A passionate telling of the story of Sada Abe, a woman whose affair with her master led to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship.
When a man chases down his stolen movie camera, the thief commits suicide by jumping off a building. But after the police take the camera as evidence, it becomes unclear if there was ever a thief in the first place.
To satisfy her lover's fetish for tattooed women, Akane agrees to have her body covered in eloborate tattoos by Kyogoro, an old craftsman. Kyogoro has developed a special technique, by which his assistant, Harutsune, keeps Katsuko's mind off the pain while Kyogoro does his work. After the work is done, Harutsune makes the shocking discovery of how Kyogoro mastered his technique.
