Maria of the Ant Village

Set in the 1860s, the final years of the Tokugawa Shogunate, The Fireflies focuses on Tose (Awashima Chikage), the mistress of the Teradaya, a small inn in the Kyoto suburb of Fushimi. She does not have an easy life. Her husband, Isuke (Ban Junzaburo), is a wastrel who fancies himself a kabuki singer and who is obsessed with cleanliness. Her mother-in-law, Sada (Miyoshi Eiko) dislikes her because of her humble origins (her family are farmers) and because she fears that she will inherit the inn instead of Sugi, her daughter. Sada's hopes for Sugi, however, are dashed when she runs off with a con artist and leaves her child behind for Tose to take care of. When Sada becomes seriously ill, it is Tose who nurses her. On her deathbed, Sada asks her daughter-in-law's forgiveness. Meanwhile Isuke spends most of his time with a mistress he has taken, forcing Tose to manage the inn by herself

Temari, a geisha, dreams of opening a small restaurant with her little brother.

Follows the life of Tsuru, the poor daughter of farmers in Shinshu, Japan.

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.

A great ambition to portray with sharp satire and humor the course of modern anxiety and love that is about to be driven to despair.

Minowada, a young teacher at a National People's School, has his own theory of education and the daughter of his linguistics teacher becomes drawn to him. Kayo, a strong-willed doctor, is also attracted to him. A mediator tries to arrange a marriage but just at that point Minowada receives military call-up papers.

Suzuko, a woman in her twenties who has a brother with political problems (due to communist reprisals), lives for over five years in a love affair with Tate who's a young lieutenant in the Army, ultimately becoming a right-wing fundamentalist revolutionary. She marries another man, one totally dedicated to the rigorous practices of Noh theatre, in an arranged marriage, but the bond that connects her with Tate is too strong.

Half a Loaf... Avarice / Yoku

Story of a woman, Saiko, who divorces her doctor husband when she is given a baby by a stranger who claims it is the husband's child. Saiko embarks on an affair with her cousin's husband, but a crisis threatens when she discovers that her ex-husband is about to remarry.

Follows the story of an insurance company executive from Tokyo, Mr. Mito, who is demoted to the Osaka office. He takes a room at a small inn and tries to rebuild his life.

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. Told from the perspective of Ryota. In this second part, we learn that Akemi is pregnant...

Ayako, a young woman from a rural fishing village, is sold by her family into a brothel when her father takes ill. There, she is quickly stripped of her innocence and illusions.

Atsuko is an office secretary who is also her family's primary source of income and caretaker in postwar Japan.

Five women classmates from a college in Tokyo are on the first stretch of a walking tour when one of them, Masako, falls ill at a railway station. Osen, a middle-aged maid from a nearby inn, takes her in and nurses her, assisted by Dr. Minami, a young physician who diagnoses her illness as a mild case of pneumonia. With Masako in good hands and needing a few days to recuperate, her classmates continue their tour. Masako’s recovery, however, is hampered by her spoiled and immature nature and her determination to punish the world for the loss of her mother.

Ichiro Yoshida, the father of the boy Kiyoshi, who has been repatriated from China, returns home after a ten-year separation. The father, who has been estranged from his son for many years, pays no attention to the boy, often punishes him unfairly, and gives all his tenderness to his little daughter, who was born after his return. The boy sees all the injustice of his father and, offended, leaves home. The father realized that he was wrong, that he was guilty before his son. The mother finds the boy and brings him home. The father and the son become friends from that day on.