SETTING: In the same days as the film was produced

LOCATION: Tokyo

SYNOPSIS:
Tapping a car window, a woman asks a man inside for a ride home. This is a hitchhiking technique women often use to get home. MAKOTO, a high school girl, does the same and gets in a car driven by a middle-aged man. Instead of taking her home, he takes her to a love hotel. When she is forced to go to inside with him, KIYOSHI, a college student, saves her. The next day, MAKOTO and KIYOSHI go to the Sumida River to spend the day with the money the middle-aged man gave him. On the same day, he makes love to her.
After a week passed without word from him, MAKOTO is waiting for KIYOSHI at a bar nearby. When hoodlums are trying to seduce her, KIYOSHI comes in. A fight begins between them. However, MATSUKI, a brotherly figure of the hoodlum group, cuts in and settles it for money. Although KIYOSHI has been carrying an affair with MASAE, a married woman, he could not resist MAKOTO's unaffected feelings for him and lets her stay overnight at his apartment. When MAKOTO returns home in the morning, YUKI, her elder sister, persistently blames her and confines her in a room. MAKOTO escapes and moves in with KIYOSHI.
Running out of money, KIYOSHI plans to swindle money. MAKOTO seduces a wealthy looking middle-aged man, and KIYOSHI blackmails. Her living together with KIYOSHI becomes the center of rumours at her school. When her homeroom teacher SHIMONISHI questions her, YUKI unexpectedly denies the rumour, and saves MAKOTO. However MAKOTO gets pregnant. KIYOSHI suggests an abortion, which, however, requires money. She leaves him behind and goes out to spend the night at a hotel with a man who drives an expensive car. On the other hand, KIYOSHI borrows money from MASAE, but when he learns what MAKOTO did, he intimidates the man to swindle money.
YUKI visits her old boyfriend AKIMOTO at his clinic, where MAKOTO is lying in bed after going through an abortion. KIYOSHI comes in the clinic to pick up MAKOTO. When they arrive at their apartment, policemen are waiting for them. KIYOSHI is arrested. The man with an expensive car has reported KIYOSHI's intimidation to the police. KIYOSHI is released from the police with MASAE's efforts. Having no confidence in protecting MAKOTO, KIYOSHI abandons her. But, when he sees her being temted into a hoodlum group, he tries to get her back bravely, and dies in his fight against them. MAKOTO, seduced by another man, gets in his car casually, but realizing what she is doing, she jumps out of the car. While being dragged by the car on the ground, she dies.

NOTES:
In 1960, the year when this film was produced, the Japanese student movement was at its height with their anti-Japan-U.S. Security Treaty protests. In the setting of such times, Director OSHIMA NAGISA made his second film "NAKED YOUTH" depicting self-destruction of the college student and the high school girl who could not quite follow the mood of the time and lead insecure and hopeless lives in the midst of their impulsive adolescense. Obviously affected by the French 'nouvel vague', and moreover produced by the conservative SHOCHIKU, the film was reputed as a new open to bring refreshness in Japanese movies. The documentary footage on the May Day of that year is inserted. OSHIMA's ambitious depiction of the times is seen throughout.