Japanese Movie Database lists 486 films released in Japan during 1966. 442 feature films were released this year. 176 of the film films released by the major five studios were in color; 227 were gendai-geki, set in the modern era, and 32 were jidai-geki, set in historical times. Released through Shōchiku in 1966, director Shin Sang-ok's The Red Scarf became the first South Korean film to gain a nation-wide distribution in Japan. Noting that each of these films uses sex as the central theme, film critic Tadao Satō names as significant releases of the year, Shōhei Imamura's The Pornographers, Nagisa Ōshima's Violence at Noon, Yasuzō Masumura's Red Angel, and Seijun Suzuki's Fighting Elegy.