An adult film actress is lured into performing in S&M scenes. When she discovers she enjoys it, she begins to find difficulty distinguishing her real life from her acting life.
Set in the Edo Era, the film opens with a group of women being convicted of various crimes. The rest of the film is given to graphic depiction of the tortures the women endure as part of their sentences.
A man leaves his family in Tokyo to travel and engage in various sexual escapades. When he returns home he finds out that his wife is starring in Imamura’s documentary about her search for her missing husband.
A detective investigating a serial rapist discovers that he and the perpetrator come from the same lineage of depraved individuals, a genealogy of violent and sexually perverse deviants that stretches through the Meiji, Taisho and Showa eras and can even be traced back to the Edo era.
Tomoko suffers at the hand of her husband, Arakawa, who practises sadistic sex with her and various other women. After Arakawa dies suddenly, Tomoko is at first relieved, but then discovers that she is incapable of enjoying sex unless she is in a masochistic position.
