Setting: Kyoto in the late 1950s

Synopsis:
Kenmochi, an aging expert on ancient art resisting the debilitations of old age, insists on secretly receiving injections from a young interm, Kimura, to boost his vitality even at risk to his health. In exchange, he thinks of marrying his daughter Toshiko to Kimura. When his wife, Ikuko, who detests her husband, finds out about the injections, she decides to keep her knowledge secret. One night when Kimura pays the family a visit, Ikuko, under Kenmochi's prodding, drinks heavily and passes out in the bath. Kenmochi makes Kimura help him carry her naked back to her room. Jealousy, Kenmochi tells Kimura, is an effective means of feeling young again.
The next day, Kenmochi, advancing his perverse plan to bring his wife and Kimura together, once again makes Ikuko drink until she passes out in front of Kimura. He next asks Kimura to develop photographs of, it turns out to Kimura's amazement, Ikuko naked. Ikuko also appears to be falling into her scripted role when she mumbles Kimura's name in her sleep. Toshiko, both repelled and stimulated by her father's antics, rents a room away from home where Ikuko, visiting with Kimura, again faints in the bath. Kenmochi's quest for stimulation, however, seems to be taking its toll on his health as he begins suffering from fainting spells and lapses in memory. Sensing his mortality, he tries to gives up his plan and insists on quickly setting a date for Kimura and Toshiko's marriage. That night, however, he suffers a cerebral hemorrhage and is confined to bed, unable to move or talk. Truly having an affair with the scheming Kimura, Ikuko turns Kenmochi's plan against him and undresses before his eyes, exciting him so much he dies. After the funeral, Toshiko, knowing of her mother's affair with Kimura, attempts to put pesticide in her mother's tea. Through the color blind servant Hana's mistake, however, the pesticide had already been switched with spice and sprinkled on the family's salad. Ikuko, Kimura and Toshiko all die and the police, refusing to listen to Hana, rule their deaths a suicide spurred by remorse over Kenmochi's death.

Notes:
Blending his style with the world created by Japan's master of aesthetic decadence, Tanizaki Junichiro, director Ichikawa Kon skillfully combines a picturesque but remote photographic style with cold, stone-faced acting to produce one of the most cynically clinical snapshots of family life found in Japanese cinema. Ichikawa's celebrated black humor is evidenced in his decision, developed with his fellow screenwriters, Wada Natto (Ichikawa's wife) and Hasebe Keiji (later Imamura Shohei's main screenwriter), to tack on the ironic death scene at the conclusion.