Hideko the Bus Conductor

Hideko Takamine stars in the first of her seventeen films with Mikio Naruse, a charming escapist comedy in which the Second Sino-Japanese War is, if anything, conspicuous by its absence. Filmed on location, the story follows a teenage girl who works in a country hot-springs village as a ticket taker for a bus line that has seen better days (obviously, though it is not stated, due to wartime conditions). She develops a scheme to liven up her route by turning the bus line into a tourist line and herself into a “modern” tour guide.