One of Tagame's earliest long-form serialized works was "The Silver Flower", a historical drama set in the Edo period that follows a formerly wealthy businessman who is forced into sexual slavery in order to resolve a debt. Through the course of the abuse and humiliation he endures at the hands of his male clients, the character comes to realize that he is a masochist; Kolbeins notes that the series "examines a time when male-male sexuality flourished in Japanese society, unfettered by Western notions of sin and 'sodomy'." In "Country Doctor", which focuses on a pre-modern Japanese village where western-imposed taboos on sex are absent, Tagame states that he seeks to "spin on its head is this idea that we think people were more conservative in the past and are more liberated in the present."