Mizoguchi's last completed film presents portraits of five prostitutes in a brothel called Dreamland in the Yoshiwara district of Tokyo. Peter Morris (Mizoguchi) calls the film “a realistic and violent study of the feminine condition. Although certainly a continuation of Mizoguchi's presentation of Japanese woman and her problems, Akasen Chitai has aroused more disagreement about its qualities than any of Mizoguchi's other films.... In it, Mizoguchi seems to be seeking a new style, more detailed and accumulative, which will allow him to reveal the underlying moral attitudes of a society which creates ‘red-light districts' and the people who inhabit them. Despite the intrusive melodramatic incidents, the film remains a penetrating social analysis (and) the acting is excellent....” The film's critics have lamented its “pseudo-documentary” aspect; indeed, according to Anderson and Richie (The Japanese Film), Mizoguchi intended to make a semidocumentary film shot on real locations. However, he retreated to the studio set when brothel owners refused to cooperate due to heated debates going on at that very moment in the Japanese Diet that were to result in the outlawing of prostitution in 1958. It is said that Street of Shame, a box-office success, contributed to the anti-prostitution ruling.