This is a delightful comedy with just a touch of the acidic. Toyoda's eccentric, if slightly dense, young hero plays out an ambivalence which, according to Japanese film historian Donald Richie, is the director's own: weighing the traditional demands of society against the lure of complete freedom. As a result, Shozo (Hisaya Morishige) is a not-so-rugged individualist. He is caught between a manipulative mother and a conniving first wife, two absolute terrors of respectability, but his mambo-crazed, ultra-modern second wife is definitely not the answer. Shozo prefers his feline companion-demanding, it is true, but not unreasonably so, entirely lacking in ulterior motives, and, perhaps best of all, existing unchanged and unquestioning through the ages.