Behind-the-scenes babes offer backdoor view of Japan's porn biz

Dealing with phone calls from literal jerks, picking out color coordinated condoms and selecting materials for simulated semen are just some of the duties of women working behind the scenes at adult moviemakers, according to Friday (5/9-16).

"I work in admin," a female office worker from an adult movie production company tells Friday. "My job involves everything from dealing with guys who call the company while they're masturbating to selecting condoms that aren't going to stand out on screen during filming."

Friday interviews the admin worker, a female assistant director and an adult actress to see what it's like from a women's side behind the scenes of the stick flick caper.

The picture the women give of the adult movie industry in Japan is a detailed one, with answers to 50 questions posed by readers of the magazine's mobile phone site.

Sexual harassment is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a part of their daily working lives.

"I'm used to the sexually abusive phone calls or requests for sales of adult items," one of the women says. "The problem with this job is dealing with the prejudices of the people around you. Many of the women working in this business never tell their boyfriends or parents what line of work they're really in."

Job interviews are also somewhat out of the ordinary.

"Women get asked questions like 'Do you enjoy sex?' or 'Do you masturbate?' and it's normal to be asked to flash your breasts," one of the women tells Friday. "It'd be sexual harassment in any other workplace, but for this job it's vital information the company needs to know."

Payment is an issue that seems high on the minds of most readers.

"Directors get paid according to how well their movies sell. It can run into the hundreds of thousands of yen per movie in some cases. Editing work is all done on a contract basis, so editors get paid pretty well," the adult video company employee says.

"Famous actresses can get paid 1 million yen or more per movie. For actresses on studio contracts, though, the rate is more like 80,000 yen to 100,000 yen per flick. The more popular an actress is, the more she's likely to get paid."

Appearances in direct-to-video porn are likely to be made by ordinary women.

"We get university students, office workers, part-time workers, housewives, nightclub hostesses, the works," one of the women working behind the scenes says. "It all depends on how well talent scouts have talked them into it. One thing all the women have in common is a tendency to be unable to say 'no.'"

In a business where companies disappear overnight, it's surprising to learn that payment is not always immediately done in cash.

"It really depends on the production company," one of the women says. "Some places only pay on a certain day each month."

The women also provide insight into what shooting schedules are like for the adult video market.

"The movies are all basically shot in a single day. If there are dramatic scenes involved, it might take a few days at most. But the production staff are all paid on a daily basis, so we can't afford to take time," one of the women says before going on to describe typical filming locations.

"Normally, the movies are made in a studio that costs several hundred thousand yen an hour to rent out. There are also studio sets with office, train or apartment scenes in them. The hardest shoots are outdoor locations. We've got to pay to rent out private property and usually have to restrict scenes not easily viewable, like building rooftops."

There are also onerous tasks like watching movies as they're being screened by industry watchdogs to prevent them from incurring the wrath of authorities –- an easy thing to do considering the display of genitalia in Japanese adult movies is regarded as illegal.

"Normally, what happens is that applicants from a company looking for screening approval will sit down with a couple of old guys from Biderin (the Nihon Ethics of Video Association) in a dark room and watch the movie. If genitalia appears on the screen, everybody shouts out 'Hey, it's on screen,' or something like that and the old guys will tell us to blank it out better with the digital mosaic," one of the women says.

The women hasten to add that the adult video industry is, despite widespread perceptions, not exclusively a man's world.

"There are women adult video directors and plenty of movies made entirely from a women's erotic point of view," one of women working behind the scenes in the industry tells Friday.

"They've normally got these absolutely gorgeous hunks doing all the acting. I don't mind watching these movies at all." (By Ryann Connell)

(Mainichi Japan) May 6, 2008