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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

An ingratiating bride develops warm ties to her father-in-law while her cold husband blithely slights her for another woman.

Michiyo lives in the small place Osaka and is not happy with her marriage; all she does is cook and clean for her husband.

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…

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…

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…

A luckless geisha struggles to make a living for herself and her young son.

A husband and wife’s pet peeves and minor irritations escalate into major rifts and animosity.

Drama about the lives of the five daughters and daughter-in-law of a store owner.

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…

A teenaged girl witnesses her widowed mother’s attempt to sustain her family.

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…

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…

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…