"Hideko Takamine in one of her most elegantly irrational performances for the master of Japanese feminine perseverance. Keiko is a thirty-year-old widow who runs a bar in Tokyo's extravagant Ginza district. At her stage in life she gradually realizes she must either remarry or own her own business in order to gain a sense of security. Deftly rejecting advances from lascivious patrons, she prepares to borrow the money to strike out on her own without a male 'sponsor,' but one of her customers proposes marriage, changing all her plans. However, the courtship only bears out the vulnerability of a single woman in a mercurial trade. Her relatives close in to prey on her, her health is ruined, she parts with the married man she really loves, and resumes her cautious purveying of friendliness and liquor - without her young bar manager, played by Tatsuya Nakadai, who loved her too much to remain comfortable in her presence without marriage." --Audie Bock