SETTING: Present days

LOCATION: A fishing village in Tsugaru (in the far north of Honshu)

SYNOPSIS:
NAKASATO ISAKO, having worked as a bar hostess in Tokyo, returns to her hometown, a fishing village in Tsugaru, bringing IWAKI TETSUO along with her. Her purposes for coming home are to collect ship insurance benefits due to the deaths of her father and brother out in the sea and build a gravestone for them with the money as well as to hide TETSUO on the run from a chase for his murder of a boss of other gangsters' group. ISAKO and TETSUO settle in a shack on a beach. TETSUO, bored, gets acquainted with YUKI, a blind girl, who adores him. ISAKO, working at the only bar in the village, is denied payment of the ship insurance benefits she was counting on for the reason of a suspected insurance fraud. In addition, her friend absconds with all her savings. Because of a string of such misfortune, she is so disappointed at her hometown that she decides to leave the village with TETSUO. On the instigation of a bar manager, TETSUO tries to earn big money by cheating YUKI to make her engage in prostitution, but he gives it a second thought. He saves her and decides to stay in the village, helping a fisherman TAMIZO. Before long, however, a gangster from other group who has chased him from Tokyo stabs a knife in his flank to death.

NOTES:
The sullen climate and poverty in Tsugaru in the far north of the Honshu where the billowing coast of the Japan Sea and a stagnant lake are next to each other across a narrow sandstrip, the life in a shack of the woman who used to be a bar girl in Tokyo and the young gangster on the run from a chaser, the region's folk art Tsugaru-samisen and blind people depending on it for their living...the hard life rooted in harsh climate and geography is impressively depicted in the film. Director SAITO KOICHI, ex-stillman, created a splended visual image on the screen. The picture won the "Kinema-Junpo" best picture award, and photography by SAKAMOTO NORITAKA was awarded the Mainichi Motion Picture Contest prize. The leading actress ENAMI KYOKO was granted the "Kinema-Junpo" best performance by an actress award.