Ayame, a courtesan, attracts the attention of street vendor Kisuke and decides to run away with him to America. Unfortunately, a crazed tattoo artist is obsessed with Ayame's perfect skin as a potential canvas, so he kills Kisuke to keep Ayame in Japan. Later, Ayame is sold to a brothel in Yokohama. Kisuke's ghost possesses her, causing his image to appear tattoo-like on her skin whenever she has sex.

Loosely based on a 1926 short story by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, the film opens as an artist and a young woman are in a dentist's waiting room. Though he is attracted to the woman, he says nothing to her. They are later in the same examining room. When he is given an anesthetic, he begins to imagine a series of scenes in which the woman undergoes various forms of sexual abuse, including rape and torture. When the artist recovers from the anesthetic, he finds clues showing that he may not have been hallucinating.