The career of the director of this film,
Tomu Uchida, was in a very serious trouble at the time he made it. One of the most prominent Japanese filmmakers of the prewar period, Uchida, after failing to set up his own production company in the early 1940s, went to work for the Manchukuo Film Association in wartime occupied Manchuria, planning a film project that was never realized. After the war, he chose to remain for many years in China rather than return to Japan, apparently hoping in vain to make a film there. Thus, he did not return to Japan until late 1953, eight years after the end of the war and more than a decade after the release of his most recent film. However, his filmmaking friends from prewar days rallied round to help him return to the Japanese film industry. Uchida signed a contract with a new film studio, Toei, and was given this film as his first project, though it had originally been intended for Uchida's old friend
Hiroshi Shimizu to direct. (Shimizu, along with
Yasujirô Ozu and
Daisuke Itô, were officially credited as "advisors to the production.") His comeback film turned out to be a big critical and commercial hit, and Uchida's postwar career was successfully launched.
