"This Transient Life is a rare example of a successful film about Buddhist thought. Despite the scandalous story, the film treats the topic with the utmost sincerity, without retreating to esoteric kitsch or religious mumbo jumbo. Jissoji, himself the descendant of an old Buddhist family, continued to tackle religious and philosophical topics in his subsequent films, among them Mandala (Mandara, 1971) and Poem (Uta, 1972), both produced by ATG and based on scripts by Jissoji's congenial partner Toshiro Ishido."

"The film that treated incest in the most daring and scandalous way, however, was Akio Jissoji's This Transient Life, based on a script by Toshiro Ishido. It became an instant success and was the first film to get a wider release outside the confined circuit of ATG. This Transient Life was the most successful film of the early ATG years and by winning the Grand Prix at the Locarno film festival in 1970 it also earned international acknowledgement. Together with Yukio Mishima's Yukoku (1966; also distributed by ATG) This Transient Life was the most controversially discussed film at the FIPRESCI conference about "Eroticism and Violence in Cinema" in Milan in October 1970. However, for some unfathomable reason the film soon fell into oblivion and is still waiting to be rediscovered as one of the masterpieces of Japanese cinema."

(http://www.midnighteye.com)