girlfriend. She doesn’t have much respect for her husband but she won’t give him up because as she says he’s so easy to control.

Kikuta makes a solemn promise to Mizue to give up Hasekura and he makes a solemn promise to his wife to be faithful in future.

Of course he doesn’t keep either promise. Kikuta isn’t exactly a bad guy but he’s weak and he’s absolutely hopeless where women are concerned. He’s not the kind of guy you’d pick as a Casanova. He’s more like a naughty little boy. Maybe that’s why all three women want him.

The fact that Hasekura is a prostitute isn’t made into much of an issue. It really only figures in the plot to the extent that Hasekura has enough money to be able to offer to keep Kikuta as a kind of pet.

The ending is a surprise, to say the least. And it's certainly effective.

Director Takashi Kodama handles things pretty well and doesn’t allow the story to get bogged down at any point. All the cast members are more than adequate.

Japanese erotic movies tend to be both less graphic and more graphic than contemporary erotic films from the US or Europe. They’re less graphic in that because of a peculiar cultural taboo they couldn’t show any female pubic hair. On the other hand they could show stuff that you wouldn’t generally see in softcore offerings from other countries. The sex scenes in this movies are extraordinary intense and steamy, and sometimes soapy. And there are many many sex scenes.

This is a romantic-sexual melodrama and it works pretty well. The characters have enough substance (and enough tangled motivations) to keep our interest. True Story of a Woman in Soapland: Tear! is highly recommended.

The Impulse DVD offers a reasonable if less than stellar transfer.