In the final months of World War II, 14-year-old Seita and his sister Setsuko are orphaned when their mother is killed during an air raid in Kobe, Japan. After a falling out with their aunt, they move into an abandoned bomb shelter. With no surviving relatives and their emergency rations depleted, Seita and Setsuko struggle to survive.

A mountain man beheads his many wives to prove his love to an alluring woman he meets in an enchanted forest.

Oman travels from Shanghai to Japan in search of her mother, only to be betrayed by her companion and sold to a brothel, where she becomes a geisha and gambler.

Reiko is an adulterous housewife whose lover is a foul-tempered yakuza gangster. After one of her husband's friends spies the amorous duo at a no-tell motel, the stage is set for murder.

Set in a Shinjuku bathhouse brothel, the film uncovers the sexual eccentricities of everyday people. Focusing on three female prostitutes, the colorful, unpredictable look into the hidden underbelly of Japanese nightlife is playful but also unafraid to explore the darker sides of the business. The fleeting nature of relationships in such an environment and the consequences of toying with feelings are presented with a melancholy tinge.

For a girl who works in a 3rd rate bar, Ayuko is full of vanity. Nomura, her patron, is besotted by her and it is their habit that they cannot reach a climax unless they peek at a couple, across the way, making love. Intent on climbing up in the world, Ayuko uses all her wiles to get her patron, who is putty in her hands, to move her from her grubby apartment house to a dreamboat of a place. She then tries to find a place to work more befitting her new home but all the elite night clubs will have nothing to do with her and with time heavy on her hands, the devil finds mischief for idle hands to do.