Reading The Life of the Marquis de Sade by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa I was most intrigued as a writer, by the riddle of why the Marquise de Sade, after having demonstrated such absolute fidelity to her husband during his long years in prison, should have left him the moment that he was at last free. This riddle served as the point of departure for my play, which is an attempt to provide a logical solution. I was sure that something highly incomprehensible, yet highly truthful, about human nature lay behind this riddle […].

This play might be described as “Sade seen through women's eyes.” I was obliged therefore to place Madame de Sade at the centre, and to consolidate the theme by assigning all the other parts to women. Madame de Sade stands for wifely devotion; her mother, Madame de Montreuil, for law, society, and morality; Madame de Simiane for religion; Madame de Saint-Fond for carnal desires; Anne, the younger sister of Madame de Sade, for feminine guilelessness and lack of principles; and the servant Charlotte for the common people. I had to involve these characters with Madame de Sade and make them revolve around her, with something like the motion of the planets. I felt obliged to dispense entirely with the usual, trivial stage effects, and to control the action exclusively by the dialogue; collisions of ideas had to create the shape of the drama, and sentiments had to be paraded throughout in the garb of reason. (Mishima, 1967: 107)