is a

1967 Events January * January 1 – Canada begins a year-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of Confederation, featuring the Expo 67 World's Fair. * January 5 ** Spain and Romania sign an agreement in Paris, establishing full consular and ...

Japanese '' pink film'' directed by Toshio Okuwaki for World Eiga. One of the director's most praised films, it features an early appearance by

Naomi Tani is a Japanese pink film actress who is best known for her appearances in Nikkatsu's '' Roman Porno'' films with an S&M theme during the 1970s. Life and career Early Born October 20, 1948, in the Hakata ward of Fukuoka, Naomi Tani moved to Tokyo ...

Synopsis

The husband of a young wife discovers she has a promiscuous background as a bar hostess. Feeling that his honor has been slighted, he refuses to have intimate relations with her. The woman flees her old-fashioned husband for solace in the arms of a former lover.

Cast

* Setsu Shimizu () * Michiko Sakyō () *

Critical appraisal

In their ''Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films'', Thomas and Yuko Mihara Weisser judge ''Bed Dance'' to be one of director Toshio Okuwaki's better efforts. The film's cast is noted as one of the strong points of ''Bed Dance'', particularly the appearance early in her career of

. The poorly thought-out script and conflicting themes, however, are said to be weaknesses of the film. The film's description at the time of its 2003 showing at the

Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival The Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival is a documentary film festival held biennially in Yamagata, Japan ( ). It was first held in October 1989, which makes it one of the longest running documentary film festivals in the world and ...

noted a surprisingly Freudian touch to the film's plot. Allmovie also writes that ''Bed Dance'' is one of Okuwaki's better films, and that, besides erotic interest, its storyline provides a glimpse of cultural and sexual mores at a time of rapid change.

Director Toshio Okuwaki

Director Toshio Okuwaki is generally not well known today. Besides his marriage to

Tamaki Katori was a Japanese actress best known for her appearances in " pink film" during the 1960s and early 1970s. Katori was the star of ''Flesh Market'' (1962), the first of these softcore pornographic films made in Japan. With over 600 film credits betwe ...

, the "Pink Princess" of the first wave of Pink films, Okuwaki is today best remembered for '' Naked Pursuit'' (1968), one of the early pink films which has been lost in Japan, but was preserved in the U.S. due to its distribution through Harry Novak's Box Office International Pictures. 1967, the year of ''Bed Dances release, was the high-point of Okuwaki's career. Allmovie notes that Okuwaki's career went into decline after making ''Bed Dance'', ''Onna No Aji'' and ''Climax'', all from 1967. The Weissers agree, writing that after 1967 Okuwaki became a "notorious studio hack" who directed a "parade of interchangeable sex flicks."Weisser, p. 79. A three-film retrospective of Okuwaki's work with Tamaki Katori was a feature at the 2003

. ''Bed Dance'' was shown at the same festival, paired with an early work by

Mamoru Watanabe was a Japanese film director, screenwriter and actor, known for his work in the '' pink film'' genre. Along with directors Genji Nakamura and Banmei Takahashi, Watanabe was known as one of the "Three Pillars of Pink". Life and career Early l ...

Bibliography

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Notes

{{reflist 1967 films 1960s Japanese-language films Pink films 1960s Japanese films