The sisters Chieko, a script girl working at a big film studio, and Aiko, a revue dancer, are daughters to anti-unionist father Gintarō. When the workers at a railway company, including the family's subtenant Seizo, go on strike, Chieko and her co-workers demonstrate their solidarity and call for strike as well to achieve financial security for the film studio's staff. Meanwhile, Aiko and her dancing troupe decide to get organised in opposition to the theatre's mean stage manager. When Gintarō is fired together with a large group of employees at his company, he finally gives up his reluctance and joins the unionists, impressed by their earnestness.
As a result of the first strike by the Toho labor union in March 1946, a production administration committee was established, allowing the union to take part in decision-making. At the suggestion of the Allied Forces' Civil Information and Education Section, the film was planned by the union, produced in a week, and released on International Workers' Day,[3] the celebration of which had been banned in Japan since 1936.[4] Kurosawa later distanced himself from the film, calling it "an excellent example of why a committee-made film is no good,"[5] and refused to mention it in his autobiography.[2]
Reception
Critical and commercial reception of the film was not positive.[3]Kyuichi Tokuda, chairman of the Japanese Communist Party, called the film "too intellectualized and uninteresting."[3]
^"明日を創る人々". Kinenote (in Japanese). Retrieved 17 June 2023.
^ abAnderson, Joseph L.; Richie, Donald (1959). The Japanese Film – Art & Industry. Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company.
^ abcdHirano, Kyoko (1992). Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo: Japanese Cinema Under the American Occupation, 1945–1952. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press. ISBN1-56098-157-1.
^Gordon, Andrew (1992). Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. p. 282. ISBN9780520080911.
^Richie, Donald; Mellen, Joan (1998). The Films of Akira Kurosawa (Third ed.). Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. ISBN978-0-520-220379.