Hisako Takihana

In post-WWII Osaka, a middle-aged woman is forced to examine her dreary life and marriage when her husband's young and flirtatious cousin arrives for a brief stay to escape an arranged marriage.

The relationship between Tetsuro, a university student from a disgraced, burdened family, and Shino, a waitress supporting her impoverished relatives. The couple decides to marry despite the significant emotional and social hardships each faces, viewing their love as a means to overcome the shame and despair inherited from their pasts.

The story contrasts the life of two doctors, former classmates and now both assistant professors at Naniwa University Hospital in Osaka. The brilliant and ambitious surgeon Goro Zaizen stops at nothing to rise to a position of eminence and authority, while the friendly Shuji Satomi busies himself with his patients and research.

Two college girls who work part-time as shrine maidens swap their names with private investigators conducting a marriage background check, throwing their boyfriends into total chaos.

Yuko is sent to the coastal regions to be raised away from the rest of her sophisticated family where she finds out from her ill grandmother that she is not who she thought she was.

Yosuke Machida of the Daito Shinpo hears from a boy named Toshi-bo, whom he found on the street, that Toshi-bo’s older sister, Toyo, was deceived by a man named Taichi Tachikawa and sold into prostitution in a red-light district. He then set foot in this district for the first time and met Michiko Kawabe, a female reporter known by the nickname “Yoshie.” After hearing various details about the situation from her, he learned that Toyo was at “Kotogawa.”

A man and a woman whose love is forbidden due to a feud between their parents resolve to die together and head to the island of Sado.