Follows five sex workers employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation debates the passage of an anti-prostitution law.

In 8th-century China, the Emperor grieves the death of his wife. The Yang family wants to provide the Emperor with a consort so that they may consolidate their court influence….

In 11th-century feudal Japan, following the exile of an idealistic governor, his wife and children are separated by slave traders; the children, Zushio and Anju, are sold into brutal servitude…

When the wife of a 17th-century Kyoto scrollmaker is falsely accused of having an affair with his best employee, the pair flee the city and find themselves truly falling for…

In 16th century Japan, peasants Genjuro and Tobei sell their earthenware pots to a group of soldiers in a nearby village, in defiance of a local sage’s warning against seeking…

Fleeing a distressing family situation, Eiko, a very young girl, becomes an apprentice to Miyoharu, a veteran geisha. Both, determined to preserve their professional integrity, must face the selfishness and…

During the Edo Period, a noblewoman’s banishment for her love affair with a lowly page signals the beginning of her inexorable fall.

In early post-war Osaka, three women—war widow Fusako, her Korean expat sister Natsuko, and Kumiko, Fusako’s sister-in-law—descend into prostitution, all for their individual reasons.

Utamaro, a great artist, lives to create portraits of beautiful women, and the Tokyo brothels provide his models. A world of passion swirls around him, as the women vie for…

In the early 18th-century, Lord Takuminokami Asano, feuding with Lord Kira, tries to kill his opponent in the corridors of the Shogun’s palace. The Shogun sentences Asano to seppuku and…

In late 19th-century Tokyo, Kikunosuke Onoue, the adopted son of a legendary actor, himself an actor specializing in female roles, discovers that the praise he receives is only due to…

Ayako becomes the mistress of her boss in order to pay her father’s debt and prevent him from going to prison for embezzlement.

A geisha in the Gion district of Kyoto feels obliged to help her lover when he asks to stay with her after going bankrupt and leaving his wife. However, her…