Naomi Tani | |
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Born |
Hakata Ward, Fukuoka, Japan |
October 20, 1948
Naomi Tani (谷ナオミ Tani Naomi?) is a Japanese actress who is best known for her appearances in Nikkatsu's Roman Porno films with an S&M theme during the 1970s.
Born October 20, 1948, in the Hakata ward of Fukuoka, Naomi Tani moved to Tokyo at the age of 18. After arrival in Tokyo, she was featured in a photo layout in Weekly Taishu / Popular Weekly (週刊大衆 - Shukan Taishu). This appearance led to offers for roles in "Pink films", the low-budget, independent soft-core pornographic films which dominated Japan's domestic cinema at this time. Her debut was in the 1967 film Special. She took her screen name "Tani" from the novelist Jun'ichirō Tanizaki and "Naomi" from the central character in his important early work A Fool's Love. "Tani," or "valley," is also a Japanese slang word for the cleavage between the breasts. Consequently, Ms. Tani may have had a variety of puns in mind when she later opened a restaurant calling it the "Ohtani" (Big Breasts or Big Tani).
Tani's early films were principally with the small companies that were making pink films independent of the large studio system in the 1960s. In her pre-Nikkatsu career, she appeared in comedies, dramas, and action films, but it was the S&M genre which would make Tani a star. Her debut film was Special (スペシャル - Supesharu) for Shin Nihon Eigasha and directed by the prolific pink film auteur Kōji Seki. The film had Tani in the role of the mistress of a black marketeer who tries to cheat people at an onsen. The couple is stopped by the local villagers.Experiments on the Human Body (Zanki: Seitaijikken 1967) was a war drama in which Tani played a nurse in China where Japanese doctors are performing experiments on Chinese POWs.