Hiromi Saotome
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Hiromi Saotome (早乙女 宏美, Saotome Hiromi; born June 20, 1963) is a Japanese actress, writer, stripper, S&M performer, narrator, and said to be Japan's only seppuku performance artist. Now based in Sapporo, she worked in Tokyo from 1980 to 2014. Saotome is well-versed in Japan's underground culture and has written extensively on the subject.[1]
Saotome's strip shows are staged as one-woman plays; she performs scenes of self-bondage and seppuku that follow a storyline. Her performances are full-scale, and Saotome learns dances and selects music for each new one. She never reveals her private parts.[2] Her repertoire includes plays based on themes such as Salome, the Sada Abe incident, Mata Hari, Yaoya Oshichi, and the Future Eve.[3]
In small theater performances, Saotome uses ropes for hanging, candles, pulleys, swords for performing seppuku, and fake blood to make her performances seem realistic.[2][3] Her activities are diverse; she has performed nude shows at school festivals and nursing homes.[3][4]
Saotome has been participating in the sadism and masochism event Sadistic Circus since 2005, where she regularly performs seppuku shows.
She also works as an aromatherapist.[5]
Education
Saotome studied classical ballet and jazz dance from childhood, and this knowledge is often put to good use in her stage performances.[6]
Career
At the age of 17, Saotome began working at a no-panties cafe in Kabukichō. At the recommendation of a friend she met there, she began modeling nude for magazines and performing masturbation in peep shows. She then began appearing in S&M videos and pink films in tied-up roles.[2]
In 1983, Saotome became a regular at the Roppongi S&M bar, SAMM, and began performing shows.[7] In 1985, she won the Best Supporting Actress award at the 7th Zoom Up Film Festival, a film festival focused on pink films.[9] From 1986, she toured the country as a stripper specializing in S&M shows.[2]
When Saotome was 21, she began writing a series of photo shoot diaries for an S&M magazine. Her on-site reports from the actress's perspective became a hot topic in industry publications, and she began receiving requests from other magazines, which led to her starting work as a writer.[1]
In 1988, Saotome performed upside-down on a pedestrian bridge in the Harajuku pedestrian zone.[8][3] That same year, she trained under members of Sankai Juku.[5]
In April 1997, she began performing shows three times a week at the SM Pub Theater Bondage in Shinjuku.[7] In October 1999, Saotome performed in a gold powder show at the Funabashi Wakamatsu Theater as part of a project called "50 Years of Unusual Striptease in Japan," produced by the Strip Press Club.[9]
Saotome served as an S&M advisor for the film Flower and Snake starring Aya Sugimoto. It was released by Toei Company on March 13, 2004.[10]
In 2005, she joined the all-female troupe "Benibara-za," which sometimes performs strip shows exclusively for female audiences, where she performed self-bondage and seppuku shows. Two years later, she studied sports aromatherapy and began working as an aromatherapist.[5]
From November 2009 to September 2013, Saotome served as the hostess of the S&M bar "Black Heart" in Ginza. The bar regularly hosted events called "Masochistic Fantasy," which featured SM novel readings, as well as lectures on self-bondage for women only, which she continues to hold regularly even after retiring from her position as hostess.[5]
She has organized and held five "seppuku social gatherings" at the "Fuzoku Shiryokan," a members-only library for S&M-related activities in Tokyo.[5]
In March 2014, she moved to Sapporo and began working there.[5]