Shûzô Horikawa

A budding gangster enthralls a freeloading young woman, soon taking advantage of her knack for hitch-hiking to rob middle-class, middle-aged men.

The backstage romances of an egotistical singer and his under-valued manager, a lovelorn bandman and a nude dancer.

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.

Schoolteacher Hisako Oishi struggles to imbue her students with a positive view of the world despite the fact that war is looming.