In adapting a well-known novel by Toyoko Yamazaki, Toyoda offers a fascinating view of life in Japan between the wars. Focusing on a woman trying to make it on her own, he has chosen a vulnerable and revealing subject, for when a woman "goes public" she becomes a sensitive gauge of society's changes. Toyoda uses an elliptical manner of conveying plot, focusing instead on character to tell us what we need to know about this period in Japan. Chikage Awashima portrays Otaka, who expands her late husband's interest in a yose house-a stage for professional storytellers and other performers-pursuing artists and businessmen with savvy, and leaving her son to be raised by the housekeeper. This, of course, will come back to haunt her. In a tale that spans some twenty years, we see an evolution of fashions and fads in old Osaka, beautifully rendered. Come World War II and the bombing of the city, this woman who traded feelings for power stands contrite amid the ruins, glad that a new generation will build. It did, and we see a postwar version of Otaka and the country she represents in Evening Calm (May 26).