Tokyo Gore Police: The Definition of Erotic Grotesque Nonsense
How one sensuously gory plot-thin splatter film epitomizes the beauty of Japanese horror and the ero-guro genre.
Have you ever wanted to see a woman shoot face-melting acid from her tits? What about a woman whose body has been morphed into a chair giving a golden shower to a large audience at a sex club?
If this kind of thing appeals to you--in addition to scene after scene of wanton killings with enough blood splatter to give a Red Cross volunteer either a heart attack or an instant orgasm--then Tokyo Gore Police is just the movie for you!
I have been dabbling in the ero-guro genre, and I have been researching it and trying to explain it to friends and readers. Ero-guro, or erotic-grotesque, sometimes with "nonsense" included as well, is more than a mere genre. It's an attitude, an aesthetic, maybe even a movement that was born out of the contradictions stemming from Japanese modernization in the Taisho era (beginning in 1912, accelerating in the 1920s).
It was during that time, that the population of Tokyo doubled. Japan expanded its colonial empire during World War I. Urban life brought with it crime, prostitution, drug use, and other sins that scared and tempted the public in equal measure.
In a city where you can find bustling coffee shops, busy intersections, cute "Modern Girls" at a hostess cafe, and all manner of depravities--real or imagined--down a dark alley, people became inured to the things that would once stimulate them. Author Tanizaki Junichiro said, "My nerves are like overused sandpaper—all dull; only the eye-catching, bizarre, and grotesque can excite me."
There are many more social factors behind what led to ero-guro-nansensu, but I am not writing an academic paper here. If you do want an academic look at it, I would recommend Miriam Silverberg's book Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times.
As a genre and artistic aesthetic, ero-guro began with detective novels. Edogawa Ranpo was the seminal author. Mysteries surrounding brutal murders and the twisted thinking of the killers let readers see the dark sides of urban life. On top of the sadism involved in the crimes themselves, Ranpo frequently included scenes of whipping and domination in sexual play. World War II came along, and it became (even) more difficult for authors to publish short stories about Japanese men who were sent overseas to fight for their country and ended up coming home with no limbs and being tormented until they effectively became human caterpillars (see Ranpo's "The Caterpillar").
Then when all that shit got sorted out, when the post-war occupation ended and Japan's economy was booming again, erotic-grotesque hit the silver screens. Two films inspired by Ranpo's works, Teruo Ishii's Horrors of Malformed Men and Yasuzo Masumura's Blind Beast both came out in 1969, and both crystallized themes that would become typical of the Japanese horror genre.
Erotic, grotesque, and nonsense have subtly different meanings, but the outer wall defining them is thin, and content frequently crosses over the boundaries. In Tokyo Gore Police, most of the movie resides in the middle of the three-circle venn diagram.
The word "erotic" comes from the Greek god Eros, the god of love, sex, and pleasure. Good sex (and BDSM) combines elements from Thanatos, as well, and that is evident in Japanese horror and ero-guro.
Eroticism goes beyond just the act of sex. André Pieyre de Mandiargues defined eroticism as "a passionate illumination of the human sex, in its voluptuous or dramatic games, until the most extremes of its excesses, of its abnormalities."
At the fetish club in Tokyo Gore Police, we see a headless woman whose skin and remaining parts of her body had been grotesquely nailed onto a chair giving a golden shower to all the beings at the club. It took an extreme fetish and presented it in just about the most extreme form imaginable.
There's the erotic in the sex act, the projection of a bodily fluid coming from a woman, if we can still call her that, who was completely naked. The woman is certainly grotesque. Body horror is an archetype of "guro." The act is grotesque, too.
Camille Bertherat wrote in her master's thesis (Waseda University) that "Ero encompasses new and often troubling forms of eroticism, in both literature and mass culture. Guro began in detective stories but could include anything mysterious or uncanny; it was often combined with ero in stories and articles focused on sexual deviance. ... It should be no surprise that ero and guro were combined in one phrase first, since ero frequently overlapped with guro."
Then we have the nonsense of Tokyo Gore Police. Nonsense is an even broader and more subjective concept than eroticism. From what I read, it seems nansensu refers to various foreign cultural products and new cultural creations, things like those depicted in dance, variety shows, satire, and veiled texts meant to comment on politics underneath the nose of a censorious conservative government.
Because nansensu is difficult to define, somewhat limited to a certain era, and not intrinsically tied to eroticism or grotesque, the word has fallen off in the present. If I understand correctly, "ero-guro" is a kind of genre or style, while "ero-guro-nansensu" is a particular artistic movement that existed from the 1920s through the 40s.
That said, you can still see nonsensical aspects in many of Japan's ero-guro horror products, including Tokyo Gore Police. A Harajuka Girl acts as a cheerleader, hyping the privatized police during their killing sprees. One of the antagonists is a mad scientist who injected himself with the DNA of serial killers to invent a race of super-killers. There's a gimp/dog with swords for legs and a half-woman/half-snail with test tubes for eyes.
Director Yoshihiro Nishimura has a background in special effects, and he leans into his skills at creating extreme violence and gore. He has made a name for himself as a director by focusing on nonsensical erotic grotesque films like Mutant Girls Squad, Meatball Machine Kodoku, and Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl.
The sexy Eihi Shiina, famous for her role as Asami in Audition is Ruka, who wears thigh-high leather boots with stockings and a schoolgirl blouse as her police uniform. You're going to want to watch Tokyo Gore Police just for Eihi, and I guess I have to watch more of Nishimura's films, because she stars in a lot of them.
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