Shimizu, whose earlier contributions to this series included Mr. Thank You and A Star Athlete, is best known and loved in Japan for his films about children, the most famous being Children in the Wind (1937). After the war, the independently wealthy Shimizu combined his two abiding interests by founding a home for orphans as well as a film production studio; the former provided both actors and subject matter for Children of the Beehive, one of his last films. John
Gillett writes, “This young soldier returning from the war might almost be the son leaving at the end of Army (PFA, February). He meets up with a gang of vagrant children (all marvelous amateurs) and they go on an odyssey through war-torn Japan. Although somewhat sentimentalized, it has many Shimizu trademarks--roads, children, and several virtuoso set-pieces like the incredible mountain ascent by two boys, shot in vertiginous tracking movements. Thus the series ends, moving from war and repression into peace and reconstruction.”