Shochiku Studio collaborated with a modern theater group, Haiyu-za, to produce this incisive satire on Japanese postwar rearmament. Minoru Shibuya, director of popular comedies, adapted a story written by playwright Naoya Uchimura and screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto (known for Kurosawa's Rashomon among others). Full of clever dialogue, the story focuses on a tyrannical patriarch, an ex-general who basks in his old Imperial Army glory. To his frustration, his children of the postwar generation are indifferent to his values and the relatives pay no respect to him or to the medals he so proudly acquired during his career. The old general's time seems to have come again when a former subordinate shows up to urge him to organize a movement to promote Japanese rearmament. The film was made amidst a public debate on expansion of the Japanese Self Defense Forces.-Kyoko Hirano