Toru Takemitsu

An unemployed samurai in seventeenth-century Japan visits a feudal lord threatening harakiri in the hope that he will be employed, but his request is denied and the warrior is honor-bound to carry out the ritual suicide.

After an unemployed samurai is forced to commit harakiri before a feudal lord, his father-in-law returns to the scene, seemingly to play out the same agonizing suicide ritual.

Mr. and Mrs. Shizuma and their niece Yasuko make their way through the ruins of Hiroshima, devastated by the atomic bomb. Five years later, Yasuko is living with her aunt and uncle, and her senile grandmother, in a village containing many survivors of the bombing. Yasuko does not appear to be affected, but the Shizumas are worried about her marriage prospects, fearing that she might succumb to radiation sickness at any time.

In this cool, seductive jewel of the Japanese New Wave, a yakuza, fresh out of prison, becomes entangled with a beautiful yet enigmatic gambling addict. What at first seems a redemptive relationship ends up leading him further down the criminal path.