(Jinsei no onimotsu) A wry portrait of petit bourgeois family life in Tokyo: "If ever the ideology of 'slice of life' were realized in cinema, it is in such films as this," writes Noel Burch in To the Distant Observer. An office worker nearing retirement still dedicates himself to his work for the sake of his grown children; when he finally marries off his third daughter, he and his wife breathe a sigh of relief until they remember their youngest son, an unwanted child who knows it. His mother removes him from the unhappy scene but the child comes back, like a duckling to the nest. The Burden of Life achieved a naturalism that was far beyond the American and European cinema of the time (if anything, it can be said to anticipate neorealism by twelve years) by virtue of its egalitarian focus: just as incident takes precedence over plot, each character is a "main character," carefully drawn and beautifully developed.