Kon Ichikawa's latest film is an elegant rendering of an epic Japanese novel by Junichiro Tanizaki chronicling the lives of four sisters in 1930s Osaka. Scions of a once-wealthy shipbuilding family, the four Makioka sisters are now burdened with debts left behind by their recently deceased father. The strain on the two unmarried younger sisters to marry soon and marry well--already a matter of obligation and honor--is now also a financial concern. The film focuses on Yukiko, a reticent and slightly mysterious beauty who has rejected innumerable suitors and is rejected by others after a scandal erupts around her younger sister, Taeko's, penchant for inappropriate men and desire for financial independence. While the Makioka sisters are occupied trying to maintain a semblance of tradition in the face of encroaching westernization, Japan is gearing up for the war that will render all these concerns obsolete. Reviewing the film at the 1983 Venice Film Festival, Variety's Ron Holloway notes the “rich opportunity for ensemble acting, here used to perfection in Ichikawa's hands...the show of costumes, the compositional images of interiors...and the catalogue of emotions associated with Japanese manners--in other words, a certain reflection of a particular time and place in a not-too-distant past.”