Satoko is a mistress by trade or fate: when her master, the silkscreen artist of the Kohoan Temple in Kyoto, dies, she is given to the temple's lascivious head priest Kikuchi. She is drawn to a melancholy young acolyte, Jinen, who has observed the profligacy of his cruel master and Satoko's utter dependence on the man. Jinen is both fascinated and disturbed by Satoko's interest in him; he is similarly caught between loathing of Kikuchi and of the dark circumstances of his birth and his own moral weakness. The story unfolds in a dreamlike manner—a flashback inspired by a now-infamous image on a silkscreen in the souvenir shop at the so-called Temple of the Wild Geese.
as Satoko Kirihara
as Jikai Kitami
as Atsumichi Uda
as Jinen Horinouchi / Sutekichi
as Nangaku Kishimoto
as Tatsu Kirihara
as Masumi Fujimoto
as Kuniitsu Takami
as Mokudō Kida
as Dokuseki Sugimoto
as Takemine Matsuyama
as Shōan Kawaguchi
as Izaburō Asano
as Kan Horinouchi
as Kaio Takeda
as Mori (as Seijiro Haro)
as Sukezō Hisama
as Heikichi Hisama
as Hideko Kishimoto
as Kishichi Sengoku
as Heizaburō Hisama
as Kinnosuke Ishida
as Jirō Ebisugawa
as Shōji Yasui
as Nanzō Sasai
as Kōta Nishikawa
as Kumatarō Tamura
as Tokuzen Mikuma
as Shizuko Hisama
as Sesshū Fujimoto