Nagisa Oshima is the best film director in Japan still making good movies. There are other good directors (Kon Ichikawa), but they are reduced to doing company hack-work. Oshima can still do the films he likes, partly because he gets financial backing in France from Argos Films, the producer of both "Ai-no Korida (In the Realm of the Senses)" and "Ai-no Borei (Empire of Passion)." Thus ?"Ai-no Borei" is officially treated as a French film.
Despite the fact that "Ai-no Borei" lacks the explicit eroticism of "Ai-no Korida," it is still a continuation of the same theme: passion leading to inevitable destruction.
The passion in this case is between Toyoji (Tatsuya Fuji) and O-seki (Kazuko Yoshiyuki), the wife of a poor rickshaw-puller, Gisaburo (Takahiro Tamura). Toyoji's love for the much older O-seki is so all-consuming that he talks her into killing her husband, a perfectly decent man. Her desire for the young ex-soldier is powerful enough, though, for her to be a willing accomplice in the murderous deed.