Izumi Shima: Nikkatsu Roman Porno and the Studio’s SM Queen

Izumi Shima (志麻 いづみ, Shima Izumi), born Keiko Ishida, came into the world in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district on 3 December 1953. She is the Japanese film actress known for Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno cycle and especially for a run of early-1980s S&M features that put her among the studio’s recognized SM Queens. Collectors of Japanese bondage cinema and Oniroku Dan adaptations treat her as a central face of rope, discipline, and elegant cruelty on the Nikkatsu lot. The teachers, brides, and beauticians in these films are adult roles played by adult performers, not minors.

She was working as an actress by 1975, debuting under the name Keiko Ono in the television series Taiyō ni Hoero!. She changed names again to avoid confusion with another performer. In that early period she also worked as Emi Shirakawa and Nozomi Shirakawa. In 1977 she signed an exclusive contract with Nikkatsu and received the stage name Izumi Shima, the one she kept.

Her studio debut was the August 1977 Roman Porno Lady Chatterley In Tokyo (東京チャタレー夫人). Nikkatsu sold her as their most beautiful actress, and the camera was there to show her looks. Box office and audience response disappointed her, and for several years she was stuck in low-profile and supporting parts. Oniroku Dan, the SM writer, was also her sexual partner then. He later said she had trouble, on camera, with the uninhibited physical intimacy those early roles demanded. The professional shyness sat against a passionate private sex life. Even in that valley she appeared in S&M titles he wrote, including Blazing Bondage Lady (1980) and Female Beautician Rope Discipline (1981).

Dark Hair, Velvet Soul, and the queen slot

Dan, unhappy with how his scripts were being handled, produced his own film, Dark Hair, Velvet Soul (団鬼六 黒髪縄夫人, 1982). He brought in the respected pink-film director Mamoru Watanabe and cast Shima as the lead. Commentators Thomas and Yuko Weisser said she brought elegance and panache to the role. After that success she specialized in S&M features and was counted among Nikkatsu’s leading SM actresses of the 1980s. In 1982–1983 she was effectively the studio’s SM Queen (SMの女王). Later casting often put her in the commanding dominatrix type, rather than leaving her as the suffering heroine.

Dan’s English collection Season of Infidelity (Vertical, Inc., 2010) gathers four stories first published in Japanese in 1997. The last, “Bewitching Bloom,” recounts his relationship with Naomi Tani and comments on three later Nikkatsu Queens: Shima, Junko Mabuki, and Miki Takakura. That afterlife keeps Shima in the same line as the more internationally famous Tani generation.

The Nikkatsu list that marks the turn

The Roman Porno and near-SM credits that track her move from beauty marketing into rope leads include Lady Chatterley In Tokyo (August 1977), Gate of Flesh (December 1977), Tenement Apartment: Obscene Affair (January 1978), Teacher Deer (March 1978), Apartment Wife: Night By Ourselves (April 1978), and other apartment-wife titles, then the Dan-branded run: Blazing Bondage Lady (September 1980), Female Beautician Rope Discipline (November 1981), Dark Hair Velvet Soul (March 1982), Blue Woman (August 1982), Rope and Breasts (January 1983), Snake Hole (February 1983), Beautiful Teacher in Torture Hell (December 1985), Snake and Whip (August 1986), and Angel To Be Sacrificed (January 1988). Bondage ladies, beautician discipline, a black-haired rope wife, a snake hole, whip titles, and a teacher in a torture-hell fantasy. The teachers in Teacher Deer and Beautiful Teacher in Torture Hell are roles played by adults.

Shima did not invent Nikkatsu’s SM line. She took it up after the Naomi Tani era and sharpened it. She is the evidence that when script, a director such as Mamoru Watanabe, and the performer line up, the studio could still mint a queen. Elegance inside a rope story, and later a dominant’s authority, give collectors a different flavor from the pure suffering-heroine template. In English she is a named SM Queen in Dan’s Season of Infidelity and in Roman Porno guides in the Weisser vein, not a footnote. Dark Hair, Velvet Soul, Blazing Bondage Lady, Female Beautician Rope Discipline, Snake Hole, and the mid-80s torture and whip titles are why she stays in the history of Japanese erotic bondage film.