The Wiser Age
Drama about the lives of the five daughters and daughter-in-law of a store owner.
The Lovelorn Geisha
A woman and her daughter are in love with the same man, a chef at the restaurant that the mother manages. He is slightly crippled from frostbite in his years…
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
Keiko, whom everyone calls Mama, narrates her story: she’s a hostess on the Ginza, 30, a widow. She describes life’s vicious cycle: acting cheerful around drunks, dressing and living well…
Daughters, Wives and a Mother
Sanae is left a widow after her prestigious husband dies, but holds the proceeds of a million yen insurance policy. Being childless, her former in-laws have no objection to her…
Untamed Woman
A woman marries, gives birth to a stillborn child, and divorces, falls in love with a hotel-keeper, only to find herself subordinated to his drive for success, takes up with…
Sudden Rain
A husband and wife’s pet peeves and minor irritations escalate into major rifts and animosity.
Flowing
Otsuta is running the geisha house Tsuta in Tokyo. Her business is heavily in debt. Her daughter Katsuyo doesn’t see any future in her mother’s trade in the late days…
Floating Clouds
A married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He doesn’t and after the…
Sound of the Mountain
An ingratiating bride develops warm ties to her father-in-law while her cold husband blithely slights her for another woman.
Late Chrysanthemums
With delicate, unobtrusive strokes, Naruse evokes both the humor and bitterness of his characters’ dilemmas, in this bleak, compelling poignant portrait of a quartet of aging geishas contemplating their troubles…
Wife
Ten years into a marriage, the wife is disappointed by the husband’s lack of financial success, meaning she has to work and can’t treat herself and the husband finds the…
Brother and Sister
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…
Mother
A teenaged girl witnesses her widowed mother’s attempt to sustain her family.
Lightning
The story of Kiyoko, a young woman who has successfully managed to make a break with her dysfunctional family who have been trying to arrange a marriage for her with…
Repast
Michiyo lives in the small place Osaka and is not happy with her marriage, all she does is cook and clean for her husband.
Ginza Cosmetics
A luckless geisha struggles to make a living for herself and her young son.
Wife! Be Like a Rose!
Kimiko, a Tokyo white-collar working girl, lives with her serious, intellectual, haiku-writing mother. Kimiko seeks to marry her boyfriend but needs her absent father to act as the go-between and…