In 1939, Sakura Nishi is a young army nurse who is sent to the field hospitals in China during the Sino-Japanese war. She has to assist the surgeon Dr. Okabe with an incredible number of amputations. In the crowded wards, she gives sympathy to some of the soldiers, including sexually servicing one who has lost both arms and has no hope of returning home. She falls in love with Dr. Okabe, and follows him to the front, even though he is impotent from his morphine addiction.
Acting
Ayako Wakao's face contains multitudes—steel and shattered glass.
Direction
Masumura's clinical grotesque makes you complicit in every frame.
Cinematography
Claustrophobic hospital corridors that feel like moral traps.
Director
Yasuzō Masumura
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Released the same year as Masumura's more famous Blind Beast, this cemented his reputation as Japanese New Wave's most confrontational provocateur—studio Daiei let him get away with murder until they didn't.
Masumura, a wheelchair user since childhood, claimed the film's obsession with damaged bodies came from his own relationship to physical limitation—though he insisted Nishi's erotic sacrifice was 'pure Japanese spirit,' which... debatable.
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