IREZUMI - To satisfy her lover's fetish for tattooed women, Akane agrees to have her body covered in eloborate tattoos by Kyogoro, an old craftsman.
Kyogoro has developed a special technique, by which his assistant, Harutsune, keeps Katsuko's mind off the pain while Kyogoro does his work. After the work is done, Harutsune makes the shocking discovery of how Kyogoro mastered his technique.
This is a strikingly visual film about the beautiful young Akane, who has her back tattooed to please her lover. Her greatest fear is that she will lose this man, a file clerk with a fetish for beautiful skin and tattoos.
So for two years she commutes from Tokyo to Kyoto, where Kyogoro (Wakayama), a renowned tattoo artist who has come out of retirement for Akane, devotes the remainder of his life to completing this final tattoo.
As mysterious and foreign as it is kinky and erotic, IREZUMI explores the yin-yang principle of complete existence emerging from two opposites, and through the process of being tattooed, Akane learns that there is strength in her own degradation.
Based on the novel by Baku Aka.
Starring: Wakayama Tomisaburo, Yûsuke Takita and Harue Kyo
1982 – JAPANESE with OPTIONAL ENGLISH SUBTITLES – COLOR – 16:9 ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN - 107 Minutes
