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 writes (in "Ozu"): "Even the critics who liked the film complained about some of the more unlikely scenes.... Given the film in question, they were right to complain. In the general context of Ozu's style, however, 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..."