- In the 1800s, an American returns to Japan to find the prostitute he fell in love with, but instead learns of the physical and existential horror that befell her after he left.
- In 19th century Japan, an American journalist named Christopher has returned to search for Komomo, the missing love of his life whom he abandoned years ago, though he promised to come back to her later. He arrives on a shadowy island where he has an encounter with a deformed prostitute who tells him his beloved has passed away. He drinks with her and asks her to tell the story of her life. She tells a dark story about Komomo's life - and the sad fate that befell her.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Set in the mid-1800s, Christopher (Billy Drago) is a young American journalist who ventures to Japan to search for the Japanese prostitute he loved and abandoned years earlier. But when he ventures to an island off the coast, he sees that human demons and whores rule the land where a deformed courtesan awaits his arrival, leading to a tale of extreme cruelty and perverse vengeance.—Anonymous
- Christopher (Billy Drago), a Victorian era American journalist, is traveling through Japan looking for Komomo (Itô), a lost girlfriend whom he had promised to rescue from prostitution and bring to America. He travels by boat with several handfarms (Shihô Harumi, Magy, Shin'ichi Tokuhara and Takao Handa). The boat hits something, but it's not a rock - it's the dead body of a woman (Miyuki Konno). The boatman (Hiroshi Kuze) says that the body weighs a ton, so he deduces she was pregnant. When he turns her over, we can see that she was heavily pregnant. Finally landing on an island populated solely by whores and their masters, he is solicited by a syphilitic tout (Yamada). She claims no knowledge of Komomo (Michié), but Christopher has to spend the night, requesting the company of a girl (Youki Kudoh) lurking back in the shadows, who joins him in his room.
Disfigured and disturbed, the girl claims a closer connection with the dead than the living. She tells him that Komomo was there, but hanged herself after her love never came for her. Distraught, Christopher seeks solace in sake. Falling asleep, he requests a bedtime story. The girl recounts her past her mother, a midwife, was forced to sell her to a brothel after her father died, and eventually she wound up on the island. Komomo was the most popular girl there, making the others jealous. When the Madam's jade ring was stolen, Komomo was tortured to confess. After suffering hideously underarms burned, needles driven under fingernails and into gums she killed herself in shame and torment.
Christopher refuses to believe the girl's story, and he pleads for the whole truth. The girl starts again, in the second telling, her family is no longer happy nor loving; her father was an alcoholic, her mother an abortionist. She was taken in by a Buddhist priest, who, presumably, molested her and inspired an obsession with hell. Her father never died of lung disease she beat him to death for raping her. Again she tells of being sold into prostitution, but gives a new version of the dark fate of Christopher's beloved Komomo. Despite the kindness of Komomo, who befriended her, the disfigured girl stole the jade ring and planted Komomo's hairpin to frame her and after Komomo was tortured, killed her. She explains to Christopher that she intended to save Komomo from hell: as Komomo would be doomed for having such an evil friend, only through betrayal could she sever the friendship and ensure Komomo a deservedly beautiful afterlife.
Christopher, losing control, is desperately convinced something has been left out. He begs for the whole truth. The woman then reveals a horrifying secret: a tiny second head in the center of a hand hidden beneath her hair her "Little Sis", a parasitic twin. Her mother and father had been brother and sister, "Little Sis" was the fruit of their incest. It was "Little Sis" who commanded her to kill her father, and to steal the ring. As the hand begins to talk like Komomo in a high-pitched voice, Christopher is overcome by madness and shoots the girl in the heart and then the head. Before dying, the girl's body turns into Komomo.
The final scenes shows Christopher in a Japanese prison serving time for the murder of the girl. He is kept company only by the ghosts of his past.
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