Tetsuji Takechi

Tetsuji Takechi
Tetsuji Takechi at a "Takechi Kabuki" performance (between 1945 and 1955)
Born	Tetsuji Kawaguchi 10 December 1912 Osaka, Japan
Died	26 July 1988(1988-07-26) (aged 75)
Occupation	Kabuki director, theorist and critic, Theatre director, Film director, Author, Actor
Years active	1945–1987

Tetsuji Takechi (武智 鉄二^?, Takechi Tetsuji, 10 December 1912 – 26 July 1988) was a Japanese theatrical and film director, critic, and author. First coming to prominence for his theatrical criticism, in the 1940s and 1950s he produced influential and popular experimental kabuki plays. Beginning in the mid-1950s, he continued his innovative theatrical work in noh, kyōgen and modern theater. In late 1956 and early 1957 he hosted a popular TV program, The Tetsuji Takechi Hour, which featured his reinterpretations of Japanese stage classics.

In the 1960s, Takechi entered the film industry by producing controversial soft-core theatrical pornography. His 1964 film Daydream was the first big-budget, mainstream pink film released in Japan. After the release of his 1965 film Black Snow, the government arrested him on indecency charges. The trial became a public battle over censorship between Japan's intellectuals and the government. Takechi won the lawsuit, enabling the wave of softcore pink films which dominated Japan's domestic cinema during the 1960s and 1970s. In the later 1960s, Takechi produced three more pink films.

Takechi did not work in film during most of the 1970s. In the 1980s, he remade Daydream twice, starring actress Kyōko Aizome in both films. The first Daydream remake (1981) is considered the first theatrical hardcore pornographic film in Japan. Though Takechi is largely unknown in Japan today, he was influential in both the cinema and the theater during his lifetime, and his innovations in kabuki were felt for decades. He also helped shape the future of the pink film in Japan through his battles against governmental censorship, earning him the titles, "The Father of Pink" and "The Father of Japanese Porn."

Tetsuji Takechi was born Tetsuji Kawaguchi in Osaka on 10 December 1912 to a family headed by a wealthy industrialist. He studied economics at Kyoto National University and graduated in 1936. Takechi first became known for his criticism and theoretical writings on the theater. In 1939 he began publishing a journal, Stage Review in which he printed his writings on the theater. In the early 1940s, he began publishing collections of these writings in book form. When World War II came to an end, Takechi used his inheritance from his father to establish a theatrical troupe. Under his direction, the Takechi Kabuki, as the group was known, put Takechi's theatrical ideas into practise by giving innovative and popular performances of kabuki classics in Osaka from 1945 to 1955.