Ballad of a Worker (1962)

After WWII, an ex-soldier and his wife spend their lives working at modest jobs to raise their son and put him through school.

Director:

Keisuke Kinoshita

Writer:

Keisuke Kinoshita

Stars:

Hideko Takamine, Keiji Sada, Yoshiko Kuga

Cast

Credited cast:
Hideko Takamine	...	Torae Nonaka
Keiji Sada	...	Yoshio Nonaka, Torae's husband
Yoshiko Kuga	...	Chiyo
Chieko Baishô	...	Miyoko Ishikawa, Toshiyuki's girlfriend
Toyozô Yamamoto	...	Toshiyuki Nonaka, Torae's son
Kiyoshi Nonomura	...	Mr. Mochizuki
Kin Sugai	...	Mrs. Mochizuki
Teruko Kishi	...	Yoshio's mother
Toranosuke Ogawa	...	Yoshio's father
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Torahiko Hamada
Akitake Kôno
Chieko Misaki
Ippei Souda

Storyline

After WWII, an ex-soldier and his wife spend their lives working at modest jobs to raise their son and put him through school.

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Plot Keywords:

marriage | based on poem | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Details

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Also Known As:

The Days We Spent Together

Company Credits

Production Co:

Shochiku Ofuna

Technical Specs

Runtime:

102 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

User Reviews

The Shomin-Geki

Keiji Sada returns from the War to his wife, Hideko Takamine and their son. He becomes a road worker, and she a housekeeper for the local supervisor and staff. He works hard, and drinks too much shochu, cheap liquor distill from rice, sweet potatoes, barley, buckwheat, sugar... Japanese moonshine. Their son does well enough to go to college, but the little money they send him isn't enough.

The Shomin-Geki (in proper Japanese, it's 'shoshimin-eiga') is a Japanese performing-arts genre that focuses on ordinary people. Naruse directed them, and so did Ozu. The writer-director of this movie, Keisuke Kinoshita, worked in it frequently, and you can't get people more ordinary than these poor, hard-working two, surrounded by friends and co-workers living equally tough lives, hoping desperately for their son to do better than they did, giving up their occasional drink, even tea, doing without.

The two leads are extraordinary actors; Miss Takamine was one of the leading stars of the Japanese cinema for many years, and Sada's career, although much shorter, is distinguished by many roles in the movies of Kinoshita, Kobayashi, and even Ozu. They bring an immense dignity to these characters, even when Miss Takamine slaps her son or Sada is drunk. Perhaps it would be better to say that this movie gave them the chance to show the ferocious good character of the working poor.