Legendary adult video director Tohjiro dies

The prolific Japanese porn director Chisho Ito, known professionally as Tohjiro, has died at the age of 70. He had been suffering from lung cancer.

The news was announced on July 21 by his wife, the former porn star Mirei Asaoka.

Tohjiro was born in Roppongi, Tokyo, in 1956. He made his first film, Gondola, in the mid-1980s, and it screened internationally in 1987 and 1988.

In 1989, he shot his first adult video (this was at a time when JAV was entering its heyday in terms of sales, as lavishly portrayed in the Netflix series The Naked Director). In 2001, he founded the AV production company Dogma. He established a reputation as one of the leading porn directors in the industry, especially when it came to BDSM-themed work.

He made an adult-rated drama film called Shura: Sisters of the Rope in 2023 about two sisters who struggle to overcome their traumatic pasts, in which their bondage model mother took her own life suicide and their father, the rope artist, abandoned them. Everything changes when their father’s is located and with him, a chance to unravel the family secrets. The film stars the porn performers Aya Shiomi and Hana Kato.

The director had also recently launched a crowdfunding campaign for screenings of Stage IV, a semi-autobiographical film he quickly shot in May about a man dealing with terminal cancer and his relationship with his wife. The campaign was successfully funded and the film was given its initial screening for backers in Shinjuku in late June. The film was also shown at the Oldenburg International Film Festival in Germany, and a full release in Japan is planned for 2027.

Asaoka, who appears in Stage IV in the role of the wife, retired from AV in 1993 and has since focused on regular acting roles for TV and film.