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Tamaki Katori (香取環) is a Japanese actress best known for her appearances in [group_post 580422] during the 1960s and early 1970s.

Tamaki Katori was born in Kumamoto, on Japan's southern-most main island, Kyūshū, in 1938.

Katori was raised in a middle-class family.
Her father owned a pharmaceuticals company in Kumamoto, which is still owned by the family. After being chosen as Kumamoto's entry in the Miss Universe Kumamoto beauty pageant, Katori was hired by Japan's oldest major film studio, Nikkatsu.

Katori was the star of, "Flesh Market" (1962), the first of these soft-core pornographic films made in Japan.
With over 600 film credits between 1962 and 1972, she was one of the most prolific Japanese adult film actresses of the 1960s, and became known as the "Pink Princess" of the first wave of Pink Films.

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* Take the Poll, [group_post 580420] [group_post 580422] actress from the 1960s:

Katori was still acting in supporting roles at Nikkatsu when she appeared in director, Satoru Kobayashi's controversial 1962 film, "Flesh Market".

The first Japanese film to contain nudity (director Seijun Suzuki's, "Gate Of Flesh", made for Nikkatsu in 1964, would become the first mainstream Japanese film to contain nude scenes), "Flesh Market" was shut down by the police and censored before it could be re-released.

Officially considered the first [group_post 580422] - the soft-core pornographic genre which would Dominate Japan's domestic cinema in the 1960s and 1970s - "Flesh Market" became became a huge box-office success.

Even with the limited distribution it received as an independent production, "Flesh Market", which was made for 8 million yen, took in over 100 million yen.

At Nikkatsu, Katori continued playing supporting roles, notably in several early films directed by future [group_post 580422] Master, Kōji Wakamatsu.

In his pre-Pink days at Nikkatsu, from 1963 to 1965, Wakamatsu made 20 low-budget "sexploitation" movies based on current events, such as sensational crimes and disasters.

Though at first the work was steady, Katori was barely surviving on the bit-part wages from Nikkatsu. When the major film studios started facing a decline in audiences, they began cutting back in film output.

Katori's income suffered as well.

In the years since the release of, "Flesh Market", several independent studios began specializing in the new [group_post 580422] genre that had sprung up in the wake of that film's success. When one of these studios was willing to give Katori a contract to star in their [group_post 580422], she accepted the offer. She later explained, "They offered me 20,000 yen a movie. It was an incredible sum in those days. I hadn't been able to make it in mainstream movies because people said with my baby face and big boobs I was unbalanced, but those attributes turned out to be exactly what the [group_post 580422] business was looking for".

At Aoi Eiga studio, established in 1966, to specialize in these low-budget and profitable Pink Films, Katori often worked in the sensationalistic and "sexploitive" films of director, Giichi Nishihara. Nishihara's films of the 1960s and 1970s would lead critics to call him both "Japan's sleaziest movie-maker" and "a cult favorite among devotees of extreme cinema". In, "Staircase Of Sex" ( 1968 ), Nishihara starred Katori with two foreign models in an attempt to cash in on the exotic appeal of the Caucasian performers. "All-Movie" critic, Robert Firsching, comments of her work for the director at this studio, "Katori .... deserves some sort of medal for valor after allowing Nishihara and Aoi Eiga studios to have her brutally five times in four films".

Early in his career, "Pillar Of Pink" director, Mamoru Watanabe, collaborated with Atsushi Yamatoya - Seijun Suzuki's screenwriter on, "Branded To Kill" - in several films. Katori starred in the team's 1969 film, "Women Hell Song: Man-Killing Benten", an A-typical [group_post 580422] inspired by Toei's, "Red Peony Gambler", series. Jasper Sharp singles out a scene in which Katori makes love in an abandoned temple, as one of the most striking set pieces in the [group_post 580422] genre.

Katori worked with Kōji Wakamatsu again in the late 1960s and early 1970s, after he had left Nikkatsu to form his own production company. In the Masao Adachi-scripted, "Sex Jack" (1970), Katori appears as the lone female Member of a Group of anti-Government radical students who plan to assassinate the Prime Minister and hijack a plane to North Korea. Shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1971, French censors claimed the film was "anti-social". One of Katori's final films with Wakamatsu was, "Sex Family" (1971), which starred future Nikkatsu's Roman Porno "Queen", Junko Miyashita.

A leading actress of the "First Wave" of the [group_post 580422] from 1964 to 1972, which was Dominated by independent studios, Katori retired from acting just as her old employer, Nikkatsu, was taking over the genre and establishing the "Second Wave" of [group_post 580422], the "Roman Porno Era".

After retirement from film, Katori was married to actor Jun Funado for seven years.

When they were divorced, she married Toshio Okuwaki, director of such Pink Films as, "Bed Dance" (1967), which featured an early appearance by Naomi Tani.

Okuwaki had been Katori's director in several of her own [group_post 580422] appearances.

A third husband moved with her back to her hometown of Kumamoto, where he went to work for the pharmaceuticals company Katori's father had owned. Though she gained a child from this marriage, she was eventually divorced again.

After her third divorce, Katori decided to support herself.
She first ran a gasoline station and as of 2006, is presently running a company canteen.

Reflecting on her role as a pioneering [group_post 580422] star, Katori says, "I enjoyed my acting, but I never really got used to the atmosphere of the [group_post 580422] business".
However, she adds, "I've got no regrets about my time in the entertainment world. I'd still go back there now to perform if there was a part for this old girl".

Three films that Katori had made in 1969 with her second husband, Toshio Okuwaki, were shown at the 2003 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival.

In September 2009, the 1960s careers of Katori and director Giichi Nishihara - working together and separately — were the subject of a retrospective at the Kobe Planet Film Archive.

"Market Of Flesh" (1962, Satoru Kobayashi)
肉体の市場

"Okinawan Ghost Story: Upside-Down Ghost/Chinese Ghost Story: Breaking A Coffin" (1962, Kobayashi Satoru)
沖縄怪談逆吊り幽霊　支那怪談死棺破り

"Sweet Trap" (1963, Kōji Wakamatsu)
甘い罠

"Tough Girls aka Savage Women" (1963, Kōji Wakamatsu)
激しい女たち

"A Bitch's Gamble" (1964, Kōji Wakamatsu)
めす犬の賭け

"Sex Diary aka Flesh Actress Diary" (1965, Shinya Yamamoto)
肉体女優日記

狙う (1967, Giichi Nishihara)

泣き濡れた情事 (1967, Giichi Nishihara)

"Indecent Relationship" (1967, Giichi Nishihara)
乱れた関係

"Seduction Of Flesh aka Temptation Of The Flesh" (1967, Giichi Nishihara)
肉体の誘惑

桃色電話 (1967, Giichi Nishihara)

"Abnormal Reaction: Ecstasy" (1967, Giichi Nishihara)
異常な反応　悶絶

"Female Trap" (1967, Giichi Nishihara)
牝罠

"Misused" (1967, Kan Mukai)

"Staircase Of Sex" (1968, Giichi Nishihara)
性の階段

"Ripped Virgin" (1968, Giichi Nishihara)
引裂かれた処女

"I Hate The Wedding Night!" (1968, Takashi Chiba)
初夜が憎い

裏切の色事 (1968, Giichi Nishihara)

"Adultery" (1969, Kōji Wakamatsu)
婚外情事

"Despicable Man-Killing Benten" (1969, Mamoru Watanabe)
男ごろし　極悪弁天

"New Jack and Betty" (1969, Isao Okishima)
ニュージャック＆ベティ

"Porno Pilgrimage" (1969, Mamoru Watanabe)
ポルノ遍歴

"Sexy Angel" (1969, Giichi Nishihara)
おいろけ天使

"Sex Jack" (1970, Kōji Wakamatsu)
性賊　セックスジャック

"Women Hell Song: Shakuhachi Benten" (1970, Mamoru Watanabe)

"Sex Cycle: The Woman Who Wants To Die" (1971, Kōji Wakamatsu)
性輪廻　死にたい女

"Sex Family" (1971, Kōji Wakamatsu)
性家族

Playgirl (TV Tokyo dramatic series) - Guest appearance, Episode 37
プレイガール