I'm not a fan of tear-jerkers, but I have become a fan of director Keisuke Kinoshita, so I took a look at this movie starring Kinuyo Tanaka and found it to be well-put together piece of moral female suffering.
Miss Tanaka and Keiji Sada have fallen in love and want to get married. In short order, her father dies, her younger brother comes down with a fatal illness, her surviving elder relatives steal everything and want her to marry a rich man so they can get a big contract. Also, he is about to be shipped off for the war and his father hates her for no reason even explained, just 'unsuitability'. All but ten minutes are done in flashback, so we also knows that he dies in the war, but they have a son.
It's a surprising movie from Japan in this period. There's no overt disapproval of the Japanese side of World War Two, but since it's all about how Miss Tanaka suffers to no real purpose save to entertain the movie audience, perhaps that's disapproval enough. Everyone does a good job in this one, and if you're fond of the talent or tear-jerkers, this should one should please you.
Kinoshita had become a director in 1943, directed four movies through 1944, all fairly obvious pro-war propaganda films, then no credits until 1946, so he must have satisfied the American Occupation people very quickly. It looks like a satisfying weeper that has an air of mockery of the form, while sympathetically observing the characters caught in a stultifying society. As the decades rolled along, the writer-director would become ever more biting in his observations.
