In the same category as the superb HAPPINESS FOR US ALONE, though not in the same class. Both films deal in earthy detail with lives of working (and sometime not working) poor in post WWII Tokyo, in a manner which is consistently level-headed, neither sensational or sentimental, but still managing to be engrossing entertainment, even enthralling.

And, most importantly for this reviewer, both star the luminous Hideko Takamine. This adorable and beautiful lead actress had a very busy career, and her expressive face is a joy to watch.

INAZUMA is essentially a high-quality soap opera. Told mainly from Kiyoko's (youngest daughter, aged 23) point of view, the story mainly concerns an old woman who had four offspring, each from different fathers. Nearly everyone is a highly fallible human being, and you sometimes want to grab these characters, shake them and yell "stop being so damn stupid !".

That curious old Hollywood term "woman's picture" also comes to mind, as the strongest characters are all women, as does "slice of life", because the story has no proper start and end points.

If all this makes it sound dull and lacking focus, it isn't. This is a wonderful film in every possible way. The direction and acting are first class, and the characters all too believeable and probably very much like many other people you know. In a way, comparison with HFUA is unfair, as HFUA is a strong candidate for one of the best Japanese films ever made, but INAZUMA still rates a strong mention.

Highly recommended.

Inazuma stars the wonderful Hideko Takamine, which was one of the regulars of the films of Michio Naruse (at least during the 1950s). The movie, set in postwar Japan in a lower middle class milieu, is a bit hard to understand at first, with all the messy family relations for the audience to sort out, but is basically about the Takamine character's decision to leave her extended family and start a life of her own (her mother has four different children from different fathers: "you breed like a cat", Takamine would later reproach her mother, in one of the movie's funnier lines). The movie ends up in a relatively upbeat note. And why in so many Japanese movies from the 1950s the only job apparently available to young women consist on being tourist guides?

Kumeko Urabe has four daughters and one son, each by a different father. The son is a layabout who keeps saying "Next year...." The daughters are hardworking, and the three eldest are married. The youngest is Hideko Takamine. She has a job as a conductress on a tour bus. Her family keeps trying to get her to marry Eitarô Ozawa. She looks at her sisters and their unhappy marriages, the squabbling, the drunken men. She does not want to get married. She wants out. One day, it strikes her like a lightning bolt that she can leave, and she vanishes from her family.

Mikio Naruse directs this movie from a novel by Fumiko Hayashi and it's a real shocker to anyone who looks at the gentle family comedies of Ozu, where loving and successful parents nudge their loving children towards the right outcome. What happens when nothing works? What do you do when you do everything right -- well, most things -- and everyone around you fouls up? You work hard, you live thriftily, you keep your mouth shut because no one listens -- like Miss Takamine in this movie, I am a youngest child, and that's the way it is -- and watch as others act like idiots, as if there are no consequences, and then listen to them chatter drunkenly about their bad luck.... and ask you to pick up the bar bill. Like a dope, you do.

There's no disputing Naruse's abilities as a film maker, and no disputing Miss Takamine's as an actress. The two of them could turn out a very good movie whenever they worked together. Every once in a while, they hit the right subject, and this movie speaks to me like a thunderclap.