Lost Sex

At the beginning of each of the four seasons, a middle-aged No drama teacher retires to his mountain villa. Called "The Master" by the villagers, he lives alone and is visited only by his housekeeper, a 37-year-old war widow who comes from the village to prepare his meals. One winter day, the Master watches two newlyweds embrace in a neighboring villa, and he grows despondent. He confesses to the housekeeper that he was stationed in Hiroshima during the atomic bombing and, as a result, is impotent. A concerned nurse helped him regain his virility, and he married. He again became impotent and was divorced when he learned of an accident in which a fishing boat was covered by fallout from a nuclear test. With the coming of spring, the sympathetic housekeeper suggests that the Master observe the Yobai , a custom in which the young men of a village steal into the bedrooms of susceptible women to have sex. She invites him to spend the night in her cottage to witness the Yobai . Upon watching three would-be seducers attempt to enter his servant's home, the Master becomes stimulated, and he prevents them from entering her house. The next evening the Master disguises himself, sneaks into the housekeeper's cottage, and makes love to her. Night after night the ritual is repeated, and each night the housekeeper dreamily embraces him and utters the name "Hachibei." The Master eventually learns that there are 13 men with this name living in the village, and, castigating the housekeeper for her promiscuity, he returns to the city. The following autumn the Master returns to his villa and finds that the housekeeper has died as a result of an extra-uterine pregnancy. He also learns that she hired the local youths to observe the Yobai to help restore her master's virility and that her reputation in the village was spotless. Filled with remorse, the Master turns to watch the snows come to the mountains.