Ichikawa Danjūrō XI

In the fourth year of Keio (1868), defeated retainers sought to restore the Tokugawa shogunate with the help of Enomoto Takeaki's navy. Honda Koroiku was one of them. He discreetly handed a departure note to his fiancée, Otosei, the daughter of Matsudaira Soebe, and left Edo. Otosei's cousin and Koroiku's friend, Domae Daikichi, was once a brave warrior of the shogunate army. However, he had since fallen into a life of debauchery in Yanagibashi and was rumored to be involved with a geisha named Orikki.

This period film is inspired by one of the most notorious scandals to have taken place in Edo-period Japan. The heroine, Ejima, was a lady of the Ooku, the harem of Edo Castle in which the Shogun’s mother, wife and concubines resided, forbidden from contact with any other man except in the presence of the Shogun. The institution played a key role in the Byzantine world of Japanese court politics during the Edo era. In 1714, Lady Ejima was sent to pay her respects at a Buddhist temple in the city, and chose to pay an unauthorised visit to the kabuki theatre – a violation of protocol that was to have tragic consequences.