"[4] While working on his thesis, dealing with this interest in the relationship between imagery and literature, Tanaka took a part-time job at a movie studio to gain first-hand knowledge of film production.
He served as a production assistant on Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961), an experience which created Tanaka's enthusiasm for the film industry.
[6] In the late 1960s, Nikkatsu began having severe financial trouble due to audiences lost to television and an influx of Western films.
In order to avoid bankruptcy, Takashi Itamochi, president of Nikkatsu, made the decision to put the company's high production values and professional talent into the adult, or pink film industry as a way of attracting a new audience.
Beyond budgetary and time restraints, the only rule was that the film meet the official minimum quota of four nude or sex scenes per hour.
Director Chūsei Sone "specialized in ribald tales from the past", Yasuharu Hasebe, "delivered frightening, raw, and violent images", and Tanaka created films which were "as sophisticated as they were erotic.
"[8] In later years, reflecting on his work in the genre, Tanaka pointed out, "We can look at the core of human beings without disguising anything and can express ourselves very honestly.
Originally called I Am Burning Up (Moeagaru Watashi), a title Tanaka always preferred, the story deals with the sexual awakening of a frigid woman.
Tanaka meant the film to be an allegorical depiction of Japanese society in the post-war years, later saying, "After the war, Japan suffered from frigidity and the film described how the psychological bruises Japan suffered from would gradually be cured as time passed, through a young woman's life.
"[15] As his career progressed, Tanaka's films became known for their imaginative, sometimes surreal, use of color and poetic imagery within the setting of a harsh, brutal world.
In contrast to the first entry in the trilogy, a satirical depiction of a 19th-century brothel, Tanaka's film was a serious look at religious-sexual ceremonies at a temple.
The cast included the popular poet Sakumi Hagiwara playing the memorable role of a man who simultaneously commits suicide and wipes out a gang of yakuza when he explodes a gas-filled inflatable sex-doll.
[17] Tanaka's visual flair raised Private Life of a School Mistress (1973) above its lackluster story of a female teacher and her romantic relationship with a male student.
The Peer Cinema Club Annual, a conservative publication which did not normally concern itself with Pink films, judged it "a perfect marriage of decadence and art.
[25] Rape and Death of a Housewife (1978), despite its sensationalistic title, is considered one of Tanaka's masterpieces, and was his major mainstream critical break-through.
[30] Jasper Sharp writes that, from the point of character, plotting and construction, Tanaka's film is the most satisfying entry in the series, based on an adult manga by Takashi Ishii.