Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.
In early post-war Osaka, three women, war widow Fusako, her sister Natsuko, an expatriate from Korea, and Kumiko, Fusako's sister-in-law, descend into prostitution, all for their individual reasons.
From 1928 to 1946, the lives of 12 young people and their school teacher in a poor Japanese village are profoundly affected by historical events and personal circumstances.
The eldest daughter of a rural family Mon returns home from Tokyo pregnant after an affair with a college student Kobata, which causes a scandal that will threaten the marriage prospects of the younger sister San, in her cash-strapped family. The ill-tempered eldest brother Inokichi decides to take...
A man is involved in a fatal car accident, and though he is blameless, his company transfers him to a remote branch in a small town. Before he leaves, he gives the man's widow a large sum of money that she uses to move back to her hometown.
War widow Reiko rebuilds and runs the grocery shop in the house of her husband's family. Many years later, their business is threatened by a newly built supermarket and Reiko's in-laws plan to convert their small shop into a supermarket, to her detriment.
Lonely and love-stricken high-school student Hiroki pursues a girl, but another one mysteriously appears in his life. Is she a figment of his psyche, or is she real?
It's a man's world. Shimamura, an artist, comes to this snowbound town to rejuvenate himself. He connects with Komako, a geisha he met on a previous trip, and it seems like love. She's the foster daughter of a local family, almost engaged to the family's son Yukio, now dying of consumption. He's...
In the heart of the Japanese Alps, in Kamikochi, Nagano Prefecture, botany professor Kazuhiko Onuma spends time with Tsuruko, his lover. One night, Kazuhiko's wife Kazuyo comes to see them and confronts the professor about his extramarital affair, and Tsuruko, an inevitable witness to the...
Kosaka drops to death while ice climbing with his friend Uozu to see the sunrise on the New Year’s Day. The investigators try to find the cause of the death, then discover that the cut rope was made in the factory for which Uozu’s brother works.
