The Insect Woman follows the trail of a rural woman who survives the war years and the difficult postwar reconstruction period by primordial instinct, impervious to all direction or restraint imposed from without. Tome (Sachiko Hidari in an obsessive, spellbinding performance), at home in the tall grasses of her native Tohoku village, migrates to the city and takes up a life of prostitution, eventually becoming a tyrannical madam. From early shots of her innocently incestuous relationship with her retarded stepfather to later scenes of her in bed with a lover while the emperor is announcing Japan's defeat, Imamura establishes Tome as a woman who survives an oppressive patriarchy with “insectlike” values that are irrelevant to modern notions of intelligence, beauty, or nobility. Shooting, as Imamura usually did, entirely on location using natural sound gives this film's rigorous structure the illusion of spontaneity.