This dignified, purposeful film is often touching as a case history of doomed innocense at bay. But its coils of compromise and corruption are even more credible and haunting.

The director's favourite among his own films.

A devastating critique of postwar Japanese society; it signaled Ichikawa's emergence as a mature director.

Ichikawa succeeds in echoing how the crumbling of the imperialistic dream played its role in making the father – imaginary as well as symbolically – malfunction for many subjects.