Based on his own observations of Ginza life, Mikio Naruse made Tokyo’s famed entertainment quarter the site for his classic study of a woman approaching middle age, treated with the subtle emotional quality and nuance that were typical of both Naruse and his star, Kinuyo Tanaka. She portrays a bar hostess, struggling to support a small child and still protecting her ne’er-do-well ex from his own failures. As in every Naruse film, there is home base (here, as often, a small backstreet) and the public sphere, teeming with its lonely types and brassy molls, its streets and cafés, where a woman’s life is, literally, negotiated.