Ayako Wakao and Machiko Kyô have been good friends since they were in college. But Miss Wakao went to work for car company in Tokyo, while Miss Kyô returned to Osaka and opened a restaurant. When Miss Kyô is visiting in Tokyo, her friend asks her to break off her engagement for her. Miss Kyô promptly scoops him up. Neither she nor Miss Wakao's father, Shin Saburi, realize that it is because she wants to take care care of her father, an old sailor who took an office job when her mother died. He drinks heavily, and has just quit his position.
Kon Ichikawa's dramedy arises form the same impulse as all those season-themed movies that Ozu made, in which the time for a daughter of the house to get married has come, but she refuses because she feels a need to take care of her elders. The important difference is this: sometimes girls want to marry for love in modern Japan, and sometimes they really don't want to get get married at all; they want to make their own ways in business. In cases like this, the duty of the parents is to trust their children, and give them their freedom.
