Kamei Fumio Retrospective [Other Works]
Underwear Makes the Woman
(“Onna wa shitagi de tsukurareru”)
1958 / B&W / 35mm / 37 min
Directors: Kamoi Yoko, Chiaki Shigeo
Sound: Ohashi Tetsuya
Music: Iijima Kazuo
Art Director: Nagano Masachika
Producers: Ono Tadashi, Kawasaki Yoshiya
Cast: Nara Akemi, Kohama Nanako, Nara Kaori, Gypsy Rose
Production Companies: Japan Document Film, Toho Entertainment
Source: Japan Document Film
The film, supervised and directed by Kamoi Yoko, the underwear designer responsible for initiating an “underwear boom,” aims at improving that most behind-the-times garment, women’s underwear. Kamoi, who died in 1991, was also esteemed as an activist who used underwear in the service of the woman’s liberation movement. Nara Akemi, who appeared in Teshigahara Hiroshi’s film The Pitfall (“Otoshi ana,” 1962), Takechi Tetsuji’s Daydream (“Hakujitsumu,” 1964), and Kuroki Kazuo’s Evil Spirits of Japan (“Nippon no akuryo,” 1970) shows off various undergarments, and the heroine of this film. Gypsy Rose, famous as the Japan’s first post-war stripper, does a remarkable striptease.