With 'The Naked Director,' Japan scores a global Netflix hit

Netflix does not release audience numbers, so the show’s exact reception in the 190 countries the streaming service covers is something of a question mark. But there is proof Netflix is pleased: It has decided to underwrite a second season.

In Japan, critics and journalists have penned lengthy analyses of the series’ success. A common observation is that “The Naked Director,” which traces the career of 1980s porn director and entrepreneur Toru Muranishi (Takayuki Yamada) and his star actress, Kaoru Kuroki (Misato Morita), could have never been made as a network show here.

For one thing, the explicit sex scenes, many shot with Muranishi directing or participating in the action — in his trademark white briefs, no less — would never pass network censors. The show’s heavily fictionalized story, based on Nobuhiro Motohashi’s book on Muranishi, could have conceivably been made into a film, but the inevitable R-18 rating would have likely meant a smaller release and budget.

But with Netflix, the conventional standards and strictures of the Japanese entertainment business go out the window. Supported by a generous (but undisclosed) budget, a team of writers spent nearly a year crafting a script, with Jason George, a producer on the 2015 hit Netflix series “Narcos,” serving as a consultant.

Supervising director Masaharu Take and episode directors Hayato Kawai and Eiji Uchida had access to a top-flight cast, led by A-lister Takayuki Yamada, as well as the use of an open set that re-created bubble era Shinjuku in meticulous detail. Noting the series’ “high quality,” Hayato Otsuki of IGN Japan says, “‘The Naked Director’ shows Japanese dramas can still compete at a world level.”

However, not all reviewers were enthralled. While calling the series “a raucous, gritty tale of Japan’s pornographic revolution” that “swings between cable comedy and prestige drama,” critic Brenden Gallagher of The Daily Dot noted that “some of the material … would be taboo or even misogynistic by American standards.”