Okiyo
Two women are ferried to a small prison colony on the remote and barren prison island, where they and their fellow inmates are forced to perform perilous slave labor along the island’s treacherous cliffs, overseen by both an unforgiving sun and a crew of abusive male wardens. Meanwhile, the arrival of a newcomer among the island’s administrators, a disgraced policeman who is also the son of Nagasaki’s governor, creates dissension between the officials that, along with an untimely outbreak of bubonic plague on the island, ultimately sets the stage for a daring escape attempt on the part of the prisoners.
Oshiga
One murky night, Soetsu, a blind acupuncturist and money lender, calls on Shinzaemon Fukami, a Hatamoto samurai, to collect some money. But Fukami is too busy having an affair with a maid and curtly tells Soetsu to ask Sawano, his wife, for the money. As they have no money, Sawano interprets her husband's words as telling her to give herself to Soetsu in lieu of payment. However, Fukami catches them in the act and kills them both. Snatching up Soetsu's money bag with 30 ryo in it, he then asks two ruffians, to sink the bodies in a marsh. From what follows, it seems as if the spirits of Soetsu and Sawano are still hovering on earth in anguish and anger. For soon afterwards, Fukami is found dead by his own hand and Osono, Soetsu's younger daughter, suddenly disappears from home.
