Kenji Mizoguchi's searing look at life on the fringes in post-war Japan focuses, as do so many of his films, on the degradation of women in Japanese society. Filmed on location in Osaka, it is the story of a taxi dancer and her sister, the mistress of a narcotics smuggler. Sheldon Renan writes, "Traditionally on the fringes of Japanese life, the post-war environment brings a further, drastic deterioration in the (women's) situation. The women become scavengers, fighting among themselves like animals. Women of the Night documents the hellish world of prostitutes, narcotics dealers, and marauding female street gangs with graphic, uncompromising realism."