Nobel Prize smut meets Art Nouveau: anime's most elegant fever dream.
A woman lends an admirer her arm for the course of one night for him to find pleasure with it... An eerie erotic short story by Nobel Prize laureat Kawabata Yasunari is turned into minimalist animation of dazzling beauty indebted to Alfons Maria Mucha. A true gem created by two anime giants.
Direction
Two legends colliding: Yamamoto and Sugii's only joint work.
Cinematography
Mucha's sinuous lines reborn as living, breathing animation.
Writing
Kawabata's prose distilled to pure atmospheric dread.
Director
Eiichi Yamamoto
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Eiichi Yamamoto directed Belladonna of Sadness; Gisaburō Sugii directed Night on the Galactic Railroad. This is their only collaboration, made decades after both men's primes.
Kawabata's 1963 story was considered unfilmable until these two animators saw its visual potential in Mucha's decorative eroticism.
JP
