In this contemporary melodrama, Kawashima creates a scathing depiction of greed and hypocrisy in a society facing rapid modernization and Westernization. David Owens of the Japan Film Center, New York, notes, "This masterpiece, little known here in America, has an excellent screenplay by Kaneto Shindo and a virtuoso performance by Ayako Wakao." Wakao plays a beautiful, cold-as-ice accountant who preys on the essential weakness of a wealthy family, once powerful but now subsisting on graft and the myth of their own importance.