Black comedy set during the so-called Tempo Reformation in 1842, when many rigorous restrictions were placed on the arts and entertainment, to the great dissatisfaction of artists and audiences. Playboy Naojiro lives with his mother and is in love with the prostitute Michitose. When he expresses his opposition to the Reformation, he is prosecuted by the police, but saved by a man who himself almost falls victim to a hitman. With Oshima and Yoshida, in the mid-sixties Shinoda was part of the Japanese New Wave. He developed an aesthetic based on stylised sex and violence focusing on historical Japan. Shinoda wanted to combine the kabuki tradition, that had shaped the drama of Japanese theatre since the feudal era, with the modern medium of film.
