Setsuko Ogawa
In feudal Japan, women are vulnerable, in need of protection, and capable of deception. Jokichi of Mikogami, a drifter, has not yet fully revenged the death of his wife and son. He searches for Kunisada Chuji, who in turn has hired the knife-throwing Windmill Kobunji to kill him. Kobunji and Jokichi meet in the winter, near Sasago Pass, when both have rescued women: Jokichi has saved the lute-playing Oyae whose clan and whose lover want her dead; Kobunji has rescued Oharu, a well-born woman married to an innkeeper. Is this rescue a whim or something deeper? And why does Jokichi become the consumptive Kobunji's protector? What ultimately will Jokichi do about Oyae?
Akiko is a housewife who is bored with her relationship. She lives an adulterous passion with a colleague of her husband, decides to follow him to Hong Kong where he has just been transferred. Akiko's husband goes out looking for them, without success. Desperate, he lets himself be dragged into the underworld of the city by a mysterious Sino-Japanese mongrel who plunges him into drugs and pimping. Until the day he finally learns the terrible truth about his unfaithful wife.
Osono and Eisuke would like to get married but with her up to her neck in debt due to her late father's illness and him trying to raise the funds to start a business, they can't afford to do so. Osono agrees to work as a geisha and eventually is tricked into becoming a businessman's mistress, all because she wants to help her lover. The businessman, in turn, is actually only interested in training her so he can hand her over to a palace official in exchange for a trade agreement...
Parody tale of notorious Edo-period Robin Hood named Nezumi Kozo (Rat Man), a thief who robs from the rich and showers the money on the poor. In this entry, he's also a drunkard who sometimes forgets why he's broken into the house in the first place. This is especially true if there's a pretty girl to be seduced.
Oshichi (Setsuko Ogawa), the daughter of a green grocer, is only seventeen years old but is known as one of the most beautiful girls in Edo. She is betrothed to Sakubei (Tatsuya Hamaguchi) but does not love him. One day, the whole city is flooded by one of the worst rain storm in its history. Oshichi, and her parents are given shelter at a temple where she meets Kichisaburo (Ryuji Mori), a young priest. It is love at first sight for both of them. The storm finally abates. Oshichi's parents decide to return to their home on the following day. That night, Oshichi gladly gives herself to Kichisaburo but they are found by her mother who warns them never to divulge their secret. Learning that her plan to move up the date of her marriage to the rich pawnbroker's son, Oshichi feels that she can never be united with Kichisaburo unless she takes things into her own hands.
A concubine is exiled from the Shogun's harem after she is found guilty of having tried to smuggle a kabuki dancer into the palace for the purpose of an illicit affair. Another conubine believes she has been framed and keeps investigating.
The wife of a struggling artist is raped and begins painting a series of erotic images in an attempt to exorcise her demons. However the men in her paintings all have the same face as her rapist, and as her work becomes more popular the man begins to take on folk-hero status...
A young girl who has been made a maidservant in the harem of the Tokugawa shogun. She is entrusted with the role of the mistress's maid and gradually grows up to be a woman.
