Two sisters come to Kyoto from Tokyo to visit their dying father. Setsuko (Kinuyo Tanaka), the elder of the two, is resigned to her life as the hostess of a bar she has opened to support herself and her perpetually unemployed husband. The younger sister, Mariko (Hideko Takamine), is an audacious postwar freethinker who tries to pry Setsuko away from her husband and reunite her with an old flame. The sisters' attitudes represent a deep division in Japanese society between prewar tradition and postwar modernity, but in the end, duty to father determines the course of both sisters' lives. This atmospheric and picturesque film was Ozu's first departure from Shochiku studios, in response to a lucrative offer from Shintoho.