Minoru Kawasaki has carved a nice little niche for himself as an oddball director of absurd, low budget comedy. His films stand outside the usual batch of strange cinema coming out of Japan as they seem less forced, more passionate. I don’t think it’s just the low budgets that convey this sense of fun. Kawasaki’s dedication to the absurd can be felt across his work. In his own words: “I want to be silly for the rest of my life!” But before he would make films like Executive Koala (2005), Kawasaki would have to turn to the adult video market in order to receive a budget while remaining “silly”.
SUPER EROTIC BUSINESSMAN
original title: 課長 痴魔耕作 (Kachou chimakousaku)
Japan, 2002, Minoru Kawasaki
Kojima Kosaku (played by an actor simply known as Ginji) is a pint-sized salaryman, but don’t let his short stature fool you. Kojima is skilled; a “problem solver” for Medachi Electronics. The skills Kojima employs to solve his company’s seemingly endless stream of disasters are, as the title suggests, sexy skills. You see, Kojima is trained in the sexual martial arts. Trained, in fact, in his father’s own sexy sex-dojo. Kojima is so talented in the creation of orgasms that he can make girls cum without even touching them.
As you might have noticed from the above video, Kojima pulls some pretty spectacular sex-faces; faces that would be enough to put anyone off sex for a while. Perhaps this film’s one great offering is the performance of Ginji. Ginji is a shitty actor, but you have to give him credit for truly giving it his all. His bug-eyed, sweaty, teeth-gritting facial expressions are priceless. I’m surprised he didn’t suffer an aneurism during production.
Let’s put sex-faces aside for a moment because Medachi Electronics has a serious problem. Their rival company, Nishishiba, are blocking an important shipment from Malaysia. Kojima is sent to confront Ujie Toru (Nakata Hirohisa), the hammy head of the evil Nishishiba and ex-member of Kojima’s father’s sex-dojo. Kojima puts a stop to Ujie’s plans when he threatens to reveal Ujie’s “secret”. Ujie panics and restrains the urge to bark like a dog.
Ujie recovers after Kojima leaves and calls upon the services of Iku Iku Tiga (Sakurai Shou). Tiga is yet another ex-student of sexy martial arts. (Almost every character in Super Erotic Businessman is linked to Kojima’s dad’s sex-dojo.) Tiga challenges the heroic Kojima to a contest following ancient rules set out by the sex-dojo: through the power of fucking, they must make as many office girls cum as possible without cumming themselves! Kojima wins after Tiga accidentally blows his load a few hours into the fuck-fest.
I should point out that Super Erotic Businessman is divided into “episodes”, so every time something major happens (for example, the aforementioned cumming contest), we get a “To be continued…” title card, and then the opening credits play again. That’s right, they repeat the entire opening credits seven or eight times. To Kawasaki’s credit, the opening titles are pretty funny.
So Kojima has Tiga beaten. All good right? Well no, actually. Kojima has a crush on Akiko (played without an ounce of energy or emotion by Hosho Nana), an uptight young lady who works at Medachi. Kojima’s boss (Kikuchi Eiichi), a pervert with a collection of pussy prints, informs our hero that Akiko is a virgin with a serious complex: she doesn’t like being molested by her co-workers! What a weirdo! Kojima decides to tackle the problem head on and molests Akiko in a public park. This bold, and highly illegal, method works.
Akiko tells Kojima that the reason she’s a virgin is that she needs to have a third person watching while she has sex. Kojima takes her home and invites his pervy boss around to peep at them fucking. Problem solved, guys! HA! IF ONLY IT WAS THAT EASY! Turns out Kojima’s rival, Tiga, has been disguising himself as Kojima the whole time he’s been banging Akiko! Kojima is furious and challenges Akiko to another orgasm-off using their telepathic cum-hands.
The film plods along predictably from there; its episodic nature making the 77 minute running time seem a hell of a lot longer. We’re taken on a racially insensitive tangent as Kojima solves the sexual problems of an Arabic prince (played by an actor called Raper Satou – no joke… that is the professional name this man chose for himself). The film also constantly brings up a funny but overplayed joke about Kojima’s height fluctuating depending on how turned on he is by Akiko.
Super Erotic Businessman climaxes with Kojima and Tiga masturbating big strap-on dildos in front of two office ladies who squirt lady-jizz into champagne glasses. While that sounds amazing, and it kind of is, it gets tired pretty quickly, much like everything else in this film.
The biggest issue with Super Erotic Businessman is that Kawasaki clearly had no interest in the erotic content of the film. This wouldn’t be a problem if these tired scenes didn’t wheeze on for so long. The sex scenes are also borderline repulsive. This is not due to any sort of prudishness on my part. There’s just something inherently unsexy about office life. The constant cutaways to Ginji and Tiga’s ridiculous faces don’t help.
I watched this with my partner, and she asked a very good question question: “Who would watch this?” Well, other than us, of course. I really don’t know who could possibly squeeze any sort of sexual gratification out of this. And if people are watching it for the comedy alone, there’s far better ways they could be spending their time. Super Erotic Businessman is interesting only as a companion piece to Kawasaki’s later work. His comedic leanings are already apparent, particularly his mocking of salaryman life, but his wit has yet to emerge. And he shoots himself in the foot by making the sex so boring.
Availability:
Super Erotic Businessman is only available on VHS (without subtitles). I can’t imagine this will ever see release on DVD.
