Tokyo Decadence [1992] was a film way ahead of its time in its frank depiction of BDSM. More graphic than contemporary films like the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy [2015–], Tokyo Decadence is an intersection between American and European art house cinema and Japanese pink cinema with carefully composed shots, languid pacing, and subtext filtered through abstract expression—all while exploring the darkest recesses of (mostly) consensual human sexual degradation. A young Japanese woman navigates vignettes of various professional BDSM sessions in high-end Tokyo hotel rooms with wealthy, older Japanese clients. Tainted with shame for her profession but not thinking she has any other talent to speak of, the young woman fulfills the graphic and decadent sexual requirements of her clients in order to survive economically. In sessions ranging from submission to dominance, the lead character engages in various forms of bondage and discipline, sadism and masochism, and, ultimately, control and humiliation. BDSM scenes slowly unfold to achieve an escalating, feverish sensuousness that most BDSM depictions in other cinematic productions do not achieve. In the midst of her reluctant journey through this world of kink with clients, a past love is revealed—a figure who represents some kind of emotional purity and social conventionality that the young woman desires but yet may never have. Tokyo Decadence at first appears to be an allegory about the power dynamics between economic classes (rich vs. poor or, rather, master vs. slave), but the film is not quite that thematically cut-and-dried as it slowly focuses in on the differences in sexual and creative mores between social classes, eventually arriving at a place in which one must recognize and accept their true nature and place in the world.

Featuring:
Bondage and discipline
Dominance and submission
Sadism and masochism
Spanking
Verbal humiliation
Forced orgasm (consensual)
Forced exhibitionism (consensual)
Leather bondage with a panel gag, blindfold, and straps
Leather bondage cuffs and collar coupled with rope bondage and a harnessed vibrator

Tokyo Decadence DIR Ryû Murakami; PROD Hank Blumenthal (uncredited), Chosei Funahara, Tadanobu Hirao, Yousuke Nagata, Akiuh Suzuki. Japan, 1992, color, 112 minutes.