[5] Nudity and sex would officially enter the Japanese cinema with the independent, low-budget pink film genre.

[7] The first true pink film, and the first Japanese movie with nude scenes, was Satoru Kobayashi's controversial and popular independent production Flesh Market (Nikutai no Ichiba, 1962).

Artistically shot by Akira Takeda, who was Nagisa Oshima's cinematographer between 1965 and 1968,[10] the film was produced independently but released by Shochiku studios who gave it a major publicity campaign.

When the artist is given an anaesthetic, he begins to imagine a series of scenes in which the woman undergoes various forms of sexual abuse at the hand of the dentist, including rape and torture.

[12] Though modest compared to pink films which would come soon after, Daydream did contain female nudity, including a brief shot of pubic hair.

[10] To the outsider, Japanese censors can seem surprisingly lenient in what is allowed on film, however the depiction of pubic hair and genitalia was strictly forbidden.

[14] The Japanese government was also displeased with the film because it was released during the Tokyo Olympics, at a time when the world's attention was focused on the country.

[15] Nevertheless, Daydream was a major success in Japan,[16] greatly contributing to the acceptance of nudity in Japanese mainstream cinema.

Variety gave the film a positive review, saying that despite the female nudity and erotic and perverse scenes, it was not done in bad taste.

About the film as a whole, the review says, "It is neatly lensed and edited with a gory color scene imbedded in this primarily black and white pic...

[17] Takechi's film was remade by the prominent South Korean director Yu Hyun-mok in 1965 as An Empty Dream (춘몽 - Chunmong).

In his Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema, Jasper Sharp reports that the arrest was due more to political reasons than obscenity.

[5] Eirin, the Japanese film-monitoring board, cut about 20% of the film's original content, and this footage is now considered lost.