Suguro is an eminent Catholic novelist who is about to receive a major literary award. When a drunk woman he has never met before approaches him at the award ceremony, claiming she knows him well from his regular visits to Tokyo's red-light district, he assumes she must surely be mistaken. But with a scurrilous press campaign damaging Suguro's reputation, his sleazy doppelg nger appears more and more, as if deliberately trying to discredit him. He is sighted touring the love hotels and brothels of Shinjuku; a leering portrait of him appears in an exhibition-and Suguro is forced to undertake a journey into Tokyo's seedy heart in order to discover the dreadful truth.