Demand to see the film at its first appearance at the Cannes Film Festival was so high, 13 screenings were arranged.
Shot in Japan, the undeveloped film had to be shipped to France for development, due to Japan's strict censorship policies. While Japan permits nudity and pornography, depictions of genitalia must be censored.
Japan has stringent laws regarding the publication of pornography. Nagisa Ôshima was later charged with obscenity on publishing the screenplay, but was acquitted after a courtcase that dragged on for four years.
As a woman, Eiko Matsuda, the actress who played Sada Abe, received hostile treatment from the public after the film came out. She had not faced such treatment with prior work on sexploitation films, wich were popular with audiences at the time. She eventually decided to move to France and abandoned her acting career, as she couldn't land anymore roles. On the other hand, her male co-star, Tatsuya Fuji, eventually regained his career after a period of two years without any job offers. He continues to work as an actor decades after the film.
Holds the record for most screenings at the French Cannes Film Festival (13). According to director Paul Verhoeven, his Dutch movie Fiore di carne (1973), which showed explicit yet simulated depictions of sex, had been angrily rejected as "pornographic" by the festival's board of directors only a year before. However, he wryly noted that In The Realm Of The Senses, which depicted unsimulated and even more explicit sex, was a French co-production.