Directed by Takashi Miike, the episode was scheduled to premiere on January 27, 2006, but was shelved by Showtime over concerns about its graphic and disturbing content.

Christopher, a Victorian-era American journalist, is traveling through Japan looking for Komomo, a lost girlfriend he had promised to rescue from prostitution and bring to the United States.

After suffering hideously — underarms burned, needles driven under fingernails and into gums — she hanged herself in torment, tired of waiting for her lover.

The girl starts again; in the second telling, her family is no longer happy nor loving; her father was an alcoholic, her mother an abortion care provider.

Considered to be a "deliberately and spectacularly transgressive director whose work is lionized by a substantial share of the young generation of Internet critics and horror film fans, while routinely rejected as repulsively sadistic by much of the mainstream media",[1] Miike crafted "Imprint" based on the novel "Bokke e, kyōtē", by Shimako Iwai, who also appears in the episode.

"[2] It included graphic depictions of violence and aborted fetuses, but Miike believed he was staying within the boundaries of acceptability: "I thought that I was right up to the limit of what American television would tolerate.

"[2] After previewing the episode, Mick Garris, the series creator and executive producer, requested that it be edited to tone down the content, but, despite some changes being made, Showtime felt it was too disturbing to air on television.

[1] It was shown, however, at the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival in Japan on 25 February 2006 and aired in the United Kingdom on the British TV channel Bravo on 7 April 2006.

[3][4] Unlike the other Masters of Horror episodes, the Italian-dubbed version of the film was aired only once in Italy on the Italian TV channel SKY Cinema Max in Summer 2007.