In the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.

Japan around 1860: popular courtesan Asagiri will be freed soon from her service, yet she cannot imagine any other existence. Until one day at a local festival, Asagiri meets the young artisan ...

A passionate telling of the story of Sada Abe, a woman whose affair with her master led to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship.