Flower and Snake (花と蛇, Hana to hebi), also known as Flowers and Serpents (1974), is a Japanese pink film starring Naomi Tani, directed by Masaru Konuma, and produced by Nikkatsu. Adapted from a novel by Oniroku Dan—Japan’s best-known author of sadomasochistic fiction—it was the first of Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno features to take on a full S&M theme. Together with Konuma’s later 1974 hit Wife to Be Sacrificed, starring the same female and male leads, it is credited with launching the S&M Roman Porno cycle that helped save Nikkatsu from financial collapse in the 1970s. For Japanese SM history, this is foundation-stone cinema: the moment a major studio bet its survival on rope, training, and Tani’s star power.
Synopsis: training, family trauma, and a “total slut”
Makoto Katagiri (Yasunori Ishizu) is a thirty-year-old man living with his mother Miyo (Hiroko Fuji), who runs a pornographic photography business specializing in sadomasochistic content out of their combined home and adult-toy store. As a child, Makoto shot and killed a Black American soldier he found having sex with his mother. The incident left him psychologically stunted and impotent; his mother and her staff still treat him like a child. Even so, he has developed a strong interest in S&M with no outlet.
Senzô Tôyama (Nagatoshi Sakamoto), the elderly owner of the company where Makoto works, also has an interest in S&M. His new wife Shizuko (Naomi Tani) refuses to let him tie her up or even watch her bathe; he vents his frustrations on their housemaid Haru (Hijiri Abe) instead. After finding bondage pornography in Makoto’s desk, Senzô summons him, then orders him to kidnap and “train” Shizuko so her pride will break and she will submit to her husband’s desires. After hesitation, Makoto agrees.
In town, Senzô drugs Shizuko’s tea with sleeping pills so Makoto can take her away. On the way home Makoto stops in a field and tries to rape the semi-conscious Shizuko, but arousal brings a hallucination of the soldier he killed and he stops. At home, Shizuko wakes tied up and calls for help, drawing Miyo’s attention. Rather than free her, Miyo is pleased and urges her son to rape Shizuko. When Makoto says he cannot because she is too beautiful, Miyo suggests giving Shizuko an enema to destroy that impression. He does; after watching her expel it he can become aroused. He rapes Shizuko while his mother listens outside the room.
Makoto reports progress to Senzô with tapes and physical evidence of continued “training,” even as he grows attached to Shizuko. Returning home one day, he finds Miyo and her staff torturing her in his absence and angrily orders them not to touch her unless he is present. Shizuko grows more at ease with Makoto and asks if he will protect her; he says yes and that he wants to spend his life with her. When he tells Miyo, she objects; he calls her an old hag.
Later Makoto finds Shizuko tied and being used by a man who looks like the Black soldier from his dreams. He recoils; Miyo steps in and pays the man, revealing she staged the scene with a look-alike to re-break Makoto’s potency. He tries again with Shizuko and despairs when impotence returns—yet he keeps training her, even taking her outside for walks. He unties her so she can use a restroom; after a long, worrying delay she returns of her own will, delighting him. They watch a pornographic film featuring a Black man who resembles the soldier. At first uncomfortable, Makoto finally remembers the childhood incident in detail: it was Miyo who shot the man, not him. Overjoyed, he phones his mother and has sex with Shizuko while she listens.
Finally Senzô arrives to reclaim his wife. Makoto is stunned when Shizuko eagerly moves to her husband’s side. He asks her to divorce Senzô so they can marry; she refuses, saying she is now happy because Makoto made her a “total slut” just as her husband wanted. She offers to let him come with them. Though hesitant, he agrees. Miyo begs him not to go, but the three leave in Senzô’s vehicle while she runs after them in vain. The film ends with Shizuko bound and ravaged by Senzô and Makoto together while Haru watches in shock.
Cast
Naomi Tani stars as Shizuko Tôyama. Nagatoshi Sakamoto plays Senzô Tôyama; Yasunori Ishizu is Makoto Katagiri; Hiroko Fuji is Miyo Katagiri; Hijiri Abe is Haru; Akira Takahashi also appears. Tani’s performance as the proud wife who becomes a willing participant—and, in some readings, the true controller of the men around her—is the film’s lasting erotic center of gravity.
Production: how Tani forced Nikkatsu into S&M
To avoid bankruptcy, Nikkatsu—Japan’s oldest major film studio—had entered soft-core pink film in 1971 with its critically praised Roman Porno line. By 1974 the studio again faced a dry box-office year. Since the late 1960s, Naomi Tani had been the “Queen of Pink,” the most popular actress in the independent pink market that dominated domestic adult cinema. Nikkatsu had courted her for years; she refused because the studio would not enter the S&M genre that was her specialty. She finally agreed on the condition that her first Nikkatsu film be based on Dan’s Flower and Snake. She had already starred in a Yamabe Pro pink version, Flower and Snake: Rearing the Flesh (花と蛇より 肉の飼育).
Nikkatsu accepted, but still had to persuade Dan. After inconclusive talks, Dan invited director Masaru Konuma and scriptwriter Yozo Tanaka to his home. Mid-meeting the power failed; Dan called for a candle. Naomi Tani then appeared in traditional kimono with a lantern. Konuma later said it was Dan’s theatrical way of saying yes.
Konuma and Tanaka both judged the novel unfilmable and made major story changes. Dan and Tani objected; friction over the script was real. Konuma later said Tani was “very argumentative” while the script was finalized, then entirely professional once the company decided—committed on set, never a problem. After the film became a huge hit, Nikkatsu wanted a sequel. Dan remained bitter and refused to participate in the next film, Wife to Be Sacrificed (1974), which became an even bigger success. He later reconciled and maintained a strong professional relationship with both Nikkatsu and Tani.
Critical appraisal
Flower and Snake is valued more as industrial and historical landmark than as pure art cinema; many critics prefer Wife to Be Sacrificed. Dan himself was unhappy with the adaptation. Izumi Evers has noted that Nikkatsu’s “somewhat innocent approach inadvertently adds comedy,” yet concludes that the heroine trained in masochism was “actually controlling them the whole time”—for Evers, “despite all the humiliations suffered by heroines like Naomi, this is the fundamental truth behind seventies-era Japanese sex films.” Thomas and Yuko Mihara Weisser call it “well-made garbage” while ranking it among the best of Nikkatsu’s films in the genre.
Availability, sequels, and remake
Media Blasters announced an all-region DVD on its Tokyo Shock label (scheduled around August 2007 in period coverage). Later Japanese sequels and spin-offs under the title include Flower and Snake: Sketch of Hell (1985), Flower and Snake 3: Punishment (1986), Flower and Snake: White Uniform Rope Slave (1986), and Flower and Snake: Ultimate Rope Discipline (1987). A loose remake, Takashi Ishii’s Flower and Snake (2004) with Aya Sugimoto, launched a new cycle: Flower and Snake 2 (2005), also with Sugimoto; Flower and Snake 3 (2010) with Minako Komukai under Yusuke Narita; and Flower and Snake: Zero (2014).
Why Japanese SM culture still cites this film
For BDSM and kinbaku-minded viewers, the 1974 Flower and Snake is not a consent manual and should never be treated as one. It is, however, the commercial origin story of major-studio Japanese SM cinema: Tani leveraging star power to force S&M into Roman Porno, Dan’s fiction brand meeting Nikkatsu’s survival strategy, and a plot that treats training, impotence, family trauma, and a woman’s eventual embrace of “slut” identity as entertainment that saved a studio. Watch it beside Wife to Be Sacrificed and the 2004 remake to see how the franchise shifted from 1970s pink extremity to twenty-first-century soft-core spectacle—always under the flower-and-snake title that still signals Japanese SM on the world map.
