Originally screened in two separate episodes, this was the last film to be released by P.C.L. before it merged with J.O. Studio to form Toho. It was based on a novel by Kan Kikuchi (1888-1948), a popular author and playwright whose work spawned numerous film adaptations and who was to serve as wartime president of another film studio, Daiei.

A big box-office success in its day, this is another underrated work, superbly acted by all. In the wake of Nyonin aishu, the film reunited Naruse with cinematographer Mitsuo Miura and star Takako Irie, who gives a blistering performance in a role that again anticipates the feminism of Naruse’s postwar work. Irie plays Toyomi, who yields to the advances of aspiring diplomat Shintaro (Minoru Takada) when he promises to marry her, and becomes pregnant with his child, only to see him marry another woman. The narrative has parallels with Naruse’s silent Nasanu naka (No Blood Relations, 1932) as a kind of haha-mono (a popular genre focused on maternal love and suffering). The troubling resolution of the story suggests the political tensions of the era, at a time of growing conservatism in a Japan increasingly influenced by militarist ideology.

At the time, “Kinema Junpo” critic Junichiro Tomoda praised the psychological perception in the depiction of a man fallen in love, but complained that Naruse was “unsuitable as a director of this kind of material and failed to bring power and emotion to every scene.” More recently, however, Tetsuya Hirano has praised the film as “well-paced and directed with a fluid touch”. Like Otome gokoro sannin shimai, the film contains some alluring location footage of pre-war Tokyo, including the Ueno and Ginza districts.

In the wake of Kafuku, Naruse hoped to adapt Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country (Yukiguni), which had been published in volume form earlier in 1937. Regrettably this project never came to fruition, though the novel was filmed two decades later by Shiro Toyoda.

Alexander Jacoby e Johan Nordströ