Sada’s desire is voracious and undeterred by social shame. She is the one who demands more, who introduces bondage, who refuses to allow Kichizo to leave or even to sleep with his wife. Her weapon is her own pleasure, wielded as a tool of domination. Kichizo, initially thrilled by her abandon, becomes a willing prisoner. In a devastatingly quiet scene, he agrees to be strangled during sex—to hand her the rope that will eventually kill him. Oshima refuses to moralize this transformation. Sada is not a feminist hero; her liberation is total and amoral, leading to murder. Kichizo is not merely a victim; he is a collaborator in his own destruction, complicit in the erasure of his own will. Their relationship becomes a microcosm of the master-slave dialectic, where the master’s dependence on the slave’s desire ultimately enslaves him.
Set in 1936 Tokyo, the film is a fictionalized retelling of the true story of Sada Abe , a former geisha and hotel maid who begins a torrid affair with her employer, Kichizō Ishida.
In the Realm of the Senses remains a radical challenge. It refuses the redemptive arc of tragedy (there is no catharsis, only exhaustion) and the consolations of pornography (there is no fantasy, only flesh). Oshima’s argument is bleakly profound: in a society built on repression, the pursuit of absolute, unmediated freedom—of the senses, of the body—cannot lead to utopia. It leads to a vacuum. Stripped of social roles, family, labor, and even language (the lovers communicate increasingly through moans and commands), Sada and Kichizo discover not the infinity of the soul, but the grim terminus of the physical. Sada’s desire is voracious and undeterred by social shame
Oshima’s formal style is the precise opposite of his subject matter. The camera is almost always static, placed at a cool distance or in rigidly composed medium shots and close-ups that recall the discipline of Ozu or Mizoguchi, not the handheld urgency of pornography. The editing is measured, even classical. The lighting, particularly in the second half, becomes harsh and clinical. This rigorous formalism creates a powerful dialectical tension: the chaotic, boundary-destroying content of the lovers’ actions is held within the immutable, controlled frame of the film’s visual language. We are not voyeurs invited to participate; we are anthropologists observing a ritual of self-destruction. The real sex becomes a Brechtian alienation effect, reminding us constantly that we are watching a performance of reality, a constructed truth about the limits of the physical.
The film was based on a real incident from 1936: the sensational "Abe Sada Incident." Sada Abe, a former geisha and prostitute, worked as a maid at a Tokyo inn where she began an intense affair with the owner, Kichizo Ishida. Their liaison grew progressively more obsessive, incorporating asphyxiation and extreme bondage. In a moment of deranged love, Sada strangled Kichizo during a sexual act and then castrated him. When arrested, she was found wandering the streets with his severed organs clutched in her kimono. Kichizo, initially thrilled by her abandon, becomes a
: The Japanese title, Ai no Corrida ("Bullfight of Love"), ritualizes the relationship as a fight to the death.
Ultimately, is not about sex. It is about the impossibility of absolute freedom. Sada and Kichizo try to live in a realm without rules—without money, without marriage, without time. And that realm kills them. The title implies a bullring ( corrida ), and indeed, they are both matador and bull. The film asks us: Is any love worth that sacrifice? Is any freedom? Sada is not a feminist hero; her liberation
Japanese society was horrified and fascinated. Abe Sada became a folk legend—part demon, part martyr. Oshima saw something else: a story about the absolute freedom of desire, unfiltered by social shame.
The film’s most controversial aspect—the unsimulated erections, penetration, and fellatio—is not gratuitous. Oshima famously insisted on real sex to close the representational gap that he believed crippled erotic cinema. Simulated sex, he argued, is a lie that reinforces social hypocrisy; it shows the act but denies its reality. By refusing the conventions of the “love scene,” Oshima forces the viewer to confront desire as a tangible, physical, and often un-beautiful fact. The sex is repetitive, functional, occasionally comic, and ultimately terrifying. It is not designed to arouse (though it may) but to exhaust.
The cinematography is stunningly formal. Hideo Ito’s camera remains static for long takes, observing the lovers with the clinical distance of a nature documentarian. Tatami mats, lacquered wood, and the delicate lines of kimonos frame bodies that are anything but delicate. Oshima employs the Japanese aesthetic of ma (negative space) even during the most graphic intimacy. He cuts to a boiling kettle, a falling cherry blossom, or a child’s drum toy just as often as he cuts to the act itself. This juxtaposition is key: the poignancy of the fleeting season against the desperate attempt to freeze time through sex.
To understand In the Realm of the Senses , one must understand the climate in which it was made. By the mid-1970s, Japan had undergone rapid economic growth, morphing into a modern, capitalist powerhouse. However, beneath the veneer of efficiency and progress lay a rigid, patriarchal society that repressed individual expression. Ōshima, a staunch leftist and intellectual, was deeply critical of this establishment.
