Released in 1976, Nagisa Ōshima’s In the Realm of the Senses remains one of the most controversial films ever made. Based on the real-life 1936 Sada Abe incident, the film depicts the intensely sexual relationship between a former prostitute, Sada, and her employer, Kichizō Ishida. The film culminates in an act of erotic asphyxiation that leads to Kichizō’s death and Sada’s infamous act of castration. While frequently reduced to its explicit, unsimulated sexual content, In the Realm of the Senses is a sophisticated political and philosophical work. This paper argues that Ōshima uses graphic sexuality not for mere titillation but as a radical tool to dismantle state-sanctioned ideologies of power, privacy, and patriarchal control, ultimately presenting sexual obsession as a path to a dangerous, yet transcendent, freedom.
Based on a true incident from 1930s Japan—the infamous “Abe Sada” case—the film charts the escalating, all-consuming affair between a former prostitute, Sada Abe, and her employer, the wealthy hotel owner Kichizo Ishida. However, to summarize the plot is to miss the forest for the trees. What makes Ōshima’s film an enduring, shocking, and essential work is not what happens, but how it is shown: with unflinching, clinical, yet strangely lyrical realism. In the Realm of the Senses -1976-
Ōshima hatched a plan that was as audacious as it was risky. He decided to shoot the film in Kyoto, Japan, using a Japanese crew and actors, but he sent the raw footage to France for processing and editing. By designating the film as a French production (co-produced with Anatole Dauman of Argos Films), Ōshima exploited a loophole: as a French film, it was protected by French law, rendering it technically unavailable for seizure by Japanese authorities until it was finished and imported back. Released in 1976, Nagisa Ōshima’s In the Realm