Nureki Chimuo Archive

I met Sayo Uzuki again on the set. “We keep running into each other. Guess your acting skills are finally getting recognized lately.” As soon as I saw Uzuki’s face, I teased her instead of greeting her. “It’s not about my skills. I’m just being conveniently used because I’m an old woman nearing fifty who shamelessly strips naked and spreads her legs in front of the camera without a care,” Uzuki replied with a laugh. I’ve been with Uzuki for nearly thirty years now. Thirty years ago, she was popular as a busty model. “What? Close to fifty? I thought you were already a year or two older than that?” “It’s okay, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it.” She always has her mouth open and giggles like a slightly dim-witted woman, but she’s actually capable of engaging in sophisticated, adult conversations. She has a rich vocabulary and a deep understanding of SM. I said we’d been together for a long time, but sometimes we wouldn’t see each other for two or three years at a time. When we do meet, it’s two or three times a month, usually at the filming locations for adult SM videos. “Nureki-sensei is always doing a great job too. With the rope. You never get tired of it,” said Uzuki. “That’s right. I never get bored. And besides, I get paid for it.”

There’s another reason why I readily agree to go to filming locations when asked. It’s to compensate for my lack of exercise in my daily life. “That’s true. Getting paid is definitely an attractive prospect.” After the filming was over, I quickly parted ways with the staff and went out for drinks with just Uzuki. Or rather, I’ll keep her company while she drinks sake. Uzuki is a heavy drinker, while I get bright red in the face after just a small glass of draft beer. “At my age, the fact that I can earn money by taking off my clothes is, when you think about it, something to be grateful for.” “Just because you get naked doesn’t mean you’ll automatically make money. If you’re not worth anything, they won’t give you a single penny.” Uzuki now runs a small bar near a private railway station close to the Edogawa River in Katsushika Ward. About two weeks after the shoot, I got a taxi and took the drunken, wobbly Uzuki all the way to Katsushika. The second floor of the bar serves as a residence for Uzuki and her partner. I’ve known his face for twenty years. His name is Osamu-chan. Twenty years ago, he was an intelligent-looking, quiet young man. He was a pleasant presence who always seemed to follow Uzuki as if hiding in her shadow, yet also supported her. Whenever we met, he would bow his head, but we never spoke. Uzuki never formally introduced him either. “Let’s grab a drink near my place tonight. At my bar. I have to worry about other customers, which is a pain. Though, then again, you don’t drink, do you?” “I’m hungry, so I’ll get something to eat,” I said. I got off the private railway train. I was led to a small drinking establishment no more than five houses away from Uzuki’s shop.

I pushed open the creaking glass door of a plain wooden house, its only decoration a faded red lantern hanging above it. Without even saying “welcome,” the small shopkeeper, who looked to be over seventy, bowed his head slightly upon seeing Uzuki and me. Uzuki ordered me a drink with a little shochu, carbonated water, ice, and a slice of lemon floating on top. Uzuki herself had a large mug of draft beer. “What happens to the shop when you are away on a shoot?” “Osamu-chan and the lady next door are running it. It's better without me around. If I’m there, I’ll just drink the store’s sake.” Uzuki also ordered several skewers of grilled offal, simmered tofu, and the shop’s specialty, grilled eel with a special technique, for me. “I really shouldn’t be drinking the shop’s sake. Whoa, this grilled liver is huge!” I bit into the grilled liver, which looked at least three times the size of what you’d find at a regular shop. “Sensei, you didn’t get angry at all during today’s shoot. With that, there was no need to call you in specially. An assistant director could have handled it.” “I don’t get angry on set anymore. I just keep quiet and follow the director’s orders. Getting angry is exhausting. It’s just a waste of energy.” The shoot completely disregarded the emotional appeal of bound women, their moods, or the allure of the ropes. It’s not just this time. Lately there’s been a lot of videos with this kind of content. The set is commonly called the “Hospital Studio,” featuring hospital examination rooms, operating rooms, and rows of beds for inpatients. Everything is designed for easy filming. There was a director who enjoyed inflicting pain on women’s bodies, and among his subordinates was a senior nurse, the head nurse. Uzuki played the role of that head nurse. Various examination or treatment tables are available, featuring mechanisms where turning a handle causes the spread of a naked woman’s legs, bound face-up. Some examination tables are designed so that the spread and bent legs press tightly against either side of her face. Naturally, these tables intended to spread the genitals and anus to their absolute limit.

It’s a truly clear-cut “SM” situation. Tiny, gleaming medical instruments are lined up in rows on a stainless steel tray. A silver metal object that would make a medical instrument enthusiast sigh is kept inside a glass cabinet. If the story involved showing it to a woman he’d captured, psychologically toying with her and threatening her, and eventually restraining her on an examination table, well, you could call it an “SM” drama. However, the moment the heroine appears, without warning, she is stripped naked, bound to a table, her legs spread wide, and various foreign objects are forced into her. The scene continues nonstop until the very end, filled with nothing but her shrieking and wailing. In other words, whipping, wax-torture, nose torment, anal-sex, enema torture, without pause, one after another, endlessly repeated without a moment’s respite. Following the enema torture, the scene naturally progresses to scat play. Five ropes I’d spent ten years breaking in to my hands were instantly drenched in a yellow liquid, a mixture of glycerin and milk, spurting from the beauty’s anus. The rope screamed, “Help me!” in my ears. No matter how much you beg me to help, the stench has soaked in. It’s beyond use. There’s nothing left to do but throw it away. “How about that? A relentless barrage of punishment after punishment. This should satisfy even the most hardcore SM enthusiast, right?” The director said this with a satisfied look while puffing on his cigarette, but I couldn’t bring myself to respond. I was utterly disgusted. Looking up “辟易:hekieki” in the dictionary yields “to be overwhelmed and retreat, to be at a loss.” “That girl today really held her own. She was tough. I was impressed. That wasn’t acting or performance anymore. It was damn close to real torture.” By the way, I looked up whether the word “hettakure” is in the dictionary. I thought it wouldn’t be there, but it was!

I found it! “Hettakure,” a term used to scornfully dismiss something as trivial or insignificant. Uzuki, with a trace of beer foam at the corner of her lips, said with a hint of contempt, “Do you know what real torture is, Sensei?” “Nah, I don’t know..” “Women are more resilient, both mentally and physically. Men are far more cowardly.” Let me make it clear. These are the words of Uzuki Sayo. I do not share these views. I believe all women are gentle and delicate in both heart and body, and I find them endearing. “Ah, now that you mention it, you’re right.” At this point, there was no choice but to respond with such a nod. Uzuki’s eyes gradually took on the glaze of drunkenness. “During the break, the director said it himself. ‘I don’t really want to do this either. But it’s the producer’s orders, so I have no choice.’ He said if he didn’t listen to the producer, he wouldn’t get paid his director’s fee.” “Yeah, everyone’s in it for the money. I get that. But still, that director really pushes them hard. If a girl was hurting that badly and crying like that, I couldn’t do it.” “You couldn’t do it, could you, Sensei? You’re more cowardly than most people. But you know, Sensei, that girl, when she was whipped on her back and bottom, crying ‘It hurts, it hurts,’ didn’t she actually feel good? Crying out loud, wailing, that feels good too. You’re past the age of being fooled by a woman’s tears, aren’t you, Sensei?” Ugh, I groaned involuntarily. But it sure didn’t look like it. “If you really hated it, you’d have bolted out of the studio without a second thought. But you didn’t run away, you just sat there and endured it. Isn’t that fine? Even if it hurts or it’s painful, if you just endure it, you’ll get paid eventually.” I changed the subject while eating my simmered tofu. “I don’t really know how much girls get paid, but how much do they get for being treated that badly?”

Uzuki has been in this industry for about thirty years now, maintaining a position of being neither fully immersed nor completely detached. At one point, she even produced and sold SM videos with Osamu-chan. She has connections everywhere and is quite the industry insider. I have absolutely no desire to become an industry expert, so I actually know very little about this field. I know especially little about the financial aspects. The only thing I know anything about, shamefully enough, is “rope.” “Pay? Pay’s tight these days. Well, today was a hardcore SM shoot with actual sex scenes, so even though she went through all that pain, she’ll probably only get around 50,000 or 60,000 yen.” “Hmm, she was pretty cute and had a nice body too, but that’s all she’s worth? Poor thing. Compared to before, the prices have definitely dropped.” “These days, more girls are stripping, right? Companies are using them to churn out low-budget porn videos, thousands of titles every month. Every studio is cranking out tons of cheap, low-budget projects, figuring that if just one hits big, it’ll keep the business afloat.” “Uzuki, what’s today’s pay?” I asked. I know that Uzuki isn’t signed with any modeling agency right now. So a producer can use her cheaply. “Me? I’m an old hag now, but I still take my clothes off and can do SM scenes, so I make about thirty to thirty-five thousand yen. But selling yakitori requires money to buy the chicken, whereas AV just costs train fare. The rest is pure profit. So I’m pretty grateful for it now. Plus, I’m a toppari you know.” Toppari is industry jargon. It refers to “same-day payment.": As soon as filming wraps, the performer receives their day’s fee in cash directly into their hands. There are no middlemen taking a cut. Today’s job is a piece of cake, even for someone like me. Come to think of it, I’ve been doing this job for quite a long time, but I’ve never been exploited by middlemen. “Thirty thousand?” I remember the days when Uzuki earned a million yen a day. Some girls go to such lengths to get work that they flatter the staff to the point of tears. They even call them “staff-san” to curry favor…

At these words of Uzuki, I suddenly remembered. About half a year ago, it was during a shoot for Company P. There was an actress named G-ko. She had a particular philosophy regarding SM expression, and during breaks, we talked about it at length. Looking up the word “ideal” in the dictionary yields this definition: “The highest thought derived from reason.” G-ko says she wants to read a lot of books and documents about SM from all eras and regions. I took a liking to those words and to her about the existence of the Sex Industry Museum in Iidabashi. It just so happened that Weekly Bunshun had published a serious article densely packed with information about the Sex Museum on one page, so I had G-ko read that weekly magazine too. “Today, after filming wraps up, we can go together. It’s right on the way back,” I said, and she was delighted, saying, “I’d love to! Please, I really want to go!” Just as they were about to wrap up filing with one last shot, she suddenly spread her thighs in front of the male staff members while completely naked, shamelessly exposing herself. At this moment, G-ko was not bound. She sat lightly on the studio sofa, grasping her own inner thighs with both hands and spreading them apart. At the time, I didn’t understand what that action meant. I just thought, “What a strange thing to do,” and looked away (it’s true). I wondered what connection it had to her philosophy. I turned down going to the Sex Industry Museum with her, claiming I remembered an urgent matter. I suddenly understood what G-ko had done a half a year ago, something I hadn’t grasped at the time, when Uzuki muttered those words while drinking beer. So that was a service for the male staff. How foolish of me. Indeed, it was a “flirtatious act.”

I now have a heart that accepts that as a kind of “artist’s spirit” in its own way. But I didn’t have it back then. Even though I was the one who asked, I ran away. Watching Uzuki gulp down her third large mug, I silently apologized to G-ko in my heart. I wish I had understood her better. But I suppose I’ll just end up understanding it. I understand and accept it, but I cannot go beyond that. I am a narrow-minded person. Like many actresses and models, my encounter with G-ko was ultimately a once-in-a-lifetime meeting. “Sensei, why don’t you stay over at my place tonight? Eh? Please?” Uzuki’s eyes are glazed over. Before she knew it, she was pouring wine into a mug and drinking. If she gets drunk and passes out here, it’s no big deal. If push comes to shove, she can just call Omasu-chan five doors down. The conversation with Uzuki at the bar in Katsushika continues on and on.