# Blind Beast (盲獣)
**Blind Beast** (盲獣, Mōjū) is a 1969 Japanese feature film directed by Masumura Yasuzo, produced and distributed by Daiei, and adapted from a story by the mystery writer [Edogawa Ranpo](https://www.edgepedia.org/edogawa-ranpo). It follows a blind sculptor who kidnaps a fashion model to serve as the model for his ideal female body, imprisoning her in an atelier filled with giant sculptures of women's body parts.[1](https://jfdb.jp/title/7264) • [2](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/86476)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Japanese title | 盲獣 (Mōjū); English title The Blind Beast[1](https://jfdb.jp/title/7264) |
| Release | January 25, 1969; 84 minutes; color; Cinema Scope (1:2.35)[1](https://jfdb.jp/title/7264) |
| Director / studio | Masumura Yasuzo; produced and distributed by Daiei (Daiei Tokyo)[1](https://jfdb.jp/title/7264) • [2](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/86476) |
| Source | Edogawa Ranpo's story, serialized in the Asahi newspaper as Moju between 1931 and 1932[3](https://www.genregrinder.com/post/blind-beast-blu-ray-review) |
| Cast | Eiji Funakoshi (Sofu Michio), Mako Midori (Shima Aki), Noriko Sengoku (Shino, the mother)[4](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=22612) |
| Key crew | Screenplay Shirasaka Yoshio; cinematography Kobayashi Setsuo; music Hayashi Hikaru; art direction Mano Shigeo[2](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/86476) |
| Critical standing | 100% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 9 reviews; 80% audience score[5](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/blind_beast) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
The fashion model Shima Aki sees a strange man at a photo exhibition caressing the plaster nude modeled on her own body. Days later, the masseur she calls to her room drugs her with chloroform and abducts her. Her kidnapper, Sofu Michio, has been blind from birth; for him the most wonderful thing in the world is the female body, and while devoted to its sculpture he has pursued the ideal female form, which he has identified in Aki.[6](https://eiga.com/movie/39714/) • [4](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=22612)
Aki wakes in a vast atelier filled with countless sculptures of eyes, mouths, noses, breasts, hands, and feet, objects made from the female body itself.[4](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=22612) • [8](https://cinemakadokawa.jp/product/entry-5906.html) She agrees to model for him on the condition that he release her when the sculpture is finished, but an escape attempt is discovered by Michio's mother Shino, who has abetted the kidnapping. Aki realizes that mother and son are bound by an abnormally strong love, and she deliberately draws close to Michio, sharing meals and whispering endearments. Shino, made jealous, tries to drive Aki out and is killed by her son instead; freed from his mother, Michio takes Aki in a frenzy. The two descend together into a world of touch, seeking ever greater sensation by biting and wounding each other, until Aki asks Michio to sever her limbs and their destructive story ends in a fatal culmination.[15](https://mvd.cloud/press/ARROW/BOOKLETS/BlindBeast_Booklet_watermarked.pdf) In the atelier afterward stands Aki's sculpture, its arms and legs cut away.[4](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=22612)
## Production
The film was made at Daiei Tokyo from Edogawa Ranpo's original story, with a screenplay by Shirasaka Yoshio, Masumura's frequent collaborator, and cinematography by Kobayashi Setsuo, who had worked with the director on earlier pictures.[2](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/86476) • [6](https://eiga.com/movie/39714/) Masumura Yasuzo (1924–1986), a leading figure of the postwar generation of Japanese directors, directed 57 films over his career; after leaving Daiei's staff system he made important works with producer Fujii Hiroaki and Shirasaka through their independent production company Kodosha.[7](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/FC/NFC_Calendar/2014calendar7-8.pdf)
The source story had first appeared as a newspaper serial, Moju, in the Asahi between 1931 and 1932.[3](https://www.genregrinder.com/post/blind-beast-blu-ray-review) Ranpo, whose detective and horror fiction was often compared to [Edgar Allan Poe](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgar-allan-poe)'s, saw his work adapted heavily at the end of the 1960s, alongside films such as Teruo Ishii's Horrors of Malformed Men and Kinji Fukasaku's Black Lizard (1968); Blind Beast belongs to this wave and helped renew interest in the author, leading to dozens of further adaptations in the 1990s and 2000s.[3](https://www.genregrinder.com/post/blind-beast-blu-ray-review)
## Themes and style
The film has only three characters: the model, the blind sculptor, and his mother, confined in a great sealed space cut off from society, where a forbidden, inverted love plays out.[1](https://jfdb.jp/title/7264) Screenwriter Shirasaka deliberately downplayed the mystery and deduction elements of Ranpo's story and concentrated on the three-way struggle among the model, the masseur, and his mother, treating violence, sadism, sex, and death without limit.[9](https://www.tfai.org.tw/zh/program/movieDetail/2c9580828705e1c80187a22f0513015f) The Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute's program notes describe it as the first movie in Japanese history to deal with sado-masochism.[9](https://www.tfai.org.tw/zh/program/movieDetail/2c9580828705e1c80187a22f0513015f)
Touch replaces sight as the film's governing sense. The surrealistic set, an atelier crowded with deformed objects of the female body designed by art director Shigeo Mano, and the cinematography of light and shadow are singled out by the Musashino Art University image library as the film's visual high points.[10](https://img-lib.musabi.ac.jp/search/document/detail-work/550) A 2023 study in the journal Eizogaku by Nakajima Shinsaku of Meiji University argues that the film emphasizes the darkness of its "closed area" more than Ranpo's novel does, and reads that darkness as symbolic of power derived from the feudal family system and social structure in Masumura's cinema.[11](https://cir.nii.ac.jp/crid/1390014093884000256)
## Reception and legacy
The film was released in the West as well and is described by KADOKAWA's official materials as a cult classic supported by fans around the world.[1](https://jfdb.jp/title/7264) On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 100% Tomatometer from 9 critics and an 80% audience score; critics there have compared it to Nagisa Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses (1976), which it anticipates in its obsessive, transgressive amour fou, and praised the set designs and Kobayashi's use of negative space.[5](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/blind_beast) The Independent Cinema Office, which distributed it in the UK, calls it an intense exploration of perversion, art, and sado-masochism and "a call-to-arms for Outsider Art."[12](https://www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk/films/blind-beast/)
Arrow Video released the film on Blu-ray in August 2021 with a commentary by the scholar Earl Jackson, author of *Strategies of Deviance: Studies in Gay Male Representation* (Indiana University Press, 1995), and a visual essay by the [Japanese literature](https://www.edgepedia.org/japanese-literature) scholar Seth Jacobowitz.[3](https://www.genregrinder.com/post/blind-beast-blu-ray-review) The film is also listed among significant Japanese works about disability, with commentary noting its treatment of sexuality and access to sexual services.[13](https://japanpastandpresent.org/jp/pdf/reading_lists/63ae9cf9-4c74-44a8-a061-7d75468d98a6) A separate 2001 film directed by Teruo Ishii, Blind Beast vs. One-Eyed Monster (盲獣VS一寸法師), fused this story with Ranpo's The Dwarf and was released theatrically in 2004.[14](https://www.videx.jp/detail/cinema/v_c_ayapro/cayp0164_0001/index.htm)
## References
1. [盲獣, Japanese Film Database (JFDB)](https://jfdb.jp/title/7264)
2. [盲獣 (1969), allcinema](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/86476)
3. [Blind Beast Blu-ray Review, Genre Grinder](https://www.genregrinder.com/post/blind-beast-blu-ray-review)
4. [盲獣, KINENOTE](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=22612)
5. [Blind Beast, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/blind_beast)
6. [盲獣, 映画.com](https://eiga.com/movie/39714/)
7. [Yasuzo Masumura Retrospective, National Film Archive of Japan](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/FC/NFC_Calendar/2014calendar7-8.pdf)
8. [盲獣, 角川シネマコレクション](https://cinemakadokawa.jp/product/entry-5906.html)
9. [盲獣, Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute](https://www.tfai.org.tw/zh/program/movieDetail/2c9580828705e1c80187a22f0513015f)
10. [盲獣, Musashino Art University Image Library](https://img-lib.musabi.ac.jp/search/document/detail-work/550)
11. [Nakajima Shinsaku (2023). The Enclosed Body and the Expansion of "Black": The Cinematic Space in Blind Beast and Music. Eizogaku 109.](https://cir.nii.ac.jp/crid/1390014093884000256)
12. [Blind Beast, Independent Cinema Office](https://www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk/films/blind-beast/)
13. [Selected Works of Media About Disability in Japan, Japan Past and Present](https://japanpastandpresent.org/jp/pdf/reading_lists/63ae9cf9-4c74-44a8-a061-7d75468d98a6)
14. [盲獣VS一寸法師, VIDEX](https://www.videx.jp/detail/cinema/v_c_ayapro/cayp0164_0001/index.htm)
15. [BlindBeast Booklet Watermarked.pdf, mvd.cloud](https://mvd.cloud/press/ARROW/BOOKLETS/BlindBeast_Booklet_watermarked.pdf)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Erotic thrillers and dramas*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license