Setsuko Hara credited as playing...
Michiyo Okamoto
- Michiyo Okamoto: [voiceover] My husband is sitting at the table. I bring a pot of miso soup from the kitchen. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, for 365 days a year, morning and night, come and go unvaryingly. With a life restricted to the kitchen and the family room, must every woman grow old and die feeling empty?
- Shige, Taniguchi: It's fine to quarrel with your husband once in a while. You have to draw the line even with a nice husband.
- Michiyo Okamoto: But it's no fun quarreling with my husband. He doesn't say anything, while I do all the talking.
- Shige, Taniguchi: Men are troublesome creatures. They torment their mothers and wives. The only good time in a woman's life is when we're young. We don't have it easy.
- Michiyo Okamoto: [voiceover] Small houses built over the ruins are awash in the evening glow. In one of those houses, my mother lives with my married sister. Right now, I simply want to nestle on my mother's bosom and sleep like a child.
- Michiyo Okamoto: Have you ever thought of what I'm feeling, living this life day after day? Is this what marriage means? I feel like a maid. I slave away all day long doing laundry and preparing meals. I go out for a change. I come home to an upsetting scene. I want to go back to Tokyo. I want to work there. It's unbearable to go on like this.
- Matsu Murata, Michiyo's mother: It's not good to leave a man by himself. There are more women than men these days.
- Michiyo Okamoto: I wonder if any woman would fall for him.
- Matsu Murata, Michiyo's mother: I'm sure of it.
- Shinzo Murata, Michiyo's brother: I hate people who let emotions run them and have no regard for the trouble they cause others.
- Satoko Okamoto: What do you mean by "let emotions run them"?
- Michiyo Okamoto: Saktoko, it's rude to talk to him like that.
- Satoko Okamoto: But Shinzo is being rude to me. I felt lonely and I came here because I didn't have anywhere else to go.
- Shinzo Murata, Michiyo's brother: That's why we're all being courteous to you.
- Satoko Okamoto: I'll go home then.
- Matsu Murata, Michiyo's mother: Look what you've done, Shinzo. You are a bit too hard on the girl.
- Shinzo Murata, Michiyo's brother: I said all those things out of kindness. I apologize if I went to far.
- Michiyo Okamoto: [Voiceover] My husband sits beside me. I see the profile of an ordinary man, with his eyes closed. He is floating in the current of life, exhausted from swimming. Still, he will continue swimming, and struggle through the current. I stand beside him as we share our lives together in search of happiness. Perhaps that is what true happiness means for me. Happiness... happiness for women is perhaps to live life in just such a way.