A botanist woos the secretary of an industrialist whose company threatens the local water supply.

This drama of middle-class life in postwar Japan tells the story lower-middle-class workers in the city of Kawasaki, and their troubles and travails.

Machiko Ujiie and Haruki Atomiya first meet and fall in love on Ginza’s Sukiyabashi Bridge during the Great Tokyo Air Raid in March 1945. Machiko and Haruki pledge to meet again at the bridge in six months but part without asking each other’s names.

Kameda, who has been in an asylum on Okinawa, travels to Hokkaido. There he becomes involved with two women, Taeko and Ayako. Taeko comes to love Kameda, but is loved in turn by Akama. When Akama realizes that he will never have Taeko, his thoughts turn to murder, and great tragedy ensues.

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.

The wife of an elite government official left her husband, and a young journalist is sent to investigate the case. But his boss has a hidden agenda.

A young, talented singer (Misora) is orphaned, not once but twice, and has to turn to a rather unlikely, and unwilling, parental figure, while avoiding her wealthy, absentee father, his hired goons, and the neighborhood fortune teller (Enoken) who's after the reward money.