Wife to Be Sacrificed 1974

Akiko Naomi Tani is startled to find her estranged husband, Kunisada Nagatoshi Sakamoto, in a car watching a young, pre-pubescent girl urinate by the side of a road. When Akiko returns home, the girl, Miko, follows crying that “Uncle” has disappeared. Akiko turns the girl over to the police. Later, while she is giving ikebana lessons at home, the police return to ask Akiko for information about Kunisada. It is revealed that he had disappeared three years ago after being arrested for a sexual crime involving a high school girl.

Kunisada trails Akiko to her mother’s grave, where he abducts her and takes her to an isolated cabin in the countryside. There, he subjects her to numerous degrading sexual tortures and punishments for days on end. When Kunisada leaves the cabin to fetch Akiko’s wedding dress from her home, Akiko seizes the chance to escape. Wearing only a sheet and the ropes she had been tied with, she encounters two hunters who, instead of aiding her, commit rape. Kunisada eventually locates her, cleans her up, and dresses her in traditional wedding clothes, even suspending her from pulleys in the cabin and shaving her pubic hair.

While fishing, Kunisada comes across an unconscious young couple—Kaoru Terumi Azuma and Kiyoshi Hidetoshi Kageyama—who had failed in a double suicide attempt. He rapes Kaoru, then brings them to the cabin where he binds them. After giving Kaoru an enema, Akiko is forced to have relations with Kiyoshi while Kunisada has sex with Kaoru. He continues inflicting humiliations on the pair to erode their love for each other. After he believes he has broken them, he frees them and tells them they are free to stay or go.

By this point Akiko has grown accustomed to Kunisada’s control and, disturbingly, seems to derive some enjoyment from it. She even pushes him to intensify the abuse, urging, “Whip me harder… abuse me…” After a session in the woods, Akiko and Kunisada return to the cabin, only to find the young couple has bound themselves together and committed double suicide by strangulation. Akiko tells Kunisada that they have played the final joke on him.

Meanwhile, two police detectives—Detective Miyoshi Tessen Nakahira and Detective Nakai Tamaki Komiyama—are following Miko, hoping she will lead them to Kunisada. Miko evades capture, but the detectives eventually locate the cabin and discover the dead couple, with Akiko naked and bound. When they attempt to untie her, she refuses, saying, “Don’t untie me. I like it this way.”

The police press Akiko for the whereabouts of Kunisada. She merely laughs and cryptically replies that he has escaped, and that, in her view, he is perhaps afraid of her. As the end credits roll, Kunisada is seen walking through the countryside with Miko holding his hand, while Akiko remains tied up, naked, and squirming in the cabin.