MOVIE · 1937
Humanity and Paper Balloons
Drama86 min
In a poor Edo tenement, a masterless samurai waits for his late father’s former lord to offer him work while a disgraced hairdresser tries to recover his standing by abducting a wealthy pawnbroker’s daughter before her marriage. Chôjûrô Kawarasaki and Kan'emon Nakamura are among the film’s central figures in a neighborhood pressed tight by debt, gossip, and the hierarchy of Tokugawa Japan. The story stays close to alleyways, pawnshop dealings, and the daily compromises of people living at the edge, where wounded pride and poverty push private disappointments toward public trouble.
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