The beautifully animated story of a poor idiot who has made a bet: that he can bed the most famous courtesan in Edo on the first meeting. If he wins, he’ll get a fancy new mansion; if he loses, his “most important part of a man” will be chopped off. His friend Yonosuke, a famous man of many loves, the “sensualist” of the title, decides to help him in the ways of love. Based on the classic Edo period novel The Life of an Amorous Man by Ihara Saikaku, this 1991 film is considered an unofficial successor to the famed 60s-70s Animerama trilogy of adult animated films by Tezuka Osamu and Yamamoto Eiichi: 1001 Nights, Cleopatra, and, best known in the US, Belladonna of Sadness. Yamamoto did indeed write the script; the film lacks Belladonna’s characteristic horror and revolutionary violence, but instead displays a delicate beauty of image and movement which evokes the period it depicts, when all of Edo (modern day Tokyo)’s culture was dominated by the sex workers and performers of the licensed quarters.