Imprint

"Imprint" is the thirteenth episode of the first season of Masters of Horror. Directed by Takashi Miike, the episode was scheduled to premiere on January 27, 2006, but was shelved by Showtime over concerns about its graphic and disturbing content. It was later released to DVD on September 26, 2006. Plot Christopher, a Victorian-era American journalist, is traveling through Japan looking for Komomo, a lost girlfriend he had promised to rescue from prostitution and bring to the United States. Landing on an island populated solely by whores and their masters, he is solicited by a syphilitic tout. Christopher has to spend the night, requesting the company of a girl. Disfigured and disturbed, the girl claims a closer connection with the dead than the living. She tells him that Komomo was here, but hanged herself after her lover never came for her. Distraught, Christopher seeks solace in sake. Falling asleep, he requests a bedtime story. The girl recounts her past — her mother, a midwife, was forced to sell her to a brothel after her father died. Komomo was the most popular girl there, making the others jealous. When the Madam's jade ring was stolen, Komomo was tortured to confess. After suffering hideously — underarms burned, needles driven under fingernails and into gums — she hanged herself in torment, tired of waiting for her lover. Christopher refuses to believe the story, and pleads for the whole truth. The girl starts again; in the second telling, her family is no longer happy nor loving; her father was an alcoholic, her mother an abortion care provider. She was taken in by a Buddhist priest, who molested her and inspired an obsession with hell. She beat her father to death for raping her. She gives a new version of Komomo's fate. The disfigured girl stole the jade ring and planted Komomo's hairpin to frame her — and after Komomo was tortured, killed her. She explains that she intended to save Komomo from hell: as Komomo would be doomed for having such an evil friend, only through betrayal could she sever the friendship and ensure Komomo a beautiful afterlife.