“The shomin-geki are films about the life of the common people, particularly the lower middle-class.... One of the first directors to specialize in the genre was Shimazu.... One of his best films was the 1934 Our Neighbor, Miss Yae, the story of a young girl who falls in love with the boy next door. Her elder sister, unhappily married, also falls in love with the same boy and eventually leaves her husband.... Technically the film was a triumph, and in it Shimazu was at his most slice-of-life-like. The plot had its climaxes, but these were never over-emphasized. Everything moved along on a single level. The lack of action was carefully calculated by the director to give the effect of eavesdropping on life itself.” --Joseph L. Anderson & Donald Richie, “The Japanese Film”