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Kihachi (Takeshi Sakamoto) wanders the outskirts of Tokyo, his two sons
in tow. He has no job, no home, no money to his name, and carries all his
possessions around in a bag his sons eventually loseout of carelessness.
The only source of income the three of them have is to capture stray dogs
and bring them in for rabies shots, for which the gouvernment pays just
enough money for a meal. At least there are plenty of stray dogs around. Eventually,
when it literally cannot get any worse, the father meets innkeeper Tsune
(Choko Iida), a woman from his past who gives him abode and cares for it
that he gets a job as well. Everything seems to be looking brightly all of
a sudden. Kihachi then meets a woman whom he has first met when on the
lam, and she was in a similar situation. He has fallen in love with her
back then, and now he sees to it that Tsune gives her and her daughter
abode as well. Tsune is less than pleased helping a woman out who is vying
for Kihachi's attention, but is much too fond of him to not doing him this
little favour. Then though the woman's daughter falls sick, and to pay for
her hospital costs, the woman leaves Tsune's inn and becomes a prostitute. Kihachi doesn't know about
her daughter's condition or anything, only knows the woman has left him,
and that leaves him heartbroken. So he spends his time in whorehouses,
drinking - until he runs into the woman once more. He convinces her to
give up her job as a prostitute and return to her daughter and promises to
get the money she needs to her later that night. Problem is, he doesn't
have the money, has no means of making it, no friends to lend it to him
... so he steals it from his employer. Of course he knows he is sure to
get caught, but has just enough time to hand the money to his sons so they
bring it to the woman, then implores Tsune to look after the boys, before
he goes and gives himself up to the police ... Impressive film
that tells its sad story in a non-sentimental way, instead goes for stark
realism, setting its proceedings on locations in the back alleys of an
industrialized Japan where poverty prevails. Likewise, the film is told in
a very unspectacular manner, which only heightens the emotional impact of
the plot - but again, without becoming sentimental or bittersweet. An
Inn in Tokyo is frequently quoted as one of the key influences on
Italian neorealismo, and watching the film, it's easy to see why.
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