After making her acting debut in 1965, she appeared in independent pink films throughout the rest of the decade, often for director Akitaka Kimata, whom she would later marry, and his son Seiji Izumi.
[2] Her sister also became a pink film actress, following Tama's entry into the field, appearing in Masao Adachi's Rebel Woman: Dream Hell (叛女・夢幻地獄, 1970).
[4] Typical of the films Tama made with her future husband was Pervert (Koshokuma, 1968), in which she was cast as one of the victims of a college professor who enjoys capturing women for torture.
[7] In order to offset the loss of many filmmakers who had left when the studio changed its production to almost solely its Roman Porno series in 1971, Nikkatsu recruited performers from the pink film world.
[8] An admirer of Tama, Nikkatsu director Shogorō Nishimura was instrumental in the studio's decision to hire the actress to star in their Apartment Wife series.
[11] Nikkatsu chose Tama to be Miyashita's successor in the series, and her debut film for the studio was Nishimura's New Apartment Wife: Prostitution Group Building 13 (新・団地妻 売春グループ１３号館, 1975).
[12] Among the films in which Tama acted for Seiji Izumi, her future stepson, during this era were Sex Document: Serial Rapists (連続婦女暴行魔, 1975), which Jasper Sharp describes as "Pinku eiga at its most mean-spirited and thuggish".
He comments that Tama performing these scenes for her future stepson director lends the film some inadvertently Freudian connotations.
This film had Tama straying far from her "Apartment Wife" persona, playing the role of a woman who has served prison time for physically abusing her unfaithful husband.
[3][21] Rumi Tama made her debut as a director in 1981 with the film Revenge Sex: Girl Rape (復讐セックス 女が犯す).
[7][22] Some of Tama's directorial credits are Molester and Divorcee (痴漢と離婚妻, 1985), Swaying Huge Breasts 103cm (揺れる巨乳１０３ｃｍ, 1989), and Young Wife: SM Confinement (若奥様 ＳＭ監禁, 1991).