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"Oden gets by on her beguiling looks and criminal skills -- pick pocketing and shoplifting. Her ex-hus-band Jinjûrô is a former samurai who's become a drunken wastrel. They have a young daughter, O-Mitsu, whom he never lets Oden see. Oden's current husband is bed-ridden with tuberculosis, and always suspicious of her nocturnal activities. Her personal life becomes even more calamitous after a jewelry store scam leads her to start relationships with naïve rookie police officer Namikawa and the owner of the gem business, who runs an underground prostitution ring. From mud-soaked shacks in Tokyo to opulent gambling parlors in Yokohama, Oden's machinations leave a trail of bodies and a few scarred survivors. In the first decade of the Meiji era (1868-1878), newspapers became a vehicle for new literature, with dokufu-mono -- "poison-woman stories" -- being a common fixture. One such piece was written by newspaper editor and humorist Kanagaki Robun, about a woman named Takahashi Den (aka Oden), who was tried and sentenced to death (Japan's last execution by decapitation) for the murder of a curio shop owner in Tokyo. With no less than five films partially based on her
tragic life, including a silent work from 1912, Nakagawa Nobuo's "A Wicked Woman" is deservedly the most famous." Jason Gray