Set on a small Japanese island in the final days of World War II, DR. AKAGI is the story of one man's obsession to retain his decency and stamp out a deadly disease. When a dreaded epidemic breaks out, Akagi takes to literally running from house call to house call. From the fringes of Japanese society, the unorthodox physician soon gathers a motley crew of helpers: a dissolute monk, a nihilistic morphine-addicted surgeon, an ex-prostitute, and a wounded Dutch soldier. Using medical practices that aren't strictly from the manual, Akagi and his group make a loony and quixotic effort to locate the disease-causing microbes. It's an uphill battle; the real enemy, however, is not illness, but the spreading militaristic mania that overcame Japan in the last days of the war.

An Official Selection at the Cannes, New York, and Toronto Film Festivals, DR. AKAGI is a completely original film that mixes sex, the atomic bomb, and germs with the dark comedy that is the trademark of Shohei Imamura ("The Eel", "Vengeance Is Mine").