Arquivo

A boy who has lost his father, lives with his mother. She has managed to raise him with the assistance of an important man in town for whom the son works. The boy, however, does not know that the mother and his boss are having an affair. The boy marries the boss’s daughter, but the marriage fails. He goes back to living with his mother, but the family environment comes apart when he learns of her affair. Yoshida deals with the theme incest using concepts of existencialism and psychoanalysis, all of which has led the critics to regard him as the most intellectual of the Japanese ‘nouvelle vague’ film makers. Researcher David Desser saw "a symbolic relationship between the social and the sexual elements in Japanese post-war films", associating the success of the plan for economic recovery drawn up by the U.S. with liberating the customs in the country.