Another wife, another period (the Russo-Japanese War), another evolution for Ayako Wakao, fascinating in the role of an outcast peasant woman. Kaneto Shindo wrote the screenplay for this antimilitarist drama (originally filmed in 1924 by Minoru Murata for Nikkatsu, it was Japan's first antiwar film). Okane is a pariah in her small farming village, due to her past association with an older man to whom she was sold by desperately poor parents. Sullen, depressed, having been abused most of her short life, she is brought around by the unlikely attentions of Seisaku (Takahiro Tamura), the local "model youth," on his return from the army. "The Imperial prescript says to love one another," he announces; and so he begins a love affair with Okane that eventually will render him as marginal as she. The sensuality of the rebel lovers, in beautifully choreographed love scenes, contrasts profoundly with the inexorable militarism that is made palpable in the mood of this small farming village. Okane's past haunts Ayako's performance: she is truly a woman under the influence, and loneliness has made her an agent for her own compelling passion. Looking forward to Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses, she commits the ultimate antiwar act in mutilating her lover so that the war may not. Stunningly shot in cinemascope, this is an engrossing portrait of village life, interestingly linking blindness and l'amour fou.