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 prospects of the younger sister San, in her cash-strapped family. The ill-tempered eldest brother Inokichi decides to take on the role of disciplinarian, with harrowing results.

Theater of Life: Youth Version

A Pebble by the Wayside

Tomotaka Tasaka's A Pebble by the Wayside (Robo no Ishi), made in 1938 and taken from a Yuzo Yamamoto novel, takes place around 1902, was about a young boy brought up entirely by his mother since his drunken father is never home. An intelligent teacher wants to send him to middle school, but instead the father apprentices him to a clothing store to which he is in debt. The mother dies and the boy is forced to quit work when his father insults the store owner. Later the boy goes to Tokyo, but only to continue his hardships. First he is forced...

A Man's Flower Road of Triumph

The Blue Pearl

The Blue Pearl depicts the interplay between a young man from Tokyo and two ama (pearl divers; literally “women of the sea”) in a superstitious coastal town. Though raised within the same tradition-bound crucible, the two women – Noe and Riu – are portrayed as diametric opposites; the former meek but affectionate, the latter strong-willed but jaded by a tryst with metropolitan life.