Hideo Arai

Originally commissioned to record urban redevelopment in Osaka’s Kamagasaki district, Hideo Arai transcends reportage to capture a haunting portrait of displacement during Japan’s economic miracle. With a dissonant score by experimental composers Toshi Ichiyanagi and Yuji Takahashi, the film juxtaposes the brutal reality of shantytown "barracks" against the state's modernization projects. Slum remains a visceral critique of social erasure and a vital, observational work of Japanese documentary film.

A middle-aged father has just married off his third daughter, but still has his nine year old son to raise whom he resents as he was unwanted.

The movie follows a young woman (Kinuyo Tanaka), a daughter of a high-ranking businessman and his neglected mistress, as she struggles to ease her mother's loneliness, while also having an affair with her father's subordinate.

The eldest daughter of a noble family is in love with an aviator while being courted by a fellow aristocrat she thinks is a dullard. This part is told from the perspective of Akemi.

Otoku asks her brother Bunkichi to speak with her son Seiichi, a young man for whom sacrificed everything but who now seems to be headed for a wastrel life. Bunkichi admonishes the boy to study harder, but it seems his uncle's advice may already be too late.