Masayuki Mori wed Chikage Awashima about 1937, but she could not bear children. During the War, he began an affair with Hideko Takamine, and she had two children, which Mori and Miss Awashima registered as their own, and raised them as such ever since. Miss Takamine has run a bar in the Ginza since, but it is in Miss Awashima's name, and Miss Takamine pays her 100,000 yen every month.... and has just paid to have the bar air-conditioned out of her own pocket.
But this situation, which has endured for so long, is near the breaking point, and Miss Takamine almost has an affair with Tatsuya Nakadai; she decides not to at the last moment, but walks out; nonetheless, they are friendly. She wants something for all the years, the bar, or money, or children, but all paths seemed barred to her. Miss Awashima blocks her, and Mori seems flabbily unwilling to discuss matters or do anything.
It's another of director Mikio Naruse's meditations on the poor state of womanhood in a Japan that seems devised for men to do as they wish. The women seem to alternate being villains, until the final confrontation, in which it turns out it's all laziness, with Mori getting what he wants, even as he proclaims his own guilt.
There are some fine performances here, like Keiko Awaji's, a restaurateur whose lover has bought the place she owns, Chôko Iida as Miss Takamine's grandmother, and the woefully underutilized Chieko Nakakita. However, my attention was on Miss Takamine, who gives a performance far from her usual forthright screen persona. She whines, she mumbles, she gets drunk and staggers. I won't say it's delightful; it's alternately pitiable and enraging, as she tries to figure out what to do. She is a victim here, but so is Miss Awashima, and so are the two children. Mori has to suffer some embarrassment as his students talk about him and giggle. Tough.
