Sada Abe
A black-and-white film employing handheld camera and a fragmented, impressionistic narrative structure, Tanaka's "Confidential Report: Sex Market" (1974) is among the most unusual-looking films in the Roman Porno series. The first film in Tanaka's "Showa Trilogy", "A Woman Called Sada Abe" is more conventional than most of his films, but highly regarded by critics. Tanaka was proud of his ability to produce a high-quality film on a minimal budget. Nikkatsu allotted 7,500,000 yen (approximately US$65,000) for their "Roman porno" films, but Tanaka used only about 6,600,000 yen to make "A Woman Called Sada Abe". Tanaka later explained, "I managed to make it for about 900,000 yen under budget. I believe it depends on the initial concept. I was confident that as long as the concept was good, it would become a great film and beat any of those films made for 10,000,000 yen. I think that's the most interesting thing about film-making: it's so unpredictable. 'Abe Sada's' simple lip movement could say more and be more appealing to an audience than thousands of horses running around a field. It's possible that lip movement could be more effective than thousands of horses and that's why film-making is very creative and incredibly interesting."