After his wife dies, 55 year old businessman Phillip Emmenthal, at the prompting of his playboy son Storey, populates his Geneva villa with eight and half concubines.

Three are from Kyoto, where Storey manages Pachinco palaces. Each has distinctive personality: a nun, a child bearer, a gambler, a student of kabuki, a horsewoman with a pet pig, and a maid. Phillip throws off his straight laced and repressed attitudes, immersing himself in pleasure. After about a year the women begin to assert their own power. Philips fate is in the hands of Palmira, his favourite.