The Pleasures of the Flesh
Cast & Crew
Nagisa Oshima
Katsuo Nakamura
Yumiko Nogawa
Masako Yagi
Toshiko Higuchi
Hiroko Shimizu
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Wakizaka, a young college graduate working for a small company, is deeply hurt when he receives a marriage announcement from Shoko, a girl whom he has loved for years. As her tutor, he learned she was being blackmailed by a hoodlum who had raped her in her childhood. Wakizaka followed the man and killed him by pushing him off a moving train. The police were unable to solve the murder, and Wakizaka's crime went undetected. In time Hayami, a witness to the murder and a government official, confronts Wakizaka and promises his silence if Wakizaka will hold 30 million yen Hayami has embezzled. Hayami is soon arrested and sentenced to 5 years in prison. Four years pass, and Wakizaka remains disconsolate over losing Shoko. Moreover, he is still a virgin. Desperately lonely and living in a shabby apartment, he decides to spend the stolen money in the last year of Hayami's sentence. He falls in love with a bar hostess, Hitomi, and begins to support her in luxury; but a former lover of Hitomi's eventually drives him away. Another bar hostess, Shizuko, becomes his lover and willingly accepts his money to support her child and sick husband, but Wakizaka awakens one night to find them embracing. In a rage, he tells them of the murder and blackmail and beats Shizuko's husband. Wakizaka takes the injured man to a hospital and there meets a woman doctor, Keiko, who has just quit her job rather than submit to the advances of another doctor. Wakizaka decides to seduce her; they fall in love and are eventually married. Soon Wakizaka becomes disillusioned with his bride's obsession for cleanliness. One night he awakens from a recurring nightmare about Hayami returning to claim his money; he goes out and picks up Mari, a mute street girl. Mari's boyfriend unwittingly informs Wakizaka that Hayami died in prison. The next day Wakizaka meets his old love, Shoko, who promises her body in exchange for a loan to help her bankrupt husband. Wakizaka tells Shoko that he is penniless, having spent Hayami's money, and relates the story of the murder and subsequent blackmail. Soon afterwards the police arrest Wakizaka and inform him that Shoko turned him in.
Director
Nagisa Oshima
Cast
Katsuo Nakamura
Yumiko Nogawa
Masako Yagi
Toshiko Higuchi
Hiroko Shimizu
Shoji Kobayashi
Mitsuhiro Toura
Akira Hamada
Fumio Watanabe
Naramasa Komatsu
Mamoru Hirata
Daigo Kusano
Kei Sato
Crew
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
Released in Japan in 1965 as Etsuraku.
Miscellaneous Notes
Released in United States 1965
Shochiku Grandscope
Released in United States 1965
