Akutaro's young rebel, Togo Konno, is an early incarnation of the Suzuki nihilist (the gangster in Tokyo Drifter, the juvenile delinquent in Elegy to Violence) and tamer for it. In this period equivalent (circa 1910) of Rebel Without a Cause, Togo (Ken Yamanouchi) is a "bad boy" whose irrepressible behavior causes him to be expelled from school, wrenched from his mother and relegated to the tough love of a school-principal friend of the family. As his sexuality blossoms, Togo comes up against the absurd, protofascist disciplinary code of his peers, youths who have adapted the hypocrisies of the adults around them as a weapon. Still, he persists in his new-found pleasure, first in a humorously staged seduction scene and then in a love affair with Emiko, the daughter of a local doctor. She introduces him to Strindberg, he introduces her to the Eternal Farewell. Doomed love is a given, as, in a spectacular sequence, Togo carries Emiko through the waters of a threatening flood. Dazzling filmmaking traces Togo's growth from a bad boy whistling Carmen to an intensely romantic teenage tough. Like Togo, "a seeker of knowledge" who aspires to write trash ("literature for fools"), Suzuki himself is something of a Japanese movie brat. His brackish, jazz-like direction feeds melodrama with anger, humor, and genuine sadness.