In a time of continuous civil wars ravaging the fields of feudal Japan, the eldest son of a very poor peasant family, living alongside the bridge over the Fuefuki river, decides to serve a warlord to escape his miserable condition, being soon followed by his younger brothers. Although not all the men of the family take this tragic path of death, women of the family will be doomed to endure the pain of loss during the next five generations.
A young man runs a scam selling pigeons that always return to his home. He falls under the wing of Kyoko, an older student whose heart is touched after Masuo sells his pigeons to her. However, after his scam is revealed, can these feelings truly remain the same?
(uncredited)
After handing in a report on the treatment of Chinese colonial labor, Kaji is offered the post of labor chief at a large mining operation in Manchuria, which also grants him exemption from military service. He accepts, and moves to Manchuria with his newly-wed wife Michiko, but when he tries to put his ideas of more humane treatment into practice, he finds himself at odds with scheming officials, cruel foremen, and the military police.
Newspaper man
The plans of a trio of burglars are continually thwarted by the arrival of visitors to the house they plan to rob.
A group of rank-and-file Japanese soldiers are jailed for crimes against humanity, themselves victims of a nation refusing to bear its burdens as a whole.
Young village man C (uncredited)
A botanist woos the secretary of an industrialist whose company threatens the local water supply.
This drama of middle-class life in postwar Japan tells the story lower-middle-class workers in the city of Kawasaki, and their troubles and travails.
