In a rugged landscape near Kyoto, Japan, during the mid‑14th century and at the dawn of the Nanboku-chō period, the film threads a stark, somber tale rooted in war, hunger, and fragile human ties. It opens with two fleeing soldiers being ambushed in a vast field of tall reeds, where an older woman and her young daughter‑in‑law murder them and toss their bodies into a deep, hidden pit. The next day, the two women haul the fallen armor and weapons to a local merchant named Ushi, trading their loot for food. The encounter with Ushi unfurls a microcosm of the era’s desperation—news of ongoing conflict, disrupted livelihoods, and a society that keeps marching forward, even as individuals falter under its pressures.
Ushi’s stall becomes a crossroads where danger and desire collide. After the trade, the older woman voices a sharp warning as she rebuffs a sexual proposition from the merchant, underscoring the precarious balance between survival and moral compromise. A neighbor named Hachi, who has been off at war, returns to the area, stirring old loyalties and new temptations. The two women question him about Kishi, who had been their son and younger woman’s husband, and who was drafted along with Hachi. Hachi reveals that they deserted the war, and that Kishi was later killed after they were caught stealing food from farmers. The older woman’s protective instincts flare as she warns the younger woman to keep her distance from Hachi, blaming him for her son’s death.
Despite the warning, a gossamer thread of attraction begins to pull the younger woman toward Hachi. She secretly answers that pull, slipping away every night to the hut where he resides, where their clandestine meetings become physical. The older woman watches with a blend of anger and jealousy as the affair takes shape. Her attempts to intervene are thwarted when she herself tries to seduce Hachi, only to be curtly rejected. Desperate to preserve her household’s quiet, she pleads with him not to lure her daughter‑in‑law away, insisting that she cannot continue to survive by killing and robbing passing soldiers without her help.
Then a nightmarish event intrudes on the fragile peace: a lost samurai, wearing a fearsome Hannya mask, forces the older woman to guide him out of the field. He explains that the mask protects his painfully handsome face from harm. In a cruel twist, she deceives him into stepping into the pit where their victims disappear, ensuring his death. Down in the pit, she claims the samurai’s possessions and, with great effort, wrests the mask from him, exposing a face so grievously scarred that it seems a punishment in itself.
Once more the night unsettles the village. The younger woman tries to reach Hachi, but the older woman blocks her path, dressed in the samurai’s robes and the Hannya mask, a terrifying symbol that seems to confirm the demonish rumor she’s been stoking. By day, she reinforces the tale, convincing the younger woman that the “demon” is a punishment for her affair with Hachi. The younger woman guards her secrets during daylight, but she continues to seek him by night. During a thunderstorm the older woman terrifies the younger woman again with the mask, yet Hachi, weary of being ignored, finds the younger woman and makes love to her in the grass while the mother‑in‑law watches in silence.
As the affair deepens, the older woman confronts a dawning realization: her daughter‑in‑law’s desire for Hachi cannot be extinguished. Returning to his hut, Hachi is suddenly stabbed by another deserter who steals his food, and the dream of reconciliation sinks into a harsher reality. The older woman learns that rain has made the mask impossible to remove; she confesses her scheme to her daughter‑in‑law and pleads for help in taking off the mask. The younger woman agrees to attempt removal, provided the older woman stops meddling in their relationship. Yet the attempt ends in tragedy: the mask cannot be pulled off, and the younger woman shatters it with a mallet, revealing the disfigured face of the older woman beneath.
What follows is left largely to interpretation, as the film hints at supernatural punishment but never fully explains its origin. The mask’s curse seems to bind itself to the wearer through the power of rain, a Buddhist-inflected symbol of consequence and justice. The younger woman, convinced that her mother‑in‑law has transformed into a demon, flees in terror. The older woman chases after, crying that she remains human and remembers her humanity. In a final, bleak reversal, the young woman leaps over the pit, and as the older woman lunges after her, the film closes on their fates intertwined in a field that has long concealed the secrets of war, guilt, and punishment.
- Hachi emerges as a crucial figure whose presence rekindles desire amidst war’s wreckage, presenting a fragile anchor for the younger woman while intensifying the older woman’s possessive fear.
- Young Woman is drawn into a dangerous romance that tests loyalties and exposes the fragility of human trust when survival trumps propriety.
- Older Woman drives much of the action through jealousy, cunning, and an insistence on control, only to have the truth of her own life reflected back as a cruel mask.
- Ushi acts as a catalyst in the film’s early scenes, embodying the era’s harsh economics and the rough sexual dynamics that occur at the margins of grace and greed.
- The Samurai appears as a terrifying, almost spectral figure whose encounter with the women anchors the film’s central motif: the mask as both protection and punishment, a symbol that threads through the narrative’s violence and ambiguity.
