Pink film
The second entry Tanaka's "Showa Trilogy", "Watcher in the Attic" (1976), also starring "Sada Abe"'s Junko Miyashita, was a breakthrough for Tanaka. "Magill's Survey of Cinema" calls this adaptation of a Rampo Edogawa novel "a frenzied fantasy treat." In 1970 the story had been given a straight "pink film" treatment by actress Rumi Tama's husband, director Akitaka Kimata, founder of Pro Taka and Million Film. Mainstream critics recognized that Tanaka's work in this film made it stand out from its modest "pink film" origins. The "Peer Cinema Club Annual", a conservative publication which did not normally concern itself with "Pink films", judged it "a perfect marriage of decadence and art." Tanaka's depictions of Edogawa's "ero guro nansensu" style, voyeurism and the Taishō period were influential on later films such as Kazuyoshi Okuyama's "Mystery of Rampo" (1994), Akio Jissōji's Rampo films, including "The D-Slope Murder Case" (1998), and "Rampo Noir" (2005).