Dis­cov­er the erot­ic grotes­query of this Japan­ese triptych

By the time he came to make Orgies of Edo, writer/​director Teruo Ishii had already estab­lished him­self in mul­ti­ple gen­res: box­ing (King of the Ring: The World of Glo­ry); SF super­heroics (the first six Super Giant films); film noir (White Line, and three sequels); prison dra­ma (Abashiri Prison, and nine sequels); and cour­te­san com­e­dy (Hot Spring Geisha).

Yet it was in 1968, with the tri­par­tite anthol­o­gy Shogun’s Joys of Tor­ture, that Ishii came into his own and invent­ed a sub­genre. For he intro­duced to Japan’s pop­u­lar ​‘pink’ genre (essen­tial­ly soft­core sex­ploita­tion films) the sen­si­bil­i­ties of ero guro nansen­su, or ​‘erot­ic grotesque’, as found in the ear­li­er writ­ings of Edo­gawa Ram­po. Ishii’s Hor­rors of Mal­formed Men was a com­pos­ite of Rampo’s more sur­re­al sto­ries, while the eight films in his Joys of Tor­ture series – of which Orgies of Edo is the sec­ond – smug­gled in under their his­tor­i­cal frame all man­ner of sex­u­al perversion.

We know from the open­ing title sequence that this is going to be a deeply strange expe­ri­ence. Butoh founder Tat­su­mi Hijika­ta swings down from his niche in a dis­play cab­i­net whose oth­er com­part­ments house var­i­ous naked, bound peo­ple (includ­ing a man drink­ing blood from a tube attached to a woman). Hijika­ta then per­forms an angu­lar ges­tur­al dance among hang­ing mir­ror pan­els, with first blood pour­ing, and then a chick­en hang­ing, from his mouth.

This pro­logue, with its focus on per­ver­sion and defor­mi­ty, is the spir­it of ero guro made flesh, and sets the tone for what is to fol­low: three sto­ries set in the Gen­roku era (the Gold­en Age of the Edo peri­od) whose osten­si­ble pros­per­i­ty and pomp con­ceal, as the doc­tor Gen­tat­su (Teruo Yoshi­da) puts it at the film’s begin­ning and end, ​“deprav­i­ty and a sick­ness of the soul”.

The first episode is also the most con­ven­tion­al, telling the sto­ry – famil­iar from so much Japan­ese cin­e­ma – of a fall­en woman. While try­ing to res­cue her prof­li­gate sis­ter Kinu (Kei Kiya­ma) from debt, the good Oito (Masu­mi Tachibana) is seduced by the unscrupu­lous Han­ji (Toy­ozo Yamamo­to), who is soon pimp­ing her out for his own prof­it. Han­ji deceives and cor­rupts Oito, but Oito’s bound­less, some­what naïve love for Han­ji ele­vates her even as it expos­es his short­com­ings. Yet even as Han­ji repents too late, we are left with the para­dox­i­cal impres­sion that if Oito had shared just a lit­tle of Hanji’s dis­hon­our and cyn­i­cism, she might not have end­ed up a mar­tyr to her own morality.

The sec­ond episode con­cerns Ochise (Mit­suko Aoi), a wealthy merchant’s daugh­ter whose ​‘shame­ful secrets’ are a kink for low­ly, deformed lovers, and for S&M. She is abet­ted in this by her besot­ted ser­vant Cho­kichi (Aki­ra Ishi­hama), who lets her play ​‘horsey’ with him, and who hires dwarves and men with ​‘imper­fect faces’ to rav­ish her. It emerges that Ochise’s per­ver­sion goes back to her teenage years, when she was abduct­ed, bound and repeat­ed­ly raped by a man with severe burn scars on his face.

Yet the psy­chopathol­o­gy that Ochise presents to the observ­ing doc­tor Gen­tat­su is also the very essence of ero guro – a genre which locates the erot­ic pre­cise­ly in the grotesque and the repel­lent. ​“I couldn’t act any oth­er way,” declares Ochise rue­ful­ly near her story’s end. ​“I was dom­i­nat­ed by my urges and the needs of my flesh.” Who in the audi­ence for a film called Orgies of Edo could not sym­pa­thise, at least in part, with her sur­ren­der to the carnal?

The third and final part, linked to the oth­ers by the pres­ence of Gen­tat­su, is per­haps even more uncom­fort­able for the view­er. For it con­cerns a Lord (Asao Koike) who arranges spec­ta­cles of grotesque sadism for his own view­ing plea­sure. These include dress­ing maid­ser­vants in red to be gored by angry bulls (whose horns are aflame) while he glee­ful­ly watch­es with his court, or, like the epony­mous vil­lain form 1964’s Goldfin­ger, cov­er­ing his con­cu­bine Okon (Yujie Kagawa) – who has betrayed him with a dog – entire­ly in gilt paint and plac­ing her in a reflec­tive hall of mir­rors that dis­plays her unnat­u­ral­ly hued, lead-poi­soned body from all angles.

The Lord’s eye is drawn to ser­vant Mit­su (Miki Obana), whose aroused response to his acts of cru­el­ty marks her as a per­fect match for him. ​“I’ve been look­ing for a girl just like you,” he says. But the ardour of his desire, more per­vert­ed than even he realis­es, will even­tu­al­ly bring his whole house down in flames – even if the Lord, with the sort of way­ward spec­ta­tor­ship that the view­er inevitably in part shares, is all too hap­py to ​“watch the world burn”.

This last episode is all about spec­ta­tor­ship, and lega­cy. ​“What does a child born of incest look like?” Okon asks. ​“Let’s cut it out and see.” The Lord’s crimes and mad­ness may come to a fiery end, but their genet­ic lega­cy car­ries on into the next gen­er­a­tions, paving the way for a ques­tion­able future in Japan. Because ​“behind every­thing lies deprav­i­ty and a sick­ness of the soul.” The event in Orgies of Edo may be set at a com­fort­able-seem­ing dis­tance, in the late 17^th cen­tu­ry, but its exul­tant vision of deca­dence and degen­er­a­tion has reper­cus­sions for the present day.

Its prod­uct is us, and its symp­tom is our desire to watch films like this. Many view­ers can prob­a­bly resist Ishii’s deviant blend of kin­baku, para­phil­ia, mon­stros­i­ty and sur­re­al­ism – but those who can­not are in for a heady treat that casts them too, like the Lord’s only sur­viv­ing heir, as falling some­where between human and beast.

Orgies of Edo is released by Arrow Video on Blu-ray in High Def­i­n­i­tion with the orig­i­nal uncom­pressed mono PCM audio on 19 November.