A few months ago I was introduced to the Japanese exploitation genre known as pinky violence at Cinebeats. In that article, Kimberly Lindbergs traces a brief history of the sociopolitical environment Japanese women were facing in the late 60's and early 70's. I searched around for other material on the genre and found this great article by David Wilentz, which covers mostly different films from the ones I will be discussing. In it, Wilentz writes that these films "seemed to prove that the quickest path to female empowerment is paved with misogyny and bloodshed." This is a prescient observation, and Wilentz goes on to argue--as do most other commentators on the subject--that the pinky violence film cries out for a gender-based discussion. This essay, presented in five parts over the duration of the week, is my attempt to lay some groundwork for that analysis.1. introductionAs the 1970’s dawned, several lines of development in Japanese film converged with world cultural changes to allow for the unique environment necessary for the birth of the exploitation genre known as “koshoku rosen” or pinky violence. In the booklet included with Panik House's Pinky Violence Collection boxset, Chris Desjardins, author of Outlaw Masters of Japanese Cinema, defines pinky violence as "a Japanese pop slang term for ultra-violent movies featuring female protagonists and varying degrees of softcore sexuality." The ‘pinky’ half of the equation comes from the pinku eiga, a particularly Japanese brand of sex film that came to be in 1962 with the appearance of Flesh Market (Nikutai no Ichiba). In retrospect, the early pinku eiga look extraordinarily arty when compared to contemporary American equivalents and extremely tame when compared to contemporary European equivalents.