Japanese Movie Database lists 392 films released in Japan during 1971. Film critic Tadao Satō names as significant releases of the year, Noriaki Tsuchimoto's Minamata: The Victims and Their World, Shūji Terayama's Throw Away Your Books, Let's Go into the Streets, and Nagisa Ōshima's The Ceremony. Facing bankruptcy, Nikkatsu devotes its resources to producing its Roman Porno series: sexploitation films in the Pink film style. Beginning with Shōgorō Nishimura's Apartment Wife: Affair In the Afternoon, released in November 1971, these films would save Nikkatsu from bankruptcy for the next 17 years.