[2] After relocating to Tokyo, president Kōichi Gotō and his staff shared offices with Kokuei, the earliest pink film production company.
[5][6] Another early work was the September 1968 release Love Hotel directed by Shin'ya Yamamoto (director) and also produced by Tokyo Kōei.
[11] Toward the end of the decade, Shintōhō released the June 1979 Mamoru Watanabe Meiji period film Virgin Rope Makeover (少女縄化粧, Shōjo nawa geshō).
However, the pink film studios had trouble competing with the low budget videos produced by the new AV companies which also had the advantage of using real sex (though censored) in their productions.
[17] As part of its Roman porno films, Nikkatsu started a Female Teacher series in 1977 based on sex and rape in the classroom.
[20] Of the new generation of directors from this period, often called (sometimes derisively) the "Four Heavenly Kings", one in particular, Hisayasu Satō, made a number of prominent films released by Shintōhō starting in the late 1980s.
[21] His 1990 film, named Poaching By The Water by the director, with its themes of forced sex and bestiality, caused a good deal of controversy and scandal.
[28][29] The company celebrated its 30-year anniversary in 1993 with the release of Obscenities of Japan (ニッポンの猥褻, Nippon no waisetsu), a film described by general manager Akira Mori as "something akin to a pink-tinged version of a historical epic."
The movie, directed by Minoru Inao and written by Takahisa Zeze, had double the budget of a standard pink film and featured actress Yumika Hayashi and actor Shinji Kubo.
[30][31][32] In 1994, the studio released the Kokuei produced film Keep on Masturbating: Non-Stop Pleasure from director Toshiya Ueno which, in addition to winning Best Film of the year at the 1994 Pink Grand Prix, also brought awards to director Ueno, screenwriter Takahisa Zeze, and actors Takeshi Itō and Hotaru Hazuki.
[36] In 2004, the studio released Tsumugi which marked the pink film debut of AV Idol and actress Sora Aoi.