Directed by
Takashi Miike and based on a novel by Shimako Iwai. In 19th century Japan, the American journalist Christopher (
Billy Drago) arrives at a remote island looking for Komomo (Michie), a woman he loves but who was sold to a brothel by her adoptive family. While in there he finds a disfigured prostitute (Youki Kudoh) who tells him the story of her life. This episode was filmed in Japan by Kadokawa Pictures and was never broadcast unedited due to its ridiculously high
Nausea Fuel quotient.
Tropes:
- Abusive Parents: The disfigured prostitute's father was a violent drunk who beat her mother and raped his inbred daughter, prompting her to kill him.
- Alcoholic Parent: The prostitute's father turned to drinking to evade from living in poverty due to his incestuous relationship with his sister.
- And Show It to You: After Christopher shoots Komomo through the head in his madness, she picks out a few pieces of her brain in shock before she dies.
- Bad Boss: The madame is suggested to torture her prostitutes for the sake of it, Komomo in particular. But due to the ambiguous nature of the story it's hard to tell what kind of person she really is.
- Big Guy, Little Guy: The disfigured prostitute's siamese "sister" is clearly the one in charge.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: The nicest thing to say about the disfigured prostitute's one. The father and mother were incestuous siblings who lived in poverty. The father beat the mother, the mother aborted or murdered all her children, except for the resilient girl who eventually became the prostitute. The father raped the girl during one of his violent stupors and she beat him to death in return. The mother sold her daughter into sexual slavery because she couldn't care for her anymore. Finally, the girl has a mutant, evil twin sister growing out of the side of her head.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: The only character that is good in the episode is Komomo, and she is dead before it begins.
- Blood from the Mouth: The disfigured prostitute tells her father coughed up blood after a prolongued illness and died in a river.
- Body Horror: The disfigured prostitute's "sister" is a hand with a mouth and eye attached to her head.
- Brother–Sister Incest:
- In a major twist it's revealed that the disfigured prostitute's parents were actually siblings. They were run out of their town and lived in poverty for the rest of their lives. The brother turned abusive towards his sister and was killed by his inbred daughter after implicitly raping her.
- Christopher had a relationship with his younger sister. It's later implied that he raped and killed her and was driven insane because of it.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Inflicted on Komomo after she is falsely accused of robbing a ring.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The disfigured prostitute has blue hair and clothes, the other prostitutes red, and the madame greenish-black.
- Creator Cameo: Watch for Shimako Iwai, writer of the original novel. She plays the torturer.
- Dark and Troubled Past: The prostitute's backstory is composed of one trauma after another, getting more disturbing with each revision of her story.
- Death of a Child: The Woman's mother has murdered dozens of her infants and Christopher is suggested to have murdered his little sister when they were young.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Komomo is accused by the madame of stealing a ring from her room. Her punishment? A cruel and agonizing torture session that would probably make Ichi the Killer cringe.
- Domestic Abuse: The disfigured prostitute's father constantly beat his wife because they were both cast out for being incestuous siblings.
- Driven to Suicide: The disfigured prostitute claims first that this was what happened to Komomo, who hanged herself when Christopher failed to return. After Christopher says he doesn't believe her, she admits that she actually killed Komomo (and was also the one that committed the robbery and falsely accused Komomo in the first place).
- The Ending Changes Everything: Christopher is eventually revealed to be insane and haunted with nightmarish visions due to his sister's murder. This calls into question most of the events of the story — only the opening and the ending can be said with fair certainty to be real and only partially so.
- Evil Twin: The disfigured prostitute reveals at the end that she has a twin "sister", a mutated abomination attached to her head as a result of her parents' inbreeding (they were brother and sister). The mutant forced her sister to do evil things like steal a valuable ring and set up another prostitute to be tortured for it.
- Facial Horror: The disfigured prostitute has the features on the right side of her face stretched out. The dwarf pimp is missing part of his nose.
- Fate Worse than Death: Christopher ends up being imprisoned by the Japanese authorities after he unwittingly murders Komono. The guards tell him they will make his stay a living hell. They needn't have bothered; Christopher is already living in an endless nightmare plagued by horrifying visions.
- Fingore: Komomo has needles shoved underneath her nails during her torture session.
- Glasgow Grin: The disfigured prostitute has half of one as a result of a genetic defect.
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: The prostitute Komomo is explicitly described as this. She lingers on to the promise Christopher made to take her away from her hard life. Which makes it all the more tragic that he murdered her in his insanity.
- Immune to Bullets: The disfigured prostitute and her evil mutant twin shrug off being shot and taunt Christopher that they'll follow him everywhere. This is because they're part of his deranged visions.
- Kill the Ones You Love: Christopher believes the prostitute Komomo to be the love his life. He ends up accidentally murdering her during his hallucinations. He also killed his sister after sleeping with, or raping her.
- Little People Are Surreal: One of the pimps on the hellish island is a noseless dwarf, signifying how the episode is gonna be one long decline into surreal horror and insanity.
- Mercy Kill: The disfigured prostitute claims to have murdered Komomo to spare her the life of a prostitute and being tortured by the madame, sending her from Hell to Heaven.
- Made a Slave: All the women (in particular, the disfigured prostitute was sold to a brothel by her mother).
- No Name Given: The disfigured prostitute, who is credited as "woman".
- Offing the Offspring: The disfigured prostitute's mother repeatedly threw her own infants away to drown in the river because they're inbred children — her husband is also her own brother.
- Parental Incest: It's strongly implied that the disfigured prostitute was raped by her abusive father when she was a child. She was herself also a product of incest, as her parents were secretly siblings.
- Platonic Prostitution: Christopher hires the disfigured prostitute for the night to learn more about what happened to Komomo, not to sleep with her. He makes it clear that her face doesn't frighten him, but he turns her down when he discovers that Komomo has recently died and is too distraught about it.
- Posthumous Character: The episode begins with the prostitute informing Christopher that the girl he's been looking for, Komomo, recently died. The rest is spent on the prostitute telling of Komomo's final weeks and her own life story. Subverted at the end when it turns out that the prostitute is Komomo after Christopher murders her.
- Rape and Revenge: The prostitute beat her father to death while he was drunk for raping her earlier.
- Rape as Backstory: The prostitute reveals that a big part of why she's so emotionally scarred is her horrific youth, where she was seperately raped by her father and a local Budhist monk.
- "Rashomon"-Style: Single character variety — the disfigured prostitute tells different versions of the same tale as Christopher continues to dig deeper for the truth. Subverted at the end when it turns out that Christopher hallucinated all the prostitute's stories and is just insane.
- Self-Made Orphan: The disfigured prostitute tells Christopher how she beat her father to death after he raped her when she was still a child.
- Sex Slave: In one of the versions of the story, the disfigured prostitute was sold to the brothel by her mother after the father died.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: After all the horrible events that the disfigured prostitute tells Christopher and the revelation of a siamese Evil Twin, he shoots the prostitute and it turns out to be Komomo all along. He was actually driven completely insane from what's implied to be guilt for raping and killing his sister and the entire story was part of Christopher's hallucinations.
- Translation Convention: The episode is set in 19th century Japan with a single American main character. Unlike second season's "Dream Cruise", this episode was filmed in English but with all the characters presumed to be speaking Japanese the entire time. In fact, Christopher is first thought to be Dutch, because the story is set shortly after the end of Japan's Sakoku period, when the only Westerners allowed were Dutch traders.
- Uncanny Valley Makeup: Period Japanese make-up is used in the brothel (specifically the bleached skin/blackened teeth style) apparently to further unnerve the audience.
- Wretched Hive: The remote island that is "only inhabited by demons and whores".
- Youkai: The disfigured prostitute is a vengative, superpowered, deformed yet beautiful Japanese woman with a supernumerary organ on her head, in the vein of the Futakuchi-onna and similar creatures.
