 |
| Ed Wood ventures once more to the ancient land of Japan. |
NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).
The article: "Japan—Sex and Today." Originally published in Flesh & Fantasy (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 5, no. 1, March/April 1972.
Excerpt: "In reality, for a great many years, Japan has had certain claims to being the SMUT CAPITAL OF THE WORLD and the government didn't like that label, therefore they put up a sort of sea wall about eight years ago just before the 1964 Olympics in order to establish favorable images abroad about the sexual morals to be encountered there. But from that date on the authorities, even with a heavy campaign, have been running headlong into the sexual revolution ever since."
 |
| Japanse politician Hideji Kawasaki. |
Reflections: Generally, the things that obsessed Ed Wood—such as old cemeteries, rotgut whiskey, and angora sweaters—found their way into both his movies and his writing. In that way, his career has a lot of what Frank Zappa used to call "conceptual continuity." But there are some themes, certain persistent motifs, that really only emerge from Eddie's print work and not his films. The country of Japan is one of these motifs. Quite simply, Ed Wood was fixated on the sexual practices of the Japanese people in a way that you'd hardly guess from just his movies. His 1972 article "Japan—Sex and Today" is but one example of that.
I first learned about Ed Wood's stubborn Japanophilia when I reviewed his bizarre 1967 book Drag Trade. At first, that quasi-novel is devoted to the case histories of American men for whom transvestism led to a life of crime. But then, about midway through Drag Trade, Eddie suddenly shifts the book's focus and starts writing about the cross-dressing "sister boys" of Japan. When I dove deep into Ed's other fiction and nonfiction books, I encountered similar Japan-centric material throughout his vast and bewildering bibliography—never a whole book, mind you, just a random chapter here and there. Eddie seemed particularly fixated on the idea of Japanese female impersonators becoming highly-trained political assassins and spies.
"Japan—Sex and Today" is a more general survey of Japanese sexuality. There is no surgical precision to this article. Rather, it's a shotgun blast of information, spraying out in all directions. It looks like Eddie actually did some research for this one, since he uses specific names and even quotes from a December 5, 1971 article in The Los Angeles Times. Thematically, however, Ed Wood is all over the place. Here are just some of the many, many ideas contained within this approximately 1,900-word article:
- The Japanese people are less inhibited about nudity because they live in such close proximity.
- Japan's young people are challenging the strict sexual morals of their elders.
- Japan produces more pornography than any other place in the world, but some politicians may be uncomfortable with this.
- America has had a corrupting influence on Japan, especially when it comes to the production of pornographic films.
- In Japan, X-rated films are called "pink movies" rather than "blue movies."
- The Japanese people are obsessed with sex, partially because fertility is such a key component of the country's native religion, Shintoism.
- The Japanese people have two sets of morals: one for "the streets" and another for home.
- A Japanse politician named Hideji Kawasaki tried to start a nudist colony, but his efforts were stopped by the police. Some found this reminiscent of Nazi repression.
- People in Japan still read very explicit magazines and comic books in public, even though there have been attempts by the government to crack down on these.
- The Japanese have long had a liberal attitude toward sex, but the sexual revolution has somehow made them more inhibited. Even mixed public baths are becoming less common.
I honestly don't know what to make of all that. (And, believe me, there's more. That list above is just a sample.) Is Japan a country of libertines or prudes? Are they highly moral or highly immoral? Are they leading the world in pornography or are they being led by the rest of the world? Are we corrupting them or are they corrupting us? Most importantly, are things becoming stricter or less strict in Japan nowadays? It seems like Ed Wood will make a point in this article and then contradict that point in the very next paragraph, until you realize by the end that he hasn't really said anything.
As baffling as this article is, I still loved reading it because it's a treasure trove of quintessentially Wood-ian prose. When Ed Wood was in the zone, he had a way of stringing together words and phrases that was strictly his own. A prime example occurs in this article when Eddie discusses the differences between the generations and their attitudes toward sex:
After all, sex has been an intricate part of the entire history of Japan, and the broad-mindedness dates back into antiquity. But the elders are now wondering just how far the broad-mindedness should stretch. The young have really put themselves out on a sexual limb and some of the elders wonder if they might not be cutting the limb off behind them. But the young are quite sure they are in the right, the same as the young all over the world who have decided to take the sexual world by the tail and give it a few twirls and see what happens. The problem would seem that when they take sex by its sexy tail they are not quite sure, in their youth, just when to let go. The feeling is, if they hang on with all their might they might learn all the secrets of the ages which have previously been denied them.
That passage is alternately poetic, philosophical, and preposterous. I especially savor phrases like "put themselves out on a sexual limb" and "take the sexual world by the tail." Those tortured and torturous metaphors are especially indicative of Ed Wood's writing style.
Next: "Sex Around the World" (1973)