Kaoru Adachi

Kaoru Adachi (安達かおる, Adachi Kaoru, born January 27, 1956) is a Japanese film director, producer and editor, and founder of the Japanese documentary and adult video (AV) studio V&R Planning.

Life and career

Kaoru Adachi was born Susumu Saegusa (三枝　進, Saegusa Susumu) in Tokyo. He initially worked in the TV industry mainly as an import agent for foreign films and is credited by former associate Company Matsuo with introducing Monty Python to Japan.

V&R Planning

In April 1986, Adachi founded the film studio V&R Planning in Tokyo. The V&R stands for "Visual and Retail". According to Matsuo, Adachi didn't know how to shoot films but was interested in "weird documentaries", especially those involving death, so he just "shot documentaries the way he thought they should be."

V&R Planning, under the Mad Video label, distributed the Japanese versions of the first three videos in the US Faces of Death series as Janku or Junk. Around 1989, Adachi along with Company Matsuo and a cameraman traveled to Brazil to film death scenes for Shin janku ("New Junk"), known in the US as Faces of Death 4, for which Adachi received co-director credit.Dark Side magazine noted his involvement with this series in an article "A Death Dealer - Susumu Saegusa" in issue #124 for December/January 2007. He also did a further series of death videos called "Death File" (デスファイル) again under the Mad Video label.