Nishida, a young student, moves into a hovel in the Tokyo slums inhabited by thugs, barmen and prostitutes. Yakuzas sent by a real-estate firm come to evict all the residents. Nishida stubbornly refuses to vacate the premises.
After working as assistant to Kinoshita, who scripted Sincere Heart for him, Kobayashi developed his own more personal talent along with a humanist and tragic vision of the world. With this detailed and unvarnished picture of those living in the slums around the American army bases, Kobayashi’s realism upends the conventional references of Shochiku, even before the advent of Oshima, Imamura, or Shinoda. JB
