Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Naked Director’ on Netflix, a Lurid and Funny Japanese Porn Story

Netflix’s The Naked Director is the historically fictionalized biography of Toru Muranishi, the Japanese salesman-turned-film-director who turned the country’s porn industry on its head in the 1980s. Based on the book Zenra Kantoku Muranishi Toru Den by Nobuhiro Motohashi, the eight-episode series seeks the sweet spot between wild, almost-slapstick comedy and the technical prowess of American prestige TV — and fearlessly depicts the type of taboo smut that fueled Muranishi’s notoriety.

THE NAKED DIRECTOR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A TV broadcast shows porn star Kaoru Kuroki (Misato Morita) advocating for a woman’s right to openly express her sexuality within Japan’s famously buttoned-up cultural mores.

The Gist: It opens not with a bang, but some banging. Wearing nothing but whitie-tighties, Toru Muranishi (Takayuki Yamada) stands with video camera on his shoulder, shooting porn, proudly boasting that many people have seen his rear orifice. Meanwhile, Kuroki shamelessly flaunts her famously luxurious armpit hair to a tableful of embarrassed and repulsed prudes in suits. Here are some doors, now watch them get kicked down.

Jump back: It’s 1980. Sapporo, Hokkaido. A 30ish Muranishi is a crappy salesman, handed an ultimatum by his boss: sell more English encyclopedias, or you’re out. Muranishi pairs up with Mr. Ono (Itsuji Itao), who gives him sales pointers that are mostly metaphors for fornication. Our hero knocks on a heavily tattooed gangster’s door, and gets pelted with golf balls until he pees himself, but he makes the sale. Hello, mojo! He sells and sells and sells, then promises a bigger house to his wife and live-in mother, and new toys to the kids.

But this is the story of a sleazy-ass pornographer, not a man winning bread for his nuclear family. The encyclopedia business is robbed and bankrupted, sending Muranishi home early to catch his wife (Ruri Shinato) very loudly schtupping another man. Turns out, Muranishi was terrible in the sack, and she was never brought to any sort of ecstatic conclusion (although she tells him this in a significantly more harsh, pithy manner). She and the kids move out; cue a flashback to Muranishi’s childhood, when he watched his parents have sex, then fight violently before his father left.

Depressed and drinking, Muranishi meets Toshi (Shinnosuke Mitsushima), a total perv who’s trying to hustle audio cassettes of housewives in the act of loudly schtupping men who aren’t their husbands. Before continuing the conversation, Muranishi, in an act of displaced aggression, socks him in the nose. To verify the authenticity of the tapes, Toshi takes our hero to the skeevy peeper-friendly motel where he makes his recordings. Next thing you know, Muranishi is crossing lines: feeling aroused while spying on doinking couples, using his salesman prowess to move Toshi’s tapes by the dozen, eyeballing bini-bon — plastic-wrapped porn magazines — for their next business endeavor. The sky’s the limit when you’re staring into the gutter, I suppose.

Our Take: The first episode of The Naked Director is funny and colorful, and director Masaharu Take shows a keen eye for capturing the nooks and crannies where wormy degenerates like to hang out. Yamada is a strong lead, the supporting cast is mostly inspired and the narrative moves swiftly.

It’s clear that The Naked Director is inspired by American productions — it aims for a smoky moral ether that stubbornly refuses to cast harsh judgment on figures of dubious ethics, and it’ll no doubt beg at least superficial comparisons to The Deuce or Californication. It cuts the slapstick with a little weighty drama so it feels like more than just a diverting lark. It also can be fearlessly lurid, because a porn-industry bio that doesn’t make you feel a little bit yucky probably isn’t doing its job well.

Sex and Skin: Tons of it! Bouncing, jiggling, butts, boobs, mattresses, mirrors, the sounds of hams slapping. It’s about as hard as softcore gets.

Parting Shot: Muranishi struts down the street in slo-mo as a cover of Iggy Pop’s The Passenger plays.

Sleeper Star: As the tacky Toshi, Mitsushima provides an amusingly broad, Hawaiian-shirted, ne’er-do-well foil for Muranishi. At first, anyway — their partnership is bound to become more dynamic.

Most Pilot-y Line: Ono advises Muranishi to sell encyclopedias “like you’re making a woman come with your utmost politeness.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Just don’t watch it with your parents. Or Mike Pence.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream The Naked Director on Netflix