An AV director whose catchphrase is “Nice, isn’t it.” In the late 1980s, leading Diamond Eizo, he discovered Kimiko Matsuzaka and set off a big-breasts boom in the industry: Toru Muranishi. The Netflix original drama The Naked Director, which dramatized his life and the dawn of the AV industry, has, since it began streaming in 2019, presented the intersection of Japanese drama history and AV history to the world.

The Naked Director (Japanese: Zenra Kantoku) is a Japanese original drama series Netflix began streaming in 2019. Based on Nobuhiro Motohashi’s nonfiction work The Naked Director: Toru Muranishi Biography (2016), it dramatizes the 1980s activity of AV director Toru Muranishi, with Takayuki Yamada in the lead. This entry covers the series overview, its relation to the source, the cast and staff, the social response and the significance in AV history.

Overview

The Naked Director is a drama series set at the dawn of the Japanese adult video industry in the late 1980s. The protagonist is the real AV director Toru Muranishi (born 1948), who led the AV maker Diamond Eizo, played by Takayuki Yamada. As a Netflix original Japanese drama, Season 1 (eight episodes) began streaming on 8 August 2019 and Season 2 (eight episodes) on 24 June 2021.

The drama follows Muranishi’s earlier life as an English-conversation-material salesman before his turn to the AV industry, his entrepreneurship in the 1980s AV dawn, the rise and fall of Diamond Eizo, the debut of Kimiko Matsuzaka as the starting point of the big-breasts boom, and his expansion into satellite broadcasting up to bankruptcy. Around Yamada, a large cast including Shinnosuke Mitsushima, Tetsuji Tamayama, Lily Franky, Ken Yasuda, Sairi Ito, Misato Morita, Pierre Taki, Ayame Goriki and Eiko Koike was assembled.

Relation to the source

The drama’s source is Nobuhiro Motohashi’s nonfiction The Naked Director: Toru Muranishi Biography (Ota Publishing, 2016). Motohashi is a journalist who has long covered the AV and sex industries, and he wrote the book on the basis of comprehensive research including direct interviews with Muranishi himself. The drama takes the source’s factual framework as its skeleton while reconstructing it with dramatic composition, the psychological depiction of characters and the addition of fictional figures. The journalistic character of the source and the fictional character of the drama do not fully coincide, and the work should be understood as containing dramatic invention. Muranishi himself is reported to have cooperated with the production.

Season structure

Season 1 (2019), in eight episodes, depicts Muranishi’s earlier life (English-material sales), his entry into the AV industry, the founding of Diamond Eizo, the production of early works and the establishment of his standing in the trade. Near the end of episode 8, the encounter with a candidate lead actress, the starting point of the big-breasts boom, is placed as a setup for Season 2. The main cast was established in Season 1.

Season 2 (2021), also in eight episodes, depicts the peak of Diamond Eizo, the big-breasts boom (Kimiko Matsuzaka’s debut), the move into satellite broadcasting, industry expansion and bankruptcy. New cast members joined. The climax of Season 2 is the satellite-broadcast business affair, depicting Diamond Eizo taking on enormous debt, and the final episode suggests Muranishi’s bankruptcy and comeback.

Social response

The Naked Director drew major attention when Season 1 streamed: a Netflix Japanese original with a high budget and a star cast, a full-scale dramatization of postwar Japanese AV history, and a serious treatment of adult depiction including sexual scenes all drew notice together. Domestically, amid the spread and buzz of the Netflix platform, the series was recognized as a representative example of Netflix’s original Japanese works, and through overseas distribution with English subtitles it became internationally recognized as a work themed on the Japanese AV and sex industries.

Criticism of the series was varied. Positive assessments cited Yamada’s lead performance, the precision of its depiction of 1980s Japanese customs and society, and its completeness as a drama. Critical assessments raised the fidelity of the nonfiction, criticism from a gender perspective (especially the portrayal of female characters), and debate over the appropriateness of the sexual scenes. On the historical accuracy of the 1980s AV industry as depicted, industry figures and researchers also commented; Muranishi himself made largely positive comments, while some other industry figures sought corrections of details.

Significance in AV history

The period the drama depicts spans from the dawn to the threshold of maturity of the Japanese adult video industry, when the institutional foundations of the modern AV industry were formed. The series dramatizes the rise of Diamond Eizo, an AV maker that influenced the industry through the improvisation of live shooting, the appearance of the shooter himself as a performer (self-shot / POV), and the move into satellite broadcasting. It dramatizes the big-breasts boom: Kimiko Matsuzaka, discovered by Diamond Eizo in 1989, set off a big-breasts boom through a concentrated promotion, and the series depicts the formative period of the “big breasts” genre that continues today. It dramatizes the spread of the self-shot / POV style, in which the shooter stands on set, a distant origin of later personal filming and amateur-shot content. And it dramatizes the satellite-broadcast business of the early 1990s, which ultimately led to Diamond Eizo’s bankruptcy but carried historical significance as a trial of the industry’s distribution revolution.

The Naked Director is sometimes discussed in comparison with overseas dramas themed on the porn industry, such as the American films and series Boogie Nights (1997) and The Deuce (2017-2019), a case in which differences in each country’s industry culture, institutions and narrative expression come to the fore.

Related terms

• History of AV
• Adult video
• AV actor
• Self-shot / POV
• Personal filming
• Kimiko Matsuzaka