Overview
is a 1955 Japanese drama film directed by Akira Kurosawa, produced by Sōjirō Motoki, and co-written by Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, and Hideo Oguni. The film is about an elderly Japanese factory owner so terrified of the prospect of a nuclear attack that he becomes determined to move his entire extended family to what he imagines is the safety of a farm in Brazil.
The film stars Kurosawa regulars Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura, and is the director's last with composer Fumio Hayasaka, who died while working on it. It is in black-and-white and runs 103 minutes. The film was entered into the 1956 Cannes Film Festival.
Plot
Kiichi Nakajima (Toshiro Mifune) is an elderly foundry owner who is convinced he and his loved ones will all be killed in an imminent nuclear war if they stay in Japan, so he resolves to move them to perceived safety in Brazil. He does not care that no one else wants to go or that it might make things awkward that he wants to bring his three illegitimate children and two surviving mistresses along with his wife and the four children they have together, saying that nothing is more important than their continued survival.
Kiichi's three oldest children convince his wife to try to have him ruled incompetent in order to keep him from wasting their inheritance on his plan, and they bring him before a three-man arbitration panel that includes Dr. Harada (Takashi Shimura). Harada, a dentist who volunteers with the family court, sympathizes with Kiichi's concerns and points out that the fear of nuclear weapons is present in every citizen of Japan. He wonders aloud whether it may be wrong to rule someone incompetent simply for being more worried than the average citizen, but the panel eventually decides that Kiichi's irrational behavior justifies removing his ability to make the financial decisions for his family by himself.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).