“Eros + Massacre”, Original Japanese First Release Movie Poster 1970, ATG, B2 Size (51 × 73 cm) S41

This is an original Japanese B2 theatrical poster produced for the first release of Yoshishige Yoshida’s Eros + Massacre (エロス＋虐殺 / Erosu Purasu Gyakusatsu), one of the defining works of the Japanese New Wave and among the most radical films distributed by the legendary Art Theatre Guild (ATG).

Completed at the end of the 1960s and released theatrically in Japan in 1970, the film stars Mariko Okada, Toshiyuki Hosokawa, Yūko Kusunoki, Etsushi Takahashi, Masako Yagi, and Kazuko Ineno. Yoshida interweaves the lives of anarchist Sakae Ōsugi and feminist Noe Itō with a group of politically and sexually liberated young people living in contemporary Tokyo, creating an extraordinary meditation on history, memory, political rebellion and erotic freedom.

Film background

Eros + Massacre moves between two periods separated by almost half a century.

The historical narrative examines the life of radical anarchist Sakae Ōsugi and his relationships with the pioneering feminist and anarchist Noe Itō, journalist Itsuko Masaoka and other women associated with Japan’s early-20th-century radical movement. Ōsugi and Itō were murdered by military police during the chaos following the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake.

Running alongside this material is a deliberately fragmented contemporary story set in the late 1960s, in which students investigate and reinterpret Ōsugi’s ideas while pursuing their own experiments with sexuality, freedom and political identity.

Rather than treating history as fixed fact, Yoshida continually allows past and present, documentary and fiction, memory and imagination to overlap. The result is a film about the impossibility of separating historical revolution from the desires and assumptions of those who later attempt to understand it.

The film forms the first part of Yoshida’s celebrated loose trilogy concerned with Japanese radicalism, followed by Heroic Purgatory and Coup d’État.

Poster design

This original Japanese B2 is a superb example of the radically modern graphic language associated with ATG cinema.

The design is constructed almost entirely from high-contrast black-and-white photographic fragments interrupted by an intense translucent yellow vertical band.

Across that yellow column runs the enormous English title:

“EROS + MASSACRE”

The typography is partially obscured, inverted and absorbed into the photographic imagery, forcing the viewer to read the poster as a layered visual object rather than as straightforward advertising.

The technique perfectly reflects the film itself: identities, eras, bodies and memories overlap without conventional boundaries.

At left, the enormous profile of Mariko Okada as Noe Itō provides the strongest human image in the composition. Her face is rendered with the severe tonal contrast of photographic reproduction, giving her an almost sculptural presence.

Around her are fragmented images of intimacy and confrontation. Bodies appear upside down, figures overlap, and a ghostly flame-like image spreads across the right half of the sheet.

Rather than presenting a conventional cast montage, the poster creates a sense of collision and visual instability, directly reflecting Yoshida’s experimental approach to cinematic space and chronology.

Across the centre, the Japanese title appears in jagged red lettering:

「エロス＋虐殺」
“Eros + Massacre”

The brilliant red title against yellow, black and white provides the composition’s only other major colour accent.

ATG and the Japanese New Wave

The small ATG / Art Theatre Guild identification is especially important.

ATG became one of the central institutions of post-war Japanese independent cinema, providing distribution and later production support for filmmakers whose work could not easily exist within the major studio system.

Its catalogue encompasses some of the most important works of the Japanese avant-garde and New Wave, including films by Nagisa Ōshima, Shūji Terayama, Toshio Matsumoto, Kōji Wakamatsu, Akio Jissoji, and Yoshishige Yoshida.

ATG advertising was similarly unconventional. Posters frequently abandoned the polished star-driven layouts of mainstream Japanese cinema in favour of experimental photography, radical typography and contemporary graphic design.

This Eros + Massacre B2 is an outstanding example of that philosophy: the poster does not simply advertise the film—it visually participates in its avant-garde language.

Yoshishige Yoshida and Mariko Okada

Yoshishige Yoshida was among the most formally adventurous filmmakers to emerge from the Japanese New Wave.

His work is characterised by fractured compositions, extreme use of negative space, unconventional editing and a persistent interest in the relationship between politics, eroticism, memory and personal freedom.

Mariko Okada—Yoshida’s wife and one of the great actresses of post-war Japanese cinema—was also a crucial creative collaborator. Her performance as Noe Itō gives the historical sections of Eros + Massacre much of their emotional and intellectual force.

The film became one of Yoshida’s key international works and is now widely regarded as a major achievement of Japanese experimental cinema.

Condition

Very Good+ / Excellent.

The poster presents extremely strongly, with the yellow, red, black and white graphic elements retaining excellent visual impact.

There are original horizontal and vertical fold lines, light handling creases, minor age-related wear and some gentle surface undulation consistent with an authentic theatrical poster of this period.

The reverse retains faint original handwritten Japanese theatre / storage notations, including what appears to be the film title. Such markings were commonly added by cinema staff to identify posters while they were stored folded and provide an appealing additional element of genuine period provenance.

These characteristics are consistent with a genuine working theatrical poster rather than an unused later reproduction, and once framed the piece will display exceptionally well.

Please review the photographs carefully—they show the exact poster for sale.

This poster is an original Japanese theatrical B2 from the 1970 first-release campaign.
It is not a reproduction or a modern reprint.

It is approximately 56 years old.

Certificate of Authenticity included.