Mizoguchi'ssearing look at the disintegrating social conditions in postwar Japan focuses onthe degradation of women, whose position was rendered even more marginal by theblack-market atmosphere that made scavengers and fighters out of thedisenfranchised. Filmed on location in Osaka, it is the story of a young widow(Kinuyo Tanaka) forced into prostitution, and her sister, the mistress of anarcotics smuggler. Donald Richie noted that "until (relatively recently)prostitution was legal in Japan and consequently the prostitute had a certainstanding in society. It was the ambivalent attitude of society toward these'women of the night' which especially interested Mizoguchi." Elsewhere,Richie wrote, "Mizoguchi sees women as the best vehicle for the complaint heis making or the truth he is showing. He did not, therefore, make films forwomen, but about them."