The Unokitsi, a student at the School of Fine Arts, narrates his encounter with the retired Tsoukakosi and his mistress Fumiko. The old merchant, obsessed with the beauty of his lover's foot, assigns the young painter to depict Fumiko in a Westernized manner, but in the style of an old Japanese woodcut, in a pose that highlights the unique sensuality of the represented woman. His obsession with a specific part of her body, her feet, will become so intense that it will lead him to the brink of madness.

"Fumiko's Foot" remains the most representative of Tanizaki's early works that explore "deviant" aspects, as they were called at the time, of sexuality.