It was the first time in six years that I was able to step on the land of my homeland, the land of my nostalgia. It was Tokyo that had turned to burnt earth. A Tokyo with no one to rely on.

Keiko and Toshiko are sisters who leave their mountain home, where their parents live in a hydroelectric plant company house to study in the city. They stay with their kind-hearted aunt and her jovial but heavy-drinking carpenter husband. Keiko, the 17-year-old eldest of five siblings, is gentle and responsible, while 14-year-old Toshiko is lively and childlike, affectionately called "Konchi."

Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue comes at a cost. Blind musician Hoichi is forced to perform for an audience of ghosts. An author relates the story of a samurai who sees another warrior's reflection in his teacup.

1961 Japanese movie

The picture belongs to the jidai gekki (historic) genre. It is a powerful story of violence and eroticism, picturing a world at once sordid and poetic, with two central themes which intermingle to compound an admirable panel of a critical period in Japanese history: the great famine in the mid 19th Century.

At the close of the war in Japan, a widowed mother makes every possible sacrifice to bring up her ungrateful son and daughter who are unimpressed with their poor standard of living at home. They gradually reject her in search of the material comforts that working as a maid cannot provide. The mother's despair becomes interminable.

The arranged marriage between a capricious woman from Tokyo high society and a quiet and rustic man is tested by a marital crisis.

Japan, February 1868. As the Tokugawa shogunate declines and the power of Emperor Meiji grows, Gonzo, a soldier of the Restoration Army, returns to Sawando, his hometown, to announce the end of tyranny.

A rural village elder plans an event on the return of a farmer's daughter from the city, unaware that she has become a Westernized burlesque artist.

In the middle of the period of high economic growth in Japan, a family is thrown into disarray over work, money, and romance. Their father's sudden unemployment later in life causes friction among the siblings of the Akagi family. Kensuke, a salaryman at a top company, refuses to support his parents while his brother, Shoji, determines to care for them despite only working as a taxi driver. The concern over money affects Noriko's own love life as she courts a wealthy salaryman to the chagrin of her mechanic boyfriend.