The Art Idol Koe-chan’s Challenge! Transformation Land
Reviewing a strange 2004 Japanese bodypainting documentary
Shozin Fukui, the Japanese experimental cyberpunk filmmaker best known for shocking works like Rubber’s Lover and Pinocchio 964, passed away back in April of this year. His style was more or less developed as an assistant director on Shinya Tsukamoto’s seminal film Tetsuo the Iron Man, packed with ballistic, dizzying camerawork and energy.
He also, unexpectedly, made a documentary in 2004 about a young Japanese shop clerk getting body painted by underground, contemporary erotic artists in their homes, and it’s quite a fascinating and lovely thing that stands separate from the rest of Fukui’s filmography.
I’ve never done body painting myself. I’ve been drawn on and have drawn on my own body for figure drawing, and once I got to draw a burning heart on a model’s chest, but that’s about it. I don’t know if I have the skillset for it, since I’m mostly used to painting with watercolors on flat paper and previous attempts at painting on any kind of 3D surface have always been…less than ideal. So I wanted to see what these artists did, how they handled the human body as a canvas.
Our primary subject through this documentary is Koe, real name Wakana Nitta, a clerk at the famous shop Mandarake who became known for the cosplaying she would do on the job. It feels like this whole thing was her idea, and I also wonder if she chose the artists based on her experience in the shop. She’s introduced in a white skirt and jacket, immediately calling to mind a blank canvas, talking directly to the camera about the changing of the body with some of the wild editing and transitions one is used to from Fukui.
The first artist to paint on her is Kasuma Shirow, an older gentleman, painting a ukiyo-e style geisha on Koe’s back along with an oni and some other weird little characters. His home feels the coziest with all the wood paneling around them as he quietly works, the two chatting about the challenges and weird sensations of painting on a body and being the body that’s painted on. The second artist, a younger man named Hemaru Machino, draws a…well, it’s a woman in a schoolgirl outfit, but she also has four breasts, a huge set of genitalia (the penis is a large as she is, and the testicles are painted along the contours of Koe’s buttocks), and tentacles instead of legs. He seems nervous the entire time, in a somewhat endearing way, so he doesn’t chat with Koe quite as much as Shirow. Koe talks more with Fukui here, and gets hold of a camera herself, shooting him as he works and making things feel more collaborative. That’s how I like working with models myself: I want them to be an active participant in whatever I’m making, not just a prop. We also see here just how soon Koe has to wash and scrub off the paint after it’s done: these works are all ephemeral, never meant to last outside of this documentary and the photos taken.
The third artist, Takashi Nemato, comes off as the biggest creep, and painting her in a dungeon setting with grotesque, mutilated wax figures surrounding them is…quite a choice, though Koe does enjoy interacting with these props throughout this session. The way the artist continues touching her breasts and buttocks sent me into a bit of a rage even if she didn’t seem to care. Just deeply unprofessional behavior. When working with models, I follow a particular set of rules, one of which is no touching without asking for permission first, along with no commenting on the model’s body unless they’re okay with it, so any time I see artists, especially men, behave like this it drives me mad. He paints some severed heads and abstract strokes on her, reading largely as a mess, the least interesting of all the pieces.
The final artist is the most well known: Makoto Aida, whose manga inspired piece is what became the main cover image for the documentary. Fukui didn’t participate in this segment at all at Aida’s request: there’s only a stationary camera on a tripod as Aida works and chats alone with Koe, who keeps looking into the camera, presumably at a screen to see how the painting is coming along. It makes you realize that, while not quite as ballistic as his cyberpunk films, the rest of the documentary was actually quite energetic with Fukui behind the camera, and his absence here is felt. My favorite detail of Aida’s work though is how Koe’s navel becomes a nostril for the face he paints on her torso.
I was for sure a little concerned before going into this: a young woman, erotic artists, and an older filmmaker is not a great formula when you know just how often young women are exploited. It could get creepy pretty quickly and I was bracing myself for that. Fortunately, that’s not the case. Everyone, except for Nemato (despite claiming to have no sleezy thoughts), is totally respectful. Koe herself seems really into the whole process, clearly enjoying herself in conversation and when she models the finished paintings afterwards. The male gaze here is hard to ignore, but the shots are primarily focused on the painting being done, regardless of where it is on her body. There are still some weird moments of filmmaking though: the early shot of her shaving her pubic hair in preparation feels a little unnecessary (though I get why she did it), and there’s also a quick scene of Koe sitting and eating spaghetti (fully clothed) that made me raise an eyebrow. After watching blood get poured all over her though, I decided to stop asking questions and roll with it. It does seem to ride a fine line: is it art, is it softcore porn dressed up as art, is it both? This is entirely about the naked body as a canvas for artists who exist in the margins of subculture, who seemingly have never done bodypainting before themselves. Erotic art and pornography are heavily censored in Japan, yet somehow this documentary is itself uncensored, which seems to suggest it isn’t anything obscene, even if a giant erect penis was painted on Koe’s back at one point.
Digging a little deeper, Koe has also modeled for at least one bondage photography book, which includes her cosplaying as Go Nagai’s nude superhero Kekko Kamen (one day I should write about that), so at least she had some prior modeling experience and wasn’t just thrust into this blindly. The title does make it sound as if this whole thing was her idea, and Fukui was brought in to film it during a break between other productions. As far as I can tell, Koe later became a DJ, playing sets from a capsule at the Nagakin Capsule Tower, with photos of her capsule being on display in a show at the MoMA which just came down this month. She discusses her love of music in bonus interview segments at the end of the documentary, and shows off her jaw harp skills too, so it was cool to see how her career pivoted in that way.
The Art Idol Koe-chan’s Challenge! Transformation Land can be found on Youtube under the title Hentai Land (hentai, the way it’s spelled in the original Japanese title, is used to mean transformation), and I’ve seen it in a couple of other places too. I first watched a copy without subtitles before coming across this one. I also want to know about the mech on the t-shirt Koe’s wearing at the end of the documentary, if anybody has an idea. It looks like something out of MechWarrior. Why did nobody paint any robots on her?! 🪐