Ballad of a Workman

One night, Jiro and Reiko fell in love at first sight, and on the seventh day he proposed to her, and three months later they were married. However, the difference in upbringing between Jiro, who was born and raised in a farmhouse in Shinshu, and Reiko, who is a city girl by nature, sometimes causes small ripples in their sweet newlywed life.

The Tsuru family is a family of nine, headed by Kamejiro. Kamejiro is the president of a construction company that has made a fortune in its first generation, but he is a one-man family. His wife, Aiko, is a typical good wife and wise mother type. Kamejiro gets angry and thunders down every week, and the children are afraid of him, calling him "Oyaji Daiko", but he also takes advantage of this.

From 1928 to 1946, the lives of 12 young people and their school teacher in a poor Japanese village are profoundly affected by historical events and personal circumstances.

In a time of continuous civil wars ravaging the fields of feudal Japan, the eldest son of a very poor peasant family, living alongside the bridge over the Fuefuki river, decides to serve a warlord to escape his miserable condition, being soon followed by his younger brothers. Although not all the men of the family take this tragic path of death, women of the family will be doomed to endure the pain of loss during the next five generations.

In a remote village where food is scarce, elders who reach the age of 70 are carried by their children to the top of a nearby mountain to die in solitude. Orin, a vibrant 69-year-old grandmother, has accepted her fate — but struggles to prepare the rest of her family for the ritual.

A young woman is forced by circumstance into a loveless marriage while still in love with another. This episodic tale follows their story through three decades of bitter conflict which engulfs their children and those around them.

Two men at an ironworks encounter roadblocks: the first does not have the grades to get a job, while the other finds himself falling for a co-worker.

After her mother runs away from home, Tomoko is raised to be a geisha. One day Tomoko meets her mother in a red-light district in Tokyo and her life deeply gets in trouble.

On a Tokyo dump’s shantytown edge, interwoven vignettes follow residents scraping by: a boy who “drives” an imaginary trolley, a homeless father and son designing a dream house, a young woman brutalized at home, drunks, schemers, and saints of small kindnesses. Kurosawa crafts a ragged mosaic of hardship, fantasy, and flickers of grace that keep people moving forward.

A Tokyo family escaping the war relocates to a Hokkaido village; their daughter is set to marry the local leader's son, but her siblings disapprove.

Five years after the end of the Second World War, Reikichi, a repatriated veteran, translates love letters for Japanese women to American GIs, while searching for his lost love, Michiko.

Hikaru and Ichiro are close friends in high school. Hikaru's elder brother Tadashi fell in love with Ichiro's elder sister, Mikako at first sight. Although she gave the cold shoulder to Tadashi, she gradually became fond of Tadashi.

Though plagued by ill health all his life, a young Japanese man is obligated to fulfill his family's longstanding military tradition.

The mistress of a crook real estate broker comes to terms with her soulless existence after an artist paints her portrait.

A jewelry store president begins to fall for the doctor treating her husband's illness.

Iemon Tamiya is an impoverished masterless samurai who craves a better life, which he cannot have because of his marriage to Oiwa, who is completely devoted to her husband.