(Kaze no naka no mendori). Tokiko (Kinuyo Tanaka) lives in a tenement with her son awaiting her husband's demobilization. Destitute, she attempts to make a living taking in sewing and selling her possessions. But when her son becomes ill, she takes the advice of a meddlesome neighbor and prostitutes herself to pay the hospital bill. On his return, her irate husband lashes out at her; it is only when he visits a prostitute himself that he begins to understand what his wife has gone through. Ozu considered A Hen in the Wind a failure (although it ranked seventh in the Kinema Junpo critics' poll). Donald Richie wrote: “In the general context of Ozu's style...sacrifices of realism to beauty were already visible, and it was through such sacrifices that a new and perhaps higher reality was shortly to emerge.”