“Kawashima, who was a mentor to Shohei Imamura, excelled in portraying the tides of psychological tension latent in all human relationships. Here he depicts the anguish of a young Buddhist acolyte, caught between his loathing of an immoral superior and knowledge of his own moral weakness.” (David Owens, Japan Film Center) Ayako Wakao again stars, as the mistress of a silkscreen artist; on his death, she is “given” to the lascivious head of the Kyoto temple where her presence arouses the melancholy acolyte Jinen, with murderous results. The story unfolds from an infamous silkscreen in the souvenir shop at “The Temple of the Wild Geese,” and Kawashima makes use of special effects and the alternation of black-and-white with color to suggest the film's fluctuation between the ordinary and the macabre, the psychological and the supernatural, truth and legend.