“Masako, the daughter of an impoverished itinerant tinsmith, wins a grammar school composition contest with an essay about her neighborhood. The much publicized essay ends up causing the family problems and their chronic money troubles threaten Masako's further education. Composition Class was one of several Depression-era Japanese films about the value of education. Tasaka's A Pebble by the Wayside (1938) (to be presented in February) is set at the turn of the century, whereas Naruse's The Whole Family Works (1939) and Composition Class are superb examples of contemporaneous Japanese neo-