Dark and controversial Japanese war drama. Sakura Nishi (yako Wakao) is a young nurse posted to an army hospital during the Sino-Japanese war in 1939. Raped by her patients, she is punished by the high command for daring to make a complaint, and sent to a brutalised front-line unit. There she meets a morphine-addicted surgeon, and the damaged couple try to seek solace in each other as the world around them collapses into violence and despair.