Tokugawa onna keibatsu-shi was known in English as Shogun’s Joy of Torture. What you get is a film featuring three vignettes highlighting cruel methods of punishment used in Edo (later known as Tokyo) during the shogun era. In the first segment an indebted worker tries to keep his sister, who he’s in love with romantically, from paying his creditors with her body. When he fails, shame and jealousy drive him to suicide, a move that totally backfires when his sister is accused of his murder. In the second segment, a nun, an abbess, and a monk are in a love triangle that leads to jealousy, followed by consequences for everyone in the nunnery. And the third segment involves a famed tattoo artist whose pieces depict violence, and who goes to shocking extremes in order to complete a masterwork.
In all three instances the local shogun, who has a function similar to that of a circuit judge, shows up to mete out punishment, and various cruel methods of execution are on display (being torn in half by oxen occurs in a prologue sequence). So what you have here in the end is basically a bdsm fetish film cranked up to ten. In Japan such cinema was known as ero guro. It isn’t something we can recommend. We should note though, that the believability of the torture scenes relies more on good acting than gore, so the movie probably wouldn’t be considered unwatchably bloody by most people. Take that for what it’s worth, and we’ll mark another cult Japanese classic down as watched. Tokugawa onna keibatsu-shi premiered today in 1968.
