In Depression-era Japan, a courteous bus driver carries an eclectic group of passengers from the mountainous Izu to Tokyo.

1939 Japanese movie

A spirited young teacher challenges the conservative school employing her with liberal thinking and teaching methods.

Mikio Naruse’s final silent film is a gloriously rich portrait of a waitress, Sugiko, whose life, despite a host of male admirers and even some intrigued movie talent scouts, ends up taking a suffocatingly domestic turn after a wealthy businessman accidentally hits her with his car.

Yuki is a young, single mother supporting herself and her son, Haru, with a job as a bar hostess.

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.

The story is centered around the devastating experiences of two villagers, Osaki Shuichi, and his cousin, Nishimiura Kinue, when they leave their hometown for the metropolis of Tokyo. They are in love with each other, but Kinue is expected to marry the lawyer Kanda Seiji. In consequence, Shukichi leaves for Tokyo, where he becomes tutor to the son of the rich Iwaki family. The heartbroken Kinue also makes her way to the capital, where she becomes a bar hostess.

A period piece about the love of a wealthy blind woman, a teacher of koto and shamisen, and her devoted manservant. Based on a novella by Tanizaki Junichiro.

Inoue was something of a rarity in the sense, that he was a Shochiku house director who seems to have worked mostly in period films, often with big stars like Hasegawa or Bando. "Sumidagawa", named after the river that runs through Tokyo, is also a period film, but thematically a modern one. All the themes that you associate with the normal Shochiku women's films set in the present day are in this film, just in a different context: love, the planning of a marriage, career, family relations and societal melancholy. There is no action or swordplay.

Pretty Oshige is deceived by her first love. After this, she lives a hard lifestyle, working at a number of jobs. Her only pleasure is her nephew, who eventually becomes a merchant marine. When Oshige meets her old love ten years later, she is able to forgive him and even thank him for the path her life has taken.