As in When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (May 16), Hideko Takamine portrays a bar hostess, this time fully immersed in an exploitative situation with a man (again portrayed by Masayuki Mori). Miho is the longtime mistress of a respectable university professor whose wife raises Miho's children as her own. Realizing the hopelessness of her situation, she attempts to extricate herself but becomes involved in a bitter and vicious power struggle over her own livelihood and her children's. Audie Bock writes, “Perhaps more so than any other of his films, this film illustrates the precariousness of the single woman's position in the world Naruse observes.... One of the most intense scenes in all of Naruse's work is the confrontation between Ayoko (the wife) and Miho. As fifteen years of bitterness come out in words for the first time, Naruse destroys all sympathy for any of his characters. At the end of the film, the audience is left feeling what the children express: a horror at the enormity of these people's selfishness.”