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Lady Moonflower

1976 film

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ6470462 ↗
Source-derived summary

Lady Moonflower (夕顔夫人, Yūgao Fujin), a.k.a. Flower of the Night, is a 1976 Japanese film in Nikkatsu's Roman porno series, directed by Katsuhiko Fujii and starring Naomi Tani.

Synopsis

Kizaki kidnaps Yuriko and engages in a rape and torture session with her, which he photographs. With the photos, he blackmails aristocratic flower arrangement teacher Yumeji, Yuriko's older sister. Rather than allow him to shame her clan by sending the photos to the media, Yumeji goes to Kizaki. Kizaki then proceeds to rape and torture Yumeji, who was his true desire all along. Yumeji escapes from Kizaki at the end of the film.

Cast

Naomi Tani

Erina Miyai

Osamu Tsuruoka

Tokuko Watanabe

Shinsho Nakamaru

Tamaki Katsura

Background

Director Katsuhiko Fujii had been a competent director at Nikkatsu, making lower-profile sequels in the Apartment Wife and Eros Schedule Book series until his talent for SM showed through in the Naomi Tani project, Cruelty: Black Rose Torture (1975). In Lady Moonflower he teamed up with Tani again, with a script by her long-time collaborator, SM-author Oniroku Dan. Kōyū Ohara would direct a more successful variation on the story of Lady Moonflower, also scripted by Dan and starring Tani, in Fairy in a Cage (1977), which is regarded as one of the best of Nikkatsu's forays into the SM-themed pink film.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Lady Moonflower” is 1976 film. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Lady, Moonflower and film, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1976, 1975, 1977—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1976-01-01. For this dossier, Lady, Moonflower and film is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “1976 film” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6470462. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1976, 1975 and 1977.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Lady Moonflower”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Lady Moonflower primary sources, Lady Moonflower archive and Lady research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Lady Moonflower”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Lady Moonflower” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.