Miki Takakura (高倉 美貴, Takakura Miki), born Miki Koshizawa (越沢 美貴, Koshizawa Miki) on 14 December 1960 in Kanazawa, Ishikawa, is a Japanese gravure idol and pink-film actress who became Nikkatsu’s “SM Queen” (SMの女王, SM no joō) from 1983 to 1985. She belongs to the post–Naomi Tani generation of studio rope-and-torture stars: not the first SM Queen, but a central face of the mid-1980s Roman Porno S&M cycle written with Oniroku Dan’s brand attached.
Nikkatsu and the Search for a New SM Queen
When famed Nikkatsu S&M actress Naomi Tani retired in 1979, the studio tested several replacements. Takakura rose next in line after Nami Matsukawa. Her Nikkatsu career opened in August 1983 with Beauty in Rope Hell, part of the Roman Porno series, scripted from noted S&M author Oniroku Dan and directed by Genji Nakamura. Some moviegoers complained she was too thin for bondage—ropes did not leave the deep visual imprint they wanted on fuller bodies—but pink-film critics Thomas and Yuko Weisser still rank her among the best S&M actresses of the era.
By then Nikkatsu was commercially weakened and would close its doors within a few years. The S&M genre films that had propped up the studio for years were sliding into formula. Takakura retired from pink film after five Roman Porno features written under the Oniroku Dan banner. Her final Nikkatsu title was January 1985’s Double Rope Torture, which the Weissers gave only one star and called a “stillborn project.” The short SM-Queen reign therefore sits at the exhausted end of a studio system rather than at its peak vitality—valuable context for anyone collecting Japanese rope cinema as industrial history as well as kink spectacle.
After Nikkatsu: Mainstream Film and Photobook
Takakura then pursued film and television work and became one of the rare Roman Porno actresses—alongside names such as Terumi Azuma and Junko Asahina—to gain meaningful mainstream traction. In February 1985 she appeared in the comedy Capone Cries a Lot, directed by Seijun Suzuki, who had himself started at Nikkatsu in the pre–Roman Porno era. She also had a small part in Paul Schrader’s 1985 biographical drama Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters as the second girl in the “Temple of the Golden Pavilion” segment. In 1987 she appeared in the second film of Toei’s long Gokudō no onna-tachi yakuza-wives series. In June 1995 she played a novelist in the comedy Tenshi no wakemae. December 1993 brought a 96-page nude photobook, South Fairy Tale, photographed by Kenji Ishiguro and published by Scola. She married tarento Nobuo Harada in 1995.
Oniroku Dan’s relationship to the SM Queens continued in print: four of his stories first published in Japanese in 1997 appeared in English in 2010 from Vertical, Inc., as Season of Infidelity. The collection’s last story, “Bewitching Bloom,” recounts Dan’s relationship with Naomi Tani and notes three subsequent Nikkatsu “Queens,” including Takakura, Izumi Shima, and Junko Mabuki—placing Takakura inside the authored lineage of studio SM stardom rather than as an isolated credit list.
Selected Filmography
Nikkatsu Roman Porno (Dan-branded SM):
- Beauty in Rope Hell (団鬼六 美女縄地獄), Genji Nakamura (1983)
- Beauty Rope Cosmetology (団鬼六 美女縄化粧), Katsuhiko Fujii (1983)
- Nun in Rope Hell (団鬼六 修道女縄地獄), Katsuhiko Fujii (1984)
- Rope Torture (団鬼六 縄責め), Ikuo Sekimoto (1984)
- Double Rope Torture (団鬼六 緊縛卍責め), Ikuo Sekimoto (1985)
Other films: Capone Cries a Lot, Seijun Suzuki (1985); Bakumatsu seishun graffiti: Ronin Sakamoto Ryoma, Yoshitaka Kawai (1986); Gokudō no onna-tachi 2, Tōru Dobashi (1987); Tenshi no wakemae, Jinsei Tsuji (1995).
For adult viewers of Japanese SM cinema, Takakura is the mid-1980s rope-hell face of a dying Nikkatsu: five Dan-scripted bondage features, mixed contemporary body politics about thinness and rope marks, then a rare crossover into Suzuki, Schrader, and Toei. External references include IMDb and the Japanese Movie Database entry under 高倉 美貴.
