Shuhei Horikawa, a poor schoolteacher, struggles to raise his son Ryohei by himself, despite neither money nor prospects.

Approaching their graduation ceremony, Saegusa, Sanae, and their classmates go on an overnight trip to Hakone with their teacher Ms. Kawahara, who will soon leave school. They thank her doing so and go on their respective paths, ending soon their student life.

An errant salaryman's son gets lost until a man from the Tokyo tenements brings him to vendor Tane, who's reluctant to let the kid board.

A Japanese family weathers much hardship after their military uncle comes to live with them during WWII.

In Depression-era Tokyo, a struggling middle-aged single father with a young son comes across a homeless young lady and convinces a bar owner to take her in.

Pre-war Asakusa was a riotous district of cabarets, dance-halls and brothels - a striking backdrop for Shimazu's story of innocence and experience. Pretty, young Reiko is the new dancer in an infamous theatre troupe, and her fellow performers try to protect her virtue in a land of vice. Meanwhile, an ageing actor wants to be a hero off stage as well as on, and the troupe matriarch Marie has to keep them all together.

A reformatory in the remote countryside houses 200 delinquents and problem children. The teachers and caretakers face much trouble. The school is often short on water, and one day, the well runs dry.

An aging actor returns to a small town with his troupe and reunites with his former lover and illegitimate son, a scenario that enrages his current mistress and results in heartbreak for all.