Early life

Born Yoshihiko Kuroiwa in Shiga Prefecture on 16 April, 1931, Oniroku Dan's interest in the cinema was nurtured early in life because his parents owned a movie theater. Dan claims to have also discovered his interest in S/M very early in life. "I even liked this kind of thing in kindergarten. I remember we had a lovely young teacher in her early twenties. More than anything in the world, I wanted to tie her up."

Growing up during World War II, Dan learned English from American POWs. In the 1950s, he worked as a translator for English-language television programs, including Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In the 1960s, Dan taught English at a junior high school. While teaching he began writing scripts, under the pseudonym "Matsugoro Kuroiwa," for Pink films produced by small, independent studios. It was during this early stage of his career that Dan's long professional relationship with actress Naomi Tani began.

Fame

Oniroku Dan's S&M novel Flower and Snake, is the work which made him famous. In addition to a popular 1974 film, this novel would inspire a series of nine books, and a new series of Nikkatsu Roman porno films released between 1985 and 1987.

In 1974, after years of negotiations, Nikkatsu finally succeeded in recruiting Tani for their Roman porno series by agreeing to her request that her first film be based on Dan's Flower and Snake. Dan and Tani had objected to departures from Dan's story made in the film's script by director Masaru Konuma and script-writer Yozo Tanaka. The film, Flower and Snake, became a major hit for the studio and is credited both with starting the highly successful S/M genre of Nikkatsu's Roman porno films, and with establishing Naomi Tani as the third of Nikkatsu's Roman Porno Queens and the first "S/M Queen."

Still offended by the changes in his story for Flower and Snake, Dan refused to participate in the follow-up to that film, Wife to be Sacrificed. In interviews, Dan claims that this second film, which proved even more successful than Flower and Snake, was based on a story by him, but that he had insisted his name be removed from the credits. Director Masaru Konuma, however, says that it was an original story by Yozo Tanaka.

Nevertheless, Dan and Nikkatsu were able to settle their differences and Dan later gave the studio exclusive rights to his novels, many of which were filmed with Naomi Tani. Dan's association with Nikkatsu continued for more than a decade, even after Tani's retirement from the screen. Though sometimes criticized for their predictability, the formulaic structure he developed for most of his film scripts would become the model for Nikkatsu's successful and long-lived S/M Roman porno series.

Retirement and comeback

In the early 1990s, having by then written over two hundred S/M novels, Dan ceased writing and embarked on an ultimately unsuccessful business venture. After a break of nearly a decade, Dan returned to writing, publishing his autobiography, The Flower Must Be Crimson: The World of Oniroku Dan. Soon after coming out of retirement, his popularity was such that he was involved in eight serialized magazine novels and the writing of another book.

Oniroku Dan's style

A family man with children, Nicholas Bornoff describes Oniroku Dan as a "man with a genuine aura of rather tweedy, comfortable professorship." Dan has developed his own variation on S&M. But when asked if he ever acted on his S&M and bondage fantasies with his wife, Dan replied, "No way! She would beat my ass."

Director Masaru Konuma calls his own early S/M films "European type S/M," and says, "Later S/M developed in a very Japanese fashion. The Oniroku Dan way." Konuma says Dan describes three purposes of S/M: "for punishment, for confinement and for a sense of shame," and that "Oniroku Dan dislikes S&M as punishment... his novels and screenplays are centered around the 'humiliation' concept."

Dan confirms Konuma's view by observing, "My book editors often confuse S/M with cruelty and they want me to write some 'punishment tale' for them. This type of story is out of my realm. It just gives me the creeps. Rather, my concept of S/M is 'distorted sexual desire' or extreme disorientation. It's a male fantasy derived from love... from seeing a beauty suffer through the sense of shame. Therefore, my style contains a romantic, aesthetic, and sometimes decadent fragrance."

Konuma says of Dan's female characters, "In his novels, he's searching for the beauty of women. He creates an ideal woman and proceeds to sell an S/M 'fantasy' to his readers." According to Naomi Tani, Dan's perfect film actress must "look good in a kimono; she needs to have long jet-black hair; she must have a certain amount of body fat, so the bondage rope makes a clear impression on her skin; and she has to be graceful under torture, with strong facial expressions."

Dan says that Naomi Tani fit all these conditions, and that he used her as the model for several of the women in his novels. Commenting on Tani's sudden retirement at the height of her popularity in 1979, Dan says, "I went into shock. It was the end of the Golden Duo. I almost decided to quit writing."

In summing up Dan's work, Bornoff coments, "Dan has the knack of making sadism respectable." On the growing cult popularity of his Nikkatsu Roman porno films in the United States, Dan acknowledges the differing ways of cultural and artistic expression between the two countries. He comments, "I understand some aspects of the pink film are not acceptable in America. But ultimately, if the American people recognize the special quality [of] Oniroku Dan's world through his sex films - then I am more than happy."