A film about obsessions on bondage and tattoos, disguised as historically adequate treatment of an inglorious episode in Japans long gone past. It's ingredients are violence, brothels, tattoos, female whorehouse bosses, tattoos, mean pimps, even meaner prostitutes, tattoos, whips, knives, drugs, torture and tattoos. The main theme is the transformation of young girls' skins into pieces of art, depicting both abstract and figurative motives, the latter mainly dealing with death, birth, violence and other more or less disturbing themes. Compared to other far eastern films from the same exploitation category, the violence seems almost moderate. The narration, in a fairytale-like old fashioned style, is, of course, a child of it's time. In total, the film's not so good, but not so bad either; it is not very original, but still (in a positive sense) light years away from the commercial cinema we have today which is intriguing since films like this, in their days, were themselves first and foremost done to make money.
